Troy Bronsink: Collective Change Conversations with The Hive

The Common Good podcast is a conversation about the significance of place, eliminating economic isolation and structures of belonging.  For this week's episode, La Shanda Sugg and Joey Taylor speak with Troy Bronsink as a part of a live podcast series with The Hive about Collective Change.

Troy Bronsink founded the Hive in spring of 2016 with a desire to collaborate with facilitators from various traditions and backgrounds, making space for transformative individual and group encounters. He brings 25 years of experience in small group facilitation ranging from corporate consulting to community organizing, to spiritual formation. Through the Hive, Troy has developed the curriculum for The Common Good Fellowship, as well as hosting the weekly podcast, From the Hive, interviewing local and global contemplative leaders about their work and practice.  Troy is a member of the Living School, an ordained Presbyterian minister, retreat leader, author, spiritual director, entrepreneurship coach, author, speaker, and consultant. He and his family are residents in Northside.  

The Hive  is a grassroots mindfulness community curating multi-week classes, workshops and a Membership community. It has been formed by facilitators asking the question, "What are the resources that lie within our vast lineages, traditions, and modalities of healing, and how can we place them in service of the common good?" In this series we’re talking to The Hive’s 6 core faculty members, all of whom have a unique perspective on navigating collective change.

Here's the shared poem: The Inward Sea by Howard Thurman

There is in every person an inward sea

And in that sea, there is an island

And on that island is an altar

And standing guard before that altar

is the angel with the flaming sword.

Nothing can get by that angel to be placed upon that altar

unless it has the mark of your inner authority.

Nothing passes the angel with the flaming sword

to be placed upon your altar

unless it be a part of the fluid area of your consent.

This is your crucial link with the eternal.

The music excerpt was Woodstock by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

This episode was produced by Joey Taylor and the music is from Jeff Gorman. You can find more information about the Common Good Collective here. Common Good Podcast is a production of Bespoken Live & Common Change - Eliminating Personal Economic Isolation.

Transcript

First I think I want to invite us  to recognize  the other voices or ancestors that you want to invite into this practice. We're going to talk about collective change.  And, as I was thinking about this today, I was thinking about my grandfather, Ed Odoma who was entrepreneur and a deeply spiritual person and had this great smile and also had a good bout of anger in him. So many things, but  I'm thinking of him and I wonder if for a moment, you just want to kind of shout out the names of, ancestors, mentors, voices that you want to call into this time.  Some of the ancestors too are in lineages. Some of them are so deep we don't know their names, but we have a sense of their presence in the world. One of the voices that has helped  guide my work on this contemplative inner life and how that expresses in the outer life is Howard Thurman. He was a black man that grew up in the Jim Crow South in Daytona. Beach, Florida, was born in 1899, lived until 1980,  he has a poem that I'd like to kind of start with to guide us into this practice and then I'll talk about the practice. It's called the, uh, the Inward Sea and he says it this way, that in  in every human there is an inward sea.  In every human there is an inward sea and on that sea there is an island.  And on that island there is an altar.  And standing in front of that altar on the island in your inward sea is an angel with a flaming sword. And the only way past that angel with the flaming sword is the fluid area of your consent.  The only way past  what is guarding  the altar of your own life is the fluid area of your own consent, the nerve center of your consent.  And this is your crucial link to the eternal.  

