It is said that nothing novel and brave is born of the inertia of a comfort zone. Perhaps that is why 2020 mandated that we hang out in the zone of our discomfort for as long as it takes, without getting to see the bigger picture, the outcome or the timeline, to learn to thrive in an unfolding well beyond our control and foreseeing capacity. If 2020 had only a few words for the world, there is no mistake that they reached most everyone on the planet: Slow down. Stop what you are doing and who you have been while doing it– and wait. Wait, sometimes painfully so. Lose something, or many things, or someone.... Live in the gap between two worlds, of which you only know the one departing.
At first, I, like many of us, perceived the power of this time to be in the unprecedented opportunity to pause, to listen, to dream and imagine so we can carve out a new way. But as the year went by, and life kept slipping away from plans and constructive visions and “putting something firm on the calendar”, I grew aware that The Gap was much deeper than any of my visions for what to fill it with, and that the gap was not about anything else but the gap itself; The gap, the empty space of the in-between, seems to be the greater intelligence here– it carries an evolutionary stillness and an evolutionary movement.
Isn’t this how new histories and mythoses are born–– in the unfilled space between who we can no longer be and who we must become, between what has been and what can no longer wait to happen?
This ‘gap year’ was a break of continuity– the disruption our systems needed so we could begin confronting… ourselves. The pandemic disruption, the political and economic upheaval, and the ever more ferocious natural disasters all landed their destructive force to creating the Great Gap– the dark womb in which our troubled existences can begin realigning with the deeper psyche of the Earth, where our imaginations can fall into sync with the dreaming lands and seas. It shouldn’t be surprising that some unfathomable reharmonization is taking place, and it is doing so in a ‘language’ we don’t yet speak, a methodology that does not include only our intellect– or only humans, for that matter– but it comes instead in Earth language, in cosmos tongue; It is arising from the multispecies we share intelligence with, from the great bodymind that we make together. And while something new and essential is shaping from our mutual dreaming, it can certainly be fostered–– but not forced. We must stay in the gap as it is dreaming us anew.
These days I have been loving letting myself feel how the whales and the heron and the sea plants and the new mushrooms networking after the rain, the old forest root-webs and the spread of stars constellating in just the right way, are all dreaming with us, and together we are dreaming awake something both ancient and new; we are calling the return of something long lost but never fully forgotten– something wild and tender and verbless and softly powerful which carries the bundles for our healing, our wholeness, for our restoration back into the greater family we were born to.
In the gap, our pelvises, our bellies and wombs, our own body-roots can begin relaxing again and opening toward the ground, rooting into the soil of that “other” intelligence that roots thrive in. And if our own roots are nurtured and planted deeper into our natural interbeing with our earthly allies, we become part of that greater ‘forest’, the deep-bodied world that communicates beneath the ground, sensually, like redwoods and fungi do, and it speaks through the pulses of our senses, our inner-eye imaginations, our intuitive poetry, songs, longings and dances.
From our rootedness back into the pelvis of the world, a new story is born.
Can we accept such an assignment, of being the blind visionaries who do not not see the bigger picture and do not need to hold the reins? Instead, a blind seer learns to thrive in the dark and develop a new kind of ‘eyes’ and ways of moving, to cultivate patience as a form of listening without expecting. Perhaps this time instead of “leading” the change, spearheading it, bringing it about, fighting for it, we must instead tune our bodies into the change that cannot wait to happen, and simply give way.
A great movement is already happening on its own accord– might our role be to offer it our bodies and lives as the vessel?
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DEEP BODY VISIONING CIRCLE FOR 2021: Tuesday, JANUARY 12 with Stefana Serafina and our worldwide community
+ Explore your soul vision for the new cycle through the intelligence of your deep body
+ Move, sense, imagine, dream with the Earth, and embody your wishes, visions, intentions, and dreams
+ Explore the intersection of your personal myth with the greater collective and earthly story
+ Be guided through unique intuitive movement and deep-body® practices into your physical, emotional, sensual, expressive, and perceptive "body skins" and reconnect to what has most soul and meaning in your personal myth at this time.
