What is a Vow?
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Standing Rock Sioux Tribe North Dakota Pipeline
What is a VOW?
Living in this uncertain time brings many questions for most of us. I think an important one is "How do we find our place in the transition of our current reality?" What I have been curious about is the topic of intergenerational healing and how the things we consent to; consciously or unconsciously create our shared reality. What are the kind of vows we need to make as a conscious world-centric family? How is our definition of Family changing? How are Families created by the words we use, the decisions we make, and the internal and external movements we pay attention to? I believe it is important for us to learn how to find stillness within ourselves so we can learn to be danced by the movements of life. Life being a series of continued discoveries of what is new and what is next in each moment. What are the conversations waiting to be birthed? What are the vows we want to take together in this very important time?
What are Vows, anyway? To me, they are commitments we consciously and willingly make with great intention. They come from the deepest part of the heart. The first commitment is always the one we make within ourselves. Only then can we make a commitment with our families. our friends, a partner or a spouse, a profession, an organization, a tribe, a nation, an ideal, or a higher calling. What I find most interesting is the place where they all inter-relate. I call that "finding the thread that connects us---that one binds us all." And you cannot ever let go of that thread, because that thread never let's go of you.
A vow is something that protects the intuitive “knowing” of the place we belong, both which bring us more fully in our wholeness. How do we know our place? Does it change? Vows are promises we make to ourselves and one another to help each other belong. The purpose of belonging is to evolve as a species; to use our thoughts, words and actions in order to develop a deeper meaning and an embodied understanding of the purpose of our species over time.
I believe we know it first and foremost by developing an intimacy with our own body/mind, which contains our brains, our hearts, and our guts and comprises our Spirits. This is why I became a nurse. How they all work together as a system fascinates me. And any system is always trying to find balance. It seems we come into balance or harmony when we have a felt sense of how everything relates to everything else. When everything is in its proper place, then we have a sense of wholeness, of belonging. It seems that when we cannot find a place of belonging within our inner landscapes, we begin to live a life of isolation, and separate ourselves from our outer world. Who are the real people in our lives that are willing to "show up" when we need support? Do we have the courage to reach out and ask for support?
Our words and deeds carry weight, they have substance. They carry different densities of energy and different frequencies. We can learn to experience and embody these frequencies and allow them to move in us/with us/and through us. The energy of our thoughts, words, and actions make a difference. It seems to me that it all begins with a conversation, an inquiry into discovering something as it truly is---in relation to and with something else. What and how much we will risk in bringing these energies and frequencies forward by staying with our own bodies and finding “right relation” with ourselves and others is a question we need to continually ask ourselves. We do this every time we authentically share our thoughts, words, and actions (=responses) with others. This is the concept of Transparent Communication. These energetic movements are what create our world. Inquiries bring about dialogue which support us to live into the answers to these questions.
We make these kinds of commitments both big and small every time we make a decision, even if it is just something as simple as creating a Facebook Post or not…or sending that email we wanted to send and are afraid to. We navigate the energetic complexity that lies between the desire for autonomy and need for communion. That is the line humans walk. The razors edge that lies between belonging and becoming.
It requires a certain kind of surrender, an allowing. What is it to embody surrender? What are we consenting to allow? How do we hold both the shadow and the light? Surrendering into and allowing in-and then expressing itself outward to create something---something greater than our individual human forms, greater than our individual organizations, countries, and maybe our world. In what ways are we giving our time, attention, and/or Presence to one another? Do we also have the capacity to receive? To be open? To be nurtured? To be healed?
These are some of the questions I believe are important for our time because I like to imagine we are all on a voyage of discovering more of ourselves and one another than we ever believed possible. And the way it works is you have to take a Vow. This kind of consenting carries a different weight, and it brings in energy from the space around us. This kind of discovery requires the capacity to see clearly, and take the time required for individual and collective discernment. It takes committed practice.
The kind of energies we are currently interested in exploring are the seemingly opposite energies of life or polarities. There is a paradoxical nature to life. What happens when we tune into the polarities horizontally and vertically from the spaces in between them? How free are we to actually choose our vows? How much of ourselves do we choose to give? How many of us feel we have had something taken from us without our consent?
We will be discovering together what it means to consent to bring yourself into the world as a co-creator. What is it to to consent to another from this place of transparency and authenticity? What is it to bring a child into this world from this place? To consent parent or co-parent a child who is not biologically your own? What if the child develops “learning disabilities” or a drug addiction? How do we navigate this from a collective perspective?
What about the consent required of a family with an aging parent? Are you aligned as a family during the death of your parents? What happens to children when that happens? What is it to consent together as families? As a collectives of family? How do we utilize practices that help us integrate and stay in alignment as a global social witness that is also participating in the Dance of Life?
This is what It's 'Just' a Conversation" is about. About the conscious and unconscious vows we make. It is what we choose to re-member and restore. I believe we have to be willing to re-member all of it through the gift of our bodies in order embody the wholeness of life.
Please stay tuned to learn how you can participate in our research projects on Inter-generational Collective Healing: The Imagination Project, Parent Vows and others.
Blessing to each and all of us as we continue our journey as a Family.
“All True Vows
All the true vows
are secret vows
the ones we speak out loud
are the ones we break.
There is only one life
you can call your own
and a thousand others
you can call by any name you want.
Hold to the truth you make
every day with your own body,
don’t turn your face away.
Hold to your own truth
at the center of the image
you were born with.
Those who do not understand
their destiny will never understand
the friends they have made
nor the work they have chosen
nor the one life that waits
beyond all the others.
By the lake in the wood
in the shadows
you can
whisper that truth
to the quiet reflection
you see in the water.
Whatever you hear from
the water, remember,
it wants you to carry
the sound of its truth on your lips.
Remember,
in this place
no one can hear you
and out of the silence
you can make a promise
it will kill you to break,
that way you’ll find
what is real and what is not.
I know what I am saying.
Time almost forsook me
and I looked again.
Seeing my reflection
I broke a promise
and spoke
for the first time
after all these years
in my own voice,
before it was too late.
to turn my face again.
”
