WorldView Week
After the warm bonding and coming together of the Social Week, the participants? minds where now pulled and stretched with new ways of thinking and being.
Pracha and Paola spoke about the massive shift from the old scientific paradigm to the lessons and learning?s of the new scientific paradigm. From living with Nature as traditional communities still do, to the religious and patriarchal dominance which brought on a steady decline of reverence for Nature. From Cartesian worldviews to the splitting of atoms, humans have been pulling Nature apart, believing that the answers lay in those pieces, but as New Science has proved, the whole is much more than the sum of its parts, and that the whole includes the observer. Just by looking at something is it changed, because nothing is as it seems, and only through connection to everything else, is the observer who and what they are.
This includes the state of the mind as Sulak Sivaraksa explained. There is no slipping into the misty forests of the past to regain connection to Nature, participants learnt they must embrace the modern world and make it work for them. Through engaged spirituality the participants can consciously bring the spiritual and the material together in a way that ?re-wires? the human mind.
To balance all this mental expansion the participants did a mindfulness exercise of watching the ?monkey mind?, a surreal movie! Tom brought in beautiful yoga exercises to build inner strength, preparing participants for the giving and receiving of loving kindness to each other and the Earth.
Day three brought a second great group challenge! After many hours the participants finally completed the exercise with huge hoorays and whoops! When asked if they were happy with the result, some participants were not… There had been an inadvertent bending of the rules. And so the group continued with the challenge. A great deal of inner learning and deepened understanding of the group energy and mindfulness of emotions emerged. On the whole and despite having not completed the challenge, the community was stronger for it.
Pracha lead the group through in depth discussion on leadership in community, finding the balance between Yin and Yang, between participation and dictatorship.
The week ended with 24 hours of Noble Silence and an inclusive Nature Quest. Having this at the end of a week which spoke much about our interconnection to each other and nature, yielded a remarkably deepened connection to Nature and self for many participants. Tears of hope, joy and ?coming home? were shared.
