Going to war at the Art of Hosting on Art of Hosting
(I’m posting this a day or two later than when I wrote it)
London, UK
I’m in London now, moving around with with Johnnie Moore and Euan Semple, Richard Oliver,Tanya and Kevin McLean, and Steve Moore seeing some plays, talking about our work and what it all means…
…and I have nearly lost my voice.
I’m quite intrigued actually with the fact that I am suffering from laryngitis. It was caused by an unholy scream I issued on day three of our gathering in Belgium, as I came into some quite strong and profound as a response to the invitation to our group of 26 to face the shadow present in our work. This was a deep exercise and it brought me to a level of presence and clarity about my work that has laid the ground work for my own practice to go to a deeper level.
The day began with an exercise designed I think to work our sensing capacities and our awareness of the very great field of generative support that exists in the mystery of the living system of the world. It’s very hard to write objectively about being at the centre of such experiences, but one thing that stuck out for me was a lingering sense of the power of dignity.
The house we were in at Heerlijckyt is 400 years old and it stands on a domain that is more than 700 years old. The family that owned it for that whole time recently sold it to the current owners and there is only a little of their presence left in the place. One thing that is left though is the dignity of the place and it occurred to me that dignity is a very important part of the work of hosting. I think Lieven and Judith, our hosts at Heerlickyt know this well, and they host each other and the place there with very palpable dignity. THey are good teachers of the lesson of the house.
And so it was with the present sense of dignity that I was prepared to face the shadows that the hosting team for day three put in front of us. And it was an incredibly powerful invitation to step into the shadow. We first chose sat with the strongest thing that our collective invoked in us, a powerful resource that we have to move to the next level. To me it was Sayt’ kuulum goot, the Tsimshian and Nisgaa principle of being of one heart. And then, with this resource in hand, and with our senses alive, Anita Paalvast, a very powerful aikidoka, drew her katana and walked the circle, lowering the blade in front of each of us and challenging us to identify our fear and the shadow that is in our midst. For me the invitation lay very much as an invitation from one warrior in training to another: we must know our opponent, honour the worthiness of that opponent and be prepared to engage with clarity to cut that opponent in one stroke or die to it with dignity.
We moved outside and took our places at the rim of a large circle with our resources spread out around us on the rim and the fears and the shadows collectively held, placed in the middle. We studied the offers, acquainted ourselves with who was at our backs and bowed to the oppoenents in the middle. And then with the intensity she showed in drawing her katana, Anita invited us to collectively come to the centre and engage with these shadows letting loose the most power kihop we could, acting from a deep sense of spirit filled committment. That was the moment I damaged my vocal chords.
My surrender to the task was total. I saw in the midst two of my greatest shadow enemies – greed and failure – and I sense the presence of one that wasn’t in the middle, but instead lurking on the edge: dishonesty. I see these three things as especially dangerous to the territory of the open heart, and in committing to engaging with these opponents I did so from the stance of defending the open heart.
I said in the circle that followed that I feel that if we are serious about this work of addressing our collective shadow, and we are prepared to wield a sword in the service of this work, the sword of clarity and total commitment, then we must be accurate in our engagement and insure that no more than one cut is needed. I thought of the places I work, the communities and people I work with, where the emergence of open heartedness is and has been a dangerous proposition for a long time. In Bella Coola, or on Vancouver Island or in the downtown eastside of Vancouver, opening one’s heart can be an invitation to a painful battle. If we are called to work with open hearts, then the shadows of greed, failure and dishonesty (and many others) will be there to stick us and we must be prepared, as warriors, to fight them or to die to them. They are mortal enemies and casting them in these terms is not a game. It requires a vigilance in practice to defend the open heart in ourselves and in the places where we work so that it may drive the change and healing that is needed.
I was incredibly moved and surprised by my reaction to this exercise, and I sat for a long time after the circle ended. I was joined by my mates Carsten Ohm, Tom Hurley, Nicole Baussart, Maria Skordialou, Sarach Whitely and Toke Moeller. Carsten asked me what was in my heart, and I replied that I thought the call to address our enemies was a serious call and if we were to use the sword for this work, we had to know that there would be pain. Whether we hold our opponents with love or hate, if we are cutting them with precision, we are creating pain. I wondered aloud and asked my mates what they thought of the responsibility of love.
That day I felt a fierce commitment to defending the territory of the open heart and a fierce commitment to training in the practice of wielding love, for communities, people, ideals, possibilities and whatever else. For me, the Art of Hosting on Art of Hosting wrapped up after that circle, even though we still had a half day to go, During the open space I invited people to sit with me and teach me a song from their home place. I’ll post the recordings of these songs when I can get some time. They are beautiful gems, these songs, because they are offered out of a spirit of really open vulnerability, sung in the mother tongue of my mates, and watching them sing these songs opened my heart wide to who these friends really are.
I think this is our call. What do you think of the responsibility of love?
My dear Chris,
I am moved and fully opened by the power and vulnerability of your offering here. Your surrender into a fierce engagement with the emergent depths and complexities of the personal and collective shadows of these turbulent times helps me feel my own constrictions and fears in facing the darkness of my own unconsciousness. My throat tightens into your scream and I feel such sadness and rage at how fucking hard this all is. And then I feel the beauty of all these radiant souls working in the mystery as agents of change and discover a profound longing to live into the honesty and compassion of a wide open heart.
An honoring of the soul of the world’s light pouring through you these days. Thank you for leaping into the gulf beyond the luminous edge.