So what I want to invite us to do in our practice is, whatever's comfortable for you. look around if you need to, to feel a little more comfortable. leT your body kind of settle in, and then I'm going to guide us in a practice that's from our friends of the Buddhist lineage called Tonglin, which means to, both,  surrender and to welcome, to enter and to leave. And this is a type of shared community practice in some of the previous,  Podcast, we've been talking about those practices that are,  inner practices and then kind of going, how is it that we do this in and out and in and out? And so I'm going to invite you into that first by taking a few breaths and just feeling the weight of your body settled into the ground.  You could let your gaze settle if you're comfortable with that. If it's easy to let your eyes close, that's fine, but you could leave them open too.  Just wait until you feel your body settled and connected to  the earth beneath your feet.  That you're an earthling, not  somebody hovering over another place called earth.  Notice your body rise and fall with that breath.  Notice the space in front of you. A foot's worth, twelve, eighteen inches worth of space in front of your face, in front of your chest,  in front of your lap or your shins.  Move through the body and notice the space behind you, behind the neck,  over the kidneys,  your hamstrings and calves.  Notice the space to your left,  the left side of your face.  Your neck and shoulder and arms, your hip and knee and ankle.  Feel into the weather  of that space to the left of you.  And sweep that attention through the body to the right side.  Noticing the space off of the right side of your face and shoulder and arm.  Your hip and knee and ankle.  And then we'll move to go in and down. So noticing the space above the crown of the head and then down through the busy brain.  Grateful and aware of all the things that  it does and the things we're not aware of.  Down through the senses, the eyes, the ears, sinuses, the mouth. Swallowing and feeling the  inside of the throat and the neck.  Down into the place of the chest. The heart, the lungs, the solar plexus,  all the organs that are there in the gut, and that hara, the breath that sits in the pelvis.  And from this place, just breathing in life and light.  Whatever that means for you, the infinite that is sourcing your very life right now.  The breath that is here.  Breathing that in and making space within the body to just  Sense and feel,  welcoming that sustaining life,  giving itself away as your very life.  And then I want you to imagine a burden or a weight that you carry, a place where you get a constriction,  something that's heavy on your heart right now,  and just allow that to kind of drop into the body,  just for a moment,  moving down through the head and into that heart space.  You just recognize the weight of this, that  it's just so heavy if you were to carry it on your own it would just crush you, but you can feel the weight of it, you notice it.  Notice the emotions that arise, is it frustration, or numbness, or anger,  blame, or shame,  just aware of that and then now breathing in.  Again, life and light, infinite love, giving itself away is this very moment,  moving around this weight, this burden,  allowing some lightness,  allowing that weight and that lightness to intermingle,  and in the same way that you allowed it to enter in,  to breathe back out into the world, that mingling of light and life and this weight and this burden.  Not as if this  fixes and changes conditions, but it might  allow some rest within  and rest around this weight,  recognizing where you're activated,  just breathing that out together with life and light.  And now I want to ask you to envision the eyes of  someone you care about.  And recognizing the burden or weight that they carry.  The heaviness of it that, uh, if they carried, if they tried to carry it on their own, they would, they would just crush them.  And you can't explain it, you can't  totally understand it, there's not a need to  move toward or away from it, but there you are and you can notice it. And just allow that, again, like before.  The weight of that, just to settle into you for a moment.  Moving down through the head and the neck and into the space of the heart  and the solar plexus.  Notice how you respond, what fears,  numbness, blame or shame,  worry, sadness.  You just realize the weight is so heavy it could just crush them.  Breathing in life and light  around this burden.  Noticing there how they co mingle life and light in this weight, this burden.  Allowing them to co mingle.  Maybe they move into steam or evaporate into small particles, but it just moves slowly in.  And breathing that back out into the world.  Just breathing that out.  Mingled in with the life and light.  And now I'd like you to bring to mind the face of somebody who's a stranger.  Maybe you saw them at the gas station or on a corner.  Maybe they're a bystander. And  you can picture the weight  that they carry as you got a glimpse of their eye.  The kind of weight that could just crush them if they carried it alone.  And allowing that to drop slowly into the body.  You can titrate this just enough  to recognize the way that it  holds for them, but what emotions does it bring up for you? What responses?  Where is their sadness?  Where is their confusion? Where is their blame or shame?  And then breathing in life and light,  mingled together with this weight,  that if it was theirs alone to carry, it could just crush them.  And allowing the life and light to mingle with that,  and to slowly breathe that out,  out into the world,  that can handle it,  breathing it out.   We had more time, we could do this now with the face of an enemy.   let's just take a moment and breathe in life and light.  Notice your body, where has there been constriction?  Notice feelings and emotions, allow them to pass through.  Feeling the weight of the ground beneath.  The connection to the ground beneath you. Your body rising and falling with your breath.  And we'll listen again to this poem, these words from Howard Thurman.  There is in every person an inward sea,  and on that sea there is an island,  and on that island is an altar,  the altar of your very life, and the only way  to that altar  is recognizing, acknowledging that angel with the flaming sword.  The only way past that angel with the flaming sword is your fluid area of consent, the nerve center of consent.  This is your crucial link with the Eternal. 

 Troy, I think the first  question  that I'll pose to you is in our small group, part of the conversation was talking about the image of the angel with the flaming sword and the awareness that many of us will perceive and engage with that image in many different ways. None being right or wrong, just different. And so one of the things we said we're going to talk about today was attunement. So a two part question is one, can you define attunement and how you use it? And how is that correlated to this image of this angel with the flaming sword? Is that too much? 

Great. So we'll dive in with the notion of attunement but to give some context, so the angel with the flaming sword, this is a pretty famous or regularly used meditation from Howard Thurman. And,  he was both trained in psychology, as well as was a theologian of more of an inner spiritual space. And so there is something about the hero's journey or the alchemist's journey. There's something in the creation narratives of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Christian Old Testament, that there's a Time where somebody is separated and disconnected from the original blessing that they had always had access to, and in that point of separation, the story is that there arises an angel with a sword that's flaming, and there's no way past it to re enter, really, the garden. You know, this is where you could queue up Crosby, Stills, and Nash, like, we gotta get ourselves back to the garden. 

