Reports conf.calls leading to WMtE5

Women Moving the Edge 5  January 10, 2008. 

Ria, Helen, Lisette, and Judy

Silence

Check-In:
Ria: I feel really well - I feel like ready for WMTE to happen. Beautiful snow here - sun on the ice - I've enjoyed it.
Conversation I've had with a friend this week - a man - he was telling me I had a blind spot - over email I didn't understand what he was pointing at. Then we met in real time - he said you don't seem to be mild with politicians. It's true! I have learned over the years to be mild with many people, not being judgmental, but it's true that about politicians I still have this judgment that they are stupid!
So there's a big revelation. It's true! Somehow, it's linked with naming and claiming the feminine - if I can explain it. It opened up for me to be more free, more flexible in this area of leadership that is also political.  That's something big, though I don't yet see the consequences. Something has shifted in me around that.
Helen: I've been in a great space the last week.  Next to no internal dialogue - quiet, at rest, an in-body experience.  Really being cocooned, safe in my body, life, work, cosmos, and belonging.  Finding this week I just have to show up, being empty and listen.  Then something speaks through me and I can shut up again.  It’s an intense experience and hasn't faded away at all.  First the silence, then embodiment of safeness and belonging.  Curious about what this is all about.  Feels wonderful.   Noticed people around me at work seem to be taking their own lives and insights to the next level as well.  I’m ready for WMtE.
Judy: Naming and claiming the feminine - this past week my OD group met, deeper inquiry group - once a month we meet - it's become an amazing little group. I've noticed some shifts and changes - Helen's noticed that people around her seem to be coming into a new level in their own lives, I'm seeing that in this group. I notice that what seems to be emerging, creating a deeper sense of resonance and interconnection - I could name as the feminine - but it's not named that way in that group - which is a mixed gender group. I don't know if it's necessary to name it; it's just happening and maybe that's all that matters - but why don't I name it and claim it? It didn't occur to me in the group, only after - but it's occurred to me now.  Is it about right timing? I'm marveling at the shifts I'm seeing in others and in myself, a sense of looking forward to 2009 in so many exciting ways – so much is possible.
Lisette: Last time I realised that all three of you were here.  We were all together at the same time. It was palpable the connected container that you have built. Sitting with total privilege; back from holiday, coming into my own home; my own city; to the arena of the people I am working with. Being ... in Jan I am not engaging in an active way, but going to Findhorn, to WMtE, to ... Inquiry... maybe that is a change in my life. WMtE is like it is going to happen tomorrow.

