Who are we?
We are beautiful. Beautifully designed, beautifully capable. One of the ways we can explore that is through having a gentle understanding of how our consciousness and our energy have a relationship through which we emerge and become. We become through interaction and we depend on interactions to transition from ‘what is’ to ‘what is next’ with a higher level of coherence.
In DE we explore the idea that we have three embodied ways of knowing: Rational, Emotional, and Sensory (RES). There are other ways of knowing, such as intuition, of course, but the inner RES (inner because they are personal to each of us) is directly connected to our own evolution and that of consciousness itself.
Consciousness and Energy
I learned something today; consciousness and energy have a relationship with each other and they are different from each other. Consciousness doesn’t have a form, as such – it does not originate in our solar system – which is why it uses energy to help us experience it; Earth is energy’s neighbourhood. It is also why we have these incredible bodies; because this is how we take in the energy that conveys and transmutes consciousness, and us. We take in both energy and consciousness through our own energetic systems; the chakras. And the way we evolve consciousness is by the content and quality of the interactions of our Rational and Emotional aspects. Our ability to feel emotions and to think and articulate our experiences and ideas is how we ‘work’ the energy into higher (or lower) forms of consciousness. It seems possible that there may be a realm, that is neither wholly physical nor singularly ethereal, where the two combine and interact.
This transformation and conveying of energy is something we can feel in our bodies. We all know how it feels to dislike something, even hate something, or someone, and the contrast, of being filled with a sense of expansiveness and belonging. We move towards and away from connection, safety, and belonging as a spatial experience. The sensory is our feedback system… and how something feels in our body is an indicator of how it is affecting our overall energy system.
Consciousness is evolving itself and humans are participating in that using our own energetic systems: Firstly humans are here to co-evolve collective consciousness and secondly – perhaps simultaneously – we are also here to evolve our human consciousness. Perhaps another way of thinking about this is that there is no distinct human consciousness, per se, just humans experiencing collective consciousness, thereby having a human experience of consciousness. This would probably be true of all species and sentient beings – we all share in the same consciousness but have different experiences of it, based on our design.
Communication as energy transformation
It is possible that communication is intrinsic to the process of evolving our consciousness through energy interactions because it is one of the most viable ways we refine the possibilities of consciousness, through these processes of very direct exchanges, that can flare up our emotional energy or affect our ability to think. This isn’t an accident. It gets our attention so we can discover that energy is there at all, waiting to be noticed. It just so happens that evolving collective consciousness also determines our own survival.
Our enjoyment of being here on earth – or desire for it – could suggest a certain kind of teleology to our impulse-need to become self-aware. If self-awareness directly affects our survival, then it becomes a carrot embedded in both personal purpose and through seemingly external situations, such as Climate Crisis. An idea may appear as something that serves just us but it could likely be, in actuality, serving a larger collective evolutionary purpose. We become through interaction and how we interact seems to have a direct impact on what the Energy-Consciousness is able to do next, from a creative – and evolutionary – point of view. This connects our creativity in communication to our evolution. From this perspective, listening becomes an act of creatively co-facilitating our mutual emergence and our experience of life on this planet.
There is a dynamism between consciousness, energy, and self-awareness. Creativity requires courage and so does self-exploration. It can be fun, and sometimes painfully unpleasant, to see how – and who – we ‘become’ in other people’s company. As we have all experienced, in some situations we feel elegant and comfortable and, in others, filled with self-doubt and unable to think in ways that we usually have access to. That dynamic is a collective experience. We are all influenced by each other – even by our own thoughts. Do we think our way into our feelings or do our feelings influence the kinds of thoughts that we are able to have? We can also understand more of the other person when we know ourselves well enough to know when our field has changed – and how.