There's this sense of wanting to get back to that place. Where I am at home in my own body not just in my own body, but can you feel the weight of your body connected to the earth? And there's kind of a place you can get to a yes. And it's really powerful to let yourself get to the yes. So that's a way of describing I think what Thurman is getting after we'll get to that a little bit more maybe, but,  attunement. fIrst of all I, I take a lot of that from the work of Thomas huble, who is a Austrian German uh, facilitator that works on collective trauma healing. What I like about the word attunement that already kind of made some sense to me is the image of things that ring off of each other. So if you think of attuning fork and you ring a similar tuning fork next to it,  it can ring off of the other. There's a overtone and an undertone. So you hit one fork and you bring the other one close and the second fork will start to ring.  Or in the piano, you can hold your fingers down with the damper on a chord and you go and play another chord that is in harmony with that. And as it hits, it'll ring those notes off of that same piano.  Attunement is the capacity both to feel an inner resonance. I do know that I can come home to myself but experience that in the presence of another where both of us coming home to ourselves is a heart to heart connection. It's not just emotional, though. It's vibrational. There is a way that you go like, oh, we just hit there, didn't we? And that's not also not just interpersonal but intrapersonal that there's something that happens collectively in the room, it can happen across other fields like zoom. It can happen in a room where a speaker or a artist is doing something and everybody in that moment is feeling that together there's something there's that togetherness. The reason that feels important to me is that the disconnection from that is what leaves us Satisfied with trauma responses with constrictions. So attunement, in a sense, would be freedom from constriction.  

And just to kind of draw back to something I was saying last week, as a very non musical person, I was like, keys, forks,  and I got it. I think I probably used the word co regulation, so a word we might hear sometime, co regulation. Meaning to regulate for our body to come back to a place where all of the parts are kind of working together to provide us with a sense of safety and connection to self. So  we can regulate within our own nervous systems, but co regulation is when I am regulating in the presence of someone else and all of a sudden their dysregulation can start to regulate. And so now we're co regulating and then someone walks into that room and they came in anxious. They came and then they walk in and there's something where they go,  right. That it wasn't depended upon one person to supply all of our regulation. So we go back to this myth that self regulation is, no, an attunement is our ability to not only do that, but then in sometimes recognize when we are not attuning when we're playing different chords and we might sometimes call that conflict,  on the last podcast, we talked about he's intention. And so, yeah, going back to this attunement and being able to do that constriction tension. Our ability to regulate that attunement. And so I think again, what's really powerful is we can say a lot of different words but we can still come back to kind of these central themes that we're bringing around collective change. And so I offer it back to you. Now we're talking about this angel, this flaming sword. Is there a connection that in this moment you can make to that image? Even if it's personal and attunement.

Adrian Marie emergent strategy, she talks about fractals,  that small is big and big is small, that there's actually something that matches vibrationally between things, I think of it the way the inside of my window when it frosts, because there's a little bit of leak by my door, there's moisture inside and you can start to see the way the crystals create a pattern. So, It's my experience that the inner pattern of crossing the threshold of your own life, the inner pattern of passing past that angel with the flaming sword is the type of co regulation that you're describing, but it also creates the capacity to co regulate. So, for me, the angel, the flaming sword. Yeah, it starts out kind of as a biblical image but in inner interior work like parts work the notion that there's a part of me that has carried a wound and Because of that wound in my life it stands and says no we are not going there I'm not gonna open my heart to this. I'm not gonna open my mind to this And that's been a protector, that's had an important role, but it is a constriction.  In trauma, it's begun to rearrange then the mental furniture of my life. And to actually approach the altar of my life, I have to be able to have a deal with that furniture arranger and say, Can we exhale for a second? And is it okay? Let's work together. Let's move this couch over here because I want to be able to walk through to the kitchen. Got to move that middle furniture. And I think what Thurman's really getting after is both the like, I know who I am now. So  this isn't going to cost us everything. Just can we talk about it? And so you're developing a dialogue with this. So in that sense, there's a lot of angels with flaming swords inside of my body. That's one way I see it. Yeah. 

And so we were kind of talking about, how we engage and approach this metaphor differently. And so, Troy was sharing what he shared, and for me, I viewed that angel with the flaming sword as a guardian of the altar, but not a threat to me. And so, the invitation that I understood from this angel with the flaming sword is, it is going to be necessary. To burn away, cut away, and release some things before you can have access to this altar. Because the primary function is I'm protecting your life even if it's from you. I'm protecting your life, even if it's from your past trauma. And so the flaming sword was almost an invitation. But there's something about Troy holding a flaming sword. In front of my alter and all of his humanness, are you going to cut the right thing? Are you going to burn the right? I don't know.  But there's something about an angel holding a flaming sword that brings me into this divine trust that says it probably will burn. It's probably going to hurt a little bit, but it's necessary for you to have access to what's here for you. I've been protecting it. Like everything, all the equipment is there, but if you come in the state that you're in. You're going to mess this thing up, you got to be prepared to come to this space. So it's interesting, for me, it was more of an invitation and there's no right or wrong. And the discourse isn't about any of that, but just recognizing that if there are 12 of us in this room, there are 12 potential different engagements that people had with that angel, with the flaming sword. So then my question is, regardless of kind of what the relationship is that people started with, or maybe it's still emerging. How do we then connect that to collective change? 

