Musings with Matthew

I really don’t know the protocols about this sort of thing - and there probably aren’t many, out here on the Substack Wild Frontier of learning edges and symmathesy…

I was moved to respond to a piece of writing on Collective Intelligence and trauma by Substacker, Matthew Green. He lives in a Substack server just up the corridor….. as it were!!

He’s a writer through and through, and his piece reflects on the power of the group mind/group experience to break the stagnant stasis and isolation that is trauma. Poet David Whyte writes that “to feel alone is to deny the intimacy of your surroundings”, and, it seems to me, that trauma is when that isolation seems a better - safer - option. To reclaim intimacy with ourselves, with others, and with the world is re-entry, a rebirth even. Matthew writes: “far from flattening our individual identities, far from homogenizing us, being in a group with that level of coherence, in my experience, makes me feel more like myself.”

I decided to copy and paste my reply as a piece here. This is partly because I write quite a lot in different contexts, and simply don’t make “my” writing a priority (although i’d probably rather say I don’t have time!!!). It is here, with a minimum of editing, because whilst it stands alone as a piece, I think, it is an experiment in some intentional “trans-substackian” weaving -embracing Substack as a group space in which we (writers and readers alike) might all be elaborating from something deeper than our own perspective, being shaped by a wider, fuller container. You don’t need to read Matthew’s piece first, I don’t think, but it’s here when you do want to have a look. And I haven’t asked him, so I trust its OK with you, Matthew!!!

In te reo Maori there is a word, whaikorero, which I understand can mean “the weaving of words”, borrowing imagery of making a flax basket.

Heart Politics in Aotearoa/New Zealand was gifted the use of that word for one of the "pillars" of its gatherings, an evening spent in whole group circle space. Coming after 3 days of collective exploration, reflection, conversation, insight, and engagement, it is a rich, dense space. It is a held space - in that one or two people have taken the task of introducing and then paying exquisite attention to its unfolding. It has no topic, other than becoming what it will be. (Like weavers of the flax basket, one does not know what will be put in it, or by whom, whilst it is being made: one can only be powerfully attentive - and intentive - to its potential. And this, of course, shapes the crafting).

"Intentive" because (at least as I experience the world) it seems that there is an underlying roiling generative dynamic flowing of coherence within which momentary differences generate possibilities (cf: Bateson's "differences that make a difference"). if time has a non-linear aspect at that level (as it seems to do when we encounter it, whether in meditation, psychedelic experience, deep connection of every kind), then it makes sense that Matthew writes "It’s as if the past is reaching forward into the present, placing filters around my perception, or scripting my reactions in ways that are beyond my conscious control." I'd suggest that "the present" also reaches back to "the past" - and "the future(s)" is also always ... present. At such times, perhaps, we notice that we are always and already within a greater intent, participant within a dance between fractal intelligence of the whole, and emotional sentience*¹ of the parts (and vice versa!). and the dance matters...

"Matters" - as in "becomes matter" ... the dynamics of the atmosphere overhead mean that the unseen water molecules may coalesce as clouds, and you and I watching may say "look: a cauliflower and a dragon... or maybe a horse", and then one of us half-remembers a line from Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra which leads us to telling stories about our lives, learning, love and then … and then.... something becomes deepened in ourselves (matter) - and realised (matters) between us.

when we meet in whaikorero - although one does not use that language to name the process so much for Heart Politics² gatherings outside Aotearoa - those holding the space do not need to spell such detail out to the group. Rather, we tend to hold it in awareness, and in expressing the quality of being that we feel to be emergent in the room. Trust is one of the qualities being held in that space.

the stories told are different, and sometimes not, following on, each one prompting a response in the listeners and in the room. very very occasionally one of the "space-holders" may remind participants to give a little space between speakers... usually when it feels as if there is something trying to be spoken, and it may not be finding its way in between the words. (It reminds me of that section in Bruce Chatwin's "Songlines" where he describes riding with some aboriginal folk in an old landrover. As is the custom, one of them is quietly singing because they are traveling beside a particular line of his ancestral Dreaming and, today, he is the voice of this land ... except he is having to rush and stumble to keep up with the song because it has been learned over 40,000 years' crossing the land at walking pace, and the truck is moving at 30 miles an hour....).

following my understanding of "psychosphere", and thinking about Matthew describing his experience of something powerfully arising from within the group as a result of (lovely phrasing) "certain signatures ... that titrate", I feel that the combination of intention and the quality of how the intention is held is a titrant that shapes the relational space, enabling titration. all the time. it is, for many of us, easier to perceive this within a group setting, and it think this my be because we don't have to pay too much attention to allow ourselves to naturally fall into inter-human connection: we are very attuned to the emotional space of other members of our own species, especially, again, when vitalised by difference, whether in stories, attitudes, or belief.

then we may find ourselves watching with quite intent curiosity as someone interacts with an infant, or even a pet, such as a dog or cat. perhaps we are naturally sensitive to examine the ways in which one another engages beyond the limitations of language? and maybe we are always drawn to moments where a communication is accompanied by a powerful qualitative vector?

I have found a "qualitative safari" to be a powerful, grounding and transformative process that I can do "by myself" (as if one is ever "by oneself" when there may be only self-ing!) or, delightfully, with others. Its easier in a wilder place with growing things, but one can open to the qualitative in any place. in the concrete jungles, of course, the harder-edged qualities of strength, resistance, command, singularity, independence, efficiency tend to dominate, drowning out the others - and its always noticeable when the designer, architect or planners have been attentive to other qualities in themselves when creating the space. but, by default, the whole is always present, and so, by attending to the quality in myself, I can begin to find them even in the harder aspects of what some might term the resonant world.... (see what I did there :) !!). The trust here is that, after 14 billion years, there is something we can and do lean into, and it will meet us: we are already involved, even as we are in a greater evolving which we can influence just through being.

and, for sure, whilst it is satisfying (and sometimes just bloody delightful and empowering!) to do such things alone, the richness of being in a shared space give us access to so much more ... for monochrome to Kodachrome to the stained glass window and then the fecund, multisensual colours of the old forest...

and then, as we have for millennia, we settle in a circle space, connect to a sense of intention, whether poverty through ceremony, or merely in the instinctive recognition of the intrinsic ceremony of the commons of people, place, and circles, the qualitative presences, touching each of differently, drawing out the stories that - variously - heal, give heart, enlighten, inspire and in-form.

Mary Oliver puts it rather more succinctly -

"I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?"

its a question best engaged in relationship.... it is the question that shapes our times … and it is the question that transforms the previous question - “Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? “

Tell me, what are the qualities you wish to embody with your one wild and precious Life? And how can I help?

Thanks for all your writing, Matthew. People can start meeting you here

1. Thanks Katherine Peil Kauffman for this nifty naming of a significant aspect of psychosphere.

2. https://songlines.wixsite.com/heartpolitics/gathering-2024