Learning to listen deeply [to

collective wisdom, nature’s wisdom

and inner wisdom]
Daniel Christian Wahl
May 24, 2017 · 8 min read

It takes two to speak the truth — one to speak

and another to hear. — Henry David Thoreau

What we most need to do is to hear within us

the sound of the Earth crying. — Thich Nhat
Hanh

When we explore collective intelligence and wisdom, we should

not make the mistake of assuming that only fellow humans can
inform insights, provide evidence and support decisions. The
wider community of life, the embedded intelligence of ‘the pattern
that connects’, the practice of asking nature (as nature) can inform
collective intelligence and wise action as well.

[…] When it comes to participatory decision-making, accessing

collective wisdom and tuning into life’s inherent intelligence,
many traditional cultures offer powerful technologies of the
sacred, rituals and practices that should not be dismissed as
‘irrelevant’ to our modern societies. To the contrary, we need to
recover these deeper forms of listening and gaining insight in
order to recover the wisdom we have lost in an avalanche of
information and knowledge. Our methodologies tend to be focused
on (rational) thinking alone, but deep insights can be gained from
processes that include and value sensing, feeling and intuiting as
part of decision-support.

Three such practices have helped me personally to experience

collective intelligence in action and to gain deeper insights into
and through my relationship with life. All three have deeply
informed and supported my work as an educator, facilitator and
consultant; and have deeply affected the quality of my own
interbeing with all my relations. [This is an excerpt of a subchapter
from Designing Regenerative Cultures,published by Triarchy
Press, 2016.]

For me, personally, the practices of mindfulness (connecting to the

wisdom within), council (connecting to the wisdom of the group),
and solo time in the wild (connecting with the wisdom of nature)
offer important pathways towards regenerative cultures, as they
are embodied direct experiences of our interbeing. These
technologies of the sacred are more than simple practices, they are
ways of walking in an ancient lineage of living the questions. They
can guide our healthy participation in wholeness.

Council
Council is an ancient way and modern practice, spanning many
cultures and religions. In council we listen to the whole: the people
and the place, earth, water, fire, air — the living planet. The
practice elicits an experience of true community, a recognition that
each voice needs to be heard, that every person has a gift, a story
to share, a perspective of the whole. It allows us to share our
common humanity. Every time someone opens up and shares
what truly moves their heart, in heartful listening we are given the
opportunity to experience that beyond all our differences we care
about very similar things.

Council creates space for new insights and understandings,

wisdom in decision-making and the healing of differences. More
than being just another communication tool, the deep practice of
council allows us to access and experience collective intelligence
and group wisdom, offering a way both new and ancient of guiding
collaborative processes.

Council is a non-hierarchical form of deep communication where

each person is empowered to speak. Its primary intentions —
listening and speaking from the heart — encourage genuine self-
disclosure and attentive empathic listening. The quality of deep
listening extended by everyone in the circle towards the person
holding the ‘talking piece’ contributes to creating a container of
deep trust and openness.

Once this container is co-created — also helped by an attitude of

ritual — it enables us to share deeply from the heart. Often people
find themselves expressing a quality of insight and wisdom that
they did not know they had. In these magical moments, people
speak from a place that is deeply nourished by the collective
intelligence and wisdom of the whole group and beyond as the
guidance of the ancestors, of future generations and of all of
nature is invited in at the beginning of the council.

Council encourages participants to speak from their own

experience, making I-statements rather than speaking in
generalities for others. As the practice deepens, participants
achieve greater tolerance for different perspectives and greater
understanding of the feelings of others. Council can help us to
develop our ability to mediate conflict non-violently. It offers a
simple but powerful contribution to the creation of a culture of
peace and understanding.

Council lets us experience empathy and compassion as the

bedrock of our own humanity. There are many forms and lineages
of council practice. One of the organizations that has contributed
significantly to promoting and sharing the practice of council is
the Ojai Foundation in California. It has brought council to
schools, hospitals, prisons, and into the boardroom of major
companies.

Jack Zimmerman and Virginia (Gigi) Coyle provide an excellent

resource for exploring many different forms and applications in
their book The Way of Council. In recent years some of the elders
of the Ojai Foundation have helped to train a series of council
trainers and council carriers in Europe and Israel, leading to the
creation of the European Council Network. Taking part in a
number of Gigi’s workshops and working with the community of
council carries and vision quest guides has offered me inner
sustenance and deep learning on my own path as an evolutionary
activist.

