Summer Solstice Greetings!
You haven’t heard from me at Tribe in Transition for a while, and I’m sorry for that because I was enjoying the weekly rhythm of creating and connection, writing and sending out my newsletter. However, those of you who have ever completed a big project – like building a house, publishing a book, getting your art ready for an exhibition or fulfilling any other big dream – will know that in the final stages you have to give it everything you’ve got, even if that means letting go of everything else, including your doubts and reasons.
These last few months I’ve been doing all those things at once – I’m building a home for my Tribe in Transition Transformational Practice Community, I’ve been completing a major chapter of personal healing, I’m gathering all the resources I’ve created over the years and making new ones, and I’m bringing a long-held dream from possibility into reality.
Hanging in Through the Final Stages of a Project
These final stages of any big project are not often inspiring or sexy or even nourishing, unless you choose to make them so. But they are character building. Through these last few months I’ve developed skills in persistence, determination, patience and paying attention to detail, and this builds strength and resiliency, a rock solid trust in the self. I’ve been practicing commitment combined with non-attachment to outcomes, and this supports freedom to stay true to my choices.
Like many people, I thrive on the beginning stages of a creative project, I love being carried by inspiration and going with the flow. But finishing – getting all the details lined up, walking that fine line between good enough and crippling perfectionism, being ready to let go and offer up the always unfinished and imperfect creation – well, that’s a different game. Attending to details and working through frustrations can concentrate the mind and, if not balanced with flow-time, it can also contract the mind, the body, the emotions, the energy field. Too much focus and frustration is stressful and tiring. Doubts and fears rush in like a big tide to knock me off my feet, threatening to carry me away.
But we always get to choose whether we’re carried into distraction and contraction or into meeting the next challenge and opportunity, which could lead to the next expansion. We get to choose how we see things. For example, during these recent months of sustained effort there have been times when I thought I had made bad choices and that my present regime was detracting from me rather than allowing me to expand. But now I see that we don’t have to choose between focus and flow. We can have both. In fact, to be fully empowered we need to be able to dance between focus and flow, at times to weave them together and at times to hold them both when they’re in conflict. Practicing these skills is expansive. As a result of these realisations, I’ve become much more responsive to my need for rest and renewal, I’m learning to work in shorter bursts, and only when I’m moved to, I’m making more space for inspiration, joy and gratitude to come in and I’m listening better. I’d been missing serendipities from my life and now they’re back.
And I’ve done it! I’m tying up some loose ends and I’ve built the container for my Tribe in Transition Transformational Practice Community. The first few members are in, finding their way around and sorting teething problems. Very soon, I’ll be opening the doors and inviting you in to taste and see and co-create.
It’s Never About the Product
This is a big deal for me, not only because I’ve made it through the wilderness and the swamp to get here but also because I’ve been carrying the seeds for this community for over 30 years. In fact, I can trace the roots back for a lifetime. It’s a dream I’ve needed to mature into by learning all the different facets of my trade and the skills and capacities that those facets have developed. It’s never about the finished product – no matter how good and true and beautiful that is – it’s always about the journey. The project is never an end but a vehicle for developing consciousness and connecting with others, a stepping stone to the next creative act and the next…
A Womb Full of Seeds
I’m imagining that we come into a lifetime with a womb full of seeds for our Soul Work latent within us, like eggs waiting to be fertilised. And we all know how few of those eggs get to grow into new life and what a gamble it is.
If we don’t realise our mission and bring the dream that’s living inside us into form, does it recycle into the next incarnation? I tend to think so. When I look back, so many of the seeds that have led me to this current creative project, appeared as synchronicities or serendipities, although I always had a choice as to whether I’d risk realising them. For example, when I was in my early 30’s, I took a job as a Field Officer in Adult and Community Education, working throughout Scotland, and I discovered a natural talent for spotting emerging learning needs in the field and then meeting those needs by creating innovative learning resources and training programmes. This came so naturally to me I didn’t value it much. It was simply “what I did” whereas my passion was for writing poetry and being an archaeologist of Soul.
We Always Have a Choice and Our Choices Shape Our Lives
I nearly didn’t take that job because I was shy and timid and afraid of the stretch it was going to require of me. At the beginning I was struck dumb, and I had to push myself through my fear of speaking up at meetings. The first time I spoke up it was like taking a leap into an icy pool. But once I’d found my voice there was no stopping me. On the other side of my fear was a whole new world of opportunity and creative waves that carried me deeper into my authentic mission. I can’t imagine how differently my life would have unfolded if I’d allowed my fear to control me… and here I am forty years later, still carried by and deeply engaged with my mission.
The Ouroboros
Completing the container for the new Tribe in Transition Transformational Practice Community is a completion and a new beginning. It’s the completion of a cycle of healing, learning and soul work, and the beginning of the next. The Ouroborus, the snake with its tail in its mouth – that’s where we are collectively – at the end of one big cycle of evolution and the beginning of another. And that’s why these skills of completion are so vital to our well-being.
This article is throwing up new seeds to be explored in the future – there’s so much I want to share with you about the creative process and the transformational process and how we can co-operate with the emergence of authentic new life. Watch this space!
