An exchange between Nancy Myers and Deena Metzger

Recently I sent a dream to several friends including my mentor, the writer Deena Metzger, not only because she was in the dream but also because it seemed relevant to our exploration of guardianship, what it means to become guardians of the future and what that requires. Deena immediately wrote back and I added some thoughts. Our letters follow.

The letters refer to “council.” For several years, Deena and others in her wide circle of friends have been gathering in councils or "councils of possibilities."  Some of these small gatherings focus on particular questions, themes, or agendas, and some are convened simply around the question of what then shall we do, given the times?

Whatever “council” is, it is not a conventional conference or working meeting, though decisions and actions flow from it. Councils, for example, have nurtured ideas and action around future guardianship. We are coming to understand that the council form, the practice of council, as it is evolving, is closely related to guardianship because it prompts the kind of thinking and relationships that may be essential to heal the world and carry us into the future. --NM

November 9, 2007

Dear ones,

This morning I dreamed of a gathering of women that included Deena.  It was like the councils except that everyone was, how can I describe them? Older but not necessarily old. Wearing long, richly colored homespun type garb. (Colors like the ones in the guardians graphic, come to think of it.) Jolly and serious at the same time. I was a newbie and included graciously. I remember two things.
 
 1) One of the women (plump, cheerful and gray-haired but not so old) was the one who supplied Deena with her words. What? Deena the writer actually got her words from someone else? How did that work? I was very curious about that partnership.
 
2) One of the women who was really old, stringy gray hair, turned and looked at me with a half-smile of recognition. "I know you. You know me." And I realized I did. When I woke I realized I had seen her in previous dreams, mostly from 10+ years ago when I felt I was being called to move into elderhood but it still felt like a long way off.  The crone beckoned then. And on waking the gathering seemed like spirit-women who were also human.
 
Perhaps we are being called into elderhood with a particular urgency, because of the times. What if our move into elderhood accelerated at a pace commensurate with the (appalling, tragic, human-caused) acceleration of puberty?

 Guardian mind. Council mind. Elder mind. These are urgent teachings.

Love,
Nancy

Friday, November 9, 2007
Nancy dear:

What an amazing dream.  It confirms that the necessary and systemic mind change manifestation we are being called into as individuals, communities and globally, is actually occurring; it is part of a shift that can rescue us from our dire straits.  Once we enter it, it is important to continue – no matter the provocations to deny, desist, resist – in the new mind that is being inscribed in us – a mind from which future possibilities emerge and are sustained.  So, for example, the difference between being a guardian and living from guardian mind. 

I had just finished writing a dream with many children in it when your letter came.  These children … the future?  In the past, with conventional dream analysis, they would have represented the past, my past, my childhood or my children’s childhood, but now they seem to be the future.  If I analyze that dream it could be that as ancestor I was instructing the future child beings in right relationships. What does it require of me to be a useful and supportive ancestor?  What knowledge that we have gathered may be useful for the future?  How do we maintain the tenderness that is being called for in us even unto the future?

 But here is the question from your dream that I am responding to:

What if  our move into elderhood accelerated at a pace commensurate with the 
(appalling, tragic, human-caused) acceleration of puberty?

We gathered here in a Council of Possibilities on Thursday night.  On Friday morning, it was clear to me that everyone had spoken and participated the night before like an elder.  I brought this to their recognition and asked them to continue in this way.  Sometimes, I reminded the group to enter into the discussion as elders, even to preface what they were about to say with, “As an elder.”  They did.  “As an elder” slowed us down, deepened us.  We could hear the depth of contemplation in the ways spoken.  There was so much respect in the room and such a sense of urgency that wasn’t hurried or hysterical – rather the urgency was gravity. 

At one point, a woman, Ayelet Berman Cohen, challenged me for leading the group, which I had been doing, perhaps even increasingly, over the weekend.  “If we are all elders, why are you leading the group?”  She wasn’t belligerent; she needed to understand.  “I don’t want to be resentful of you,” she said, “I want to be in right relationship with you.” 

