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Afternoon Reflection: Day Three

We are going to go into a reflection on a couple of questions.  I will ring you into silence, setting the context with a metaphor.  Then give you the calling question, allow you to reflect on that for a few minutes.  Then Katie will have another question.  

This morning as I walked labyrinth, it struck me as a metaphor for where we are in our process today.  The labyrinth provides a container, a path in and a path out.  Some of us are moving towards the center.  Others are ready to move out on the path into action.  It also struck me as I came out of the labyrinth that all the collective intelligence and wisdom, we are a culmination of fourteen billion years. . . Incans, Mayans, Hindus. . . all ways of knowing into the future.  We are weaving into the fabric of next seven generations.  How do we take all we have done here, reweave it and take it into the world in some form of action?  

In the morning, I was into dancing.  This afternoon, I am into weaving.  Walking the labyrinth reminds us we are all going in same direction, we are all on one path.  Kalia was so excited.  It is very good to walk the talk and to be mindful about that intentional reconnecting, going to the source, finding the strength, also joy.  When we come together, we are trying to find common ground.  So much diversity in this room, so many perspectives.  Unless we bring it together, with all ingredients. . . I had image of all of us bringing forward all of our gifts.  If we don’t make weavings, connections, we will lose opportunities.  I offer an image:  Water.  Visualize the future of your great, great grandchildren.

Drumming wake up call, call to action.  How are we proceeding.

I am leaving tomorrow without making a contribution.  This is my contribution and at the same time a manifestation.  When I fly back, I will meet reality, a hard reality.  These four days have been beautiful day.  Nice people.  Good people.  When I fly home, it is the reality, somebody in almost every day will be killed.  Innocent persons will be killed in my country.  Muslim in Thailand are wildly angry but now violence coming that never happened before.  When I left Bangkok, there was a demonstration and nobody knows what happened.  . . . I fly 10,000 to join evolutionary movement.  I join you before I come here.  That is just physical join and learn something.  To ask many questions:  how we make an evolutionary/leading/moving edge.  One thing I know at the edge, there must be a danger there, a fear there, that we are afraid.  . . . A Brahma Kumari woman said what you think belongs to the world.  What could we do that would have impact on the world and encourage other people to join, to move, to go to the point of fear.  I have made a commitment with a friend, a rinpoche, he say ‘Chaiwat, I commit to be a warrior, to create a new kind of society.  Not this life, maybe next life, or hundred lives, I will do.”  I said “Yes, I will do it, too.  Next life, I will do it again.  Do it again.  A commitment between us.”  So. . . . how?  I use myself as a vehicle, I am evolving as I remember, I grow up in many ways.  I am looking for something.To be evolutionary you must know yourself, who you are, where you come from, know your nature.  If I know my nature, then I can, in the universe, bring my life story with the story of my life, the story of my native town, story of my land, story of universe, this must be coming.  How can I relate universe story with my own story and make it energy for me, to learn something?  So this tension, which we want to see.

I thank you, Chaiwat, for stepping into the center and bringing the voices of those who are suffering.  When I came here, I said to myself ‘you are an amateur evolutionist’ and you are going to meet the pro.  I don’t think we need to become professional evolutionists.  I think what the world needs is what we have experienced here, which is to be fully present with ourselves.  Knowledge nice, wisdom vital, we need wise individuals out there to help Thailand, Mexico, other cultures.  . . . My commitment is to go back and be a channel of the spirit of these gatherings.  People will know that this space exists.  I will make sure that this happens.  I will bring the qualities of you all to Mexico and would love to be connected.  I have strong sense of urgency.  Sometimes we believe there is time and I don’t think we will have much time.  I think that before a disaster hits us, we should understand our fears, differences and move together.  The time is now.  . . . “My sight place in the universe, my feet grounded in the soil, and my heart streamed to a star.”

I have one overall mission:  a vision of one world.  Three more specific visions:
1.  A politics based on values and meaning, the world will grow into these
2.  All people of faith could be in community no matter what their faith
3.  A network/family of people able to function and work together in mystery, from mystery, in service of the world.  I am in the midst of that.