Silence - Pause

Judy: Each check in – I am noticing a sense of each of us being able to be present in whatever our situations are – and yet somewhat detached. Holding that. Holding the space for wherever we are and what's emerging.
Ria, when you spoke about getting excited about your recognition of your resistance to politicians and the feminine - I am not sure I understood the connection.  Could you say more?
Ria: What I realised was that I am in some way judgmental of politicians - or it was until he said that and I understood. I was thinking of that this morning as if I project onto politicians that last bit of 'you are supposed to lead me or protect me and you are stupid in how you do it'. It’s like the child speaking through me - not the adult who knows about developmental processes.
It also has links with taking leadership as if I was blocking politics out of my view - I am in the social, civic sector, maybe even the corporate world - but politicians? I had blocked it out of my normal view as if it was something happening on a side where I don't look. Now it has opened up and I am more flexible to look at it - maybe there is something for me to do in that area.
Helen: That seems very important, what you said, Ria.
We have many preconceptions what it means to be in politics. The assumptions we have in order to go into politics - having a big ego, having to lie a lot, saying what others want to hear, etc... I see politics as participating in public life; trying to get into governmental power is a small definition of politics. If we name what we do, if we name and claim the feminine, we must stand up and participate in public life. Some aspects of what you do, Ria, in Levend Vlaanderen, that is politics!
Judy: I'm thinking about this political question - it's connecting to a bigger systemic thing that I'm noticing. Maybe especially in the US because of Obama - and the engagement of the younger generation(s) - all generations - it's moving into the potential for small circles of people all over the place to be addressing public policy, across the Internet, in meet-ups in lots of locations, picking an issue they care about - healthcare is one I see everywhere - people are holding dialogues that will theoretically input into the greater decision-making process - circles of people coming together to interact around issues they care about is potential for something new to emerge. What we hold in WMtE, we're creating practices, grooves, at a level that isn't there in the mass consciousness yet, but it's preparing the way. It's the potential to really shift the way a lot of things happen. It's something I can't articulate, I've seen it only in the last 6 months - huge potential.
Holding the space for politicians and any leader that we may not agree with.  In the incoming administration - in Obama’s inauguration on Jan 20 - a far-right Christian minister will give the invocation - he has a huge evangelical following – there is a lot of dissatisfaction with this - Obama’s philosophy is that all must be included in the conversation. He ignores all the stuff that comes up that is so negative - he goes ahead and he just does it. He's created a kind of container that can hold this shift. I think that what we do is holding it in our own way for bringing the feminine – and all that She is - forward.
Lisette: With your question, Ria, I ask myself: Is there a group that I write of, don't engage with, put them in a box and close them off? Our former Dutch minister is an amazing man! And a woman in the Dutch parliament, she sees herself as the representative of civic society. It would be amazing if she would come to WMtE; I will talk with AM about that.  She has a good connection with her. Also the invitation of Kosmos magazine, maybe we can write an article about how she does this in the parliament, in the European parliament.  A whole vista of possibilities is opening here!


Practicalities:
Discussion of who will be coming.  Around 13 or 14 now.  The Welcome letter.  And what about on-line conversation?  Can be indicated in the welcome letter.  Also link to harvest from previous WMtE if people want to read that.


Check out

Judy: Sensing into the energy from the last WMTE in the US - there was something really - no words, hard to articulate  - I feel vibrancy and aliveness and possibility as we move forward - emerging, evolving, beautiful - I feel blessed to be part of it and excited about what we're moving into next.

Skype connection was lost

On the Chat:
Lisette: This is the second time that the connection disappears during my check-out - I was talking about the light I feel we are channeling, the lightness I feel, the playfulness.  
Helen: My check out is that I notice we are operating on the assumption that each iteration of WMTE is going to build on/go further than the one before...  ☺
My check-out was the wicked smile - and I LOVE YOU!!!!!  (hug)
Ria: I'm sitting here, just smiling; all is well!

WMtE 5 Call, Dec. 26, 2008  
Helen, Lisette, Judy (Ria could not get on-line)

Silence:

Check-in:
Judy: Odd time, odd feeling - yesterday was Christmas - different this year - no obligatory daughterly duty - to go to Ohio to be with the family - seamless - no sadness, grief or emptiness - except the welcome silence - I notice how easily that happened. I don't feel sad, although I had great love for my father. It was the time for him to go, and I'm now looking forward to things like what we're doing together - the essence of life for me is exploring the edge of consciousness and collaborating with others - I'm grateful for this shift - that some of that stuff is behind me. I have a sense of freedom, to move forward in a bigger way than ever before.
Lisette:  Interesting for me too.  I'm in my father's room, behind my father's desk - my father passed away too. Traces of him still here. But I don't have the grief or sadness that I would have expected to have. Sense of 'it's up to us now'. When I was preparing for the call and seeing whether there had been any emails, I read the Presencing and your blog, Helen, the email from Beck - my way is the way... It's up to us to keep the space wider, there's a space for everything - saddened by the boys fighting over their toys - feeling us as wideners of space.
Helen:  Yes! is all I can say to that!  Sitting still with the feeling of holding the space for the highest future potential.  Spent Christmas with friends, solitary here with my kittens, children away, and this afternoon with G on some of our projects together.
More and more I feel the importance of this women's work.  And it’s time to be more explicit and visible.  Remarkable how many can understand when you explain it.  Lunch with my director, talked about holding space, and he understood.  On the one hand there's this sense that the world is starting to understand and the other the sense that we at WMtE must forge ahead and push it as far as we can and not worry if everybody gets it.  Part of what it means to move the edge is that not everybody will get it, but that's OK, that's reality. Stay grounded in the reality of edge pushing.