I understood then that I had to answer very thoughtfully and that much was at stake.  I have always worried about and inhibited what I felt and saw, until this moment, as a discrepancy between teaching, holding and guiding the groups and the equal injunction “to call people forth into their full and radiant possibilities.”  It immediately became clear to me that these activities are in competition only in a hierarchical society.  But within council mind, these roles co-exist.  The role of teacher or guide is one of the roles in the circle and also it is a role that anyone could take on and would take on, sometimes here, but certainly in other circles that she or he convenes.  Within council mind, the question was not a challenge to me, as it could be seen to be in a hierarchical setting – ‘kill the king, long live the king’ – but a challenge to conceptualize and honor what we were in that it required the unequivocal honoring of each person, their gifts, concerns, and possibilities.  Ayelet became the catalyst for deep understanding among all of us – and also of greater possibilities of realization and collaboration. [Whew!  What a relief!]

Suddenly so many reasons for, qualities of circle/council mind became transparent. 
It was clear that group leadership and being an elder are two entirely different ways of being.  We were all elders and at this moment, I was guiding this group of elders – not challenging but holding the questions and trying to apportion time fairly – as the elder that had envisioned and then convened this circle, and also as one with ten to twenty+ years on most of the participants.  There is, indeed, a great difference that occurs in those twenty years -- if one is fortunate.  There was visible relief in the room when I spoke about it.

I entered into teachings about being an elder that were important in and of themselves but that changed us as they entered the room.  The teachings came from me, through me, but weren’t of me.  They were spoken by me for the first time. 
The most important teaching is that the elder by his/her now innate nature is concerned for and holds the community for the sake of the future of all beings.  As the mother holds her small family or community, but cannot by the demands of her role be concerned at every moment for the welfare of the entire community and her family's place in it, the elder is called to try to hold each individual member and the community, kin and non-kin, human and non-human and the future, equally.  The elder as she develops holds and tends all these souls. 

A Siberian shaman, accompanied by an American woman, his most accomplished student and dharma heir spoke, some years ago, at Michael Harner’s Foundation for Shamanic Studies.  He described his work as tending each individual soul in his village.  Whatever other work he was called to, he visited the soul house each day and tended each individual soul and then carried them throughout the day.  Some years later, the American woman, who was destined to take on his work upon his death, admitted she was unable to carry such a heavy and demanding responsibility.  Nevertheless, such is the responsibility of an elder.

An elder is constantly alert to and concerned for the souls in her purview.  As she carries this her concern for herself as an individual inevitably and increasingly diminishes even as she must respect and hold equally what else she is called to by the mandate given to her.  But even her concern to realize her mandate is not personal, while the mother, for example, must be personal or she isn’t the mother. 

Something profound has shifted in and among us -- and I am seeing that it is lying dormant waiting to be awakened in many others. The shorthand is -- facilitate a change of consciousness and conscious behavior and living.  We were working with a dream that Elenna sent that had an epigram in it: “If you have to become something else, then change.”

In these recent councils, the issues of individual work weren't among us.  Individual work was among us but not the issues that have so long accompanied and negatively complicated self-realization – the issues that arise when ‘success’ or recognition are the goals as opposed to fulfillment of a spiritual mandate related to the times and the future.

In the course of the weekend, the understanding of mandate substituted for hope. The mandate we are trying to fulfill as opposed to what we hope for.  This was also a relief.

As elders, respect for each other is primary and we experienced this.  Respect and deep interest in each other’s calling, and the hope and desire to sustain the particular individual, and the contribution that person can/will make to the community, the world and the future.  Knowing that we can each offer more if we are supported and informed by each other.  Fulfillment of one’s mandate being the standard rather than an external standard of success or conventional reward. In such a rethinking, each one of us feels compelled to assist the other, each council member/partner, in their fulfillment because together we participate in assuring a beautiful future for all beings.  Competition and envy fall away.  Looking to the future – new mind – rather than the past – conventional mind – changes the ways we evaluate our work and lives.

Respect and spontaneous support for and enthusiasm about each other’s activities and possibilities and gratitude for the gifts another has, which any one of us might not have in the same way.

Elder mind considers the future and depends upon the circle that holds both council mind as a form and guardian mind as a particular focus.  Still, as the guardian protects something in particular she knows that it exists only within a field of relationships.  Therefore the guardian protects the dynamic of interrelationship.