Boom. Yeah, we've been talking kind of metaphysically, like what's going on on the inside. And, whether that interaction feels like  I'm calming that resistant part down so that I can be present, or whether it has a purifying role in it. When I approach the altar of my own life, there is a homecoming that allows me to not be afraid of other thresholds, to neither invade or abandon other situations and other people because of thresholds. So some of us, when we hear afraid of other thresholds, some of us are like, I just run through walls.  I'm not afraid of thresholds but that's a fear response to be running through the wall of somebody else's life to say, you need to behave this way to me. Everybody sit down right now. So it's not that you're not afraid. That's a type of fight flight response. Similarly, if I wither, because I'm approaching the threshold of other people or an area, kind of a poison ground. When it comes to, you talked about energy of walking into a room and feeling that energy and having a positive effect, you can also feel lack of attunement it's like the wifi signals turned down and there's not connection happening and that can activate, if we go to Enneagram, well, let's do something fun because  it's all anxious here but it also could be like, I'm leaving or y'all need to fix this. How do I come in here and take charge? All of that is the same type of self protective habit when it comes to thresholds or when it comes to those flaming swords that are in a sense, protecting the tenderness of where our actual competence comes from.

So, So when you're in a group as a facilitator, what are some of the things that you're thinking about? Or the conditions you're trying to set in order to allow attunement to occur. 

Now it's great. There's a group that I'm working with right now. In this case, it's a church, but it's a committee of folks. I was doing something similar with a trucking company and could work with different groups in different ways. And this group, we were talking about change and we, we read a few different kind of quotes about that. I asked them what words or phrases stick out to you and they'd share that. And I said, now, which of these phrases help you feel  some courage or some connect connectivity to folks around you. And then which ones bring up some type of fear or concern. So I got them to make that contrast. They were starting to recognize now there's fear or concern in the room. And so then I said, what do you need from one another? So that, that fear doesn't become an obstacle for us making decisions together and you can do this in spaces that aren't specifically spiritual. You're just helping folks begin to acknowledge there's fear in the room. And then you say, what do you need from one another? What do you need from the others in the group to not be overcome by that fear or that concern? So the first person to speak said, well, I guess I need to listen better. And I was like, Oh, that's great. Now, that's what you're thinking you need to do. What do you need everyone else to do? And he goes, Oh, I guess I need y'all to be patient with me. And so what we did right there is create the opportunity to see that threshold. And then to ask for what you need in order to be able to step over that threshold with other folks. That's one way to get at that.  '

So I have this image that's forming in my mind. And it's a group of people, let's take this group of people. We have all said we want to participate. And actuate the common good, collective change. And sometimes people just stop there. So the image that's folding is we are all approaching in various distances and proximities to our own personal angels with the flaming sword. But there's one that's way over there. That's that collective, right? So in some ways, I think collective change is tricky because people are looking way down there. You ever been driving down the street and you're not really Focusing on what you're doing and you are approaching a light, but you're looking at the light that's down there. And that light is green, not the one that's right in front of you. And then at some point you're like, Oh my God. Right. It just feels to me that sometimes people are looking at the light that's down there and focusing and moving and attempting to attune to what's there instead of what's right in front of them. And it feels like that can be a significant barrier that the collective we move in, like we were talking about last week, we come in as these individuals, and we say, okay, well, we are all headed towards that thing but then we either try to bypass the altar and the angel that's right in front of us. We dig holes and try to go under it. We try to slide around, we try to jump over it. And so with that connection between, Reverend Angel Coyote Williams quote, without interchange there can be no. Outer change and without collective change, nothing matters, right? And so going back to,  I'm the micro thinker of the group for sure, right? But that inner change, that inner crossing, that threshold is part of collective change. And I think sometimes if we don't recognize that we got to do this stuff here alongside others, attuned with others, with the support of others, we'll keep going for that light that's down there and I think that's where we get stuck so often, why isn't the collective change that we are dreaming about, hoping about, talking about, why isn't it happening? And I think a lot of times that is because people don't frequently recognize that if you don't do the inner work, the outer work and the collective work are directly connected to it. 