Some silence

Participants – the Tunnel
Helen:  What is the conversation in the Middle that wants to happen?
Lisette: Curious who will be there so we can include them already.
Helen:  So far, all women who have come before, except V.
Lisette:  With the importance of this time and this work – let’s dream into who would we really love to be there.  Anne-Marie sent email to ? who is exploring the physical movements, dance of holding space.
Judy: Not many US women - many won't go because of the distance. One woman who is on the edge of this work and interested is JJ.  I sent her an invitation.  She is from the UK.
Judy:  Readiness. It's fascinating - there will be people who will feel called to come and be ready immediately for that. There will be some who will want to come but feel not ready, or feel ready but not really be ready - judgment thing. Green is inclusive, but we might want to really be with those who CAN move the edge. Important that the door should be open for those who are on the cusp. How should we deal with this? How does that impact me in work with other kinds of women's circles? Who could be 'just about there'?
Helen:  I have the open space feeling of anyone who turns up are the right people - anyone on the cusp needs to expect a challenge - again with the younger generation, can we expect that? We need to be really clear about our expectations .... tricky things, expectations. A friend in that respect as we wake up to what it is about ...what's happening now, if I can articulate it, we're bringing in another piece - if we attract the younger generations, it will bring in action and activism - crones moving the edge of collective consciousness and space holding, the younger ones have less experience, an unformed-ness which will not prevent them from acting - how do we weave that into the equation- action and activism: the action will be done by the 'less aware', while the more aware are more into guidance and space holding and what does that mean in this kind of prototyping.
I see us almost digging a tunnel through which the younger people with their momentum can move so they don't hit the wall. Prototyping almost - widening from Lisette = space of consciousness. I see a tunnel.  The older are ahead of the young burrowing in the tunnel so their momentum can take them further.  Tunnel is consciousness and is U shaped.  To the extent that we go there before them, the energetic young activist can follow through the tunnel and come out the other side.  Into prototyping and real action for a wiser and more just society.

Some Silence and conversation turned to who the younger women might be that we could invite.

Lisette: Interesting, when you asked what was in the Middle, we named an item and went right in!

Raising awareness of this work
Helen:  What else needs talking about? Raise an awareness in some way of this work. Timeliness of the Presencing community forum. We can start something.
Lisette: Just read Theory U.  Also saw the prominent place of the Circle of 7, it’s like our work.  This (WMtE) is the place where you can learn to do that as a woman.  Attract women who are involved in that community to practice with us.
Helen: Ria and I are going to birth this article about Otto S. last three principles: intentional grounding, relational grounding and authentic grounding - would be good to do it as soon as we can so we can actually call in some women through that.
Judy: I agree - even Otto has said that bringing the feminine into the world is so important, it's essential! I've had it in the back of my mind to contact him, to see if this is interesting to the work he is doing.
Our invitation is on the event section of the Presencing site.  Nothing much is showing up when people see it. Our invitation is Women Moving the Edge of Collective Presencing.  Might be good to say all of that.
Lisette: I started to cry when you mentioned what Otto said. Connect with Otto - if he can encourage some women to turn up.
Lisette:  Margaret Wheatley – I read Leadership and the New Science.
Judy:  Art of Hosting connection for Berkana.
Helen:  Marilyn Hamilton – another to contact.
Lisette:  It's not large-scale work, but this is now what is wanting to happen - this is what is needed so badly, so the more people we can have there who don't know about this but if they did... I followed Anne-Marie's intuition. So grateful I came.  I had not a clue.  Who else is holding this alone and would benefit from holding with us?  Who is pioneering this on their own?

