Harvest – Circle of Conscious Creation, Oct. 20, 2016
Present: Sarah W in the UK, Ursula and Nina in Brussels, Analesa and Saira A in Massachusetts, Judy in Colorado
CCC Question Guiding Question
If old world foundations are crumbling, like the ground beneath us falling away, What do we notice arising around (or through) us that wants to take form? In the world or in our lives?
Collective Presencing Circle
Judy: Heart. It’s interesting – something showed up in the silence that was different for me, or I realized at a deeper level. Part of what’s present in the question for me – a lot of our old ways of being, of what we expect, showing up in the US political environment – everything we’ve always thought was there or true or supportive is somehow falling away. As though the ground is dropping away, beneath my feet, at least. I sense a lot of anxiety in the country – people not even knowing why, necessarily. That relates to collective trauma that some of us were called to work with in the Creating Hosting Collective Healing Spaces gathering in August. For me what came through in the silence was another layer dropping away that felt protective. Part of what has come forward, and I think Trump is a gift in that way, he brings so much up that really needs to be looked at in this culture and worldwide. The treatment of women, all the kinds of abuse that have taken place over centuries – a long, long time. I didn’t think I would feel that again like when I was younger, that I might feel sometimes in danger, or wanting to look behind me to see who’s there following me, or not trusting a man that I didn’t know – that feels so far in the past; but what’s happened here – especially at the debate, it was almost as though Trump was stalking Hillary Clinton on the stage. It just came into me on a different level and it felt traumatizing. It was still with me the next morning. It feels like for me that something I was taking for granted about safety has fallen away. Rationally I know that’s not so, but perhaps that’s how many, many are feeling. Not safe. Causing a lot of anxiety, fear, anger, turmoil – without any kind of hints yet about what’s arising. Yet I have the sense that something different is wanting to be born. I know that, I feel and sense that. And maybe some of us and what we are doing, each in our own worlds, in our own lives, is part of bringing that forward in whatever form it takes.
Ursula: This question for me is so interesting; I so wanted to be here. This is exactly what I am sensing inside and outside myself. Crumbling of the foundations is so clear, not just in my own democracy. People are losing orientation and they are constantly looking for more in the old way. It’s so interesting when it comes, it is completely artificial or clumsy. At the moment I am just watching and I’m not saying anything. When I’m in a unit meeting where people just play real and they aren’t. Using foundations that are not there anymore. That aren’t valid, for us anymore. I just see it as a cabaret, I am an observer, I see I will not be able to change that and the others? Myself, I am getting completely permeable. My membrane is much thinner. That has made me much softer and smoother in a way. I am witnessing, and at the same time this crumbling around me, and also this softness around me. I am seeing it more. The main tool has been using tantra and sexual energy. Intentional breathing, alone, and with my partner. Going over boundaries I have had. And sometimes also in a collective setting – not knowing what is possible in such a loving and collective place, this fine energy, and it does a lot with me. This is a completely new place that has arrived. I have completely given up territory in that area. I am not jealous anymore. That’s the new showing up. Especially this Tantra lady that came to us is such a gift; she is an artist also. Just breathing in God and out God, but name it what you want. The moment my body got that, I could get rid of so many thought structures, beyond convention, of what has to be what! To me it’s a way forward, and it’s not yet completely shown up and manifested in form. I’m in so much transition at the moment. Whoever I am meeting, I was in California in the summer, and here I can talk about it and people are doing something more intentional with their energy that is so fine and powerful. We have never learned to go beyond conventional intercourse or even getting pleasures. I read the book on sex when I was 20 but I’ve never really practiced. I know that’s the key; that’s the secret. Just use it, but it’s not taught in family. That’s to me the new showing up and daring to speak about it. The connection to what J said is here. I realize that a very healthy way of making love cured me from all my traumas. Sometimes I was in public spaces where someone was raped. I think my body picking up something stored in the spaces and had fear of being raped. Maybe my body was picking up