Thomas…your first paragrash captures exactly how I was feeling. Your second one is a generous acknowledgement, for which I say thank you. I have a very clear sense of the luminous edge at the moment, and feeling a strong connection with your work, on many levels.
Dearest Chris, I must echo Thomas here. As one who also challenged her vocal chords in that extraordinary scream, and who heard your words in circle afterwards, and who has been and is daily confronted with the pain of the open heart that witnesses the fear and closure in others, I can add that another shadow challenge that can derail our work in the world is our own passion.
When we know, in our deepest heart of hearts, and see with our clearest eye of the spirit, that all that we fear is a shadow (even death), as we practice the open heart and open mind and open will with every last fibre of our warrior spirit, we need to know how to remain in perfect poise and dignity, never to push our adversary or interlocutor into a place they cannot go unless we are prepared and awake enough to go with them to guard their back.
As Kalil Ghibran so rightly said, we cannot condemn those who stumble on the road when we who walked in front saw the stumbling block and yet failed to remove it.
You are in my heart and I am at your back, dear Chris.
have to laugh, really… to come here this morning and see so much of our last year and latest messages showing up in the story of this workshop. all is one and we are winning through.
happy birthday, mate.
Thanks very much Chris for your words. I sat in the circle with you and I noticed that you were moved in a deep way. I was more touched about the greatness that lives in myself, and in all of us. Do I have the courage to live up to that greatness?
With deep love,
Ria
Dear Chris and also Thomas and Helen,
Thank you so much for sharing your harvest of day 3 with such an open heart. And I bow to your question! It struck me what you said about having only one strike, as I see shadow work as a ongoing, step-by-step process, uncovering shadows and shadows that hide in the shadow of the shadow of… I wonder if there is a faster way, a possibility to cut right through to the heart of the shadow, with only one strike? Or is it just my inability to let go? Or to see?
I deeply resonate with the need for hosting yourself and others from a place of dignity. Passion has always been my driver, but I am a student of the art of transforming passion into compassion and being at service of what wants to come into being through me (as George often says it). Is that love? The pure unconditional love for the world? Can unconditional love and wanting to be loved co-exist?
(Contemplating while writing…)
I’m still cooking with many elements of this… here’s a story of a synchronicity in my recent discovery of shadows and swords. http://easilyamazed.com/blog/2007/06/teachings-and-synchronicities-warriors.html
Deep thank you,
Dear Chris,
I am very grateful for the harvest in words you did of the 3 days in Belgium and I bow to your courage of showing yourself in these words, your understanding, your knowledge, your knowing, your vulnerability, your doubts, your strenght, your compassion, your love and so much more.
I am pondering on what you wrote about day 3 and especially on your question about the responsibility of love and Helen’s reaction saying never to push our adversary or interlocutor into a place they cannot go unless we are prepared and awake enough to go with them to guard their back. To me, from my aikido background, I even see another level, which is that we need to guard our adversary of interlocutor of hurting himself by pushing and forcing into a place he thinks he should go, but is not aware that this will hurt himself.
At the same time I feel I have been walking on the edge of this passion Helen mentioned and I’m wondering if I haven’t pushed a bit too far. Whilst walking the circle with my shinken that day I felt the power and the strenght that was present and I could feel the determination. But with each step my legs started to feel the grief, the pain, the worry, the sadness that were present as well and they started trembling more and more. I had to gather my own strenght, my own determination, my connectedness to the field and my trust in my intuition that this was at the right place at the right time to be able to finish the circle.
I think the strike we made was not so much at our “enemies”, but at ourselves and we were guarded by the strengths of the field that was in circle around us. Contemplating your words and how this experience was for me, I very clearly feel that what Helen said; how important it is to stay alert in our passion, compassion and love. Because if we practice alertness, we will be able to repond appropriately, whether that is a clear cut or something else. I very clearly see now that the practice of the cut in the moment is so valuable, because it teaches us, not so much to really strike (and hurt) someone, but to react with decision in the moment, despite our fears, despite our doubts.
And, like Ria, I am wondering if I have the courage to live up to this greatness. I am asking myself the question if I hurt anybody in this circle, if I have pushed anyone over the edge of what they could bear and I offer my sincere apologies if I did and was not able to guard their backs.
It is with humbleness that I bow to this circle and all the great people that make it up.
Anita
Hi guys…thanks for all of this.
I think the strike we make is always at ourselves. This is really what the responsibility of love is all about. There is no way to make a strike in the world that is only about “the other.” I think this is why aikido training is full of so much wisdom. It is the practice of the golden rule from a place of knowing our inextricable connection to everything else.
Passion is one thing, passion and responsibility quite another. The two dance endlessly in creative endeavour and the art is being on the edge of both. Both of them have their shadow sides, and both are needed.
There are always times in one’s life to cut and the compassionate act is to cut cleanly whether that is in the world or in ourselves. To make a hash of it is a painful mess, a bloody waste with much negative result. To cut cleanly through what needs cutting is a courageous act, and is needed in many places in our world right now.
Anita, thank you for the training. It was a great gift to me, speaking personally, and its ramifications are still rippling in my world.
To the others, thanks for your support and engagement and reflection here and elsewhere.
More thoughts on living with an open heart… and musings related to your words: http://easilyamazed.com/blog/2007/06/living-with-open-heart.html
[…] In June I wrote about the work of living in the territory of the open heart. This is a strong personal claling for me. […]