Go Lay Down

 

Aaahh April!  I attended several on line events as a Liminal Weaver researcher.  I will share highlights below: astonishing statements, insights and events -- world changing in my view.

Most important to me over this month, however, was that several shifts occurred in my own being. I am not ready to share details because the changes are ongoing. I believe the praxis of esoteric studies and social arts groups has spurred these budding new faculties.  I am repeating the Refined Breathing course from MysTech, attending three Anthroposophic study groups and two social arts practice groups -- Thoughtstorm, and the Mystery of Love.  I will report as soon as I can.  Stay tuned.

Global Resilience Summit  March 29 - April 5 included: Ken Wilber of Integral Theory and practice interviewed by Diane Musho Hamilton, the Buddhist mediator; Otto Scharmer of ULab and the Presencing Institute; Alexander Beiner of Rebel Wisdom; Dr. Rich Hanson of the Greater Good Science Center UC Berkeley.  Upon reviewing what they said, I realized that listening to them and their ilk for so long has embedded their sense-making, language, and orientation into my mode of public discourse.  Their remarks brought them up to date with the current world situation.  I felt reassured, but no lightening struck.  

The indigenous speakers did take me into new territory, as they almost always do.  Kuuyux Ilarion "Larry" Merculieff has a blog: "Hello my other Self," a rough translation of the Unangen (Aleut) greeting "Aang waan."  His message to the conference attendees:  "Stop talking!  Stop thinking! Connect from the heart in the moment in the center of the river of life with the Divine.  Let go of attachment. Find others who did the same, and form a new tribe."   Lakota Tiokasin Ghosthorse and Hopi Ed Kabotie chuckled together in chagrin over their current designation -- BIPOC.  Kabotie stated that he experiences the English language detached from lived experience of nature, opposite to his native tongue.  He believes positive environmental change will come from "the few who make a conscious decision to go against their own comfort and advancement when it clashes with Earth, those who can inconvenience themselves so we and earth can heal."

Tending the Roots Festival April 6-9:  Our Bodies at the Borderlands  was hosted by a team of women of color.   The ever-mind-blowing psychologist and philosopher Bayo Akomolafe titled his offering "When You Fall Apart Don't Forget to Love the Pieces."  He stunned everyone by telling the story of a Nigerian priestess who led the resistance to cultural and environmental pollution.  Her recent funeral was attended by thousands making pilgrimage. He announced at the end she was a Austrian emigre Susan Wenger, nicknamed "the white witch."  Bayo's artistry with words makes him for me the Metamodern Master of Metaphor :  "Don't categorize or you miss the politics of surprise.  Don't ignore possibilities of transformation.  When categories spill, monsters from the hall of villains can become saviors." He asked us to examine "the generosity of brokenness, the shrapnel of what we're supposed to be"; he urged us to take up chasmography -- the research of cracks, and the cosmology of travel -- we must get lost, "lose the way."  "We are travel; we are place-making practices."  

Orland Bishop started his conversation with Carlin Quinn of ERE -- Education for Racial Equity -- by stating he intended to co-create "realities that matter for our time."  The Zulu word "sawebona" -- roughly translated as "we see you" -- includes in the we and you the cosmos and the ancestors co-generatively.  Encompassing other levels of being, and higher realms of reality,  sawebona  allows cognizing the future.  This future indicates sacred hospitality to every human being.  Sawebona "is an energetic acknowledgement of the human being" who is becoming.  "You don't have a word yet; become yourself first, then step into the creative field and host energy, thought, word, reality."  Sawebona provides pointers to a grammar of the new, what is in preparation -- quite the antithesis to Western education's separateness via intellect.  

 

Orland Bishop made several breakthrough statements. First: "total forgiveness of the past" is called for. The ancestors, the past, will not do us any good if we won't forgive.  The suffering of the past has become compost. Second:  "We have to give away our medicine; cultural appropriation is called for in our time; trust who I give it to and why; go slowly and trust whom you meet."  Finally, in the Q & A when someone asked what he thought about reparations, he said: "Reparation will be future; intuition is needed; no institution right now can do this; practice sharing now."

Resmaa Menakem, author of "My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies" (2017) started his conversation with Karine Bell about the current challenges in somatic abolitionism. His new book The Quaking of America addresses the situation of USA post George Floyd and Black Lives Matter.  He sketched  some ways to face the increased pressure and tensions at our beings' borderlines [subtitle of the summit]. "Contain ourselves at the edges; quicken what starts in new growth; there is possibility and peril in quaking. Yes, it's generative; but it's still perilous."  He called on us to build "thick skin, fortified mind set, and malleable heart."  Rubbing, being pushed up against yourself, making mistakes, creates an essential passage.  Make this individual medicine communal.  

At this point Resmaa said he had a bad headache.  Karine Bell immediately told him he should go and rest, and he left.  Then something truly remarkable happened.  For the next twenty or more minutes, individuals, twosomes, and choruses started to sing "Go Lay Down" in wonderful combinations and counterpoints.  The Zoom Gallery showed the arrays of singers.  This spiritual was a new one for many of the attendees; it's a classic with simply three words:  Go Lay Down.  Finally the host Karine Bell and the other team members came on to discuss this spontaneous "revolutionary act of REST."  I did a colored pencil drawing during this session. 

Much more happened this April, but I will save it for the next time.