Door Martine Verweij
A personal confession
Shockingly but true: the last few years I’ve come to discover that most of my life I wasn’t fully able to perceive reality as it truly is and as it can be. With this handicapped way of perceiving the world, I could not see many crucial things. I never had clear inner visions of what can be. I would think of all there is to know in the world, as sheer impossible to grasp. Seeing all the different scientific disciplines, the fields of knowing, I would feel overwhelmed by their magnitude. Thinking: how can I ever know all there is to know and then proceed by doing the right thing? I mostly saw the details. I could only hope there would be some interconnectedness.
I also couldn’t see that things that annoy me in others, are actually part of me (‘I am the other’) and can be seen as a gift, to show me what’s going on inside and what’s bothering me about myself. I couldn’t look at a painting and feel the maker’s energy and the source of inspiration that he was connected with.
The shift
For some reason the last few years, I’ve been lucky enough that life showed me that there is more out there, than I would think of before hand. And as a consequence I stumbled upon more and more people, events, teachings and writings that have helped me make an enormous shift.
A shift that Einstein once described as the restorative move, where we reinstall our intuitive mind as the sacred gift, and our analytical mind as its faithful servant.
A seemingly minor, yet crucial shift, which changed everything for me when it comes to my own life, the relationships I’m in and the abilities I manifest. Things got so much clearer; I need to do much less, work less hard, yet I have a bigger impact with my endeavors. And this starts from a rebalancing within, restoring the intuitive ability, that many of my friends and people I work with now recognize as being one of my strongpoints.
My intuitive ability allows me to grasp highly complex matters and know what is the right thing to do at that very moment. My analytical mind keeps up and is learning so much, so quickly.
The restorative shift I made, also allowed me to see what really is the matter with all of us right now, in the face of enormous climate change. And more importantly: it allowed me to see the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible, along words of Charles Eisenstein. And the potential there is in all of us to connect with our deeper selves, each other, and nature.
Not the only one
Pretty amazing. But I feel I’m hardly the only one rediscovering the importance of dancing with systems on two legs. All the systems thinkers that inspired me, finally got to this understanding. Donella Meadows speaks about it in the blog post I shared recently. Her husband Dennis Meadows, acknowledged it, when we met him last year in an event of the Club of Rome Netherlands. And the whole board of the Dutch chapter of the Club of Rome, of which I’m a board member since two years, is on to this track. Stumbling at times. But with sincere intentions.
That gives me hope. If the Club of Rome, an organization which successfully showed the world that we are facing really serious limits to our own growth on this planet, relying on the best of analytical thinking out there, is able to see that analytics are not enough. That we need more of ourselves to make the difference. To be precise: that we need two legs and the willingness to engage in the dance of life. That is just plain wonderful and very promising.
Don’t think harder and longer – restore your intuitive ability – build that bridge
Those who think long and hard about what’s happening to our planet, have come to the understanding that the solution is not in thinking harder and longer.
Only our intuitive way of knowing can grasp the whole that we’re a part of in an instant and can connect to the emerging future, that’s developing within all of us.
And it’s only in the collaboration of both our intuitive and analytical mind that we can truly define what’s happening right now on this planet and in ourselves, and know deep down, how the bigger whole is asking us to move forward.
That’s the most important bridge to build. Let’s learn to dance on two legs and while dancing re-design systems in such a way that they support the web of life that we’re part of.
This short movie – made by filmmaker Maria Kolossa (We Love Earth) – shows you how the Dutch Chapter of the Club of Rome is moving forward in learning to dance on two legs.