Towards Awareness: Spaces of HOPE

We continue to receive powerful feedback from the RANZCP Psychotherapy Conference which was held at Uluru in September and featured a keynote address by CASSE’s Pamela Nathan and workshops with the Men’s Tjilirra Movement and Ken LechleitnerPangarta. Participants have indicated that they were moved to reflect deeply on the stories that were shared, and motivated to act. We are very pleased to share feedback from another attendee, Catherine Donnelley. 

Catherine has also shared details of a fundraiser being held tomorrow, November 4, to recognise one of Australia’s early civil rights pioneers, William Ferguson. Click here for flyer

Towards Awareness: Spaces of HOPE

With sincere gratitude, thank you to the Anangu people for sharing your sacred country. No ‘space’ could be more powerful to hold Deep listening than the enveloping environment of the desert and the energy of Uluru. The atmosphere nourished a deep visceral learning towards healing. Thank you also to the RANZCP conference organisers and speakers.

……….Can we fly yet, George?

Still reeling from the depths and deep impact that the – The Heart of the Matter : Deep listening, Dreaming and Joining the Dance conference provoked us to delve….. we quietly recover and reintegrate into the daily life of the world we each inhabit, the impact continues to be revealing and visceral.

Taken into our internal worlds to listen, the more we heard, the further our eyes cast down, sinking deep into shame and empathetic despair. The conscious breath became witness to our intake of the truth in our country’s neglect to honour equitable human rights. These fundamental rights denied by our suffocating history are now drawn into conscious circulation to oxygenate our collective blood.

Moving from our internal, infinite psychic and spiritual worlds, to the essential of our breath, we could remain suspended in a surreal like state that follows the visceral impact of a vivid dream or more accurately a traumatic nightmare… knowing, feeling and yet not doing.

To be stuck in limbo would be perpetuating the deft blindness of the colonial project. It is critical that we activate this knowing with action and continue to join the dance with respect and humility.

We felt a reverberation from this internal meditation in deep listening, hearing and critically absorbing the truth and its devastating, lived impact today. Now we are more conscious in our aims to listen and learn, as a first step to healing the chasms and the deeply embedded ruptures that exist within the landscapes of our countries earth and psyche.

Within this sacred landscape, where we witnessed the infinite vastness of the horizon and sky, akin to and beyond the inner measure of our spiritual, psychic world, we came together in an effort to honour the ‘space’ and consciously address the interrelationship of the internal and external worlds.

We emerge with a new awareness, from the lived and felt experience of despair, critically asking how can we equitably and collectively manifest spaces of hope for our future?

How might synchronicity in rhythmic hearts awareness occur, to emerge beyond the immediacy of our buddy, within a healing circle, to the social worlds of our professional life and beyond, into our physical environment and civic spaces? How could the ‘atmosphere’ we create; remind, prompt and catalyse?

The spaces of hope occur within small and simple gestures as we emerge – an extended hand, reaching out to shake in friendship. It is found within the compassion of ‘Buddy Breathing’ that Dr George Halasz so eloquently describes for scuba divers. It was experienced in the healing circle at the closure of the conference; a powerful spatial manifestation, a safe holding; the infinite, nonhierarchical, inclusive, equitable and shared space of community. Here our intentions ripple out sustaining self, other and country as demonstrated and embodied by Ken Lechnleitner Pangarta and his generous casting of emanating hugs.

Indigenous Activists throughout history have been consistently demonstrative of rising Hope, their being embodied such polarisations. The grounded walk of knowing, paralleling resilient visionary strength, with eyes fixed on Hope for the future. We are inspired.

Ferguson, along with Cooper, understood the essential of HOPE. He was a key figure in forming the Day of Mourning – to honour our past, the vision to have a Day of Hope following. It is poignantly shameful, that this ‘space to honour Hope’ in our collective calendar is still unrealised and yet more relevant than ever. The immense power and resilience in stepping beyond immediate and oppressive circumstance, in an effort to mobilise change is inspirational.

The truth revealed and acknowledged, is part of the healing conscious awareness of our present. There is much to learn from the First Peoples of Australia, it is indeed in our land and environment (social and physical) that we find support and nourishment, where the spirit is both visceral and tangible. With gratitude we have an upwelling of our hearts energy, which inspires our gaze to sensitively move between the internal worlds of the dark trauma and rise up, towards the future, where Hope is catalysed towards sustainable futures.

Maybe we’re not flying just yet… our eyes however, can be firmly cast on where we want to go… should we aim to transcend?

Motivation comes from grounded knowledge and experience. Inspiration pulls us towards, forwards, upwards, out of despair. Together lets translate our awareness into respectful activism and may ripples of HOPE transpire.

PS: As mentioned at the conference when discussing symbols of HOPE and  honouring First Peoples Past, Present and our collective Future… you are welcome to attend or contribute to the mminent Fundraiser hosted by the Ferguson Family for a Statue of William Ferguson in Dubbo on the 4th November 2017 in the Historic Landmark building Australia Hall. I hope to see you there as we continue to manifest ripples of HOPE… in ALL possible ways…

William Ferguson Fundraiser flyer