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If you would like to be involved in a Heart and Soul group please start by visiting the forum by clicking here.

Two of us from the Initiating Group recently went to Totnes for a weekend of Transition Training and one of the most inspiring and moving aspects of the two days was the session on ‘heart and soul’. We were asked to think about the reasons why we were giving our time to this project and we realised that most of us had had a moment of realisation – a sudden terrifying awareness of just how dangerous our situation was – and just how degraded our children’s future might be. So we became involved in groups and projects, campaigning and protesting and we spent most of our time thinking about who would hire the hall and where we could find a good speaker. The question raised in this session was: what happens to all those feelings?

One simple exercise we did was to work in pairs. One person spoke as themselves and the other person was a silent visitor from 200 years in the future who had come back to find out about those who had lived through the ‘Great Turning’, the time when our society finally recognised the value of the environment and stopped its polluting, destructive, carbon-belching ways. It was extremely moving, both to think about what in our own lives had brought us to this awareness and, perhaps especially, to listen to someone else who was giving their time to work for a future they might not live to see.

Many questions were raised in these sessions, here are some of them:

• What are the attitudes and beliefs that have created our society?
• How do our personal histories influence the way we live and consume?
• How do our personal histories influence our attitude to environmental bad news?
• Do we need to face up to our fears before we can act positively for change?
• Should we connect our feelings about Climate Change and Peak Oil to other experiences, fears, losses or changes in our lives?
• What are the emotional blocks to reducing our carbon footprint?
• How can we best support each other through times of change?
• Can we learn from psychological models of change?
• Would, for instance, addiction therapies help us to recover from our addiction to oil?

If would be great if we could generate lots of Heart and Soul groups in Shaftesbury – they don’t all need to meet in halls, they could be informal groups of friends or neighbours or work-colleagues getting together in cafes or pubs or people’s houses to talk about the deeper issues that affect them. These groups might then get together to organise community events or invite inspiring speakers, or they might simply reflect on the emotional issues that are raised by Transition.

Transition Town Shaftesbury Heart and Soul Group

Inaugral Meeting

On Friday June 20th the inaugural meeting of the Heart and Soul group took place in Shaftesbury Abbey at one pm BST. noon real time. Present were Pat Roberts, Rhiannon Bryant, Yvonne from Glastonbury and myself. The theme which will be continuous is the healing of the ancient energies which, through disruption, have damaged much of the town and its inhabitants. After due reflection, the lighting of candles and the burning of Glastonbury incense , a meditation took place taking these themes into consideration. It is to be hoped that regular meditations will occur according to the lunar calendar at sunrise and sunset. I have sought permission to use the Abbey out of hours but they charge twenty five pounds a session but if we can find a quorum of nine or so, this should not be insurmountable. It was not possible to contact yourselves as this was decided upon at the last minute as this is the usual way that things of the spirit operate.