Conscious Self-Evolution: Are you an Evolutionary Woman?
Series 1 of 10
An announcement for the first Evolutionary Woman Retreat arrived in my mailbox on the day of my husband’s memorial service in September 2005. The words Evolutionary Woman stirred something in me. I didn’t know what an Evolutionary Woman was, I just knew that I wanted to be one.
Founded by my friends, Lucky Sweeny and Bonnie Kelley, Evolutionary Women Retreats emerged out of a “field” of Conscious Evolution groups hosted by Barbara Marx Hubbard.
Rumi describesthe “field” in a poem:
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.
In Lynne McTaggart’s books, “The Field” and “The Intention Experiment,” she reports scientifically that our body extends electromagnetically beyond ourselves and our physical body. Holding an intention, including prayer, with a group of people helps us tap into something that magnifies our inner knowing and exponentially expands the intention.
Ninety women attended the first Evolutionary Women Retreat in Santa Barbara, California, December 2005. On the first night of the Retreat, we moved our chairs and sat in groups of three waiting for instructions for an experiential exercise. We would tap into “the field” that we had created just by bringing our electromagnetic selves together in the room. In the first round of the exercise, one of us would be the speaker, one of us would be the listener and one of us would be the observer. (We would switch roles and do this two more times.) Lucky Sweeny asked us a question, we closed our eyes, tuning into our higher wisdom, then opened our eyes to speak. I don’t remember the question, but I remember thinking I didn’t have an immediate answer to it.
As we sat in silence, I felt a rapid flash of my life from childhood to the present moment. So many choices and decisions I made that had surfaced from my inner knowing. I followed them even when the world around me told me I was wrong. The decision to leave an abusive marriage, the decision to use alternative medicine for a chronic health condition, the decision to homeschool my kids in community-based learning. Big and little choices. I knew in that moment, during the first exercise, that I was an Evolutionary Woman. I had always been an Evolutionary Woman. From that moment on, I was even more aware of a bigger universe, an unseen world that was happening around me that supported me and a more expansive view of my purpose and life.
What is an Evolutionary Woman? A feminine cocreator; one who is incarnating the creative intention of universe, localized within herself as her own passion to create; one who is consciously self-evolving and is willing to realize her full potential for the good of the self and the whole human community. ~Barbara Marx Hubbard, 52 Codes for Conscious Self-Evolution
Ms. Hubbard also defined self-evolution: While self-development works toward improvement, self-evolution offers a new template. It is open-ended. We have not yet seen the full model of what we can become.
At the Retreat, the Saturday night activity was called, “An Every Woman’s Bazaar.” Chairs were set up back-to-back, in weaving rows. Each participant was encouraged to share something and display it on a chair. Photos of our family, friends, and pets. Creative projects. Business cards. Items for sale. Books we had written. Evolutionary ideas for: schools, the environment, parenting, co-creating in community, businesses, social programs. We were here to witness the evolution of the women in this room.
Walking up and down the rows, we spent the evening learning about each woman’s life. A simple family photo led to conversations about homeschooling in community, sharing resources, heart-based networking, organic farming, environmentally safe products, exchanges of healing modalities and finding collaborative partners.
As I listened to the stories, it became clear that two things had occurred multiple times for each woman:
- A breakdown: something was missing or no longer working, and “societal norms” did not provide any solutions.
- A breakthrough: new ideas, synchronicity and solutions seemed to pop up out of nowhere with action steps that required faith, risk, innovation, and creativity. Most of the time, it required finding a new support system, resources and community.
If any of this resonates with you, here are a few reflections to “tap into the Evolutionary Woman field”:
- Reflect on a breakdown from your past that led to a breakthrough. What was missing or no longer working? What new ideas and solutions seemed to pop up out of nowhere? What synchronicities happened? Who did you connect with for support?
- Is there something that is breaking down in your life now? Write about what is happening and ask some questions like, “What is good about this? What am I learning? What solutions have I not seen yet?” When answers appear, write them down and take small action steps.
This is the first article of a series of ten. In future articles, we will be exploring some of the “codes” from Barbara Marx Hubbard’s book called, “52 Codes for Self-Evolution: A process of metamorphosis to realize our full potential self.”
“I will stay awake with you.”
~The promise from an Evolutionary Woman
Andrea Hylen: Ancestral Lineage Healing Practitioner. Author of Heal My Voice: An Evolutionary Woman’s Journey. Creator of The Incubator: On-line Co-working Space for Cultural Creatives. Somatic-Intuitive Coach. www.andreahylen.com