Page 127 - ECOlogic Book

We all belong to the “scar clan.” 145 We wear tough skins of defense against
further scarring; we harbor tender places we do not dare to venture. We
create enemies in our psyches, seeing our own anger in the face of another.
The scars we guard so tightly are often more related to our own ancient
history than they are to anything that’s happening in the present moment.
That changes when we bear witness.

Witnessing
“Bearing witness,” or withness, we are told by Gary Gach, “is deep listening
to what is said and unsaid, without judgment, as a means of engaging with
the world.” 146 Witnessing, or sharing,” says Nelson, “opens the pores of our
soul to the stories being told all around us, by our companions along the
journey, by the Earth, by the universe itself. And as we gain a broader
sense of the conversations at hand we fathom a deeper meaning about what
is valued and what carries meaning in this larger context.” 147

Now we’re getting somewhere? Community as defined in the dictionary
means “giving to each other.” So with witnessing, we are giving to each
other our ears; our undefended attention. Easier said than done, and this is
where my notion of putting aside our illusions of a perfect world comes in.
In a perfect world, we would all be able to bear witness all the time. But, we
remind ourselves, we are scar people. We are not perfect. If we can attain
perfect witnessing even 10% of the time, we’re doing well. Can we
congratulate ourselves for the 10%? Can we, as well, forgive ourselves and
each other for the other 90%? This doesn’t mean we quit trying. (I should
talk.) It merely means we do the best we can.

The Larger Context
So what of this larger context? Nelson gave us a taste of what this might
mean by suggesting that our own attending to one another might open us to
a larger community in which we dwell. We have tools now for at least an
intellectual experience of this larger context:

“We peer into the past with our new instruments and understandings as into
a mirror. Slowly a picture emerges of where we’ve come from, of whom

145 Arien, Angeles, “Through the Eight Gates,” Winter, 1996 Noetic Sciences Review.

146 Gach, Gary, “Landmark Gathering Radiates Power of Creating peace,” Fall, 1997 Earthlight Magazine.

147 Op.Cit., Nelson.

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