Thank you for inviting the writing at The Rising of the Divine Feminine Substack into your inbox, and thank you for being here in this online space. Welcome to new readers and boundless gratitude to those who have been reading and walking with me on this journey since an earlier point in time. Which points me towards a favorite Rumi quote:
“We’re all just walking each other home.”✨🌟💖🙏🕊️
Good morning beloved reader,
Last week I was so grateful to read Katherine May’s Substack The Trouble with Getting Together as sometimes I struggle with community too.
I particularly related to this:
Some of the people in that room were personal friends; I struggled to pick them out until they came to talk to me. I know from repeated feedback that this reads as aloof, but it’s actually me drawing a complete blank. I don’t blame the people who judge me, because it hurts to be ignored. My disability is invisible, and few of us are secure enough to not want to be known and greeted in a social gathering.
It’s not that I feel a complete blank, but I sometimes feel incredibly shy: not sure if people want to be greeted by me. And yes, as Eckhart Tolle teaches; shyness is simply an aspect of ego. But hey, I’m not yet enlightened😎 I’m practicing becoming aware of all aspects of my ego, but perhaps for me, it’s a life-long practice😆
One of the IRL communities I belong to is a local organic and biodynamic CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and as Jamie and I recently bought e-bikes (yes I LOVE having a power-assist to get up a hill!) twice a week we now ride the 8-miles to and from the farm to pick up our raw milk, bread, eggs, and assorted veggies. We joined this CSA in maybe 2014, but recently a new farmer, his wife and their gorgeous little 5-or-6-year-old daughter have moved to the farm. The first time Jamie and I arrived at the farm on our new e-bikes, this little girl was delighted and intrigued and asked us a million questions.
Now every time I go to the farm, I look out for this little girl and am delighted by her insatiable curiosity and joie de vivre. I mentioned her in a phone call with my radical 85-year-old mother in Australia who used to teach little kids, and Mum’s observation was how delightful it is that her curiosity has not yet been squashed out of her, as so often happens by parents wanting their kids to “fit in.”
Our families are our original community and they can bring us the most positive aspects of life including love, joy, soul-nourishment, abundance, belonging. In addition to the most negative aspects of the human condition including pain and suffering, hate, abuse, violence, chaos, feeling ostracized or cast out. Perhaps these polarities are like the yin and the yang; the light and the dark; the outer-material-physical-experience of life and the inner-emotional-mental-spiritual-experience, or as Eckhart Tolle describes it: the horizontal and the vertical dimensions of life.
Katherine May also writes about how we can make communities work:
There are lots of different ways to help, and one of them is politely dissenting from gossip and prejudice. That’s the hardest bit, but I think it’s the right thing to do; I can do it on behalf of others, and I hope they’ll do it for me, too. If it all gets too much, I can scuttle back to my likeminded online communities and ask for advice. It makes a huge difference to be in both kinds of communities at once.
And here I’d love to explore the difference between talking about each other with the intention to understand another person versus to make ourselves feel superior: “Oh so-and-so is so selfish,” and the unspoken subtext here is, I would never do that, so I’m morally superior, which is just ego.
And this is not to judge ego as good or bad, but simply to become aware of it. Again, for me, a life-long practice. And what Buddhist practitioner and former Thai Forest Buddhist monk, Jack Kornfield says is true:
Perhaps when talking about another person, what is essential is to investigate what is my motivation?
Sometimes when we discuss a person who isn’t present, a closer bond is formed between those who are present; a kind of emotional intimacy. Maybe similar to cheering for a sports team — we’re all on “the same side” as opposed to the “other side.”
But in communities, we don’t want sides. We want love and acceptance, right?
We want a space where people can feel safe to be all of who they are. A space that brings out the best in people. Where people feel inherently valued and appreciated for offering their gifts. Is this an impossible ideal? Maybe. But maybe we’re at the point in the evolution of human consciousness where it’s necessary. (You can read more about this necessity in the anthology edited by the Sufi mystic, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee called, Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth.)
What are other motivations for discussing someone when they’re not present?
Is it to make myself feel superior? I get to make myself the most superior person in the community by cutting everyone else down. If I can find something to criticize in the other person, I’m immediately morally superior and I can keep everyone in their place by having a kind of power over others.
