A Collective Inquiry
Conscious Closure and The Wild Life of Dying
a series of articles, experiences, Participatory gatherings and co-inquiries to co-create practice, wisdom and our narratives threads to travel these times
“We are in a new level of collective awareness that our way of life is horrifically harmful, unjust, possibly suicidal and completely unsustainable. If the climate crisis, the extreme disparities of income and access to resources, the financial and mental health crises, the rise of polarization and authoritarianism were not enough, we have a global pandemic that has thrown us into a wild unknown. This is a threshold time….”
Living Endings
One thing that is clear: our old normal was not normal at all and the new normal(s) are still in the realm of the possibles. Eco-systems and human systems are breaking down and we are in a liminal space between what we knew and what is possible. There is grief. There is relief. There anger and rage. There are rich expressions of mutual aid and love. So a quest begins - where do we go from here? how do we go? what do we leave behind? who are we becoming? what futures are we imagining possible?
The veil is lifting. We need to learn collectively how to navigate these times of massive unknowns and shared unpredictability so that we may take our place anew in the sacred order of things. That which is dying is rich in life. To pay attention and to practice with and into the unfolding of that which is dying both individually and collectively is not only intelligent, but necessary. It is a time of potentials for deep historical and systemic healings and re-generations.
There is so much that is alive in the dying. In the old myths and deep-root stories, dying is an essential part of initiation and maturation. We die to parts of ourselves in order to grow. We meet strange situations and altered states. We must sacrifice something precious of ourselves to step over the threshold. And there is a quality - a wild life - that becomes more present to us when the veils are thin between the worlds hold information for us - if we pay attention. A wild life meaning those aspects that are untamed, unknown, unpredictable, edgy, from the margins, from the dreaming, secondary and marginalized - the undergrowths visit us.
But how do we travel this wild life collectively?
How do we steward our selves, organizations, communities, cultures through these transitions so we may mature into a new era that is deeply just, sustainable and attuned to the living planet? What are the rites of passage as leaders, pioneers, change makers, citizens, societies so we may steward ourselves and others through the deep passages ahead?
Join the Journey:
A Participatory Inquiry
Rites of Passage / Learning Journeys
Coaching and Consultancy
Harvesting our Practices
Art-ing the Emergent Stories & Myths
“One of the big gifts of being human and living on this earth is to be in the ever-changing and quite miraculous constancy of change. The small and large miracles that come with the natural cycles of living and dying are the unique inheritance of our partnership with life. Imagine if we as a humanity began to partner again with these natural cycles to learn and evolve with them, rather than trying to control, deny or medicate them. ”
— Vanessa Reid, in The Irish Times, on Monday 16th September, 2013
WATCH: THE WILD LIFE OF DYING TEDx
READ: Conscious Closure: stewarding organizations through the cycles of life
A Collective Practice:
Inner Systems Change: Whiteness
A LEARNING SERIES TO DEEPEN OUR AWARENESS & PRACTICE OF transformative Systems LEADERSHIP
“Our inner world is filled with many voices which come from our lived experience, our family systems, the lineages and cultures we come from. As leaders who are committed to transforming unjust and inequitable systems, as leaders who are imagining futures that are fundamentally different than those we have inherited and perpetuated -we need to get to know how those systems live in us internally. How are ourselves, as change-makers, complicit in the very systems we are called to change? This is awareness work, it is the deeply personal and very human work of systems change.”
Join our Learning Pod: Whiteness and Systemic Change
Whiteness, white supremacy and internalized racism. This is a participatory and practice-based learning pod for white leaders, innovators, change-makers ready to work with our racism and white supremacist conditioning. It is a hosted space, a welcoming space, and space for building capacity, awareness and for meeting our fears and strengths with rigor and commitment. It is intended to deepen our capacity to “sit in the fire”.
What is the inner work of acknowledging, exploring and transforming how we are complicit with the very systems we want to change?
What does it mean for you, personally, and for us, as white leaders, to embody the courage and skills to transform systems of oppression, and take new individual and collective actions in our contexts?
What is my anti-racist practice?
We will work with multiple forms of intelligence:
A Power Framework of inner and outer power and rank based on Julie Diamond’s model of Power Intelligence. We will explore power in the context of white supremacist mainstream culture and build our awareness to use our power, all power—personal, positional, expertise, informal, systemic, inherited (race), learned (life experience ), spiritual and more.
~Power Intelligence
Building our Learning Container: this is a learning journey. Information, knowledge and wisdom will emerge from the group as we learn and unlearn together. Our personal learning will be amplified by our collective learning.
~Collective Intelligence
Inner Work Practice: from Process Work and Deep Democracy, reflective practice, somatic and dream-work, lineage and ancestor work, and feelings - yes, feelings and emotions including white fragility, weaponized tears, and fight-flight-freeze. Meta-skills. Superpowers. Edges.
~Somatic Intelligence. Emotional Intelligence. Spiritual Intelligence.
What’s Real: Case Studies: offer peer-to-peer support to gain the capacity and courage to go over your own personal and leadership edges to embody anti-racist awareness, action and practice in your contexts.
New Actions in our contexts.
