From Great Turning Experiment

Báyò Akómoláfé is a widely celebrated, public intellectual, speaker, author and teacher. He is globally recognised for his poetic, unconventional, counterintuitive, and indigenous take on global crisis, civic action and social change. As Executive Director of The Emergence Network, Báyò inspires a diffractive network of sharing – a slowing down, an ethics of entanglement, an activism of inquiry, a ‘politics of surprise’…one that does not treat the crises of our times as exterior to ‘us’ or the ‘solutions’ that conventional activism offers as separate from the problems we seek to nullify. Báyò is the author of We will tell our own story! and These Wilds Beyond our Fences.

Questions for Ongoing Reflection and Dialogue

1. Báyò posits that ‘decolonality’ is the idea that reality is still open, no matter how closed it might seem – that we are not as isolated and private as we think we are – that we are not yet made, we are not yet fully done – that rather we are becomings. And that it is by slowing down that we begin to break open to new realities.

   Can you give yourself the gift of slowing down as a way to break open, to become undone, to shape shift, to be different, to blossom into your own becoming? Are you willing to risk it and reexamine your sense of self so that newness can come in?

   How open are you to the idea that you are not yet made, you are not yet fully done? Are you open to disturbing the long-held belief of modernity that you are isolated and private?

2. Where do you tend to become stuck in your own life? Take time to trace the patterns of cycling and circling that prevent you from liberating yourself from the stuck places. What insights from Báyò’s sharing may support you to break the cycles? Experiment with this the next time you find yourself in this old patterning.

   Consciously develop a practise to become astute to noticing where you may be repeating old patterns over and over again, or inadvertently propping up and reinforcing the old systems, rather than listening deeply to what new realities want to emerge.

3. Consider the binaries you are exposed to in your life and in your own thinking:

   How comfortable are you with, and how open are you to, disturbing the limitations of your own thinking and exploring and allowing new possibilities outside ‘either-or’ thinking, outside the realm of the known?

4. The wounds that we receive are our invitations to shape shift, to become different. In light of this:

   Where does it hurt? Where is continuity becoming more impossible in your life, day by day?

5. What opportunities do you take to make sanctuary in your life in the way Báyò described? How willing are you to ‘sit with the bones’ of our lingering past, and deeply listen, without falling into the trap of spiritual bypassing, without the need to cover over the cracks of modernity? Recall an experience of this and describe in detail the way it altered your relationship to yourself and all of life.
   

6. Recall a time in your life when you encountered the sacred, the divine, in a way that broke your composure. Describe in detail the effect of this experience.
   

7. At this half-way point in our 4-month journey, take time to reflect on your overall experience:

   What have you received thus far? What is transforming in you? What are the ‘ah-ha’ moments you have experienced?

   What do you yet feel inspired to give? What is yet to transform in you? How would you like to show up during the coming 2 months – for yourself, your fellow journeyers, your family, your local community, the community of life?

8. How does our Session 5 content inform ‘Your More Beautiful Life’? Set aside ample reflective space to review ‘Your More Beautiful Life’ worksheet and incorporate the learning from Session 5. I invite you to imagine this as a turning point in our journey. Are you willing to risk everything and reexamine your sense of self, your colonality, your stuck patterns, so that new realities can come in? Be open to disturbing what you have previously recorded on your worksheets, and re-examining all aspects of your life, that you may deeply listen and truly open to the emergence of the new.

   Remember, cultivating your more beautiful life is an iterative process, so be sure to engage deeply with this question and allow your soul force to breathe new life and conscious expansion into each category of your worksheet.

   Allow Spirit to guide you and flow freely through you for your very highest unfolding at this stage in the journey.