Meta-work, difference with storytelling

Helen:  Just punched a hole through into different space!! We really need to ask Ria who she sent invitations to.
Judy: The dance between large scale and not so large-scale work. These gatherings are so small that we can go to a deep level quite quickly. It would be another edge, doing larger groups - we just keep exploring.
Helen:  Meta-work.  Patterning at quite a high level.  Look at how you do it, distill patterns, apply to other things.  WMtE.  We are looking at the meta-patterns.
Important ... conversation with GP, is patterning at quite a high level, meta work - pioneers are doing it, but not wording the patterns and seeing if they can be applied elsewhere - in WMtE we're looking at the meta-patterns and that is not large scale work - 85% of the population are lost in content - this work is about joining the dots at the meta level.  We can't afford to get lost in the content.
Judy: That's what differentiates what we're doing from the storytelling model; people getting together to tell their stories. I get bored so quickly - I don't have much need to tell my story - it is a different level of work. That's interesting to notice!
Lisette:  How to deal with that?
Helen:  In the invitation, we have named what we are there for.  Good to hear from Ria on this.  She is a lot less controlling.  We should put it on the agenda for next time we talk, whether we need a strategy to counter too much 'story-telling', or whether we should just let it be. So the question is - should we just 'deal' with our boredom? or find a strategy for allowing people to tell their stories?

Judy: Around the topic of story telling and holding space - I struggle with holding the space for someone – it helps to see the soul essence as they speak – yet sometimes I think we have to say something. Being willing to take a yellow leadership role - say that enough is enough. I meet this in my personal life - if I'm honest with them and shut them down, they don't like it, they get offended.  I am insensitive.
Helen: In our invitation it is explicitly stated how we will work together.
Lisette:  Already my mind starts to run.  There are different kinds of stories! like Anne-Marie talking about her Meshworks.  Then we can go to patterning – different from personal stories talking about own past – good to have stories about applying this work in the world and when you struggle.
Helen:  Maybe let's do present and future, not past.  But last year our ancestors appeared - maybe invoke in the beginning so we are not going back. I strongly sensed healing the nastier energy of Europe and the witches. After we did some of that on the last day - all the ancestors turned up in the morning.
Judy: To me it’s not going into the past as much as tapping into our subtle knowing - sensing their presence, knowing they're there - part of a feminine way of knowing that is so magical.
Helen: Do we explicitly invite the ancestors or see if they show up?  Is this a pattern?  Don’t want to get into; been there, done that.  Want to push and expand that which is.
Lisette: I have no memory of the ancestors coming in.
Judy:  Perhaps it was more present for Helen and me and a couple of others because it came in the morning meditation before the group met. It was with me the whole day, but not necessarily voiced. Very present.

Check-out

Judy:  What I love is that we are looking at the meta-patterns, about how to develop these practices that we haven't quite looked at before. What happened last time? what could happen this time? We're touching into things that we haven't given voice to until now. Like how to work with women who need to tell their stories, etc. I think it's important and interesting that we are exploring and moving that edge.
Lisette:  Feel that last time was a very intimate gathering.  Now I see a whole spider web we are weaving around the world.  How to have that intimacy and connection? I believe there are so many of us out there.  That is what I find pushing the edge.  Also feel strong connection between the 4 of us.  And people from last year coming back and making it more solid, prototyping, learning.
Helen: I think we've covered some good ground - with solid foundation of ones who have been there and bonds and connections that have come from working together in others ways like AoH, creates a good lead belt that we can put on when we step into the water - like an anchor - we see each other and go boom - down deep already to start with ... the importance of the continuity of this work ... metaphor of the pancake that is strong enough to take in more water and more flour without forming bumps, knowing the cosmos won't send us more than we can digest.

WmtE5 December 2, '08
Judy, Helen, Ria

Silence

Check-in:
Ria: I have been thinking whether the question on the invitation is the real one, or is it in the right wordings. We have hardly talked about it. I apologise that the invitation isn't finished yet - I decided this afternoon that I'll go and buy a software package, the open source software just isn't as good.
 
