Author: Willow Berzin
When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
I don’t remember who said this, but im getting an impression that by shifting my ability to listen and notice reality, my consciousness/awareness is humming on a slightly different frequency, and more synchronicity occurs.
I’ve also been noticing how I generally am feeling different after representing RPN at the global Nature Positive Summit last week, and the profoundly awesome ripples of impact from it being grounded by Indigenous leadership. I’ve been advocating for this for a long time, but to experience it in that way 🧡🌞🌅
Everything feels different, more open, expansive, positive, hopeful and actionable. The promise beyond ableness for me is to continue to ground myself at the bottom of everything (as Lulu speaks to in ‘Total Reset’) a practice by sensing and responding from my gut or lien, and fortify myself with courage as an ongoing practice/process.
We've been exploring a reflective process through the years events. Below is what came up for me after the most recent Storying Naarm community session.
Understanding Process - from this session, what did you notice?
I noticed the general vibe in a group of mostly Regenesis Institute trained practitioners is different to a general vibe of mostly untrained but aspiring practitioners. It’s a different frequency or energy, a different collective antenna, not better or worse, just different.
I noticed the gap between worlds/stories from the analytical scientific knowledge we watched in the video recordings of the history of the geology of this place, and the wanting to learn and understand more of the local Indigenous stories and wisdom that exists, but as yet feels hidden.
I noticed a strong desire to reconcile this tension and the wild synchronicity of getting home shortly after our session and a friend of a friend was visiting who happens to work with the Wurundjeri Council as a walking on Country tour guide - my wanting to setup an experience like this where we could come together as a community and walk Country together - and so we've reset our Story of Place initiatives to be around understanding place with First People's first.
What new realisations or questions emerged through the process?
I’m still trying to work out how can we make this collective reflective process frictionless, even cutting through the noise in my own choice of obligations and capacity is hard, to notice the noticing, to decide to share it and what. I am super curious to hear more from others who participated in any of the first couple of sessions, what you’re all noticing, what is being called for, and how might we create processes to support this shared journey of uncovering and deveiling what lies beneath. Particularly as we are at the frontier of this work and are all learning different and similar things along the way, both as holders of the container, as co-creators and as co-participants.
What tracks and patterns emerged for you about yourself? or collective? Naarm?What was enabled through this process? What conditions enabled this? What wasn't enabled, what constrained you?
I’m definitely holding tensions around right speed and pace. And what I’ve learnt about value adding vs extractive paradigms over my experiences and learning in the last half dozen years since going all in on the work. The haste of urgency to respond commensurate with the need/collapse, similarities and differences of diverse contexts’ and privileges, where wilful blindness or wilful ignorance, cognitive dissonance, attachment, fear, convenience and comfort can be ignored or thought of as enemy. Where the desire to build community resilience through this, and to let things unfold as it will, all the while in endeavour to deepen trust, and where it can all too easily be broken, for systemic reasons or otherwise. I've been noticing how and why trust breaks, the conditions that allow for break vs build vs rebuild trust. That trust is everything, the pace of trust even more so, the baseline to sustain, maintain and operate through. That trust is a particle of love, you have to give it to receive it. And that we are all here holding mirrors to each other.
I went down a rabbit hole last week about how do we decolonise time, to find patience in the waiting time <> to shake and stir up potential for good trouble making..the differences between being and doing, and the joy I feel when operating in a flow state of ‘doing being’, not always getting this right. Learning the hard way all too often, and ongoing unlearning and relearning to listen to my gut and heart, and to be better able to respond and act from that place, in right relationship.
Exploring Instrument. From your essence, what method or ways of understanding place would you like to contribute to this process? What is your promise beyond ableness towards this process?
I want to continue to build my capacity and capability to transcend politics, opportunities, money or problems, or beyond perceived, real or otherwise, limitations or tokenism, while I learn how to practice what it means to shift my mindset from scarcity to a mindscape of abundance.
To learn what it means to really walk together across differences, particularly with our First Peoples’. To properly honour and respect the traditional custodians of our places, to learn the protocols. To walk our talk and talk our walk in Right Relationship. To stay grounded and at the bottom of everything, to return to Oneness.
How do i/we/us do this? How do i/we/us be this? What does this really mean in practice? What does it feel like? What will it take for I/we/us to step fully into this work together and reconcile our past, in the present, for our shared futures?
I also want to lean into the tensions around what I sense is the call to many of how to step more deeply into the work, to overcome the risks and uncertainty and struggles for how to survive in the old collapsing system, and how to shift to thriving in the next, the ongoing shedding and letting go of my own baggage, to share my journey as I also relearn the way, as we learn to walk this path together.
Maybe it’s a bit like falling in love? To step over the edge of certainty and keep going…falling into freedom..To be fearlessly learning out loud alongside my fellows in the work.