Yeah, I got a couple thoughts.  One is idealization that idealization is a I think is a fight flight response. It's a way of saying,  and I'm really good at this, that  we've been talking Enneagram on each of these podcasts, like as a Enneagram seven, that's a head type. It's easy for me to dream about something and that dream to feel, to be a bypass, frankly. it's also can be a helpful tool to get to something, but I think we sometimes bypass the suffering of the exchange with the other by leveraging a better option down the road. And so we don't actually get across the thresholds  of my own altar. You don't get across yours. And instead we go, we're after that thing. And that, I think this one I've been curious about with you, but I think that's what a flock response is. That it actually is, that we'll together go shoulder to shoulder about another ideal. But we haven't had the opportunity to actually experience that ideal as healing. And this is why I think folks burn out.

Say that one more time. 

Yeah. I think when we cross over this threshold in our personal life, in our interpersonal life, in collective change, when we do that, it is experienced as well being and health. It actually is a place of recovery. So where I break a bone and it restores itself, there's more strength there. If there's a wound where I've cut in my arm, you clean that out. It's pretty amazing. That just happens automatically. Like, the Earth does the job. And,  we don't call that magic. It just does it. Well, the same is true for trauma healing and for interior Transformation and healing is that I can cross over and it does have some of that purifying experience that you were talking about Shonda, but it also, it allows me to actually feel regulated in that home in this, if I rush to the ideal, if I have to do a workaround to it. It's more like an empty carb, like an addiction, and it doesn't actually recognize, I don't recognize I'm home there because I don't know what it's like to feel at home. And we just look at each other and go, well, who are the next people were taken down, what's the next wall we're charging  and so that resonance that attunement that we could experience that becomes the source of incredible courage. we've pushed it to the side and forgotten, and we got holes in our pockets. I think of Student Nonviolent Action Committee and the work of SNCC and, and Civil Rights,  the training and work that they went through to be able to stand in places that were highly contested, where the collective was operating in what we would call, with historical bias, we'll go back and go, How could anybody have thought that? But that was normal until sisters and brothers  of African descent said, no, it's not. And when they sat there and said, this is not normal, that conflict created a moment where both it was searing that experience, but also there was a sense of a new awareness of what connection could and should be. To have the confidence to do that sort of work, there was an inward journey that those activists went through. 

Thank you for that, and I really love what you said about the flock response. it, what came up for me is, How flocking because again, the flock, the flea, the fight, the freeze, and the fawn are all responses to stress, threat, and danger but in flocking, how easy it is to bypass the inner journey sometimes and the inner work, because if I come into a space and I'm flocked and there is a calm presence. A sturdy presence when I come into a room with Daniel calm, sturdy, if I'm not careful, I don't try to work on being calm and steady myself. Instead I go, I just need to hang out with Daniel a lot because when I'm with Daniel, he co regulates me. So I feel calm and steady when I'm with him. And when I'm with someone else, they bring this. And if I can just flock with you all day, I don't have to cultivate that for myself. I get it from you. So we see like the balance, the harmony that needs to exist within that, because that co regulation helps our body to feel what that feels like. If I don't know, calm and steady. And then I get around Daniel and I feel calm and steady. The body's like, wait, what's this? We like this, but if we're not careful, then the response will be  Daniel.  Daniel, where are you at? Are you coming? Where are you going? Oh, wait, what do you mean you're leaving, a lot of our relational conflict and ruptures happen because we've become reliant on the person we're in relationship with to give us what we haven't done the work to cultivate within ourselves. Just think about two relationships real quick and you like, dang, right? It's how we get. So the grief of that rupture is so immense because  I'll never feel that again, because we relied on them to provide it for us instead of going. Now that you've given me the appetizer, I want to build the entree within myself. I can achieve this within myself. So that's what I thought of when you talked about flocking being a possible attempt to bypass 100%. 

Shonda's talked about birthright in a way that's collective change from something as aspirational to something that is actually the potentiality for that is within me and within us. Kind of like what Troy was saying. It comes from the earth. It's already here. It's our birthright. So here's  three sentences that kind of described this one is change is our constant context, inevitable context changes all around us. love is our grounding principle. And loving change is our birthright. It is our birthright to be agents of loving change in the world. It's our birthright to be agents of loving change in the world. So when I think of what's a collective, I think of me and my friend group, like there's probably a group of 20 folks here in Cincinnati that are a type of collective. And so when we're hearing this stuff around co regulation, I'm thinking of examples of when we have not been co regulated,  it's this collective of 20 folks. It's also a fractal because these 20 folks in Cincinnati also vote in Cincinnati, and so they're part of a bigger collective So in all those sorts of ways you could think of how you're plugged into lots of different collectives as you and your family Maybe just you and your spouse or you and your best friend family city town country Does that does that give some context so you kind of determine what the collective is for you? 