Judy: I like your question - it's something for us to sense into. I'm in a really good place, because I have jettisoned the albatross from around my neck! It's wonderful! The other thing that came to me in the silence - the women's group last night, I noticed from this intentional evolutionary perspective - what am I learning here and what is my tension? It's an orange-green group, which I notice, and that people's contributions are personal/ego-based. If we go to a higher place, 'from the middle' that they can't hold that, and someone goes every-day practical... What does that say about my participation and my intention? I see it as a possiblity - I have a sense that we're making a new pattern, or an imprint, of something that's been there for a very long time and is moving to a higher place on the evolutionary spiral. There's something really good about that, and something is evolving and it is important. These women really like it, they want to do it and they want to come back. My intention is about whatever I can do to hold the space for evolution to occur. That gives me joy.

Helen: I am in a domestic space, my parents are staying with me. Aware of overworking - doing dumb things. Looking forward to a break and holiday. Also think it is good to look into the question. Still work to do on the invitation - sense of what is the function of each part - need relationship between the bits (text). Might be too many quotes. Shorten the Scharmer quote. Also what would be turquoise photos, good question! Maybe photos from Kings Mill and some photos from previous WMtE gatherings.

Framing
Ria: What I really want to do this time is to try to be as precise as possible - so that it is clear that it's not a green gathering. That was part of the photo question. Last time we had a nice picture with N. and U., which is fine in itself, but I think putting that on the front can have a green connotation. I have been thinking: then what? I was thinking of Dana Anderson, who makes this beautiful art - but that's still quite green. That's why I stopped. I didn't see any further. If you have ideas, that's fine. The only thing I can think of is the drawing I made in the last gathering - the colours with the one red dot. It's just colours... not really art, and not really representing something.
 
Pictures for the invitation: ideas
Amy Lenzo's nature art
Nice nature photos can be appropriate.
photo of the feminine figure, statue, goddess.
searching for good pictures that capture what we want to say...

Our guiding question
Ria: For emergence to happen, it's really about the synergy between focusing the inquiry and holding the space - does that come through enough in this question? I don't want a group of women to sit together and hold the intention of the organisation and sit in silence. I think there is a more active part of looking into what is the basic inquiry. Also, I didn't feel totally comfortable because I put up the question but we didn't talk about it, so I wonder if it's really the question.

Helen: I like the idea of the scalable question: organisations, government, world... Do you think  “women" has to be in the question?

Ria: Maybe not... I don't think so...
 
Helen: Does it make a difference if there is a group of people holding an intention on behalf of a greater whole? What does it mean to do that? To what extent do we need to hold the same intention? To what extent is it in the middle, the space held by the individuals? To what extent does the intention arise in the middle and is it possible to articulate that? Is that what maybe women can do, that sensing?

Ria: For me the question came out of seeing that the gatherings built on each other and were somehow going up on the right leg on the U more into some kind of action, or more in the world or connected with the world. We saw in the last gathering that the basic question was: How do we keep an alignment between individual centring and the collective while we are in action? What is the next edge?

Helen: Bearing in mind we have to keep the edge here with women who have not done that before.

Ria: Even if we don't get there, it doesn't matter - well, it does, but it's more that we as the hosting team know what is the edge that we are searching for - What is our edge?

Helen: Important point. What is the edge we are searching for? Judy holding space for women moving up the evolutionary spiral. For us, I would like to think we are moving the edge of the spiral, not up it. In the meantime, what Judy said is appropriate because we hold space for everyone there to take their next steps up or to join with us at the edge. Meeting people where they are and moving the edge while we can.
 
Helen: If we were asked to hold hands and lean over the edge and to bring back the question that is just beyond our sensing ... what would it be?

