What is my gift? What is your gift? What is our gift? These are questions I would like to answer using a collective presencing practice. I am excited as I write these words, but I also harbour some doubt and  some skepticism.

Since reading Collective Presencing by Ria Baeck in September, I have been thinking about Guiding Questions.

We can access the full depth of the potential in service of manifestation and generative action, only to the extent that we can articulate a clear and lofty intention or purpose. This explains the importance of finding powerful guiding question(s) and clearly naming the shared purpose. Just as the tallest tree has the deepest roots, the higher the consciousness from which our question is voiced, the deeper the level of sourcing it will invite and the deeper and more subtle layers of information to which it will grant access. This field that grows wider through many cycles generates authentically new wisdom.

I was not struggling with finding good guiding questions to explore. Instead, I was seeing too many such questions and I was unable to focus on any one in particular. I began sharing my thoughts about the potential of collective presencing with others, but none responded in the way I hoped for, not yet. I remain open to something positive happening in the future in any of those directions. And I would not mind being in more than one circle. But now I feel focused on exploring gifts as my first priority.

For a time I thought that it would be better to first find a couple of other like-minded people with whom to develop a guiding question. Doing so by myself felt contrary to the spirit of collective presencing. But Ria Baeck herself suggested otherwise.

It would be good that you articulate a question that you want to use the CP inquiry about/around? Most likely people are more attracted by the question, than by the practice itself?

Two themes in Collective Presencing are shadow work and trauma work. I think these are important and I share the belief that we hide much from ourselves. I have done some exploring in these directions in recent years and I have gained some knowledge. I have learned much from a good friend who had a career as a psychotherapist using depth psychology. But I do not feel drawn to do shadow work or trauma work,  individually or in a circle, at this time.

Collective Presencing also talks a lot about something else that we hide from ourselves, our gifts. Since retiring in 2012 I have gained a deeper understanding that solving the metacrisis will require the collective wisdom of everyone. To find that wisdom will require a deep understanding of what we can individually and collectively contribute.

What Ria Baeck writes in Collective Presencing about gifts speaks loudly to me (emphasis mine).

We have received these small (or great) gifts from nature, from birth; now it becomes a conscious choice to share and express them, bring them to the table where we sit. It is not through our own small will that we have created these unique gifts, rather, it is an act of surrender to recognise that life gave them to us and it is an act of choice to show and share them.

This re-integration process also has a huge influence on how we look at others: we become more humble, because we realise how blind we were to our own ‘stuff’; our hearts can stay open to them, and we can see them as fellow human beings with their own characteristics, wounding, patterns and gifts.

Can we relate directly with this deeper layer and leave the habitual patterns for what they are? Are we able to see the gift others bring to the table? Can we truly accept and honour the other?

Once we acknowledge and open ourselves to the group’s field, we get a sense of contributing our own unique gifts, our own unique form of leadership, in service of the collective wisdom. 

We all need a circle(s), because we are, by definition, as blind to our own unconscious parts as we are to our true gifts, and more importantly because we each hold a piece of the puzzle that only together will offer a deeper understanding and a way forward for our shared question or issue.

Again, it is not a ‘one plus one makes two’ operation, but an emergent wisdom that arises when we put our individual gifts and knowing together in a vibrant mix. Then we become a group or team that is ‘co-wise’.

In these new terms, what is meaningful to exchange seems to be our true gift, and not coins or bits of paper or electronic numbers. What if everybody were to follow their deepest passion? Wouldn’t the outcome be that Earth, and all life on and around her, would thrive?

If someone were to ask me what my gift is, my reply would be that I do not know. I have some skills but I do not consider them gifts. I have no natural talents and I lack the soul of an artist or musician, but I admire many such people.

As a career, I was an accountant and I was a better one than many of my peers. In a sense I had a gift for accounting, a deeper understanding than many others. I understood accounting as a beautiful language that could be used to tell a story. But that story certainly did not serve any higher purpose and did not contribute to any collective wisdom.

I now see collective presencing as a tool that could enable a small group of people to discover their gifts, and to become comfortable with that discovery. And I see the potential for the emergence of some collective wisdom from such a group. And I see this as potentially contributing to solutions to the metacrisis and a Game A to Game B transition. I am not entertaining any thought that I in such a group will save the world. No, but I can play a tiny part. If my contribution somehow leads to more such groups, which leads to more such groups, which leads to more such groups…

Imagine that we succeed. Imagine that we discover our gifts and contribute to collective wisdom. That sounds rather arrogant and I would be cautious where I share such a thought. But it would probably be safe in communitas at The Stoa.

A Game A conversation often starts with a question: what do you do? A Game B conversation could start with a different question: What is your gift? Imagine a community where such a question is natural, comfortable, asked and answered with humility.

I have found clues in my own writing, particularly when associated with The Stoa. Recently I wrote something on Discord that I now see in a different light than when I wrote it. And I am intrigued by this because this is not how my mind usually works.

I wrote: I am very interested in our subjective experiences generally. It seems to me that people quickly and easily share objective facts about themselves. But sharing our "real" experience of life is not so easy as words are often insufficient. I am hoping that at The Stoa better tools for sharing our subjective experiences will be developed. My sense is that this will be a necessary step towards communitas. In some way that is not clear to me, this thought may somehow connect to what my/yours/our gifts are.

I have some doubt whether I will find the others to go down this path with me. A group could form and later fall apart. And there is probably considerable risk in opening up to each other in the way that collective presencing advocates. Any number of things could go wrong. But Ria Baeck herself has offered her support which is quite encouraging.

I also have some skepticism. One lens through which I look at the world is seeing the stories, the narratives. What if collective presencing is just another story that we tell ourselves?  What if it is just stories all the way down? These are uncomfortable thoughts that I cannot get completely out of my mind. But I also think that if collective presencing and collective wisdom are just stories, they may be stories that we can make true.