Whidbey Island Storyfield Summary

[Lion Kimbro]

(forwarded on behalf of Omar)
----


Dear Storyfield Community,

Early last month twenty-one of us gathered for three days at the
Whidbey Island Institute to
explore further certain aspects of what emerged during and around the
Storyfield gathering in
Colorado. Our specific intention was to explore positive images of
the future and means of
disseminating them into the culture at large. During the three days
we danced through
experiential explorations into and various conversations about the
central topic. The journey
was guided by three questions formulated by Harry:

WHAT IS THE MOST INSPIRING, EMPOWERING, INTEGRAL STORY OF THE POSSIBLE
HUMANITY/EARTH COMMUNITY THAT WE CAN SENSE INTO, PERCEIVE, ARTICULATE?

HOW MIGHT WE DRAMATICALLY ACCELERATE ITS EMERGENCE IN THE GLOBAL HEART/
MIND, IN
THE COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS?

WHAT ARE OUR INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE ROLES IN BIRTHING THE POSSIBLE
HUMANITY/EARTH COMMUNITY?

We explored these questions and all the resulting conversations
through dance and movement,
through meditations, through conversation with the land, through art,
in diads, in small and
large group, at the breakfast table, with our heads on each other's
bellies, with our noses in the
fat falling snowflakes, with our heartears and mindeyes wide open.
The whole time paying
particular attention upon: What is it that wishes to speak/move
through me? What does the
larger intelligence have to say? What is my role? and through the
leadership of Harry: What is
Love's vision of the future?

We ended the weekend with each person stepping to the middle of the
room and stating to
those assembled their intentions/visions/projects for the coming
season.

The facilitation team felt that the best way to share the experience
would be through the words
of those who attended. Following (almost) are those reflections.

First, a brief note:
Several times during the last two weeks I intended, prepared, even sat
down to put all these
reflections together and it kept getting interrupted. Eventually it
just
became somewhat comical and curious. Well, New Year's morning, in the
first moments of
waking up the why of it suddenly dawned upon me: the parties are past,
the family gatherings,
the shopping and wrapping and baking and snowboarding and blindfolded
cliff jumping, and
we are still in the turning of the year, we are still at that pivot
point in which the template of the
coming months is made. Whatever it is that we are all up to the
Universe has a lot of energy for
it, that much is certainly clear to me. And all that it is is way to
important to get lost in egg nog
and Frosty cartoons and frustrations about yet another mediocre
present from your
Mother/Father/Uncle/Sister. At both Storyfield and the Whidbey
Gathering I had the feeling
that the purpose as much as anything else was the bringing together of
a collective of
extremely skilled and vibrant souls. I encourage you to listen with
your whole body as you read
the words of your divine cohorts and remember who it is that really
called out to you amongst
us, which projects or conversations or lunatic notions sparked you
most and reach out with
your long fiberoptic fingers and make a connection.

The Reflections:


Anne Stadler:

First of all, thanks to you five who facilitated the weekend, and to
George
who graciously gave over whatever he might have imagined might happen
at
the weekend to what emerged as the passion people wanted to take
responsibility for.

As I said while I was there, I participated by following what had
heart
and meaning for me, and living the question "what is a world that
works for
all?" and my answers as they emerged. For me, a world that works for
all
is a world of love made visible.

I appreciated the series of inspirational readings and questions that
Harry invited us to attend to. They formed a trajectory of inquiry
that took
us deeply into the intention. Rebecca's offerings were totally
enjoyable,
playful, expanding our capacity to heartfully ground and integrate our
intellectual responses to the questions that Harry was posing.
Omar was profound and essential in his offerings from the world
channel.
Karen and Sheri were wonderful logistical undercover agents, and the
place we created all together was delicious and comfy. I appreciated
the
deliberate engagement of all our intelligences and modalities of
learning.

I felt we could have honored and embraced the natural world earlier in
the process. And I would've appreciated trust in the natural flow, and
experimenting with listening and offering rather than "facilitating".
AND
more dips into silence to engage the deep undertow of our true rhythms
as
an organism. We might have begun with sharing food as we reconnected
by
answering the question: what calls you to be here at this gathering?

The high points for me were: my time in the woods listening and
receiving; the evening of movement and leaderful group embodiment; the
"I have your
back" experience and drawing of our vision of the world that love is
calling into being. After that experience, I felt the need for
lingering over
the paintings people did, creating an art gallery that we could engage
with,
noticing recurring images, etc. Instead we moved quickly on to
another
process. AND I heard about the amazing experience in the Sanctuary--
and
felt I probably would've chosen to be there and might have listed that
as
one of my high points as well!!!!