I have the urge to speak and then it went away and came back again.  I ask you to hold a container for me because I don’t know if I am strong enough to say what I need to say and ask grandmothers to give my heart a voice.  I have heard many lofty words since I arrived, beautiful worlds.  I’ve never heard such exquisite language.  And I remember the first day with the salon, we talked about language and going beyond language.  We talked about social creativity and collective intelligence and I realized we were missing this big piece of a social creativity that is as old as the universe, that is even older than humans, that all species were collectively in a ritual way to achieve their goals, that humpback whales when they are feeding, they gather and make amazing sounds, like miles davis.  They work together with that music, that sound, to catch the thrill.  This is ancient technology.  I’ve heard so much about new technology, that it will save it.  I think it has been overrated.  I’m not living better.  I’m living faster.  I’m not living deeper.  I want to live deeper.  All human cultures have gathered together in ritual. . . They all look different and all the same, gathered in circles around the fire and all the shit comes up that nobody wants to talk about and they talk about it and that is what makes the community.  I thought it was just that I was raised Canadian, we’re all so nice.  We’re all being so nice.  Then we had a mash up in that corner.  I learned so many words today. Something can come out of this.  It’s not being nice, it is being raw.  . . . Enlightenment is knowing yourself.  I hear lofty words and wow these people are so smart.  They know all this stuff.  Do they know themselves?  Do I know myself?  I want to know what it means to be a human, that’s the only thing that will get us out, get us through, to get a real mash up, a real emergent coming out so I was thinking about. . . .Americans tell me they don’t like their system of represenation. . . well, you know what, your system of representation is based on the Iroquois nation system of doing things but your founding fathers missed a big piece of it and that is who chose those leaders, who chose those warriors.  It was the old women.  They cut out the old women, it was the old women who chose them, they have lead, they have been in their bodies, burst their babies, tended the dying and the sick and they know what it means to be human.  . . .  So I was thinking about how to embody this, to connect. . . so I want to propose a ritual.  I want to propose a mash up.  What we would do is we would choose two warriors from this group to have a mash up.  We would put them in the center, with the old women around them and everyone else out there and we would let our two warriors mash up and if the old women don’t like what theya re doing, the old women could choose someone else.  Same thing here.  We’d have to make some rules.  I have to confess, I have already chosen the two warriors.  I was hoping I could convene old women, have a council. . . but sense of urgency, there is no time.  Consulted a couple of women.  Honorary crones.  So, I’ve spoken to one and he thought it was a great idea. The other is such a busy guy that I didn’t get to ask him but I think he will be willing to do it.  If people agree on this, we could set a time, they could be talking, they could be grabbling. . . there is something that needs to shake people up here. . . . The most important thing that is my commitment is I go back to my beloved Bowen Island, and I will go back and make sure everyone knows the story.  I invite all of you to go back and know the story of your place and love your place and walk your woods and walk whatever and just be whatever and look after your own garden.

In addition to electing the women selecting the members of the great council, they brought together the many Iroquois communities.  Another type admitted to the council, the pine tree chief.  I wanted to be a pine tree chief.  They didn’t want me to do what I was doing, they wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer.  I want to be a pine tree chief.

You are.  Stand tall.

I’d like to remind us that indigenous people are still with us, not only in spirit, not only the stories that we have inherited.  Indigenous people are not only alive, they are getting stronger.  We haven’t been listening to them, we thought we had all the answers.  The indigenous have watched their lands taken away and then destroyed.  They had learned over thousands of years what worked, how to live in harmony, get along in community, sustain the planet.  They’ve been trying to teach it to us every since.  This is one of the most important pieces of hope in our time.  The new president of Bolivia is an indigenous person.  Not just history:  it is happening right now.  I’ve been working with Suquamish Tribe, people of Chief Seattle. . . a few issues, ilncluding Chief Seattle’s home.  A polluted inlet, from shopping mall and their survival has depended on harvesting the inlet.  Their answer was they will take time to clean up the inlet, for decades, year after year, persistently, taking a very clear stand, they will not give up on any part of this living planet for which they are responsible.  Just a few years ago, they began to be able to harvest shellfish again.  It is important that we honor some of the people who have these lessons to teach us.  . . . . . I don’t know if there will be generations to come.  To get real that extinction that happens over evolutionary time also and the way we are doing things has that potential built in.  We need to contemplate the possibility of our own extinction.  Then ground ourselves in the passionate commitment to say yes to life anyway.
I wish to name other communities to bring them into this circle, a commitment I made when privileged to work at Findhorn:  I wish us to not only act from a species perspective.  I wish to call in and to have us embrace that overlight the sacred spaces, the mountains, the trees, flowers, waters, volcanos, angelic presences who in soul and in god and in their way guide us, they are a parallel and interdependent evolution.  They are co-evolving in a mystery way deeply and strangely connected to us.  Also to call in those beings of nature, sylphs, salamanders, faeries, elves, knomes, those whose substance give form to that which is, together with the angels gave us the gift of the soul that allowed us as humans to walk as confluence of three streams:  spirit, earth and human.  We are three in one.  Nature is not out there.  Nature is in here.  It is inside of us.  I wish for us to remember to call upon these communities, to sit in council with them, so when we think of earth in its destiny, it is not just a species focused conversation.  Let us embrace the muses as we write, play, dance, sing, embrace fullness of who we are.  We are the full spectrum of life, attempting to reveal itself.  I acknowledge angels, nature spirits who live outside and inside who we are.

Stephen jumped around in a wild dance.  Thank you, I needed that.  I had a vision that each of us sometime go to the person in the circle we most fear, sit with that person and see what happens.

