Being in the Unknown Together

On our calls we are practicing being together in an unknown space. Below, is a 6-minute audio clip where we discuss how to be in the unknown as we imagine a new reality in a cross-gender forum.

While many of the people drawn to this initiative are interested in living in a village environment, the purpose of coming together is not solely to build villages. There are plenty of resources, examples and templates of how to build an eco-village or intentional community.

The commitment in this group field is to partner with the Mystery and to step into something beyond what we know.

To do this, we cannot use the rules of engagement with which we are familiar. While some of us have chosen paths of the unknown in our personal lives, many of us have not experienced being in the unknown within a collective, relational container. This process may bring up discomfort, confusion, and resistance – and in fact if it does, it means we are doing something right.

Though of course there is no way to do this right. The Mystery is filled with paradox. The ability to hold paradox challenges our binary thinking; it challenges the systems that keep us separate and divided.

If we allow paradox to exist in our collective space, then we cannot rely upon rules and guidelines because when a rule applies in one situation, it may not apply to another. This requires us to develop a deeper capacity to listen to what is actually happening and required in any moment.

I imagine the process of village building, in the way that I am called to it, to be similar. In this way, the village evolves through a deep conversation with the land, with a particular group of people, and with the surrounding human and non-human community.

A network that connects villages will also have its own expression and life force born from a greater intelligence beyond our human one. I experience this interdependent web of possibilities as something I deeply know, but have never seen in existence. In this sense, a village and a network are not things we implement – they grow one another (and each of us too).

To be in a space of Unknown is not comfortable for most of us. We are used to a world where solutions, order and metrics reign supreme. We are taught to relate to others and to have our needs met in superficial ways. We organize in communities, governments and organizations where someone at the top has the answer to satisfy our need to know something.

What if instead we allow ourselves to go beneath and beyond what is familiar, and not know? That is the invitation of the space we are experimenting within.