That's it again. Okay, right? Yeah What's the one story that's getting in the way of the collective living into its birth, right?

There's a lot of ways to answer that. I think today I'd say that there's not enough love to go around in the constricted state that we're in. Maybe I'll just back up and say that I do think the world is in a  trauma response. That there is a trauma, that most relationships are a type of trauma bond because we're meeting each other at this dysregulated state and that in the acceleration of news and fear and loss, we aren't learning to come back down from that. So we're actually learning to live at that accelerated trauma state. Our birthright is to be able to move at all sorts of speeds, but with love. And I think we are cynical and we blush if we feel loved or we blush if we feel love towards somebody. And so we aren't coming home to each other. We're projecting on each other and we're internalizing projection, shame and blame. And we're using that shame and blame so Much to protect ourselves that that's the thing that's connecting us all we're connecting through the magnetism of I like that.  You should be ashamed of that too. I mean it happens in a class all the time It happens when i'm coaching someone before I know what i'm saying this and they're like, oh, yeah Never am I gonna and you just start to realize like oh, yeah shame is so easy as a false energizer  and blame is just as easy because those efforts I have had it with them and you could fill in the blank with whoever it is And  that energy has actually become so strong, that we're embarrassed to actually tell somebody we love them. John O'Donohue has a whole book of blessings where he talks about the ways in a postmodern world we've cut ourselves off from all the institutions that used to bless us. So there used to be someone that was part of a community agency, an institution, that wore a thing and said, when the two of you are together and you make this promise, it matters and now most of us have a friend or have been that person that go online to get the certificate in order to say that to somebody. And that's perfectly fine, but what that means is that the people that are doing that blessing work, they actually don't know yet that it's okay to say I love you to the people that they're standing in front of. Or that it's okay for them to say that to one another in front of other people. And the same is true about all these rites of passage as we come through. We've cut ourselves free from whether that diploma is going to do it, or that award, or that accolade, or that level of degree in an institution. And so we don't know how to bless each other or to feel blessed. And at the core, we blush when we realize that we're in love. And we don't know how to stay in that place and go, I feel love. I have experienced love with someone and I want to tell about it even in this extreme trauma context we're in the middle of right now in terms of internationally and specifically in the Middle East,  it's difficult to get back to a place of going, Can you talk about those you love without blushing? Can you allow someone else's love? Can you allow yourself to open the threshold of your heart to consider and love anyone else? 

We don't really understand the context we're living in right now. I just mean that we don't. Because we live in it. So if you've ever gone to Colorado, anybody ever been to Colorado in the room? The air is different in Colorado, right? And so I'm gonna approach this from a professional basketball perspective or professional football perspective. There are teams that practice and live in Colorado. They experience that air. All the time. And their body makes adjustments to be in that air. You got other teams that have to go there and play a sport and their bodies are not prepared. I'm talking supreme athletes whose bodies are not prepared to be in that Colorado air. It impacts the outcome of the competition, but those who live and practice in Colorado, don't think on a regular basis. I'm practicing in Colorado. The air is dead. They're just living in it. And while we have spikes of moments where we go, Oh, wow, genocide is happening. Oh, wow. When was the last time you took a moment to look around you at all the trauma? And threat and danger that we endure every single moment of every single day, whether it's the changing climate pollution in the air, what we consume in our food, we're living and we're adjusting as we go. So when I hear you talk about the capacity to say I love you. And to receive that love that happens outside of survival, that capacity to do that when you are trying to run from the saber tooth tiger and historical context, or simply get a meal right now, all of the energy that we have capacity for in that moment moves into, we got to survive, feel love later wHich is why when we didn't talk about co regulation and the ability for even if it's just for two hours to come in and fill your heartbeat rest alongside of someone else, it opens up space to go, Liza. I love you.  I do. I love you. And being able to access that as we come back to collective change, why I think it's so powerful. It's because if I think I got to survive all by myself, I got to do it all. I got it. I might love you somewhere in here, but the parts that are taking over the parts that say you got to eat though, and that mortgage is due and your relationship with your partners. So yes, it's plentiful. The earth has it ready for us, but it's the access that I have to it. When I can attune in a space when I can co regulate and I think that can be so scary.  For people who've never experienced it or collective spaces have meant more survival instead of more attunement. So I was, that just came up for me as you're talking about this capacity to really love someone, something else, that tree that provides oxygen outside the front of your house. Imagine how far you got to get away from survival to be able to look at that tree one day and say, Oh, I love you. I love you.