Solo time in the wild

Spending time alone in nature, with an open heart/mind, maybe
holding a question or maybe simply letting one come, is also a
valuable ally for evolutionary activists. Solo time in nature can
generate powerful insights. It serves as an effective way of letting
go of the old and inviting the new (story) into our lives.

Rites of passage ceremonies exist in all of the world’s indigenous

cultures. They are an important marker of transition,
transformation and change in the lives of members of these
cultures. The transition from childhood to adulthood, from
adulthood into eldership, the transition into parenthood, the
confirmation of a new role in the community, the intentional and
ceremonial leaving behind of modes of thinking and acting that no
longer serve us — these important moments of change and
transformation can be energized and celebrated through rites of
passage ceremonies. They serve to support individuals and help
them to recognize their unique gifts and potential, for their own
benefit, for the benefit of their community and for the benefit of
the world.

In the industrial growth society we have done away with

traditional rites of passage or turned them into ineffective vestiges
of their ancient counterparts. Vision quest, or vision fast, is a
powerful ritual that can help individuals to mark these important
life stages and transitions in a meaningful and helpful way.

For most people, there comes a time in life when engaging in such
a ritual could be an important act of transformative innovation at
the very personal level of our own way of being in the world. Rites
of passage ceremonies enable men and women of all ages, but
especially young adults, to engage in an age-old ceremonial
pattern: completion of an old life, movement through the
threshold of the unknown and return to the world reborn.

People in transition from one phase of life to another often find

deep meaning and guidance in this process. It is a path that has
been followed by human beings for many thousands of years.
When it is time to consider such a ritual, these questions call us:

Who am I?

What do I have to give?

How can I heal my wounds and leave behind habits that
no longer serve

How can I become an effective agent of positive change?

How can I love this world, every day a little bit more?

What is my true calling?

How can I serve?

Just as meditation connects us to our inner wisdom and intuition,

and practising the way of council connects us to the collective
wisdom of our people and community, nature- based rites of
passage rituals — or simply spending conscious solo time in nature
— connect us to nature as a profound source of insight, guidance,
vision and strength.

The School of Lost Borders in California, Sacred Passages in

Colorado, and the Eschwege Institute in Germany are among the
many places where you can start to explore the power of modern
day rites of passage for yourself and experience how these rituals
can help you to step into your own full power as an agent of
positive change in this world.

For me, solo time in nature is an important source of insight,

creativity, meaning and vitality. I have seen in workshops I co-
facilitated how such immersion in wild nature, combined with
council and other practices, can have a deeply transformative
effect on people.

Shortly after my own first vision fast in 2008, I read Peter Senge,
Otto Scharmer, Joe Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers’
book Presence (2005) and was delighted to find out about John P.
Milton’s vision fast work with global business leaders. John’s
programme seemed to have had a profound effect on many of
them. I met John only a few weeks later when he paid a surprise
visit to the Findhorn Foundation. He gave me a copy of Sky Above,
Earth Below (2006). The book describes many useful techniques
for meditation, conscious movement, and visualizations to draw
strength and insight from our conscious participation in nature. It
has been a treasured companion.

Mindfulness practices, council and solo time in nature can support

us on our path of living the questions, individually and collectively.
We are all making a difference, not just by what we do, also by
what we say, the questions we ask, the way we think and invite
others to think, but most of all by how we ‘show up’.

The quality of our being in and through relationships and how we

help others relate to the future potential of the present moment
changes outcomes. Setting an intention about who we want to be,
how we want to behave, and what we want to activate in the world
and affirming this intention every day in our thoughts, words and
actions is a practice of personal transformation that catalyses
cultural transformation.

The most effective way of writing the narrative of interbeing into

humanity’s collective consciousness is by living it with compassion
for others and our own failures on the way. If enough of us become
culturally creative evolutionary activists we will contribute to the
emergence of diverse regenerative communities and a thriving
future. Listening more deeply is an invaluable source of insight
and guidance for all who are willing to follow that call.
My Life is a gift from the whole of Life to the
whole of Life […]
— Tom Atlee

[This is an excerpt of a subchapter from Designing Regenerative

Cultures,published by Triarchy Press, 2016.]