something that was stored in the space. Sometimes I couldn’t go out at night or would call P to pick me up from the tram. That’s completely gone. My guess is we are also so much in the head. We know about this injustice and we hate it. We can’t solve it with the head or with legislation. Just 2 days ago, a friend of my daughter’s was raped and murdered in Germany. Many of us are suffering. Yes, we can get all angry, but we can only work with us being grounded; anger doesn’t help. I can only speak for myself, I find it terrible, and I grieve with everyone; but I don’t sense that anymore in my body. I don’t know what changed; I just know I am protected. If we are completely grounded and our feet are almost in mother earth and connected to the higher world, we are protected. This really powerful energy also gives us a protection at the same time, uber translucent and sensitive. What I am seeing is 2 things at the same time – this getting very, very sensitive, almost like an elf, and at the same time very strong, and impatient if I am with people who are not serious and I let them know. I know I am on the way; I am not yet the butterfly, I am in the caterpillar position. To me it’s really getting more into the body, really expanding who we are beyond whatever we thought, and expanding and expanding and not seeing any boundaries anymore. Some days are wonderful, and some days I am struggling in the reality world that I have around me, because it doesn’t fit me. I am patient with myself, but not sometimes with what I see around me.
Analesa: Heart. Thank you both for sharing – in the silence the first thing I felt was as the political system is, as you said J, creating a lot of tension, I found that in the circles of women I’m with, and we’re calling community circles to share, even these women in a spiritual circle here are in anger and fear. So what is arising in me is just hold a space to keep the largest perspective possible. I keep bringing that kind of language, and some singing to the conversation. Not that it doesn’t amaze me what is going on, but it is helpful to keep that perspective of some kind of evolutionary shift that’s going on. In my own life, so much is falling away and I’m happy about it – feeling more my true self is arising. As many of you know I am writing a one-woman show, which is so interesting to me. I am working with a wonderful coach and we are looking into the time when I went into 30 days of silence with my letters, and every day I would go on a shamanic journey and make love to the gods, or to some spirit person. So much sexual and feminine healing was going on. One of the major themes of the show is going to be a sexual awakening which I am really in the caterpillar stage of working with. What’s arising for me is coming into my body for the first time ever. I have escaped it most of my life and slowly but surely coming into a part of me that’s feeling more grounded and relaxed inside every day. Stuff that’s needing to be cleared is continually showing up so I can work with it. Interesting that you mentioned Osho because one of the women who’s helped me the most is a spiritual teacher, whose work is related to Osho, Mada Dalian. And I am working a lot with her methodology of shifting, of letting go to get to that centered place of what is right in this moment and to feel the interconnectedness of everything. So I have had tastes of that that I haven’t before. So it’s an amazing time, both inner and outer, stuff shows up to be cleared. And we don’t really know what the future may be bringing; but being on this journey and seeing how pieces are coming together inside myself, and even in my outside world, slowly, but in right timing, is lining up. Being centered in my body, a new thing, is a pretty novel and important way to be right now as the world is a little topsey turvey and I’m in the midst of this major creativity.
Nina: What came up for me when I read the question – those pavement art images, where someone looks as if they are walking across a chasm, but actually the ground is still there,
Or when somebody is on a glass bridge and you can’t see if anything is holding them up, but it’s alright. The idea of the ground falling away, but still upright and standing in what seems like midair, but it’s alright. I have been having that feeling a bit – both on the home front and in the work front. It’s interesting how often I get exactly the same showing up in very different areas of life. I feel behind the feeling of the ground falling away for me, at the moment, is shedding of stuff that is not fit to include as I go forward. Stuff that is mediocre or illusory or (searching for right word) stuff that gets in the way of seeing clearly. What remains is clarity that is like the breath of fresh air, when you get to the top of the hill and the wind is blowing. So that feels healthy even though my stomach keeps dropping out when the ground falls away from under me.
