Women Moving the Edge - Fifth iteration

This was the largest gathering so far - 16 women in all - gathering in the intimacy and earthiness of the beautiful King's Mill in Eliksem (Flanders) for four days over the transition between January and February.


We always gather around guiding questions, but this time the question we had crafted during our months of preparation really held us and drew us in in a way we had not experienced before:


The State of the World - the time we are living in - was also inexorably present with us. Our current context somehow raised the stakes of our gathering - already at the beginning of our day of preparation together, the four co-hosts - Ria, Judy, Lisette and myself - found that we had learned to go deeper together in search of Source, to recognise when we 'weren't there yet' and to release our effort and sink down deeper still, into the silence of pure potential, where nothing stirs, and everything is possible.


We were more intergenerational this time than before, too. My daughter Anna, at 13, was the youngest but by no means the least, coming out with the occasional bolt of wisdom from under her curtain of hair... and totally disrupting proceedings on the second evening, when she had us in stitches of laughter for over an hour. Seeing the ease with which this new generation can cut through complexity and home in on an essence is truly hope-giving. We patronise them at our peril!

As usual, we dispensed with any kind of facilitation after the first few hours together and settled into a self-organising, self-regulating flow of conversation, silence, contemplation, movement and creativity that delighted and nourished us all.
Again we were reminded that women need to touch each other - and again I was blown away by how soft we are!

In the middle of our circle, along with the talking pieces and flowers, were pens, paints, crayons and chalks, coloured paper and sequins, scissors and glue (not to mention the licorice and chocolate)... as time passed, beautiful pictures emerged from the centre to grace the walls, all produced as the conversations interwove and the circle birthed its magic.

With four iterations of this process behind us already, we could really see how the field has deepened and learned. Ria has been able to make some of our discoveries explicit in her model of source and spirit and Judy has also elaborated on this. This time, we learned how to collectively move through one woman's individual experience into the wordless space of source and healing together. It kept happening, and we got better at it each time. Each time there was a movement from the mental realm into the experiential, embodied, felt sense - from 'what do I think?' to 'how does it feel?'. From a place of confusion and discomfort to a place of spaciousness and deep rest, the experience of the individual acting as a gateway through which the collective could move. And it wasn't just done with words. There was the touching again - the physical support of each other's soft, warm, insistent presence. Stay with it - don't flee back into rationalisations and judgements... just stay with it... Truly a collective coaching to be with the living experience of NOW.

It felt as if the 'new paradigm' was in our midst - and it kept astonishing us: it really is EASY: just do it! It's time to bring the feminine back into the thick of things - and she won't come a little at a time. Just as you can't be a little bit pregnant. Either you give us the floor, or we take it! When the feminine bursts onto the scene, our bodies come alive - my god, I had goose bumps almost permanently for four days, it was so electric! What a world this will be when we can be in it in this way.