Ria: For me it has to do with not seeing very clearly how this practice of this continuous collective inquiry, this collective sensing - how that manifests in action in the world.
How does this continuous collective inquiry and sensing manifest in the world? The prototyping and cristalising that Scharmer talks about doesn't seem enough. It sounds many times like 'we now know and we step out of the sensing and do it - even if its something new - in the old way'.
What is emergent creation?

Helen: You are still sensing into the question from before. Still about - keep alignment between indiv. and collective while we are in action. What does that action look like and in what way is it different from business as usual? What's coming to mind is a memory of work we did as a hosting team for a recent "real sitting in the fire" hosting in my work environment. What we did was very explicitly to hold eye contact across the hosting team, with 150 people in the room. So the team of 8 or 10 could come together in 30 seconds to shift, through the sensing. Anyone could call this - sensing through and with each other, very much in relation to what was going on in the room. Example of ongoing sensing. Alignment around collective purpose, constantly held, intentionally - not being forgetful. Part of our own clarity while hosting the event, being there, holding it. To what extent will the other women step into that with us? Does that have bearing on the question?

Judy: What I'm sensing is a mixture - there's a space that's consciously and intentionally held - an iterative process, as we move into action, a continuous collective inquiry, we can be the birthing ground - the action is going to come into being as it happens, we don't know yet what's going to be next, what's going to happen. There's a constant returning to some level of connection to collective presencing or source. I don't know how that relates to the question. It is intention, emergence, continuous collective presencing, some action or manifestation that comes out of that - movement back and forth as we move up the right side of the U.
Somebody's holding that - a group, a team - they aren't necessarily the ones doing the action - or are they? It felt in the last WMtE we just did that: Mary was holding the greatest future potential in the work she wants to - it was in holding the space that we helped her go forward, but she might need to come back into that space in order to be able to continue.

Helen: Holons, parts of a greater whole. Whole - specialization of the parts - more complicated and specialized. Part of specialization is holding this intention consciously in a field that surrounds the actors in such a way their actions are conditioned by the intentional field.
 
Helen: Fractal – it is the way I hold my action. I hold a high intention and my action emerges out of that. Not all actors act in that way. The moment that we move into some kind of organization...

Ria- What would happen if you could hold this intentional field not alone?

Helen: There is something wanting to come in here for me. A friend is currently doing a personal inquiry - his blog is riveting. He's doing a very sustained inquiry into his own feeling life. Amazing levels of subtility in his relationship with it. Something we women can do so easily. So natural for us to do this work. And still it is a warrior's work. We need to step up and hold the world accountable for its highest future potential and call it out.

Helen: I read an open letter to Obama from Jim Garrison. He's setting a challenge. Almost irresistable. If we can sense into the deepest and highest intention, can we hold that intention for humanity, and from that space call out our politicians and our organizations to honor and to step up to that highest potential? With the moral powers that women can have, as an act of collective leadership of women.

Judy: So are you saying that this question is about us being called to do that? Sensing into the deepest and highest intention and to call out, as the collective leadership of women - to call out our politicians, leaders, organisations, to their highest potential?
Is that part of the process of moving up the U? To reach a place of standing and saying to the world: step into your highest intentions, and we women can collectively hold that?
 
Ria: What is the highest potential that we can hold – for our organisations, government, the world and then call out others to live up to it, to manifest it, to live it...
It's getting warm... There's some edge in there.
 
Judy: The thing to do is to play around with this - I'm not sure we're at the essence yet...
 
Ria: Holding the highest potential of the world doesn't seem like a really difficult job - it's like being on ground I have been on before - although it might be bigger. But this calling out might be another thing to do that's more of a challenge. There's more uncertainty. But I don't know if that's the edge of the collective presencing or just my personal edge.