One of the mandates I have been given over the last years as a healer and medicine woman (who, in addition to having been a patient many times, and having suffered cancer as an initiation, was married to a doctor, am married to an RN, and so am immersed in medical knowledge, thinking, possibilities and distortions) is to inspire and instigate a new medicine in which individual practitioners, let’s call them medical shamans at the moment, equally respect, access and practice conventional medical wisdom/knowledge/technologies alongside traditional and indigenous medicine traditions/knowledge technologies, as is needed at any time by the circumstances of the patient, the affliction, the community and the future.  A peacemaking medicine that doesn’t separate working with the ancestors from leading a therapy group, writing a prescription from gathering herbs oneself in the forest, from doing surgery in a hospital operating theater or doing psychic surgery among a community that is praying, any more than it distinguishes the need and healing of the patient from the need and healing of the community.  A healing medical medicine way that truly sees singing the world into being as possible, and that understands that the voice can be a profound instrument for healing a human and also an animal, such as a whale, an afflicted singer, and also the environment and the planet.  A medicine that sees the singer healers are both human and not human – that recognizes the healing potential of the animal singers—whales, wolves, dolphins, elephants, birds, let’s say.   A medicine that would permit and include such a dynamic scope and spectrum as the inclination, particular intelligence, skills and gifts of the medical shaman allows.
 

What I am trying to say is that we are being initiated into, trained and informed by spirit to carry a new mind that by its nature is sustaining rather than destructive.  The structure and form and way of being of the mind itself is what we are called also to explore and understand.  This in addition to its new content – for example relying on dream and understanding dream differently – and honoring the new and different dreaming that is occurring among us. Those of us participating in various councils and circles are noticing how our individual dreams have changed in the last years.  The dreams, more often than not, seem to serve and speak to the community, instructing us regarding global concerns and the possibilities of the future. Also the individual dreams are forming a field of dreams; this field of dreams is the way spirit is speaking to us now. 

It is transparently clear to me that this astonishing mind transformation is happening among us and this is one of the vital transformations we are being called into.  A mandate for all of us is to yield and enter into this even as it is being revealed anew, day by day, and in concert with each other. An invitation into the real possibility of a viable and radiant future that we are helping to ancestor into being.

***

Now to Nancy’s dream!

 This morning I dreamed of a gathering of women that included Deena. 
 

It was like the councils except that everyone was, how can I describe them? Older but not necessarily old. Wearing long, richly colored homespun type garb. (Colors like the ones in the guardians graphic, come to think of it.) Jolly and serious at the same time. I was a  newbie and included graciously. I remember two things.

Colorful clothes. Jolly and serious.  The I Ching reading that I got, 58 Open /29 Repeating the Gorge, Ghost River, The Pit, with two changing lines at the 1st and 4th emphasizes the need to express ideas to act with joy and delight despite or because of the gravity of these times.  This is, I believe, an image of the new councils we are asked to live in as well as attend. Council/elders’ gatherings/guardians – a shifting landscape in which we participate in or emphasize now one, now another aspect of the configuration.  Lawrie Hartt had an image of how agile and fluid we are called to be, and also instructions about the co-existence of suffering and beauty.  Not that suffering is beautiful, but, as I understand her instructions, that there are always areas where beauty can and does enter even into the darkest anguish, and we are being called to open our consciousness to the awesome nature of such co-existence or co-extension. 

Homespun, in addition to its obvious associations, may also speak to the ways in which we are weaving our mantles with our own hands.  These mantles, these mandates, are from a new world – are from a future.  There aren’t any existing job descriptions.  This work is from the core of our creative visions.  And weaving, as we are, places us yet again in the realm of Grandmother Spider indeed. 

 1) One of the women (plump, cheerful and gray-haired but not so old) was the one who supplied Deena with her words. What? Deena the writer actually got her words from someone else? How did that work? I was very curious about that partnership.

The one who gives me my words.  Deena the writer wasn’t the one you saw first at the council. Deena the guardian, or healer or elder or council guardian/convener was the one present in the beginning.  She is different and older than the writer. Deena the writer is this other one and has her own history and roots.  Sometimes she writes the book or poem and sometimes, as in this moment, she feeds Deena the elder with words. She is also like the one who came to you, Nancy, when you were in despair, and who has written your wonderful book.  She is like the one who gave you the words that have led you to create the dreamsite Guardians of the Future, but who also wrote a book through you – gave you the words. Even if publishers have not been enthused, you are still being called to bring a version of the book into the world.  The future is not daunted by rejections or standards set by its most difficult and threatening past.  The future wants this book from you.