I am humbled to be in your presence, wondering if Stephen’s invitation is that we might all sit with ourselves.  Two new things for me:  one edge is thanking faeries and muses and I want to thank young nerds. . . I was particularly inspired by Jair and Lion and Kaliya showing me that the cyber world is not an amoral world, that those of you here who know me “I have really been about conversations ninety five percent in the body.”  What I saw in our conversation was that you guys are living in another reality and it is sorta of like I feel dinosaurish.  You guys grew up conversant with a way of being that is no longer frightening to me in an evolutionary sense.  Lion, you gave it to me the most.  The dynamism of polarity embedded in the universe is alive and well in cyberspace.  This is the moral dimension of the silicon beings that are growing up amongst us.  I have a prejudice as a sort of carbon being that it is just not going to be as good so I actually felt a surge of thrill around this rather than a sorta of resistance, like how are we going to insert a moral dimension.  I thank you for that.  It is an opening for me that I didn’t expect.    Its been terrifying to me that systems are going out of control and I didn’t understand how moral dimension could show up in these systems.  It feels like the moral constraints are all and that is bad thing.  Cancer, who-ooh-ooh.  I’ve had cancer so to say it is a cancer on the earth doesn’t hit me the same way.  I’ve just had this inkling that there is a way that the virtual world, I mean I want us to dance and be in body and hug and all of that is a pleasure of in body existence but we may be on an extinction path and we may not find much beauty in the silicon world and it just may be what is coming, what is birthing. . . I couldn’t have imagined that thirty six hours ago.  The other one I want to say is that there has been, I haven’t had a disconnect between presence and activisim, and, like my partner, my old partner, my deceased partner used to say presence and a buck will get you the subway.  You got to get down to it,you got to do something.  I’ve been a nonstop energizer buddy that you gotta do something and my journey in the last year or so has really been down deep into the nether reaches of my own being and into a place of such beingness. . . it is really different form how I would and I have had a concern.  I’ve created duality:  my interior world and there is coming out into the world.  I am going to be in the world and I am going to dominate as though I have to leave home to do something about this out of control system.  Somehow or another in the two circles, that Michael happens to have been in both, the little bitty three circle and then the circle on fields there was a . . we generated such a palpable field, a wave down the body. . . this is just an opening, . . . it may be that presence is what I do in the world and if the field that we generate and that I experience in all circle work I do, conversation café is a generative field, that’s doing.

I’d like to offer statement of thanks and blessings.  I’ve had some ambivalance that I would miss my tv show, Lost.  Lost is about group stranded on an island and they try to find their way off, they discover a lot about themselves.  The challenge is a group called “the other’ they have teo contend with, a shadowy, frightening group.  Great deal of conflict among them, many people represented:  wise crone, scientist, destiny, technology.  So my statement of thanks is that I don’t feel like I have really missed it.  The other is a blessing is that for most people these are easy.  Not for me.  We had to choose a napkin and a holder and within the first meal, I lost my napkin but the whole time I’ve been caring around the holder.  I wouldn’t give it up even though it had no use.  So many times I’ve tried to do something in the world and the spirit that moved it, manifested in some kind of form, when I took it out in the world, I sometimes lost the spirit that animated it.  It has been such a prescious time spending time in group, with individuals.  Twenty to thirty times I was with someone where we glimpsed something that really matters to us, something of what is in our hearts, something that will keep us going, so we can stay connected.  The blessing is that wherever that place was that you glimpsed that within yourself that you hold it dear and you take the power of that place wherever you wander.


Does anybody else feel really frustrated? With a lot of energy that wants to bust out?

The field is inside, present and waiting to emerge.  That’s the beauty of this marvelous setting.


I recognize that in any circle there are multiple things happening, multiple lenses.  My request would be that in the circle we honor wherever in this quality of space ecch person finds themselves.  Including frustrated, dramatic, seeing angels, rising as pine cones – PINE TREE – I would like to be witnessed for my commitment:  I have been touched by what people have said about place.  I make commitment at personal level that although my heart is in Mexico, the small piece of land that I would like to help to steward as a statement of the connection of the intimacy of my life, with the scale of my life of a small piece of land in Tomales Bay where we have been called to make our soul’s home.  The second thing is something I’d like to acknowledge that has not been spoken and that is the incredible potential that exists in what was signaled.. . the incredible power that exists between generations in this room  and outside in this room.  , , , I would like to name the possibility of intergenerational collaboration.

Lion stood in solidarity.

Whooping, clapping, joy.

My commitment is to be parat of the floating, bodhisangha of this circle, of every circle where hearts beat thus into the mystery and of the mystery, to the places we love and stewarding those places and stewarding the places our lovers love so that I smy commitment.  I rejoice in the delicious expression of energetic and heartful and juicy spirit that comes through each of us and in each one of us that we encounter in our floating bodhisangha.

I’d like to offer. . . when a lot of energy is generated by a collective of people it separates into little pieces and may or may not catch fire. . . or we could perhaps be channeled and leave this place committed to some sort of collective action.  I’d like to see a collective decision to really do something together that would be impossible alone.

Jair played guitar.