And I would say this is why mysticism I think is part of the hives work is that the mystics would say that that distance is only as far as my ability to exhale and drop in and feel the ground of the earth. And so there's a great authority and a long tradition of mystics and prophets that were able, in the place of great distress, to find the ground and to look out on a room and say, they shall not, we shall not. Let's go. And that groundedness wasn't because necessarily they were afforded the extra space to do it. It's that something captured their heart and they found the ground of that. There were ancestors that were saying, now is the time. There were folks around them saying, we've got you, we're going to create space for you. But for anyone in places at intersections of oppression to have spoken up when The conditions weren't there for that. This is proof that the earth does this. The earth actually brings out love against all odds. And so it's something to celebrate. There's no shame. It's that close to the altar of your own life. I mean, this is Thurman's work is working at this with the experience of unbelievable walls and lack of access. And, the importance of coming together, like we're talking about. That's really powerful and also just it's a miracle that the earth does this at all  

So I saw the moment where I perceived you thought we might be contradicting each other  I saw it and so I to be clear  Along with that part of me saying the trauma we live in every day Is that in this room? I can feel the access to love that we have collectively and none of that trauma that we live in every day has stopped There we go. It's still going whatever bill does do it still do Whatever pain you had, you probably still have, but you probably notice it less right now, whatever contentious relationships you're in, they're still there. So, in actuality, I believe we are saying the same thing and I appreciate that clarification that I'm definitely not suggesting that we gotta wait till the trauma and oppression goes away. As a matter of fact, the progress, to use that word, that we've seen demonstrated. It's because it didn't go away and yet people still stood or sat at counters in the face of violence, they didn't wait for a safe moment. They took that moment. So where  I want to bring it back where we're aligning is yes, the space, but the space will not be given to us so for me, it feels very, if I'm waiting for the systems. And all the things to give me the space to come home and get to that place, then I'm never, ever, ever going to get there. And so what does it mean for us to say, I'm going to take that space? I'm going to move into that space. I'm going to co regulate into that space. The world didn't stop spinning. The things didn't stop happening. I just wanted us to be aware that we, our bodies are highly attuned to all the things that we're experiencing on a regular basis. It's aware your body is aware it didn't forget. It's not confused. It may have decided to numb a little bit because let's be real, if my daily life is a hundred traumas, at some point, it's going to stop telling me about the, the bottom 10 because we got other things to focus on. So we're here in this moment, but can we take the space, even with all that that's going on to find the space, the way so many of us before have, and the way our ancestors still give us access and guidance and encouragement to do 

so. we had a question from Mary Claire online. It feels as if there might be a cultural shift towards healing self, especially our younger people are more willing and oriented to turning towards the hurt and its causes, but also those of us who are a bit older. Broader understanding of the trauma, for example, exists and seems to be helping many people heal. Does it seem we might be a generation, or two, or three, who are pressing the pause button on focusing as much on collective work and doing the needed work of individual healing, and that this might position us better to heal groups and systems?  And, what do what do we need about the fact that we as a human race might not have time for this? 

I do think there's an awareness of the responsibility.  The individual's responsibility for healing. James Finley has a quote that says, Trauma isn't just what was done to me. But what was done to me, did to me. Trauma is not just what was done to me, but what was done to me, did to me. Which means it's shame based. And I think people are recognizing that something that has been done to them, at all sorts of intersections, is now done something to us. But the turn that Finley makes as he goes in, it's shame based. I would say that a lot of people are not crossing thresholds to one another because of blame. Which isn't the same as accountability, but I think it saves us sometimes to remain in a story of separateness. And so this next question, the next part of the question I hear you asking about, Mary Claire, is like, is it a moment to put a pause on collective transformation? Are we noticing that in the air? I would say  I'm personally feeling something very different because what I'm noticing about healing is that these folks believe the earth is ready and we're a part of it. That healing that comes from the body, from the natural connectedness that is intended. And this does come from learning from indigenous healing practices, learning from things that aren't westernized or particularly mainstream Christian like I was taught, learning from other spaces. But you begin to recognize that the earth has a way of activating us. And putting us into play with one another. And I do see it. So, maybe there's less institutions. There's less of that being organized and hierarchical into institutions. But I think there's something grassroots happening that is not a lot of individuals being healed all as different islands. I think it's actually a lot of grassroots groups of people that are learning to be able to go through the hard work of healing together. That's certainly a bias of a positive reframer, but it is kind of my sense that that's happening. But the last question about time, I think, in one sense, it's the long work. Just today I was talking to somebody, they mentioned Resmaa Menekum's statement that it's six generations of work ahead of us for the abolitionist work that he's committed to. So, the notion that, for a Gen X er who's bought into a lot of 90 day programs, it does not seem like there's enough time. That's true but for the notion that this Earth continues to keep reshaping herself and that we're a part of it, then it's really more about presence than it is about longevity. That infinity is moving through us, and the only way to touch it is in this moment, like right now, if you want to touch the end of the universe, just put your finger out, because there is no end of the universe, it keeps ending further ahead, the same thing, so the healing source and the calling of healing that's possible, because you can hear it, the sound of the genuine that Howard Thurman would describe it, it is reaching through us, and that changes time, that feels like flow. Like the day you're painting or weaving or sewing all day long, and you don't know where a minute of it went, or I'm writing, singing, or you're playing with a child, or you're sitting with somebody, and your heart opens up, and where did the time go? So I do think that kind of time is on our side, and at the same time, it's gonna take several generations for collective change to begin to click, especially as institutions are crumbling, who knows if there'll be institutions, the way we've known them now, I don't know,  