And of course, the delicious experience of being with each of you
again,
held in the loving embrace of our desires to serve.

Thank you dear convenors, each one of you has a treasured place in my
heart, and all my playmates!!! Yum! Yum!

Love, anne



Darryl Bouchard:

It's the questions that determine...

I dream a world...in which: sacred, love, communion, connection...

The sacred is met with love through connection and communion...

Word, dreams, movements, dance and song,
Mingle, create sacred birth child,
Fingers touch...
Hearts born from the same protozoa,
Emergence from hearts touching, love,
I am to be,
You are me,
We are he,
Mother Divine.

Swirling atoms speak with words,
Words swirling birth child,
Proton probabilities,
Utter forth from lips, cellular creativity,
Conglomerate into eternity, universe, galaxy, planet, humanity, hidden
messengers reality,
Fingers run through hair,
Tingle and mingle.

I dream a world in which all beings celebrate the sacred...

rampant wild juicyness in everything held in complete awe and utter
foolishness...

I dream a world in which all beings celebrate the sacred and the zany
in love, connection and
communion.



Rebecca Strong:

It truly was a fantastical winter weekend of solid intention,
creativity and play. We planted some
outrageous seeds of possibility, crafted further a rich tapestry of
relationships and really began
to sink into being our bio, spiritual, cultural, creatively diverse
selves within the constellation of
folk present. High points for me were; walking amongst those gigantic
Cedars, having the
opportunity to incorporate and illicit the wild~animal body self into
the curriculum, finding the
pure well of emergent creativity in the sanctuary on Saturday evening
and watching the room
unfold into organicity on the final morning, during/while Harry shared
his genius. Longings that
were provoked by the weekend; 1. looking forward to finding ways to
continue calling out the
genius in each other so as to realize that we are a part of an
organism and therefore do not
need to do it all ourselves. (probably sounds familiar but please,
feel into that) 2. really want to
begin working in small pods, applying our unique gifts to each other's
work and world so as to
mutually enhance each other's vision, mission and purpose. 3. to
continue to develop synergy
amongst us. Synergy is how change happens, doesn't matter what the
subject is, think about it,
if there is synergy amongst a group ~ it thrives. Let's keep building
this! 4. I will be soon
birthing a yummy educational/transformation program, would love to
come teach in your area!



Tom Atlee:

At a late November gathering of about two dozen people from August's
Story Field Conference,
we did an experiment in flocking. Gathered in a large room, all
facing the same direction, with
rhythmic music playing, we were instructed to imitate or flow with
whomever was immediately
in front of us. We moved as a mass, led by whomever happened to be in
front. When we
neared an obstacle, the leader would turn away from it, say to the
left, and every individual in
the group would turn as well -- and that imitative movement would
leave someone who
happened to be on the left side of the group suddenly the new leader
and we would then follow
them. I found it fascinating how simple the instruction was that
could generate that level of
group coherence.

The article below is about such "swarm intelligence." In its
descriptions of ants, scientists speak
of "chemical trails" that the ants leave, which influence the behavior
of ants who come after
them.

In reading this, however, I realized it would be more useful to call
these "information trails" or
"meaning trails". Framed that way, we can see that groups of
organisms turning toward or away
from each other's trails of meaning begin to generate collective
movements. Not only ants do
that. People do that, spread throughout real society. From teen fads
to great religious and
political movements to the "people who bought this book also bought
Book B" algorithms on
Amazon to stock market crashes, we have been turning toward and away
from each other's
meaningful messages for millennia, generating collective behaviors.

The lead scientist in the article suggests that we haven't evolved
long enough in our groupings
to have developed the kind of ant-like instinctive simple rules and
powerful information trails
that could make us naturally more orderly -- for example, preventing
traffic jams.

But humanity's special abilities are not primarily found in our
instincts and automaticities.
Among our most powerful gifts are our ability to create our own
meanings, as needed; to
change them through learning, reflection, and conversation; and to
spread them rapidly
through writing, arts, and mass communications of all kinds.
Furthermore, unlike the kind of
swarming behavior described in this article -- where participants
communicate to each other
only in the simplest forms, if at all -- we have the ability to share
complex evolving
understandings -- to hear each other in depth and to use our diversity
-- and our conflicts --
creatively to generate new and better ways to think, feel, and act,
individually and collectively.

So our task isn't to evolve the perfect set of behavioral rules to
keep us all in a particular
orderly swarm. Our task is to evolve the capacity to individually and
collectively observe our
individual and collective behavior -- in all its details and diversity
-- and to generate new rules,
systems, stories, tools, and states of consciousness, that can shape
our collective behavior in
newly appropriate, productive, and enjoyable ways -- over and over
again. Our task, in short,
is to become a richly diverse swarm-that-is-not-a-swarm that is able
to consciously evolve
itself.