Or is it to understand the other person so we can hold a space that brings out the best in them?
We all have our gifts and challenges — what stops us from holding the space to bring out another’s gifts? Versus condemning them for their challenges-shadow-mud that some may call flaws, but are simply aspects of a character. We get to choose which seeds we want to cultivate, but we don’t want to condemn the negative seeds. Like they say at the Buddhist monastery across the road, “It’s like this.” Acceptance is key.
Sometimes we talk about other people because we’re fascinated by the human condition. I love to discuss people with other people in this fashion, but perhaps the biggest trap is falling into the habit of judging rather than simply observing. (Which may be the result of cultural conditioning by the dominant patriarchal religion.)
Therapy 101 teaches us that whatever we get triggered by in another, is a quality that we’re disowning in ourselves.
“Oh I can’t stand her arrogance!” shows I’m not comfortable with the part of myself that is arrogant. If I can observe that quality without being triggered by it or condemning it, then I’m not disowning it in myself. I’m simply observing it in another person, while simultaneously knowing that I have the exact same quality in myself.
I want to be able to observe it in another without judging or condemning it. We all have all of these human qualities-archetypes-parts within us — perhaps this is why Internal Family Systems therapy has become so popular as it recognizes all of our internal ‘parts.’
Perhaps this spiritual-psychological principle of owning our own shadow and not projecting it onto others, falls into that bucket of, a moment to learn but a lifetime to master.
But perhaps it’s the most necessary principle to learn and practice to foster healthy and happy communities, and to bring healing.
Rather than focusing on how awful that “other” person is, we get to practice loving and accepting our whole human self, so that we can simply observe a ‘negative seed’ in another.
I remember watching a video about the “intentional communities” that were established in Byron Bay, Australia, where my own father had established one in the mid 1990s. At the time, I teased him he was creating his own retirement village. But the therapist in this video made the observation that the most common element in failed communities was when people projected their shadow onto others.
It’s painful to own our shadow, our most shameful parts, our ‘mud.’ Which is perhaps why I so dearly love the Lotus metaphor. It helps us to recognize we need our mud to blossom from!
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May we cultivate communities where we are supported and encouraged to own our shadow or ‘mud,’ knowing that like the lotus flower we blossom because of, not in spite of.
May we not project our shadow or ‘mud’ onto others.
May we create communities where we feel safe to be all of who we are, where we feel loved, accepted, valued and appreciated as a whole human being: body, mind, emotions and spirit.
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I also recently read Charlene Storey’s gorgeous Substack Post, Why we need to celebrate our achievements even when it feels vulnerable. Charlene offers a beautiful example of how to hold a space for a community to form. She writes of the responsibility she feels to the community, but how, ultimately she comes to this:
Now I’m trying to think of myself as a host who sets out the chairs, welcomes everyone and joins in with the conversations while still working in the background, making sure everyone has a good time but without trying to do it all alone and burning out ten minutes into the party.
Besides our beautiful Substack community that’s forming here at The Rising of the Divine Feminine, I’d love to hear your thoughts about IRL communities you may be a part of, and what you notice works and doesn’t work in those spaces. After all, isn’t it simply connection we’re interested in? A space where we can brighten the light between us?
Thanks for reading✨🦌✨ 💃🧚♀️🤸♀️🌼🌷🌈🌺🪷💕☀️😎 💃🕺☯️🥰✨🌟💖🙏🕊️
Thank you for this, Camilla. As I age, I think I return to the need for community. When I was in what Indian philosophy calls “Grhastha” or the householder stage, I was so busy that my community was my workplace and my parent groups, and other people I was thrown together with. But as I approach 60 and am now in the “Vanaprastha” or forest dweller stage, I can choose to seek out my own community and people who are more spiritually aligned. And I do! My spirit is so much lighter when I’m in community. Thanks for this insightful column. 🙏🏻
Thank you for this post, Camilla! So thought provoking. I really love the idea of examining our motivations. Ideally, I would do that before every word I ever spoke (or wrote). 😁 As far as IRL community goes, I like mine small. Tiny even. I find large groups to be draining. But my little group of close friends and family is everything to me.