just two things I'll add to the middle question about pausing collective change. It's my perspective that people are finding their people. So hive model find your people find your practice. We have so often been conditioned to find your place. I mean, listen to the words that were used, know your place, stay in your place. We've been several generations that have been conditioned to find your place. But place doesn't mean connection. Place doesn't mean people. Place means usually indoctrination, culturalization, so I think people are finding their people and that powerful healing is happening through the practices that these people are doing. But agreed, because it's not a place, we don't know where to look. We don't see it as much. So it seems like people aren't doing it, but the places weren't safe. So a lot of people are doing it. In ways that are not necessarily being seen  by others, it's a real, if you know, you know, and I feel like the recovery community is a great example of this. You know where a meeting is, if you know where a meeting is. And you got all kind of people who are meetings are happening next door to them Downstairs from them and they might not even know but it's happening. And then the other part to the timepiece  I'm still  letting this settle in my body but a couple of days ago  Spirit my divine source told me as I found that for this week little peaks of Urgency kept showing up. Where's this coming from? I did this work. I'm divorcing from urgency.  I ended up having a call with Daniel that day and I literally asked him, Daniel, do you have a rush? And if you know, Daniel, you'll chuckle because Daniel does not rush. And what my creator said to me is if it's emphasized or prioritized within the system, that is intended to keep the system working. The systems created time. I created seasons. And so I've been sitting with the notion of time that so many of us are really attached to, by no fault of our own, that's not a blaming statement, I still am. We got to start this on time. What time are we done? We're going to talk for 20 or 25 more minutes, like we have been conditioned and socialized around time. But when I sat and thought about the earth, my grass has no concept of time. Yet it knows when to grow the trees and the bushes and the, the birds don't have a clock, but they know when to migrate, so at some point we got to ask ourselves, our commitment to time seems to be ours. And yet earth and nature seems to be moving when it's supposed to without a clock. So this notion of, are we running out of time? I hope so.  Because if we run out of time, maybe we can run into season.  And maybe what we're calling this generation is going to do its season's work. And then the next generation will do their season's work that all lead to this collective liberation we're talking about. But when we're stuck in time, we think we got to do three generations ahead's work. Why don't we focus on our own? Why don't we focus on the season that we're in, do the work we are called to do here to set it up for them? So when we release the grip of scarcity around a construct that was made up in the first place, it can give us some more space for that love. We're trying to access connection to the Earth that's telling us how to do it.

I think that love does something different to time. It does create a type of timelessness. It has a type of eternity that moves through it. 

So as we are closing, I want to invite you to give us a blessing but let me just tell you why I'm thinking that. Okay. I keep thinking about how, You said we need to create spaces where we without shame, tell each other that we love each other. And it feels to me like that's what the hive is doing. So it feels like  that is a theme that has woven throughout our conversations.  And so I just thought maybe you could invite us into that with some type of blessing.

A couple of years ago, I was on a retreat and it was a silent retreat and, I had read from Meister Eckhart something beautiful where he says, there was a time when I was every bird, I was every hoof, foot, fin, and wing,  and nobody asked me what my purpose was because I could love everything.  It's when I left what we were that the shame and sorrow came in. And there was a night there, I was reading this,  had a cigar and a gin and tonic, and the thunder was coming over the hills, and it started to just pour and rain. I went inside,  took a shower and went to bed with the rain against the tin roof.  Literally was a tin roof at the cabin. And somewhere  in the dream, I guess,  I had this sense of, of being loved and the internal thing, you know, when you're, when you're being chased in a dream, you can't run fast enough. When you're wanting to talk in a dream, you can't say the words. And I was hearing, I love you. And I couldn't open my arms to say, I love you too.  Wanted to, I just couldn't because I was so scared  of how vulnerable it is.  And I remember waking myself up with a  like opening my heart, like, and, I'll let you interpret whatever you need to about what was happening in that night and what was in my drink or what was in my dream, but may, you know, the threshold of your own heart become accompanied with it  travel there with bravery.   And may you open your arms.  May you have friends around you that can keep you safe so you can open your arms. May you have places   that ring true so that you can ring off of each other.  May you know that the ground of your own life  is the very earth that's getting ready.