EnergySensing — 27 Feb 2022
#EnergySensing
The word Ukraine is said to come from the old Slavic word for borderland. Energetically, the land embodies a mythical, liminal space in our collective unconscious, currently under attack. What began with the Australian bushfires in 2019, and morphed into the pandemic, continues in the most overt, and final form possible. This is the final frontier before the planetary consciousness collectively decides the fate of humans. The decision hinges on how we engage and work with what is happening now.
The Australian fires nudged us, with least possible harm to our species, towards living in an eco-centric manner: to learn to belong in something beyond humanity. We did not quite listen, except for a few pockets of humanity that awakened in the process. A louder clarion call came in the form of a virus that challenged, quite visibly, our fallacious notion of borders. Mocking our imaginary identities, it brought the world to halt to give us an opportunity to go home, within, literally and figuratively. It showed us our connectedness in a way no other visceral experience has shown us before. Yet, we have not really listened. Now, we need the borderlands of the unconscious bombarded violently, as a desperate call for attention. Will we pay heed? Or will be choose to continue to consume and be consumed by our divisive ideologies?
It is not the time to be a spectator. Do your work, in every which way possible.
Back in 2015, Ukrainian artist Alexander Milov created a sculpture called ‘Love’. It features two wireframe adults sitting back-to-back with their inner children reaching out to each other from within. In Milov’s own words, here is the description of the sculpture: “It demonstrates a conflict between a man and a woman as well as the outer and inner expression of human nature. Their inner selves are executed in the form of transparent children, who are holding out their hands through the grating. As it’s getting dark (night falls) the children start to shine. This shining is a symbol of purity and sincerity that brings people together and gives a chance of making up when the dark time arrives.”
Seven years (significantly symbolic) later, we are that sculpture, individually and collectively. The wireframe figures are Ukraine and Russia, left wing and right wing, you and the ‘other’. Will you choose to identify with the wireframe, or with the children reaching out to each other? They are children because they are a part of our emergent eco-centric consciousness that is still nascent and needs nurturing. But they are glowing and transparent because they are ready to lead the path forward. Do not mistake youth (including what is new and young within) for lack of wisdom — that is an old patriarchal narrative that has colonised us for long. The youth is merely representative of a new journey that just begun, hoping to survive and thrive, if we have the courage to let it live.
Here is what you can do:
At the individual level, notice all the wireframes in your life. Summon the guts to act from the inner child.
Do the same in the systems you work in. Old structures will fall, for the wireframes need to break. Can you meet it with wonder instead of fear?
Right before the war began, an artist-politician reached out, embodying mythopoetic energy like the inner child, to the inner children of the ‘other’. If you have not already heard Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s appeal to Russian citizens, do listen to it. It is not about Ukraine or Russia at all.
Whether the inner children survive and break out of the wireframes, is up to us and dependent on what we do now. Do we have the courage to choose life, and to choose to belong?
#RukminiIyer
