We Need to Regain Our Connection
In February this year, I attended the Care of the Environment Workshop led by Wytske Visser1 in the Basque Country. One of my highlights was becoming much more aware of how important it is to be connected with each other and with our earth. It was good to experience this in close connection to so many Basque Co-Counselors in their homeland; with the Ekain cave with its prehistoric drawings (more than thirty thousand years old) only a hundred meters from our workshop site; and surrounded by beautiful trees, a small mountain stream, clear air, wildlife, mountains, and quietness. I realized that I want to do more Co-Counseling sessions on getting reconnected with my own home ground in Aalsmeer (the Netherlands). I think that I get a bit closer to my own roots when I spend time in my vegetable garden.
Wytske encouraged us to be more physically close, which makes it more safe for all of us. We can learn this from little children. With more safety we can discharge more deeply.
She also shared her thinking about leadership. Most RC leaders lead on top of their fear. It is crucial to discharge our fears, including about leadership. And it is crucial that we learn how to be good counselors for each other as leaders and to support each other to better contradict our chronics.2 We need to get closer to each other so that the patterns can be discharged. It is also important to get encouragement for our leadership. We can phone or mail someone to say how wonderful and great a leader she or he is. Then later we can ask how it was to be encouraged. We can learn how to better encourage each other. We still find it difficult to do this well, and there is not only one way of doing it.
We are trained to function without discharge, which makes us disconnected from each other. The biggest fear of those who have the power is that we will regain our humanness and stand together. Yet internalised oppression makes it hard for us to do this. We need to regain connection.
Another learning: If we come back to our senses as humankind, Mother Earth is ready to find balance very quickly. But now too many of us are unthoughtful. We know what is going on,3 but we do not change our behaviour.
We are too discouraged to stand up for ourselves, and we forget the power that we have as human beings. We are also made to believe that the more material things we have, the better person we are. The answer to this is to be connected and to stand together. The best things in life are not for sale. When we have each other, we do not need consumer goods.
We need silence, thinking together, encouraging each other, and discharge. I liked it that during the one-minute silence after the change of interpreters4 the light in the workshop room was switched off. It made me feel more quiet and peaceful.
Deep-down inside we have never lost our connection. Deep-down inside we know how intelligent we are and how deeply we care about everything that is alive. I feel happy to be better aware of the world around me.
Thanks, Wytske, for being such an inspiring, connected, and intelligent leader.
Goof Buijs
Broek in Waterland, the Netherlands
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders in the care of the environment
1 Wyske Visser is the International Commonality Reference Person for the Care of the Environment.
2 Chronic patterns
3 “Going on” means happening.
4 When there is interpreting at an RC workshop, it is customary to have a minute of silence after each interpreter finishes his or her turn interpreting. This gives both the interpreter and the people being interpreted to a chance to rest or discharge.