Helen: What I try to do is sense: What does the world need? Part of what it needs, is exactly to have its highest potential held up in front of it. To galvinese it - to strenghten us and move us into bold action - we are at a different point in history, the world has changed - the world has the highest potential president, it creates a higher field of potential to live up to. There is something that is coming up: there needs to be a huge amount of creative fermentation that is going on: new currencies, new economy, new governance... in doing that we need to be presencing, inquiring... What must guide our working together to solve these problems? There is something there about holding space for the inquiry. Two things: hold the intention for the highest inquiry - keeping the space open, not collapsing into default thinking - and live up to it. And then there is also the voicing of the learnings; the whole process piece...
These are intentional actions that change the quality of the human endevour. They are intentional evolution. That is different than before: it is not accidential, it is not unconscious. It is the intentional holding of the highest intent, the largest potential that we can get our arms around. Something we know how to do, but has been missing in our act as a species.
Intentional getting into a relationship with the cosmos, the source, the spirit. Which is probably our highest potential...

Then we decided to sleep on it, and let it ferment... to digest it...

Lesley, I would like to fully support you in this!

We might even think of connecting with you - or maybe some more women - who want to support us in this way. There could be a feedback in both ways when connected by Skype maybe - or conference call.

But also if we could just read your insights, and we could post what is going on here, that would be really great! Imagine what becomes possible if we make the field really big in this way!

Helen, Judy and Ria    
November 18, 2008

Long Silence

Check-in:
Ria – In this gathering there were only 3 participants and the two of us, but it was the right mix, the  right people. Not a lot to share in this check in - I want to jump to the harvest of this morning. I'm happy with the wholeness of the picture. It came together very fluidly. Happy with that, happy to move on.
 
Judy: Same thing - not a lot of words - deep sense of peace. Heart field, sensing my part in something that's very resonant - what we're creating here has a resonance - there's a quickening to the next WmtE.

Helen: I looked at the photos - beautiful roses. Art. Charts. As if I were there. Transitional leadership model... My check-in - quickening in the times. The world was in an enchanted slumber of dispair (under Bush) and has now awoken, a kind of empowerment, now we can get things done!
This work is timely. Kittens romping. I am really looking forward to hearing and sensing into what is to come next.
 
Conversation

Harvest of Women Moving the Edge4

Ria: Harvest of our gathering we ended yesterday (see photos of our harvest): Intentional evolution was more present in this gathering as I probably named it more. Awareness that we are active participants in evolution. The purpose of moving the edge is building or deepening these grooves of collective presencing. Doing presencing in circle, with a group. We saw that collective presencing builds on the Scharmer model - open mind, open heart, then open will, which means a connection with Source or Soul. Only in this moment of coherence or resonance of these 3 – on the individual level – we then start the collective bit from this place of coherence in ourselves; we start sharing our human energy. Beatrice Bruteau names thinking and loving as parts of the human energy, we also see a sharing from this Source place. Only then do we create this Circle Being or this field. What was new was that we could move more out of sourcing into an action place. This was exactly the question or the intention of the gathering, How do we keep ourselves and the collective aligned while going into action? So we could do that. The  difference was that as WMtE we go to this deep, still, serious, sourcing place, now we were more able to move, more lightness, more sparkling. This relates to the Wholeness of Knowing – the use of drawings, dancing, nature, constellations... “The knowing arises in the experience of the field itself.” Beyond the language of the conversation. It has a non-verbal quality and brings in the subtle knowing in different ways.
 
What emerged in this action - looking at Mary's model of leadership, we saw this map is important to make the transition to a fully turquoise society - where eveyone could live in emergence. There was a deep understanding how we need to weave together the younger and older pioneers, a deeper understanding of the intergenerational. Older generation would need to bring in grounding, compassion, holding, stillness, reflection, the more wise qualities. Weave it with the younger generation who acts so spontaneiously. They live in the flow, are not afraid, living more in the field than being stuck in the personality. Clear that we have to weave this together. Mary was at Pioneers of Change. gathering last summer. She saw the younger generation. They do hosting easily, start new projects, social entrepreurship but they miss something to bring it into the world or don't know how to speak about it. Weaving together these different energies became clear as the next step in evolution.
 