This is a complex challenge and -- given the increasing need for
certain changes in our
collective behavior -- our evolutionary "window of opportunity" is
pretty narrow. But the act of
figuring this out will develop exactly the capacities we need for our
next evolutionary leap.

We have so much awareness, so many tools, so many good hearts,
competent hands and
articulate voices. Together, we are being prepared for this leap,
which is already underway,
even as we try to get our act together....

Coheartedly,
Tom


Karen Kudebeh:

Fantastic setting at Whidbey Institute in the Farmhouse. It snowed
all day
Saturday, enveloping us in soft white. That night, the trees engaged
several of us in a "call-response" experience where we were in the
Sanctuary
(after we humans 'toned' together, the trees let the snow drop onto
the
building in response; this actually happened "on cue' several times).
Chanting in the wood-burning Finnish sauna, hearing from Fritz Hull
about
how the Whidbey Institute came to be, starting 40 years ago; walking
the
woods; walking the labyrinth; having Vicki Robin drop by one morning;
deep,
deep connection and witness to one another and to nature. And I really
"got"
that my specific gift to myself and to the world is Centration, the
first of
Brian Swimme's 10 Powers of the Universe. Oh yes, and if I ever feel
disconnected or sad, all I have to do is to remember the words "Harry
Belly-Fonte," followed by belly laughs echoing in the Sanctuary, to
bring me
back to Connection and Joy.



Link to the video created by George based upon a collectively created
vision poem:

http://www.onetruemedia.com/shared?
p=45ace993e060cd20528699&skin_id=1603&utm_source=otm&utm_medium=text_url




Peggy Holman:

Harry gave us the gift of some powerful questions, along with what
felt like
a tour through his own internal processes. Coupled with the movement
and
art from Rebecca and Omar, the weekend was alive for me. I danced
(yes!)
and drew (oh, terror!), and reflected, alone and with others. I left
more
in concert with myself, able to tune in and connect with the dynamic
tensions within me - masculine and feminine, my center and my emerging
edges. From movement to art to words, a flow of images opened in me
that
landed with clarity and poetry. And that's just my connection with
myself!
I also discovered more capacity to harmonize with others, resonating
with
their energy and being. It was as if I could hear their thoughts,
feel
their yearnings simply by paying attention, reflecting what I sensed
in
them. I feel more intimately connected with others. And the residual
effect: I now know that by harmonizing with another's rhythm, I can
tune in
and touch their core more deeply, resulting
in greater understanding and intimacy between us. What a gift!

Peggy H



George Johnson:

Great soup and warm conversations
Mad dancing without a care
Held by the towering pines
with cookie sized snow flakes
Listening to a profit
share wisdom and possibilities
Asking the question in the labyrinth
And knowing we are on track
To creating a world
that works for everyone

Blessings


Skye Burn:

Dear Rebecca and Omar,

This letter is a response to your request for reflections on the
recent Storyfield gathering at
Whidbey Institute, focusing especially on the part of the program you
facilitated.

My father, who spent a great deal of his time sitting on the beach
watching the tide go by,
invented the phrase "bunch hunch" to describe how huge flocks of
starlings fly in unison and
coordinate their activity. The movement exercises you facilitated
Saturday night in Thomas
Berry Hall seemed designed to evoke the bunch hunch in humans who have
long forgotten how
to act as one, except unconsciously.

Today, the world faces urgent life-threatening situations that require
systemic solutions. Single
minds and single individuals acting alone cannot resolve issues like
global climate change.
Collectively we need to act as one to respond effectively to such
challenges. Yet the
impediments to humankind getting to the place where we consciously are
of one mind and act
as one seem insurmountable. For this reason, I found myself deeply
moved as I watched your
movement exercises from my place on the couch, where I sat due to the
cast on my foot and
recent surgery. I felt the intent of your exercises was to waken in
people somatic awareness of
what acting as one feels like. Here, I use the word waken because I
understand the world
population already acts as one and is of one mind on an unconscious
level and we just need to
waken to the fact for it to become conscious reality.

Several thoughts went through my mind as I watched the participants
learning to move in
unison, flying around the room like starlings, smiling.

I wondered what would happen if they had a complex task to accomplish
together, for instance,
if they had to construct a house the soul could call home. Could they
sustain the synchronized
motion all through the creative process? Could they agree on a plan?
Could they retain the
sense of unity, rhythm, and flow even while various members of the
team raised issues and
focused on different aspects of the construction process? This I
thought more closely
approximates the complexity of our task of creating a world together.
Given the complexity of
our world creation, I wondered what it would take to waken the spirit
of unity in the world
population and communal mind/body system.

