Highlights of the talk broadcasted on March 21st, 2020
by Thomas Hübl
edited by Giselle Charbonnier
Suddenly, one day, we wake up in a new world, where many of the things which seemed so stable are not so anymore. The most certain thing today seems to be uncertainty. Following the pulse of these times, in this essential talk Thomas Hübl gifts us with his clarity and inspiration, inviting us, above all, to find our deepest humanity.
MY EXPERIENCE AS A HUMAN BEING
Within a very short time, our world has really changed. No one really knows where the river goes now, but we know that we have to trust our swimming capacities. What we are called for at this time is, to be truly human. Something really important is to come together. We need community building and creating intelligent networks that are supportive. Our relational capacities are a fundamental component of resilience. So, before we talk about big ideas, it’s truly important to look at: Who am I as a human being? What is my experience? What are my fears? What are my concerns? What stress comes up in me? My fears, my concern, my stress are very important.
PREPARING TO FACE SUSTAINED UNCERTAINTY
We all know that uncertainty healthwise, economically, and relationally, is one of the best triggers for our deepest fears. When it looks like things are becoming scarce, or that we are threatened healthwise, individual and collective, past traumas get triggered. Many fears and stress may arise; fears and stress that are stored in our bodies either from our developmental time as children or from what our ancestors went through the collective trauma field. We need practices on how to work on those fears because we are not in for a short sprint. We are in for a longer run. We need to take care of maintaining our nervous system’s capacity to constantly self-regulate.
RESPONSE-ABILITY
In the presence of collective fear, we have the tendency to downgrade or disintegrate higher functions in consciousness and regress to lower levels of functioning. When fears grow we may only find two options: to become overwhelmed or to become avoidant and distant. If we want to act responsibly, we have to watch out for both.
Responsibility is the ability to respond individually and collectively to the current global moment. This is very different than reactivity. When I’m reactive, the past runs the show, I use patterns of responding and relating that I’ve learned in the past. When I feel tight that’s what’s coming up. Whereas responsiveness is a function of resonance, of open relation. Responding means giving, presencing, feeling. Then my body, my emotions, my mind, they all work together as a unit, and that’s the foundation of human relation, that’s always adding energy into the system.
Keeping the vulnerability of our hearts
The vulnerability of our hearts in a crisis situation is part of a tremendously important supercomputer. On the level of our hearts, when our hearts are open, there’s a coherence function built into the human supercomputer. And I think that’s what this time is called for. This time needs to be run by love. Not as a slogan; now my practice to stay connected to my vulnerability is very important. This keeps me in a coherence field, and I’m able to create that coherence around me.
Invoking the wisdom of our ancestors in our cells
Our bodies are hundreds of thousands of years old. The intelligence that is stored in our bodies is the concentrated liquid of humanity. Our ancestors went through crisis already, and the resilience they gained from this sits here, otherwise, we wouldn’t be here. The cells of our bodies, our emotional systems, our mental systems, our capacities to relate, our capacities to give and to do things that are courageous, to support each other in times of scarcity, these capacities are in us, and it’s very important to remember them, and even invoke them, to consciously connect to the fact that generations after generations we had already crisis and we know how to be in that.
SELF-REGULATION - INNER AWARENESS
In these times it is very important to keep track if I speed up and get too stressed, or if I become avoidant. I can always come back to myself taking a deeper breath, prolonging some exhalations and bringing my attention to the parts of my body where I feel myself. Starting in these parts I can ground myself. Then I can include my stress, my fear, and presence it. When we bring awareness to our bodies, emotions, and mind, we foster a state of coherence which allows our nervous system to self-regulate.
CO-REGULATION - COMPASSIONATE LISTENTING
If fear and stress are somehow overwhelming, and I can’t calm down on my own, it’s fundamental to reach out in order to process this with somebody else. Fear can become stagnation in our system whereas, if I keep sharing with others what’s happening within me, this energy can move.
Every nervous system has the capacity to co-regulate another nervous system. This capacity is a tremendously important function today. Co-regulation happens when I really presence you while you tell me what’s going on inside of you, and when you really presence me when I tell you what’s going on inside of me. If we are just there for each other, if we feel each other, without giving immediate advice, this creates a sense of relaxation, it’s a great way to stabilize each other in stressful times.
The need to digest the past
If I just hear you and feel you, and you feel me, we create a field within us. We can create fields between two nervous systems, or within groups, and those fields create stability. And this is what we need right now: to create coherent fields where we can digest our past together. We need to digest our individual and collective past, because all the undigested material that sits in my nervous system. My own pre-traumatization, and the ancestral and collective traumatization is a lot of energy, which when suddenly arising together, can de-stabilize my system.
One message of this time is the need to digest, individually and collectively, this material that is coming up. This is the way to keep us and our social networks more grounded. The whole global situation shows our level of disembodiment, how we are not really embodied in nature. What we see right now is kind of a global reset. When the structure is not strong enough to contain the growth, things go out of balance. In spiritual science, we say there is space, energy, and structure. Space is the capacity to reflect, to digest. What do we digest? Our experience, so that we can stay in a regulated space. Undigested past, trauma, shadows, and living too fast is filling up the storage in our nervous system with material, and we don’t have endless storage. So the stress levels are rising, and that’s where relational attunement, nervous system synchronization, intelligent community building, really being with each other, is needed, but not just to give immediate mental advice, because this often separates us more than connects us. What is more called for, is heartfelt connectivity where we feel each other, and we learn to co-regulate each other.
GROUP PRESENCING - BUILDING INTELLIGENT COMMUNITY NETWORKS
Groups have like a cloud computing function that is more than the computing function of multiple individuals in the same space. This cloud computing function is a very powerful healing resource, and we need that function now because in the face of collective fears there are high tendencies for downgrading or disintegrating higher functions in consciousness. What we need now is an up-leveling of coherence in order to stabilize the collective field.
Through group presencing, we realize and enhance the connection between the collective and the individual. In mystical science, we see that each one of us is the individual expression of the most universal. This is why every voice is very important. On the other hand, the higher is the coherence of groups, the more intelligent is everybody within that group. This is why group coherence and intelligent networks are powerful resources for innovation, very much needed today.
Intelligent networks include the following ingredients:
1.- Self-regulation - Individual processing
2.- Relational regulation or co-regulation - Attuned relationship and listening.
3.- Group coherence - Group presencing - that everybody in the group feels everybody else - builds the group field, creating an intelligent collective expression that exceeds the sum of us. Coming together with a purpose, with an intention, as small teams, as big teams, in hospitals, in organizations, with people who work remotely from home, in order to generate group coherence, we need to have practices to synchronize, practices to strengthen the whole system, of a hospital, for example.
4.- Spiritual resourcing - Deeper states of presence - Presencing means to be able to differentiate between things that come up from the past and what’s actually happening now, and to help me integrate what’s coming up from the past. In presence, we have an inner connection to the essence of life. Presence is the place where the future is born and it is the integration tool for the past. So presence is a tremendously important resource for healing and innovation, and right now we need a lot of local social micro-innovation. Through presencing, local and global communities can have a lot of innovative capacities unleashed in order to deal with the situation in the unexpected forms it may take. Since many people have more time now, because many of us can’t leave our homes, we can use some of this time to do mindfulness practices, contemplative and meditation practices in order to come to a deeper state of presence.
Thanks for being part!
A full recording of this talk is available here
For more information about Thomas Hübl visit:
