By Freya Secrest
Over 200 people participated in our recent conference, Co-Creative Spirituality: Shaping Our Future with the Unseen Worlds, co-sponsored with the Findhorn Foundation. There were an additional 50 people who joined us through online streaming. It was rich and energetic event.
Each morning during the conference, we took time to stand in our own “inner light” and invite our colleagues of the subtle, unseen realms to join us in the day’s exploration. I found I had a clear sense of these unseen attendees which heightened as the conference unfolded. It was not a visual or auditory experience, but I noticed them through a lightening of spirit, an increasing sense of joy and a more expansive awareness.
The conference was structured as a journey into different realms of our Gaian field, to allow each participant to shape more of a felt experience of our subtle partners. Morning plenary sessions introduced different territories - the Sidhe world, the nature kingdoms, and our human constructed worlds being the main "continents" one could "visit". Then the afternoon workshops, or passport sessions,allowed participants to further explore a particular area of interest to them. Individuals could work in the garden, try out a new approach to connecting with the angelic or devic realms of nature. or explore portals of sound and music to shape a connection to the Sidhe realms. Or they could journey to learn more about communicating with animal and other shamanic realms or discover ways to understand our connection to the techno-elemental world. The possibilities were wide and rich.
One of my experiences with our unseen planetary colleagues occurred during a presentation by Vance Martin, President of the Wild Foundation, and Timothy Hass, Lorian Teacher who partners with Vance to integrate work with the subtle realms and on-the-ground environmental activism. They shared a short video on elephants done by Ian McCallum and First Light Films. It brought the essence of elephant so strongly into the Universal Hall. It was not a documentary, it was an ‘a-tune-amentary’, connecting us with the world of elephant and allowing us to share in a felt experience of their connection with the world. The script was this poem by Ian McCallum:
Elephants *
To walk in the wake of elephants,
To be small in a world of giants,
To learn the spore of silence and the deep, rumbling eloquence of kin.
To move in the skin of elephants.
To feel the alliance of sand, the contours of land and the far-reaching pull of water,
To be alive to the sway of elephants
To remember the songs of seasons, ancient lines of migrations and loosen your reasons for fences.
To wake up the web of intelligence, to the wild origins of sentience.
To find your voice and raise it, that others may raise theirs for elephants.
Between the rhythm of the poem and the rhythm of the elephants, I was brought closer to the world of elephant and they were brought closer (energetically and subtly) into ours. The room was quiet for a moment. I felt we were all touched by our exchange of energy and spirit with this Gaian neighbor. To me this exchange of love is so much the heart of any subtle encounter, any co-created experience. Wonderful too that technology could help to co-create such a deep meeting!
Another specific moment of flow between unseen and physical worlds happened for me when Kurikindi, an Ecuadorian shaman, led our closing blessing. He used only a rattle made of leaves and gentle vocal sounds and whistles. I had a sense we were joined by many beings of the rainforest in blessing our gathering’s co-creative intent. I learned after that a number of people had a similar sense of specific beings who came present. What felt important to me was that we all together built a field that gave space for a collective offering to the planet.
In the midst of the expected intermingling and networking amongst attendees throughout the conference, there was an underlying spirit of fellowship and well-being. As the days unfolded, an increasing sense of joy blossomed in the overall field of activity in the conference. The energies of hope, appreciation and connectedness were anchored through the directed attention and intention of a whole conference of people in concert with beings of nature and other life. Our pathways of connectedness were heightened with the support of our unseen colleagues. I noticed it in myself and heard others speak to the same experience. We were all more available to each other as planetary co-creators.
I left the Co-Creative Spirituality Conference feeling strongly that a more active practice of honoring and appreciating the life within Unseen Realms will allow our collective planetary wholeness to shine forth. We are connected. Each morning began with the invitation for each of us to “stand on our own inner land”. Bringing those lands together throughout the day in our awareness and attention, even for that short time, multiplied creative energy on all sides. Now back at home, those creative connections continue to weave into my life activity as I notice and harmonize with the rhythms of life around me and attend to and appreciate the uniqueness and tempo of my own note in the world’s song.
*Click here to watch "In the Tracks of Giants." Also, if you're interested in viewing recordings from the Co-Creative Spirituality Conference, Findhorn Foundation is currently offering the livestream package at half-price. Click here for more details.