leaving the holding space

This little passage from Otto Scharmer's new book, Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges reminds me of a sensation I have often had when leaving a time/space of communion (a kind of space which I like to use the word "conversation" to describe):

"When operating from that deeper presence of a future that wants to emerge, you connect to yet a deeper resource of listening and of intelligence that is available...

...What happens is that you leave that conversation as a different being -- a different person from the one who entered the conversation...You are no longer the same. You are (a tiny bit) more who you really are. Sometimes that tiny bit can be quite profound. I remember that in one instance I had a physical sensation of a wound when I left a particularly profound conversation. Why? Because that conversation created a generative social field that connected me with a deeper aspect of my journey and Self.

Leaving that holding space -- the social field -- discontinued that deeper connection, which I then experienced as an open wound." pg 186

I've usually described my version of that experience as feeling like my roots and their tiny delicate root hairs are being pulled apart from a deep entanglement with those of the person or people I've been with -- like Scharmer's "open wound," it can feel raw, and tender. Or, I feel it like I'm a piece of bread dough that's been stretched and stretched and then pulled apart from the other pieces, with the soft side exposed to the air. Two of the times lately when I've been aware of that sensation have been when leaving synagogue after a particularly sweet and deep Bet Alef service (which is, now that I think of it, all of them!); and today, when I got to congratulate the new naturopathic doctors who graduated from Bastyr, many of whom I got to meet years ago when they first started medical school. Although some of them will stay in the area, and some will relocate but will keep in touch, all of them have stepped over the threshhold of this particular "holding space," into somewhere new and vast and maybe far away from here. It will take a little time for the roots to readjust and settle, to remember that hearts and minds and breaths once mingled can never again be entirely separate, that "the deeper connection" is actually impossible to "discontinue."