Intentions

We are navigating a time of imminent multiple collapses where a growing number of people are connecting with ways of being and envisioning a regenerative movement that could bring us closer to the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.

As we step into this great turning, the maps we’ve used to navigate reality cannot describe the ground we stand upon anymore. We are in uncharted territory, filled with uncertainty and not knowing. This can be a very scary place to be in. It is also a place filled with new emerging possibilities and potential to evolve as individuals and human species in ways that are healthier and regenerative. 

As we step up to this challenging path of birthing a different world in the myriad ways this is manifesting, we have to deal with the inevitable tensions and conflicts that ongoingly emerge in ourselves, between one another and in society at large. More than often conflict is charged by unmet needs and/or deep seated traumas, most of which have been inherited within our families or through cultural wounds that are carried on from generation to generation. 

This journey invites us to be more porous and question our deep seated beliefs of control and resolution, of righteousness and fixed justice, of rightdoing and wrongdoing, of relentless othering, of the ways we have estranged ourselves from a world that is alive and always moving, always in the making.  

Coming  Down to Earth, emerges from the sense that the times call for new inquiries, conversations and experiments around how we experience, work with and catalyze transformation that can arise from the conflicts we encounter through life. We will be asking:

• How can we develop our faculties for really seeing and understanding difficult situations? 

• How can we develop respect for what is in the state of becoming, for what is about to come, in a person, in a group, in an organisation? 

• Can we develop the capacity to look into a conflict in ways that help its essence to be revealed? 

• Can we stop reproducing habits and patterns of behaviour that create results that nobody wants?

• Can we meet our individual and collective shadows and traumas in ways that are conducive to more healthy and regenerative cultures? 

The  Coming  Down  to  Earth  Online  Summit  intends to open up space to hear a wide range of perspectives on how we shift from conflict resolution which attempts to solve the problems that lead to conflict, towards looking to conflict as a catalyst for transformation: changing the relationships between those in conflict to open up possibilities for deeper personal, structural, cultural shifts. Aiming to increase collaboration, co-creation and collective sensemaking, reduce violence and increase justice: our understanding of conflict transformation views peace as centered and rooted in the quality of relationships. These relationships have two dimensions: our face-to-face interactions and the ways we structure our social, political, economic, and cultural relationships.

We are striving for a world in which conflicts are seen as something natural and human, a disruptive space of possibilities. We believe that individuals and societies are able to overcome conflicts about our identities, relationships or structures if we nurture ways of seeing and being with conflicts that do not resort to violence and disconnection. When enough people have the understanding and abilities to commit to holding space for conflicts to manifest their underlying essence, we will see a growing movement towards more healthy and regenerative cultures.

This journey invites us to set our feet on the ground, fall apart, nurture the soils in which life emerges and seed the future.