Revision of Radical trust+ In service of the whole from April 9, 2008 - 20:28

Beyond Words: Body, Movement, Art, Nature

* Hazelwood, Sept. 2005, Kaleidoscope Café Retreat
In the last World Café Conversation that we had in this retreat Toke said to me that it was my task to bring the gift of body and movement to the overall community.

* From the Open Space session in Salon 2: The future of Evolutionary Salons:
“There are different group modalities -- not only Open Space and World Café, but working with archetypes, the body, dreams, ancestral roots, revelations.  We wondered if these might correspond to different developmental stages.  If so, might it be possible to craft something that could move us as individuals and collectively through a 3-4 day time period where we open up and go somewhere increasingly powerful together?”

* From Anne Stadler: Reflections on the Evolution of Collective Wisdom from the experience of Spirited Work
“Many times we walked in the woods, listened to the animal world, noticed quantum flirts from the deer and other beings we shared the land with. Often, a question would arise such as “What does the natural world tell us about human self-organising systems?” and we would walk the land to observe, then sit together under the trees to receive and share the wisdom.”

* Jan. 2006. After the Salon I wrote some lines...
Open Space as/is a talking culture.
Bringing more senses into communicating:
using dance to become present in your body
using meditation to still your mind
doing rituals to relate with ancestors and other beings
walk the land to relate to the earth
use drawing as a deeper level of accessing wisdom.

Be more present: deeper listening in the here and now
Being present, as the core of being conscious, is ultimately an alignment of body, mind and spirit. Be aware of our body, expand our movements – very literally – refine our capacities for being present and to go beyond our normal limits. All spiritual practices have a connection with some physical practices, be it to become aware of your breathing. Becoming more conscious of your body brings you – no matter what – into the here and now.
Being present connects us with silence, the quiet spot inside of us. Do we dare to engage ourselves in color, in movement from this still point, with no attachment to outcome, without controlling it? To let inspiration being present ‘in the moment’ with no translation by the mind?
Dancing, singing, drawing, … are all, besides talking, expressions of our wholeness. In our Western culture so many of these expressions have been cut of. Our ‘new culture’ will need to find ways to integrate these ways of expressing and gathering information. We can integrate the masculine and feminine ways of knowing, because if we need to handle ever more complexity, more of the whole,  this is the way to go.

Expand mental knowing
Finn wrote in his article that the individual and the group itself can be an entry point of consciousness. My dance, my walk at the beach, my drawing can also be entry points of consciousness, not only my talking. So much inner knowing in our bodies and in the subtle layers of reality is not directly accessible with our minds. Even if we ‘lean into the unknown’ in our conversation. Words needs a certain kind of being aware that we don’t need for expressing ourselves in sound, colour or movement. Exploring this direct knowing more often and intentional can show us a way to access it with words more easily.
Most of the time we don’t go into an inquiry and reflection of our inner knowing, if we notice at all! But the world is in need of this inner knowing. It can reveal deep, hidden wisdom. This kind of knowing has to come into the world, to balance the importance of the mental, analytical knowing. When we release the mental knowing that we are so used to, we create an opening, a space where we can be open for other kinds of knowing, sensible in the body. If we take time to inquire and reflect the hidden wisdom becomes accessible and then we can share it – also with words – with others.
We all know that an image, a poem, a performance can carry much more meaning than words in a conversation. Let’s use these intelligences more intentional, individually and collectively. Pernille, one of our convening team, recently had a performance where she was dancing the question “Who am I?” and she experienced that the dance was a strong impulse for creating a deep dialogue about the same question with the audience. What could happen if we all engaged in such a dance?
What if we could/would always listen and think with our bodies and our minds?

Create more community
In the experience of my women’s circle, over the years we have come to value all expressions as honoring and living the authenticity. Not only authenticity of the individual but also on the level of the community. Isn’t dancing, singing and eating together a core part of every community worldwide? I am longing for creating this kind of shared culture, as much as Check-in rounds and the bells ringing for silence have become a part of the culture that we all create together as we go.

Please add your piece of wisdom
I tried to weave some different threads into this article. It’s intention is to catalyse a conversation and the whole movement. Of course you have also a thread to add; please join in the conversation!

Something needs to be said about Beauty here…