Saira A: Heart. Thank you everyone for speaking so richly and honestly. I get so much from that. The image that I have in meditating and holding for a number of days is of myself standing so solidly as a cone of light and the edges of where my body begins and ends are dissolved. It is fascinating to me, this month here in the USA there is an increase of anxiety and fear. I have been doing a lot of shamanic work. One journey done for me was a soul retrieval – so blessedly in that I have been able to let go of a great deal of fear and darkness. I also did a workshop with Lock Kelly, who wrote a book called, Shifting into Freedom. We did many exercises to get a glimpse of living in our bodies in that state of connection to Being or God of the Universe, unhooking from thinking mind. Experiencing a knowing in the body, located in the body, located outside of the body, located some distance from the body. Then being in that altered state and returning it to daily life to live out moment to moment. That teaching combined with the soul retrieval that I had gone through in the last several weeks, has helped me feel very expanded and utterly safe and strong. Then I listen to the debates; I listen to the whirlwind of conversation afterwards, and I find myself being able to hear that and not get pulled into it, and to stay in a place where I can be of help to others. It can take simplest form. This morning I worked with an elderly woman on a jigsaw puzzle. The joy of something so simple and the communication between us was a simple joining of one shape to another. I am experiencing being with others and in my own body with the removal of some very deep fears that had held me, grasped me. The ground actually feels fairly solid to me right now and full of light. I am so grateful.
Sarah W: Heart. I have been listening into the question and also what’s been shared. I had the Tarot card, the Tower, with me as an image. As an archetype it speaks of a lightning strike that hits the crown and releases the inhabitants from their protective shield which is on an archetypal level is illusory. Eventually there’s this mayhem and what can be seen as the chaos, that there’s this release to the point of grounding what is true. And everything else is no longer relevant. The structures, the forms, the patterns that have had their day; the old crumbling. I was sitting with this word crumbling. For me I feel like I’m in a wave right now where there’s been that word spoken, and so the tower really showed up as I was in my own sensing and listening and also there’s been an image, kind of Lord of the Rings imagery – when the ground sliding away and again it’s this point where you literally land on the solidity even though it might be layer after layer after layer beneath. And this other thread of imagining walking down a sand dune, where there’s these fine elements that are just falling away and yet how to move down that is to stay steady and upright and just let the foot slide into the opening that is created. Like you do in soft snow as well. So there’s that feeling in my own landscape; the lightning strike came with having my partner last week being admitted to hospital with a suspected heart attack, and being away on a survival training course funnily enough – and yet here he was in the space of survival because he lost consciousness and was taken to hospital. I rang him in the morning and found him there – and just being faced with the potential of losing someone, and losing him, was a shock for us both, for sure. A fairly recent reemergence of our relationship, having known each other 30 years ago, and we met again a few months ago. And yet what took place was this clarity of what was important and like everything, forget everything, forget the work; it created such precision. It was the heart, and thankfully he is fine. He was discharged later that day. I was meant to literally be in Turkey this week for hosting a gathering, and I delayed it until I knew what was needed and then decided my place was to be here, holding a space for his recuperation and also for us. Just that sense of such a moment of change. and I know it’s very much in field of the US with this massive decision point. What’s going to happen; what’s the choice? And I think that’s what’s key for me – these points, these moments in time; life brings you something that makes you realize the magnitude – the magnificence of every moment, actually. Life’s been very clear for me, I feel this has created such an attunement to following a path, and I have been aligned to the path of truth for sure, but this moment for me personally has created a very embodied understanding of what is important. Important being what I have energy for and what I don’t have energy for. And right now it’s absolutely a path of love. And part of my alignment this lifetime, and everything else simply falls away. I feel like that’s the biggest choice we have right now. Do we choose love or fear? And sure I have some waves committing me in this recent time and now I am just leaning right into what I’m in. Everything else is taking care of itself; I’m doing my work slowly, slowly. The gathering is just fine; I have been hosting my colleagues from here; and I know how to do that being in the subtle arts and being anchored deeply in a knowing that is of me and beyond me. I know this is in service of the field, not just in service of myself and Neil, for sure. Out of that comes the clarity of other elements in any field that is interconnected with me; crumbling takes place there too, things get levelled, in a rightful way. It’s not a right or wrong perspective, but a beyond perspective, a cohered perspective.
