First day of the conference

The conference is all organized in a perfect German way. And today was a mix of a formal welcome, a World Café, some presentations and short and long workshops.

What is important to share?

First my experience of the World Café. I was a table host for three rounds of conversation around some questions, of which the most important one was: “What is the ‘Big Why’ that is worth contributing my very best?” And the café format did what it was intended to do: the conversation was rich, deep and meaningful. Every table ended with writing down two theses, sentences as a harvest of the conversation. Our table came up with: “Share with each other about the such-ness of evil.” and “Daring to bring lightness even in difficult situations.” Imaging something like 80 people reading all two sentences like these…

In the afternoon I attended the workshop from the Research Group on Political Constellations. The system you deal with in Political Constellations transcends the system of a person or a family, even the system of an organization. It has to do with government, economics, cultures, international organizations, religions and so on. We had some theory, even some research and also a real practical experience. The way Albrecht Mahr (initiator of this research group and of this conference) facilitated this constellation was fascinating in itself. A way to speak about it, is that he trusted the collective wisdom of the system. He allowed the representatives to move in their own way. He only started with a few of them and gradually more people in the audience reported bodily feelings and emotions. They were asked to stand up and follow their impulse. In this way the constellation unfolded. Although there was no ‘solution’ he stopped the constellation by asking all representatives to stand in a big circle. This was not ‘pushing’ a solution but a way to allow the client to give equal attention to all the elements of the system.
Albrecht told us he holds the hypothesis that elements that are in conflict with one another are in equal ways important for the solution of the problem. This is for him the real Collective Wisdom.

This brings me to the theme of the conference, not only as it is officially announced, but also how it is alive in conversations and even dreams of the participants. In our little circle many stories come up about the evil, the shadow, aggression etc. It seems that we are all stretched over time and space. Stories of ancestors who were racist, or relatives who died in the war; all these stories are asking us to stretch our awareness – and our love! – beyond these borders that we are so used to.

To go beyond conflict asks us to include and transcend. No easy thing, because we have to give up to look at evil as being ‘bad’, as a thing that we want to exclude from our awareness. It asks us to listen, deeply, to ourselves and all the others – also persecutors! It asks us to see them as human beings and as connected to myself.