It’s difficult to describe the attainment of Nothing, to tell someone of your journey on The Road to Nowhere. I’ve just spent four days in the pursuit of dark matter to bring into the light of consciousness; following Ariadne’s thread; jumping into an abyss. I’ll try to explain a little of what that means.
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A peace descended on arriving at Oxon Hoath on the Wednesday night before the programme. I wasn’t sure what I’d signed up for, but then not many ‘Concordians’ do, I suppose. In the light of the setting sun I sat and looked around the space where I’d arrived. The house, smelling of simmering stocks and whispering with quietly paced footsteps, welcomed me into Power Intent & Evolution (PIE). Little by little over the course of that night and the following morning, our numbers grew. Each nervously smiling face took those same steps as I over the threshold of our grand new home, and joined our cohort. Thursday morning was when it would all begin.
The sun was shining and the grass glistened with the morning’s dew. Shaking the sleep from our bodies we met in the dance studio for the first of our many Tensegrity sessions of the programme. Some arriving with a wealth of experience in this practice, some with none, we worked together to bring our bodies into the space. “In this programme I’m not in the business of dealing with minds”, our facilitator Greg Johnson explained, ”I’m in the business of dealing with bodies.” Well, he certainly got mine on board. Over the course of the next few days we were in that studio for a great many hours, urging our kinaesthetic memories to grasp onto the forms we were learning. Each of us caught the Tensegrity bug in some way, practicing on our breaks and feverishly scrawling reminders in our journals of which pass came next in the sequence. By the end of it we were able to complete many of them in silence, working together as a group – without verbal guidance, simply energetically – through each form.
My body’s response to Tensegrity was an interesting one. At first I felt I was doing okay, ticking the right boxes, but wondered why I hadn’t ‘felt’ anything yet. However it was seeing the partnership of the bodywork and the dialogue sessions together which really presented the key of PIE to me. One afternoon, during one of the dialogue sessions, I felt an almost prickling, pins-and-needles type feeling across my upper back. This quickly spread and became quite uncomfortable and then lightened, eventually presenting itself as simply a new awareness of that area of my body. I sat in the dialogue room and realised: “This is what shoulders feel like!” I’d unlocked something, was able to move and sit in a way I never had before, and knew that the passes we’d been practicing over those few days had begun to eke out some reaction in my being. Something hit home at that point. This programme wasn’t like others I’d done, this wasn’t the usual Concord experience; this programme had literally rewired the way my body perceived the world.
It truly was a magical few days, set in a magical corner of our beautiful countryside. We were nourished with phenomenal surroundings, stunning food, inspiring and eye-opening stories, and had our hearts opened to continue receiving nourishment from those same sources back in our daily lives. I’m sure Oxon Hoath will soon forget the fact that I’ve visited – dozens more will likely stay in Room 3 before the year is out; but I won’t forget how Oxon Hoath visited me – in fact, I’m not sure it will ever leave.