Rational, Emotional, Sensory
Our minds deal with the ‘mental’ stuff – the Rational. They can be full of wonderful qualities that we can experience as reverie, daydreaming, imagination, analysis, organizing, identifying patterns, telling stories, conceptualizing, and visioning. Emotionally we get to experience compassion, empathy, become socially invested, care, and relate to others. Our Sensory gift is that we can sense as energy our deep ecology, interconnection, intuition, ancestral and spatial awareness. Indigenous peoples have maintained their adeptness at sensory awareness and the deep connection to Earth that comes with our sensory gifts. These are sophisticated systems. As long as we have a body – a Sensory house – we can explore the dynamics between the Rational and Emotional. Our evolution is the path of self-awareness and it’s all based on paying attention to the feedback loops of pain and pleasure without attachment.
Although typically, in DE all three Ways of Knowing (WOK) are interacting equally it might be helpful here to think of it more like this to see how we rely on the experiential to better understand our emotional experience and framing of reality.
And there is something else to consider for our minds – reflect on how uncomfortable we can get when we have to let go of what we think we know. The reason the rational gets uncomfortable with the unknown is that it wants to be – and is here to be – of service to manifesting. When things are evolving and have not yet formed new patterns it can’t yet do its job of organizing and manifesting and so it (we) can become confused and edgy! Experience lessens this reaction and things soon re-orient once they have found the new pattern and thereby a new temporary equilibrium. It can help us, going forward, to remember that these moments of arriving soon become departure gates for the next transition! The two tenets of DE invite us to be unattached to either our ideas or our solutions so we can be constantly updated by reality!
Communication as an evolutionary principle
If communication is so important to our evolution, what can we do differently to enhance that process? Let’s take a look at how we speak to each other, and why. Our motivation in an exchange can determine and affect the outcome of it. This short video explores some of the dynamics inherent in conversations held with different levels of awareness and consciousness.
In a conversation or a dialogue we could choose to ask ourselves privately ‘Am I trying to win or to meet this person… dominate the conversation, or discover and receive new possibilities?’ We can ask ourselves, honestly, if we are more seeking protection and security through our knowledge or letting ourselves flow into connection through an interaction? Is the interaction an opportunity for novelty to arise … are we letting it be? Another consideration is that of the search for security – does it come more from self-protection or from mutuality in connection; are they each a different kind of security?
If we approach a conversation from the perspective of the two DE tenets (1. Nothing is fixed and 2. Energy waits to be noticed) then we invite back in our curiosity… our ability to be intrigued by each other and by how we each experience reality. If we can bring back our state of wonderment we sit side by side and look at the view together. If we are sitting facing each other oppositionally then I am describing the wall I can see behind you and you are describing the wall you can see behind me – we cannot verify each other’s perspectives whilst protecting our own because we have fixed a position.
Debate - Discussion - Discovery - Language
The language of the adamant can interrupt the flow of what’s possible from the perspective of novelty arising (N.B. the definition of DE is ‘the phenomena of novelty arising when two or more elements meet’). Notice how your mind cannot function as well if you are spatially oriented and the person confronting you has closed the size of the space that your mind feels invited to explore. Some adamant language shows up as ‘Well, I think’ ‘I don’t believe that’ ‘That’s not right’ ‘You’re wrong, that’s stupid’ ‘Why would you think that?’ ‘Since when??’ The suggestion here is that the confronter is trying to replace your idea with theirs – this would be a debate. Someone has to win. One argument has to defeat and replace the other – ‘because it’s better’! There’s adrenalin in there, especially if you are good at it!
Language of invitation: A different kind of conversation i.e. a dialogue or discussion is more mutual, more spatial, and seeks exploration. The orientation is ‘beginner’s mind’ and that spatial language might be generated from a state of ‘I am curious’, ‘I am open’, ‘I am listening’, ‘I am ready’, ‘I am relational’. In order to be able to do that we need to have developed to a certain level of interior sophistication to be comfortable within ourselves. In other words, the security we previously sought by winning our argument now gets found in our mutuality which means we need to have already found the security within ourselves. A healthy ‘I’ can become a constructive ‘We’.
