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April 2023

Dear Fabian,

My previous newsletter was the last one sent from BayNVC, and this one is the first one from NGL. You may have received an events listing, and this one is the first update from me to you.

The topic I chose to focus on isn’t new. This time, it arose at a meeting of a new team coming together within NGL to co-hold with me the completion of the Learning Packets project. Despite heroic efforts, I didn’t manage to complete the project by the end of December as I so longed to do. I have eight more packets of forty-nine to complete, and a long list of tasks, one of which is to redesign the very unfriendly page that lists them. Talking about that webpage was when the question of accessibility arose and quickly became a heated discussion between one member of the nascent team and me. I myself have long accepted and settled into it not being mine to do to make all that has come through me accessible, though I am passionate about making it all readily available.

The difference, as I see it, is that making things available comes from me outwards, while making them accessible starts with thinking about where people are and orienting to that.

The former is what I am already doing. I have a deep goal to die with as little as possible only present within me and not anywhere else, and much of my conscious energy is going in that direction. Putting things out, writing, speaking, codifying, teaching, coaching, mentoring, and all the activities that I do with that orientation flow out of me. Sometimes, when there is a specific due date, it requires mobilization, and that’s infrequent. It’s so clear that this is exactly what’s mine to do. So much so, that I essentially do it almost regardless of circumstances, except when I am so low capacity, with so little energy, that I simply can’t. I want to demonstrate this within the context of a personal update. 

When the last newsletter went out, our pod was days away from leaving Scotland and beginning our journey to get here, to where we are now, in Ankara, Turkey. It was an intense and complex drive through multiple countries and four active borders, including a run-in with the customs patrol in Germany that will result in a letter from us to various agencies in Germany. And we landed here. It’s our first time outside of the global North, acutely noticing the loss of comfort and ease in getting things. We are now engaging, regularly, with a newborn, Maya Mey, learning immense amounts about the immediacy of experience that is possible for us humans and that is so regularly taken away from us through patriarchal conditioning. And we are actively exploring the deep questions about our practices arising from the experiment of living together with Vesta and, for a shorter time, with Aurélia. As usual, we are living with total uncertainty about what will happen next: How long will we stay here in the end, and will our visa extension even be granted? Will we find, through these experiments, people to join us so we can increase our capacity to face life? Will our next journey indeed be to Spain? Will we, eventually, find land to settle on and take out of the market?

This way of living, in part chosen consciously, in part the result of circumstances, including the pandemic, and in part surrendered to as a complex gift from life, has been ongoing since I left home four years ago. Since September 2020, it has accelerated. For two years, we were never in any one place for more than three months, moving from one configuration to another as people join and leave, experiencing ongoing logistical, legal, and relational challenges, and constantly learning and rethinking what anything means. Since last August, we are finding ways to have longer stretches of time in one place while still not finding a definitive path to landing anywhere. 

And… it is during this period that I completed 35 learning packets, and a similar number of blog posts and articles. I also have done significant amounts of teaching, including an intensive apprenticeship program within NGL, my courses at the NVC Academy, monthly NGL Intros, ongoing coaching calls, and one-off events, podcasts, and interviews. It’s a lot. Also, during this time, I have been key and central within NGL in terms of building capacity for the future, attending to deep divergences, and caring for ongoing operational functionality.

Sometimes, truly, I don’t know how I have managed to do this. And I know with absolute clarity that the distinction between making things available and making them accessible is a crucial element. Again, to make things accessible, I would need to redo much of what I have done, bridging gaps in education, language, ease of relating to text rather than images, attention span for complex ideas, and much else. When I imagine doing this, the level of overwhelm about not knowing how, and the level of grief about the gap are such that my energy literally drains out of me. This may well be a serious limitation of mine, and it’s still part of what makes something mine to do or not, because our actual capacity is a foundational element of discerning what is ours to do. I say this to others often: we cannot choose what is ours to do based on aspirational capacity or what we believe should be true; only on the basis of what is true about our capacities and commitments. 

That would be enough to keep me focused only on making things available. And it’s not the only reason. The level of experimentation and rigor that is needed for what we are trying to do within NGL requires quite a high level of individual capacity, most especially the capacity to be in what I call “nonreactive discernment,” in order to participate effectively. Without baseline individual capacity, our overall energy gets diverted into dealing with conflicts and mistrust, as patterns of scarcity, separation, and powerlessness show up even when there is deep alignment on vision. This is already happening, and is painful and difficult, regardless of how we respond to it.

If we put active energy into making what we are doing accessible, we are likely to reach more people and tap into levels of longing that exist, I believe, in all humans, despite centuries or millennia of patriarchy (it varies in different parts of the world). This longing, present in us on a cellular level, is where vision comes from. If large numbers of people were to enter our experimentation based purely on excitement, inspiration, and longing, and without the necessary baseline capacity, it would likely outstrip our collective capacity. At this early stage, as sad as it may be given how much need there is in the world, we don’t have the capacity to have many people join us, because the larger the field, the more collective capacity is needed to actually manage to untwist it. All too many movements and groups grew faster than their visionary spirit could be truly integrated. This is one key way that recreating the past happens. And I want to preserve the seed of the gift that was given to me, to us, from life, so that what we are discovering can indeed mature.

For me, at 67, this is not easy to accept and surrender to, and it brings up a lot of grief. The gap between vision and the current reality of our capacity as a species is growing around the world. In the last number of years, I have been taking on more and more of looking into that and stewarding it, as all that I am bringing forth indicates. My energy is beginning to diminish, whether it be only from age or from the combination of hardship and age. This means that I need ever more co-holding, and then the gap of capacity within NGL, and even more so within those closest to me, is more impactful. 

Still, if I am serious about realigning with life, this is what is needed, so I don’t outstrip my own capacity as a precious living being, one of uncountably many life forms, a speck in the larger order of things, and yet the only life I am. Just recently, I came to see a new limitation of mine that is now at the forefront of my own liberation focus. I have been continuing and continuing for as long as I have capacity, orienting to my capacity as a thing, with little reverence for the actual life energy within me which is the capacity. Even what is totally mine and no one else’s to do may be more than is within capacity. I want to orient with more surrender, more acceptance of limits, and more reverence. I want to trust in the mystery of life. Just like grass grows through concrete, I want to leave open the possibility that the longing for ways of living aligned with life is strong, and that something of beauty and staying power may grow from the outpour of what I make available, even if I myself don’t get to see it. 

In mourning and surrender,

Miki

Photo credits: Emma Quayle, Vesta Kroese and Leslie Becknell Marx