Judy: I so appreciate all that has come into the circle. It’s like it has the flavor, the scent, of each of who we are, of all of us, and yet some kind of universal weaving going on here as well. A lot is about this embodied presence of love. Amidst all the chaos and mayhem, appearing personally or collectively, we are learning more and more how to do that. However it is for each of us, whatever kind of stage we are in.
Nina: Heart. Wow! Sarah, what you shared doesn’t only put things in perspective for you, I feel that by association, and how it puts things in perspective. Sending get well wishes and empathy with that experience.
Analesa: I felt, Sarah, when you were speaking the strength of your following the North Star, the truth, and standing in the love; I admire that you follow what is true for you. I feel that is what each of us are doing on this call, finding a deeper truth that is permeable, and flexible, deep and joyful at the same time, even amidst the difficult stressors we are under.
Closing / Checkout
Sarah: Heart. I really resonate the refection you offered to aligning to deeper truth. That is language that I have used over time and you bring that in right now. I feel that is the call to humanity now and the call for each of us. There are these moments where we vote literally, where we take our stand – like those of you in US and others will be doing fairly soon. It is like where do we stand? What are we aligned to? So there’s that aspect of the deeper truth and the call to that. And at the same time there’s this alignment to the higher vibration. I am really in that thread these days. What is the vibration of love and embodiment and feminine presence in the dance with another? So there’s a deeper truth, there’s a higher vibration. Therefore, there is an anchoring, a hooking into, as I see it, into the polarity of our own soul nature. As we evolve, we become attuned to that which we are called to offer into life that is deeply rooted, deeply grounded, and in service of whatever we are called to be. It can be multifaceted and many things. That is our choice and where our soul can have its voice. I am grateful for this call. I will carry this into the rest of my evening.
Nina: What I take away is the idea that each of us is redefining GROUND. It might be nothing like somebody’s else ground. Cloud anchors might be our ground. Or a feeling of ease with the free fall in the sunshine. Like the street painting, there’s something under our feet even though it doesn’t look like it. Something that holds us like the belay in rock climbing. Lovely to be here and hear you all.
Analesa: Part of what is going on for me right now, and for many is – Who am I? What am I? where am I? Where do I want to put my energy? Where will my soul be nourished? Where to live, what to join. One thing that is really clear to me from this call, it is to be in circle with dear friends who can go deep and wide, who can hold each other, and have assorted perspectives, and be supportive of one another in these transformational and crucial times. This is one place where my soul is very happy. Grateful I am part of this – thank you J for holding this for so long and for all of you for being here.
Ursula: I am really enjoying leaning in with you, thank you, and hearing different words and experiences, and lots of things; there’s a lot of resonance.
Saira: Heart. I have such an image of this moment of us all as light beings, standing on the ground that is also light and physical. I am so grateful to hear each of your journeys.
Judy: Heart. I am very grateful to all of you and what has come forward. I echo A. – Wherever I or we might go or be involved in, to know, to have circles like this in person or across the world where we can come and feel a sense of resonance and presence and support, a level of coherence that is often very hard to find in the world. So it seems to be, for me, a way to sustain and grow in that embodiment of light and love. It feels really important. I will send Nina’s image – quite something – like a chasm of air with clouds and someone is leaping over. I appreciate the image of the tower S, so much is erupting, and disrupting, and shocking, and blowing up, and yet I have a strong sense something else is coming through and emerging, just there under surface. Appearances on the surface may not always reflect what is really moving and coming into being, and doing that through each of us. Thank you.
Bell & Silence to Close
Next call Nov. 17, 2016