People engaging in collective presencing need to be able to do three things at the same time: being a participant in the process, being able to observe (self and field) and to be a leader - or do the stepping forward when needed and appropriate. All these levels of participation are needed. As hosts we host as a living example of that, by being that, having more mastering in combining these different awareness levels.
 

Being explicit
Helen: I will write this up! Also important - question arising now: How we take this forward into the next WmtE? Some who have already been there will want to be there and there will be new women. Challenges of balance between ego and the participant-observer-leader. What can we do in advance to prepare the field? Intention that will help women to step into that, so that we spend as little time as possible in the ego space and as much as possible in the collective space. Do you feel that is an issue?

Judy: It can be an issue - I don't know that it will happen this time. This time, anyone who couldn't be in that space selected themselves out. It's the invitation that does that. There's part of me that wants this to grow and have more women there - and this past gathering was really small and there was very little ego present at all. Maybe our invitation will ....
 
Ria: Naming these three or four levels of what we expect - what we live into/train ourselves into - naming it, will enhance this process a lot. Remembering that L. said last time that she didn't know it was a purpose to 'go beyond ego'.
 
I can imagine that some of the new women who come in are not as familiar with it as we are, but I think our field is stronger and more explicit about what needs to - or could - happen. So I don't have any worry about it. I trust the process and I have learned that being explicit is important. It's part of this masculine intention setting. Putting a good question as intention. Somehow, I guess that women coming through you, Helen, can be related more to action in the world. If we can keep the process with their action orientation, we can build on what has emerged here. That's how I see it now.

Helen: Sense the rightness of that. Particularly the explicitness of the invitation.

Ria: I see that the invitation needs to be less Green and more explicit. With a language that can name as much as possible. It asks from those of us who will be writing it to come out of the source place ourselves - giving language and words to why and how. The harvest of today helps a lot.

Helen: What is the next step? Sensing the purpose?

Next step in the unfolding - Towards Action

Ria: What I see in the bigger picture is that we are doing a big U process. Every WMtE is moving one step in the U. We have made now one step out of the bottom into the right leg of the U. I think the next will be the next step on that leg. Although I don't have much clarity on what that will be (yet).
 
Judy: Ria said that the women H invites might be more action oriented so there could be the issue of moving into the sourceplace, the deep place before moving into action.

Helen: I see WMtE as an interative process - starts at the beginning each time - must go down the U every time again, although more quickly each time. Brings us up the right leg of the U further each time. And must take every cohort to down to the bottom each time. Next to that: sensing what are the potentials present. Calls for action already in the air. Sense what is brought in, as well as what is emerging. What emerges will be a manifestion of what they brought in - to be transformed and transmuted into the world. Maybe we can hold this even before/from the start - maybe some generative interviewing of the women coming.... Sensing of who is coming and what they are bringing.

Intergenerational

Ria: Related to this weaving together of the two generations - I think when languaging the invitation, we could really aim at that. Bringing grounding for the younger and bringing movement for the older ones. It would be really good if we had more of these younger women. We had one now, and one last year. I think of Simone, Sophia, I will probably need to speak directly with them. I can imagine that how our invitation was presented - the language, the format, was pleasing to my eyes but not to a younger woman, perhaps.

Helen: I sense the extreme appropriateness now to open the door for my daughter to come in - as she feels like it, as a teenager. She could hang out at Kings Mill and come in as she feels like it. She is 13.

Judy: Good for each of us to be thinking about outstanding young women who might be good to come that we haven't thought of yet.

 

Europe

Helen: Talking with Peter Merry about the energetic work to be done in Europe - Wars, wounding, and 6 million witches we burned. A lot of the healing work around witches is being done, I said with assurance. I have the sense the witches and ancestors were with us last time in Belgium. It is time now, we are safe again, we can come out, look at what we have hidden, and see what has stood the test of time and science. I relate this to the Magic, the sparkling energy you felt now. We have started to heal in the Western World.

Ria: Europe might have a prominent place in our next gathering. We will be women from all different countries – and we have been in different gatherings where Europe has been part of the picture.