retrospective
/rɛtrə(ʊ)ˈspɛktɪv/
adjective: retrospective
looking back on, dealing with past imprints
6 months on perspective: looking back on, dealing with our past imprints as individuals and as a collective.
Retro - relating to, reviving, or being in the capacity to see backwards to move forwards.
Perspective - what gives a three-dimensional feeling to an experience. A wider lens view.
As we move into the summer, we are using this month of May, to ponder, to validate, to reassess, to look back and see what has taken place over the past 6 months.
Close your eyes right now. Take a careful breath.
Ponder on your last 6 months… from the year closing of 2020 up to now May 2021.
What filters through your mind immediately?
What memories?
What imprints are in your skin? In your soul?
Is there a particular way to describe this time as a word?
As a colour? An image? Perhaps as a flavour?
An interesting contemplation to explore and journal about…might be:
my circle and process over the last 6 months
Our retro-eye from The Collective Energies perspective, takes us back to our humble beginnings, when we started our living tapestry, the collection of stories, of movements, of our global locations, the gathering of a diverse community sharing hearts and in communion, with heart and soul.
Through artistry, music, motion, silence and stillness.
Even in the distance but together at the heart of things.
Thank you for being part of this membrane, for being skin to this communion. For letting us feel and touch through the screen; your heart, bodies and souls.
We have gained perspective in so many ways as individuals, changing infinitely in so little time at such an accelerated pace. We have traversed the depth of this virtual land. Learning together, communicating truthfully, we see with more clarity, sense more, feel more, hear more.
We are now ready to keep growing our potential and our creativity as one collective. It has been not a destination, but an exploration of souls meeting, gathering and reflecting on what is good and what still feels beautiful.
In the words of one of our members Elle :
“The thing that really unfolded for me over the past 6 months with The Collective Energies was the sense of winding this community together. How it can be a process of reimagining our experience of community, of making meaningful connections in a world so often constructed around transactional relationships.”
During this 6 months a feeling that came up for us was:
TRUST
Leaning into the often perfect synchronicity, of the potential of community in circle, holding hands and fingers intertwined.
Trust that change brings vision, expansion, potential, perspective and so much more.
Trust that in order to grow we must realise … there are now spaces too small to contain us.
An image that comes up for us during these 6 months is:
CIRCLE
A circle of co-creation, where we are together, we gather, we weave, we move, we keep growing, being, expanding, exploring in circle.
Not in vertical lines, in Circle.
Yes it is a process but never linear. Around and around we go.
One of our members Sarah draws a snow mandala
A Colour that keeps showing up for us during these 6 months is:
GOLD
The power of this colour to bring the glow, the shimmer of our passions and our gifts, a recognition of what matters, golden presence, luminosity and cellular renewal.
A flavour that describes these past 6 months for us:
CACAO
The power of the cacao seed. A seed with so much potential within and so many ways in which it offers itself to the world. Its bitter sweetness, its deliciousness, the love and heat cacao brings to our hearts as we let our taste buds feast on it.
An imprint of the growing vision from the last 6 months, that lifts us all:
I AM | WE ARE
The recognition and the acknowledgement of the many efforts and hands that create the whole:
intentionality as we build the foundations together,
learning to trust in one another,
creating the circle together,
tasting the cacao in our tastebuds,
relishing on the gold that has been coming through.
The trust that I AM can become WE ARE.
A torch that we light up in communion, month after month to remind each other about what is possible.
To remember what we may have temporarily forgotten.
In Naomi´s words:
Sometimes I forget and all I can remember is despair.
I have often wondered if this ache I feel will ever begin to change shape within me.
For the longest time I have felt like a lone satellite, hurtling around the Earth at low latitude trying to locate a coherent signal.
But I am also hopeful.
I haven’t yet been able to watch the film above without tears of gratitude falling down my cheeks.
I see each of us in orbit.
That is what The Collective Energies is to me.
A galaxy of kindred spirits in orbital murmuration; coordinating movement, rippling ideas out and across, responding to each other and recreating.
The higher we fly together, the stronger and more coherent the signal becomes.
As one of our member’s articulated:
‘like the accompaniment of a feathered hand’
Autumn roosts of Starlings usually begin in November.
The Collective Energies commenced its aerial dance November 2020.
I really love that.
It helps me to remember that there are others.
‘A symphony of stragglers’
Widening Circles
Listen
I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.
I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?
Written by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated and read by Joanna Macy
Song from Ani Di Franco: “Binary”
With these lyrics: “consciousness is a circuit… you gotta complete the circuit, not just with human beings, with the sky above you, with the earth beneath your feet”… This circling circuit of connectivity is what stands out for us in this collective.
LISTEN
Part 2 of our new audio series created by one of our members
Silent Noises by Sally Balfourth
An investigation into voice, silence and the art of listening. Holly Jones joins to share her experience of working with community choirs.
SEE
The global gallery we created together as a Collective Collaboration
MOVE
Daily Meds:
Nailing all the nails on the head: a quick flash of acceleration, movement and breath for when you need to get stuck in and time is truly of the essence.
The symbolism of the circle in movement.
Heart Caves:
A simple voice practice to allow the divine to express through voice. Let your voice emerge in its truest form.
Burst:
A burst of joy to help get the momentum to move past the sticky point of the circle.
And a final pondering:
If I did every day what I did yesterday, how would my life look one year from now?
May the peace of wild things be with you…
Ana Muriel
@ana.muriel.flow
