In times of great urgency, remember the art of holding.

In times of great urgency, remember the art of holding.

There is an art and skill that is rarely accounted for when applying our regular metrics of value measurement.

That is the art of HOLDING. Holding is natural part of a mothers biology. (Which doesn’t mean all mothers know how to hold, or men do not have skill in this area.) We hold the presence of a child in our womb. Research has shown that what pregnant women eat, their adequacies of rest, stress relief, affirming life conditions, all have an effect on the development of the child in utero.

While Holding might sound like a passive act, it is indeed both passive and active. It is the dynamic equilibrium of being and doing. Of listening and acting. It has as its core structural dynamics, polarity.

The act of Holding creates a field, and in that field all of the properties required for the emergence of what is being birthed will assemble, if our holding has a purity to it and is connected to the larger schema of the emergence of Universe. Holding never occurs in isolation. We are always connected to the larger field as we hold the field we are stewarding.

In our current world where activism is necessary, the art of holding is a critical skill. When pushing, and pulling, the stamping of feet, the yelling of words…when these acts fail us, as they will, then we might try instead to Hold.

To have the pattern of holding be the biggest force present when the stakes are highest. To allow our fellow players to have their own rhythm, to not force, or coerce, but instead to create a field that attracts. To clean the periphery on the field being held, strengthen its boundaries, ensure that no unsavoury energies have crept in, including our own shadow patterns. (Like control, fear, scarcity, demand..) To align the purpose of the project with the field being held. This is what we can do while we wait for our fellow players – those aligned and those dissonant to – to exercise their own sovereignty on their timing and process.

As Bucky Fuller would say, Nature has its own gestation. Try rushing the gestation of a child? A mother learns to be patient in the gestation.

Sometimes our role as steward is to HOLD. To not push. But at the same time to not do NO THING. For holding is still an act.

Holding has layers. We can hold the project we are birthing, and this can be held in the larger field of our community, which is held in the larger field of the evolution of humanity.

And at some point, if we are connected to Source, we are being held. No matter how skilled or aware we are at holding.

When we consider spiritual exhaustion that arises from constant activism we might recognise that we need to relax in the act of being held by all the visible and invisible energies holding us on our path. That the deeply conditioned story of our solo journey, battling the odds, disqualifies a whole host of support. How about we let that support in, and be held in the process. Now there is a radical act.

Ultimately it returns again to being One. To not being separate. To the illusion that I am/we are alone.

For many of us stoics and activists, being held, whether by our friends and family, or by the invisible world that seeks to support us on our path, is akin to being asked to spend a life doing absolutely nothing.

Today I am drinking from this well. I am both allowing myself to be held, and doing the work of aligning and purifying what I am holding. Removing my agenda, my desire to control, my process, my requirement for things to occur in a certain time. Plus I am cleaning out other unwanted foreign energies from this field. Those who seek to diminish and destroy what we are holding. Those who have thrown me and others on the scrap heap of the unqualified.

And in the process, I am relaxing into the knowing that all is well. Kairos time is at play. The Field is consummately creative and alive. I am held. We are held. The project is held. Our actions have effected the field.