Fridays

It's Friday so it must be four hours of Collective Presencing practice.

Since the new year we've had a new guiding question:

"As we travel through the dark forest together how can we cultivate our night vision/wild intelligence?"  

You can take dark 'dark forest' any way it strikes you on any particular day e.g. the state of the world (so many unknowns), personal struggles/challenges, inner turmoil or conflict.  Whatever's up for you in the moment and bearing in mind the guiding question.

The process is impossible to describe, so rich, tender and magical, full of insight and wonder.  If you wrote down what we each said in sequence it would make utterly no sense if you hadn't been there.  In fact the most common experience is to be surprised by what comes out your mouth in a context of deep listening (inner and outer). Always a discovery. The practice is a training in ever deepening respect and appreciation for difference.  

I often feel unsettled and restless afterwards, so much stirred up by the diversity of what is expressed.  The last couple of times some sort of cumulative thread of understanding has formed itself in me.  I feel more settled once it is articulated, which sometimes happens at the end of the session, sometimes later.

Today:
WILD INTELLIGENCE=WEIRD INTELLIGENCE ('weird' only because unfamiliar, new, fresh)

ARTICULATING=NAMING
NAMING=PUTTING WORDS TO FELT SENSE/EXPERIENCE (something like pinning down a butterfly but somehow it feels essential to articulate the implicit)

NAMING from APPRECIATION=>VALUING DIFFERENCE/UNIQUENESS
NAMING from JUDGEMENT=>LABELLING/SEPARATING/OTHERING

WEIRDNESS as APPRECIATING PRECIOUS UNIQUENESS=>CONNECTING

I was contemplating how storming the Capitol seemed pretty weird to me, largely because it felt alien, not something that it would ever cross my mind to do.  It's the judgement that's the killer of connection.

PS - no reason this should be comprehensible to anyone but me, this is an attempt to articulate, not communicate.