Obstacle to Community

I just got off the phone with a friend discussing our Lightbeaerer dinner group, and the direction to go with our local gatherings. It was quite eye-opening to see that I have been an obstacle to the manifestation of my own vision of community.

Laura and I started inviting friends to meet over a monthly dinner a couple years ago to discuss issues of community. I was hearing an inner call (as well as an outer one from an esoteric source) to take my discussions on community to a new level.

For years I've had visions of a number of groups connected in a network, each working toward its contribution to a new world. I saw how they comprised teams of individuals with varying skills, each adding something to their group purpose. And each group became part of a larger organism, connecting through various hubs (or councils, as I originally saw them) to coordinate efforts within the larger organism. My job would be to help the organism form and function as envisioned, essentially to keep the groups on track and aligned with the attributes needed for the new world.

Along with these visions came an understanding I was to help them develop the practice of conscious co-creation to achieve their ends, where basically individual members are able to add their soul's contribution while working together free (or at least moving beyond) the egoic distortions that often derail group activity.

I wasn't sure where this dinner group would fit in. Early on I talked to those who came about the idea I'd had, and suggested they begin seeing themselves as a hub, connecting many different groups that were learning to work together within themselves as well as the greater community.

Somewhere along the line, I got sidetracked. Maybe it was because I wasn't clear myself on what I wanted the group to become. Maybe it was I wanted to see how it would evolve based upon their common vision for it, so I kept asking them where they wanted to go with it.

But no answer ever came. Even suggestions were few and far between.

Anyway, in my conversation with Jill I finally blurted out this original concept and how I had thought our local group could fit within it. Also that I had somehow lost my way, and in not wanting to superimpose my will for theirs, I had set aside my vision.

In short, my own reluctance to interfere with the collective will caused me to deny them the opportunity to even hear about it and decide for themselves whether it was something they might want to participate in.

In my effort to allow them to evolve their own way, I denied them the way I called them together to explore. My own beliefs about freedom of choice and self-determination got in the way of doing what I had set out to do, compounded by my own confusion and lack of clarity over the role this particular group of people might want to play in it.

So what advice can I offer you now?

Get out of your own way. The beliefs and perspectives you hold may very well be keeping you from doing something you want, something that's important to getting where you want to go.

The establishment of community and new foundations for human relations is important to what I'm trying to accomplish. While many steps have been taken to advance that cause over the last couple years, the one I wanted to take early on was never made.

But it will be.

Maybe my confession can help you avoid such a situation (then again, who's to say now isn't the perfect time to take this next step).

If things aren't evolving the way you want, maybe you're holding yourself back. Look carefully. In your zeal to move forward, you just have kept something hidden from yourself that could be key to the next leg of your journey.

Go easy on yourself. God bless you indeed.