I first wrote this in June 2008.  As I look now from this present place in Dec. 2008, I see how we have moved with the evolutionary unfolding of understanding “holding space”.  I will share here what I wrote then with more from Nov. 23 and today. 

My sister in collaboration, Ria, has been holding the question “What is holding space”?  And so at some level I have held this question as well within a greater question of “What is the next level of the emergent feminine?  What is wanting to be birthed through us now”?  We often speak of “holding space” when we gather collectively to inquire into collective knowing.  Or we speak of holding space for others who are facilitating a large collective process where innovative ideas, solutions, and actions can emerge.  

To give context –  I recently read something that Jean Houston wrote about the UN.  A UN person said that her experience was like that of being in the womb and not knowing what would be born.  In 1945 I was born into the energetic birthing impulse of the UN and have always resonated to this planetary work.    And now I know it and own it as part of the feminine, our collaboration with the planetary womb that holds and gives birth through us to the next turn of the evolutionary spiral.

The followoing is from my morning meditation on November 23;  these things came onto the page. 

The UN, the womb, the messiness of the birthing process.  What are we experiencing, learning through this?  From the womb we are not sure yet what we will birth.  We must be in the chaos, the messiness, and the beauty and repatterning all at the same time.  We must be in the silence and active stillness and at the same time in the thrust, the incredible force of the life impulse itself.

Not only is the feminine (the womb) empty and receptive, taking in, holding, nurturing; she pushes out, an undulation of life, an emptying so as to take in again, to give even more life into the world.

It came to me here that the process of “emergence” is itself a birthing.  There is a thrust, a burst and something new is born in consciousness.  There are often the birth pains, the contractions, and then – Wow, Emergence, in all its messiness, even ugliness and yet life itself, so beautiful, so unique, so full of potential – the evolutionary and even revolutionary.

Holding space is really what we women do; we are the womb.  We take in the seed (a question), and we hold the possiblity of potential for the new life to emerge.  When we hold space we do what we do as the womb – hold, support, nurture, protect, listen, love – in quiet strength we hold ambiguity, we hold the sacredness of life, the sacred space connecting to and nurturing the possible.

And when this fragile new being wants to emerge, we release it, sometimes thrust it, almost violently, into the world, into life, into Being.  Emergence from the silence and safety, through the chaos and messiness (almost like a burning ground) of the birth canal into the vast open space of freedom, of Life, and into the next level of the Unknown.

Now on Nov. 23, 2008 I have a deeper understanding and connection to the womb as Source.  Women Moving the Edge in its 4th iteration brought clarity about Collective Presencing from Source.  It is the feminine that holds this place of the emergence for future potential.  It is the Collective She that has the capacity to birth the yet-to-be-known.  With an intentional evolutionary question held in the womb of collective inquiry, moving with wholeness of knowing as engaged in collective will,  we access the Source of the emergent seeking to come into form.

Now on Dec. 7 as I reflect on yesterday’s call with R and L, I see that we must claim, name, and own this feminine capacity of “holding space”.  We must no longer be silent or devalue this essential element in our collective process of cultivating Presencing from Source.  In partnership with the inspiration of collective inquiry, we  are the birthing ground of emergence for the highest future potential to come into manifestation.