Divergence – when we can’t find a way to agree with an idea. When we hear different ideas from our own, a constructive language of contrast might be along the lines of ‘Ah… well at the moment I am working with the thought that…’ ‘Hmmm, in my reality right now, I’ve been noticing…’ ‘Right now I’m seeing it like this/this way…’ ‘I’m thinking that…’ ‘I’m considering/exploring the possibility…’, ‘Oh right, well that’s interesting because I’ve been noticing…’ ‘I’m wondering…’ ‘I have a thought to contribute on this topic…’. These keep the door of inquiry open without collapsing either reality too soon.
Finally, if you do want to shut the door on a particular thought, for now, this can be done without shutting the door on the person. The language of closure might be ‘I hear what you’re saying, and yet I can’t find a way to integrate that right now’ or ‘I hear you, and I’m just entertaining a different approach for now’, ‘I wonder if it’s possible to let this be for a while – would that work for you?’ ‘I’m not fully on board and yet I’d like to allow for new additional possibilities on this – can we come back to this point in a new moment of time?’
The body as a personal information source
If you try these ideas see if you can notice how it feels in your body, also how your body language might change when you use them, as it may help get a sense of which ideas might enhance openness and connection and which may reduce those possibilities. A wonderful question to ask oneself is ‘What am I trying to achieve here – a collaborative inquiry, a shared experience of discovery together, or something that only I have agreed to? Another question I like is ‘Is this expanding my/our sense of space, or contracting it?’ The advantage of this is that a collaborative conversation/exchange means we are sharing the responsibility of both the quality of the experience and the outcomes! A great de-stressor compared to having to carry something on one’s own.
A final point here is that Adamant energy is not against the law (!) – it can be essential when putting off an unwanted exchange, especially a dangerous one. We have to know how to use that energy to protect ourselves sometimes. So it’s more a matter of being aware of the choices we have and then choosing the one that best serves the purpose of the moment. Maybe you’d be interested to think about where you might have swapped out an approach in a past ‘failed’ conversation (!) if the idea of Tenet #1 – Nothing is fixed (including our own solutions and ideas) – had been available?
Conclusion
Multiple realities co-exist for each individual and each collective – we don’t know what we don’t know. We barely know what we really are but we do know that each person is having an experience based on their history/future/ancestry/land influence/animal influence/elemental influence, practical affectations, and unseen affectations. We are each a collective; our individuality is a way for us to both allow and direct, like an orchestral conductor, this confluence of energy-consciousness, allowing it to emerge through us with the best possible attention to detail, consideration, and accuracy. Whatever we choose in terms of how we ‘come into’ a conversation will influence the level of intelligence, insight, connection, intimacy, and creative possibilities that that level allows.
My hope is that in becoming aware of what we believe, we can begin to have a relationship to the fact that we believe it, and we can then explore why it matters to us to believe it! In there we will find a need that is being met and we can decide if it serves both us and the gestalt of a situation to maintain that belief as a fact. Perhaps in letting go of that attachment to the idea that our need can only be met through that one belief, we can become open to new ideas that encompass, and generate, the possibility of their own evolution, whilst carrying the collective needs in their heart. In DE there are two tenets: 1. Nothing is fixed and 2. Energy waits to be noticed. If nothing is fixed then there is a new opportunity for something to cohere us together yet further, in mutuality. If we can be in an open relationship with reality then we can become that novelty arising, along with the new possibilities that emerge through the openness. We become through each other and I, for one, find this both beautiful and tender.
Thank you for reading.
Clare Hedin is a transformative teacher of consciousness and a sound healing practitioner, using the various elements of RES to transmit and transmute consciousness to help people experience deeper levels of connection and higher levels of coherence and understanding.
She has performed musically for many years at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, California, UK, and Greece and is available for coaching and training, as well as performance and keynotes. She co-designed the Sound Healing department of The Sound Healing Institute in San Francisco and taught Creativity & Innovation at SFSU for many years.
Dynamic Emergence is available for individuals and groups to take online in a beautiful course format, synchronously and asynchronously. Contact: connect@dynamicemergence.net / clare@clarehedin.com
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