I wondered at what point humankind lost contact with the psychic
awareness of oneness. Did it
happen with the advent of agriculture, when we began seeking to
control Nature--the medium
of life--to create farmlands and domesticate animal nature, including
our own human nature?
Did our separation from oneness with Nature begin when the creative
spirit stirred the
firmament of our communal imagination, when we looked at the forest
with creative intent and
said those trees would serve our purposes better if we cut them down
and used them to create
boats and houses? What happened to our native ability to hear Nature's
song? Realistically,
although humankind is for the most part no longer close to Nature we
are never separate from
Nature, for we are Nature manifest in human form. Yet, somehow in the
process of acquiring
techniques of mastery and learning to control the medium of life with
creative intent, it seems
we lost contact with or overrode our innate sensitivity to the medium.
As these thoughts
roamed through my mind while I watched your movement exercises, I
wondered if humankind's
history of repressing our awareness of oneness and overriding our
sensitivity to the medium of
life might link somehow, in the kinetic logic of somatic psychology,
to humankind's torturous
history of repressing, enslaving, and marginalizing Africans and
indigenous peoples around the
world. In the inner workings of the communal mind/body system, in the
communal soul, is
racism the projection of a repressed content? Do persons of color
"carry the energy" of our
communal repression of a vital awareness? If so, I wondered if your
movement exercises might
be a subtle and gentle way of releasing some of the energy and
integrating at least some of
that repressed content into conscious expression.

I also wondered about the Storyfield in general. What is the
Storyfield? Could the Storyfield
gathering at Whidbey, like the first gathering in Colorado, be
providing an opening for the
creative exploration of a field just emerging into consciousness, as
the Copernican Revolution
provided the opening for humankind's creative exploration of the field
of natural science? At
Whidbey, with astute guidance from Harry Pickens, we spent three days
feeling our way into
awareness of the Storyfield and our relationships to it, feeling drawn
into the creative
exploration but not knowing where the inquiry was leading to, if
anywhere. Harry focused on
several aspects: helping clarify our motives, amplifying awareness of
our unique callings and
roles, helping us discern what it takes to create a major shift in the
Storyfield, and helping us
become more receptive and open to "downloads" from the Storyfield.

All through the Whidbey gathering, I wondered if the Storyfield refers
to an unconscious (or
half-conscious) dimension of reality. If so, I wondered how we might
help humankind become
fully conscious of this dimension of reality. What methods, what
techniques will be effective? By
the end of the Copernican Revolution, scientists settled on the
"scientific method" to systemize
their exploration and bring the hitherto unconscious field of natural
science into consciousness.
Here, I thought because humankind dwells in the field and we are part
of its natural continuum,
humankind has always been aware of the field of natural science on the
level of somatic
consciousness. Humans were part of evolution long before Darwin
discovered the principle of
natural selection and long before Mendel's discovery provided the
opening for our exploration
of the field of genetics. Over time, the scientific method has proven
reliable and effective in
awakening humankind more fully to the field of natural science, but
the awareness was there all
along. Thinking along parallel lines, is humankind conscious of the
Storyfield on one level but
not on another level?

Finally, as I watched your movement exercises I began to realize
(slowly like a fist pushing up
through the earth's crust) the work I have been doing for the past
thirty years seeking to
understand the dynamic of culture as a creative process and the
understanding I have come to
may have placement in this field of inquiry. I realized my work to
recognize and comprehend
the archetypal or mythic patterns that have manifested over time in
the unfolding drama of
world history might be relevant to our exploration of the Storyfield.
I felt excited and filled with
gratitude to see the potential relevance. Not being able to put weight
on my foot, I hopped on
my little scooter roll-about, joined the final circle, and held hands
with you who participated
directly in the movement. I was glad to have participated, albeit from
the sidelines.

I hope these reflections are what you wanted.

With warmest regards,

Skye Burn



And finally, a poem from Anne:

Galumph and snuffle. An elephant swings her trunk as she sways over
to me.
We nudge and boomp and wink.

Snarky Peggy snakes through the forest of legs.

Feel your feet commands Rebecca. Let it move yoouuu.

Squeak. Umble...balumble

Exuberant Allison boogies by. My old knees grumph and grizzle, as my
pelvis
moves to the Brazil beat sizzle.

Question! Question! calls Harry as the flock whips past. Five
principles
or is it three??

...maybe ONE and infiniteee....

And in the woods...snow silently cradles each little tiny tiny pattern
and
fragment of juicy life...

Human, merely being....zany, delicious, deeply serious.

Love made visible.

The "new world" we ARE IN Already!!! Yippee!!

Love, you !!! Anne