2) One of the women who was really old, stringy gray hair, turned and looked at me with a half-smile of recognition. "I know you. You know  me." And I realized I did. When I woke I realized I had seen her in previous dreams, mostly from 10+ years ago when I felt I was being called to move into elderhood but it still felt like a long way off.  The crone beckoned then. And on waking the gathering seemed like spirit-women who were also human.

Ok.  Wasn’t it about ten years ago that that other voice / woman, Stranger, entered you and among other energies, transformed you into the writer? And isn’t the writer an elder, or an elder becoming, by virtue of her listening to the spirits and the dreams and searching for a literary voice that can hold these intelligences and transmissions whether or not this culture, as it is now, recognizes them?  The crone beckons then, beckons, I think, the two of them … the two writers!  She can’t be without them.  She is not herself without being in council with them.

And also council as we are all beginning to experience it is an event in which spirit speaks through us: “the gathering seemed like spirit-women who were also human.”
 Isn’t that why we call to spirit at the beginning of each circle so that we will be more than ourselves, will be informed by spirit?

And indeed, this is happening now, even at this moment because I certainly didn’t expect to write this at 8:30 am when I picked up your email, Nancy, and now it is 2:30 and I haven’t moved from the computer for a moment.

As part of my mandate I am holding so many interlocking connections. It is part of being a guiding elder in a circle of elders and elders becoming – and it is my call to connect each of you reading this to the others circles that are calling you into connection.

This is also resonant mind.  This is jazz.  This is beauty. 
 
Love and Blessings,
Deena

November 9, 2007
Dear Deena,

I am honored to have unleashed that torrent of words, so much you have been thinking over the past months. “I” that is, the dream that came to me. I am honored to have been the channel. We are all channels.

I have been thinking about council and what you call council mind—I picked that term up from you. What it is, what makes it work in the way it does, and how we learn it, practice it, and teach it, pass it on to others.

Council mind is about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts, isn’t it? The emphasis moves away from the individual. It happens best when people move into the elder role as you have described it (which they can do at any age). In the elder frame of mind people think less about themselves and more about the community. In a lot of circles that do not operate as councils, a great effort is made to give everyone a chance to be heard. Nothing wrong with that. But council is not about the individual. It is about the whole circle. Or put it this way. By setting aside ego mind—the mind that ranks 1, 2; inside, outside; speaker, listener—we make room for mystery to enter. The spirits start to get interested in helping out. Open the spaces and other voices speak. Unheard human voices. Animal voices. The visible but silent voice of the surroundings.

This is the Quaker meeting without the emphasis on (individual) soul silence though that can be part of it. Instead the emphasis is on listening together. Making connection. Expecting the unexpected.

How do you get into council mind? Here is my observation of the helpful steps, from our limited but intriguing experiences…

It has to start with calling on spirit, large mind, god, mystery, what the 12-step people call the higher power. This is tricky because it can stir up people’s sectarian religious sensibilities. Your way v. my way. What I am comfortable with and what I am not… But we simply have to find ways to get beyond that because it is essential. Because council mind is that it is not all up to us. That we gather to make room for something larger to happen. Regular human thinking has so far not been up to the task of getting us out of the messes we have made.

And then a go-around, everyone speaking briefly about one thing. To become fully present.

And then, to get into council mind, there is nothing like the telling of dreams, but this too is a sensitive matter because it is not quite like what people have become used to in thinking about dreams, if indeed they think about them at all. Dreams are to be considered, in council, in a different way than in the therapist’s chair. It takes some practice. But it is a practice worth learning and teaching because, like the call to spirit, they remind us that there are other ways of knowing, and, as we know, they provide instruction. And the telling of dreams to each other is part of the action. It makes connections, it makes things possible, and it makes things happen. I believe we have invited the change in our field of dreams by the telling. You can say that or you can say, simply, the spirits speak.

I find myself doing a lot of dream instruction in my own circles of friends. Not interpreting dreams but helping people consider larger meanings. Cultivating appreciation of the astonishing wisdom, the connections, the mystery, the beauty, the otherness of dreams.

Maybe from there you go on to the more businesslike approach to Guardian Councils, which Carolyn describes and which will be part of the how-to book And more. I’m thinking that guardian mind, which we haven’t really described, may require Joanna Macy’s kind of experiential role-playing.  Like moving into the elder role, they call forth a certain potential.

It is all part of what can happen. The chapters in the how-to book are being lived, written.

Much love,
Nancy