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Three keys to our response-ability to the crisis of our civilization

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CNN, BBC, and zillions bloggers and citizen-journalists around the world bring into our living room the fullness of the human drama of disaster, hunger, violence, and pain, at a scale and poignant immediacy as never before.

There are think tanks and think nets engaged in inquiry into
various aspects of the ultimate question of our turbulent, jump time:
What is our intelligent and wise response to the crisis of civilization,
and its unprecedented dangers and opportunities?

Living into that question is a community art.
It calls for communal responses to the changes that accelerate as never before.

Are we ready to face
into that wild pace
and learn to dance with it?

If you want to, stay flexible and find your community.

Where will that response-ability come from,
which can match the scope and complexity of the most powerful opponent:
our intertwined global crises?

"You have been telling the people that this is the 11th hour.
Now you must go back and tell the people that this is The Hour.
And there are things to be considered. . . .
Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
Know your garden.
It is time to speak your Truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside of yourself for the leader.”

Then he clasped his hands together, smiled, and said,
"This could be a good time!” -- from the message of a Hopi Elder

I boldfaced those words of the message, which evoked the resonances that follow.

 

The right relation to life depends on whom we ask, but what if we asked life itself,
while it unfolds in the early 21st century, as images in a fast-turning kaleidoscope?
As I’ve been holding it, a pattern of meaning started taking shape,
and words offered their service to express it:
It is a relation that is nourished by non-judgmental, self-reflective wisdom,
and a no-kidding commitment to stay available to the creative impulse.

Our best chance as individuals to ride the waves of change,
instead being washed away by it, is to find/create our communities.
Our best chance as humankind to pass this evolutionary test
and graduate to our next level of civilization,
is in the self-organizing collective intelligence and wisdom
of communities of co-creation and communities of practice
in all areas of society, business, and governance.
Those communities and organizations need to give room to youth,
honor their talents, passion and aspirations.
Only then will they have what it takes to pass the test.

The journey of learning together is not only about distributed cognition;
we all learn faster and deeper in caring, mutually supportive relations.
Being good to each other, in the communities and organizations in transformation,
is also holding each other in our highest potential
so that the future in need of us can become now.

Submitted by George Por on May 23, 2008 - 10:05.

Tetra-arising

Submitted by Helen Titchen Beeth on June 14, 2008 - 21:57.

George - that's a great question - The next phase of awakening in all four quadrants. I had to wait until this evening for the time to ponder it.  And it's well worth pondering. At best I can make a start - on condition that you add your own observations!

 

Upper left -  the interior of individuals ready to engage in the co-birthing of a collective buddha. I see a growing ability to be self-reflective, to understand the constructed nature of all experience. A growing transparency of self and readiness to enter generative flow with others. Ability to drop discursive thinking and surrender to be informed by the 'field'. Growing availability to and spontaneity in the present moment, together with perfect clarity about personal boundaries and limits. Enhanced presence, focus and sense of the relevant. Rapid shrinking of the personal agenda in favour of the kosmic one. Paradoxical increased care for one's personal wellbeing as a vehicle for manifesting the kosmic agenda.

 

Upper right  - the exterior of individuals ready to engage in the co-birthing of a collective buddha. Speak little, stay much in silence. A lot of laughter, bright eyes and springing step. Often found sitting in circles and engaged in intense conversation. Often found in nature; in solitude; in contemplation; in ritualised movement. Often found in a multiplicity of different communities, both physical and virtual - often found online. Rarely found hurrying.

 

Lower left - the interior of the collective buddha-in-becoming. Collective focus is on questions and inquiry. Collective reflection - silence is prized so the parts can sense and savour the power of the collectively held field. Chaos and uncertainty are embraced readily. Values are inclusive, transcendent, but also imanent and honouring of past, present and future, source and spirit, masculine and feminine. Fluidity is prized, and there is space - like in Rumi's guesthouse - for whatever shows up in the middle. The collective is the crucible of transformation for the individual members, who also together hold the crucible. The collective is valued by its parts both for its own sake and for what it can manifest in the world. Boundaries are clear and yet perfectly permeable. The collective recognises and newcomers who can sense the field and integrate into the container, and welcomes and holds all other who wish to enter the field. (Whoever shows up are the right people).

 

Lower right -  the exterior of the collective buddha in becoming. The organisational structures include the circle, the triangle, the square, the network and the fifth organisational paradigm that embraces them all. Collective spaces are designed to be flexible and easily reconfigured to host the structures called for at each moment. Attention is paid to design - simplicity, proximity to nature, nurturing and welcoming spaces, beauty and comfort, functional to enable people to engage together in all aspects of living, sustainable to honour our dependence on mother earth. Physical structures are plastic and malleable - in permanent interaction and active relationship with the community that it serves. Attention is paid to symbols and symbolic structures.

Three Keys

Submitted by Amy Lenzo on June 13, 2008 - 19:12.

What a fabulous post, George.

And I love your reflections, Helen; they add a simple beauty and solid ground to the ideas George has invited us into conversation about, which I feel are deeply spiritual in nature. 

 

I'm sitting with these three keys - right relation, find/create our communities, and be good to each other. I think you are right on, George, in recognizing "right relation" as a non-judgemental self-reflective PRESENCE that is truly open to what IS, in each moment, which is surely the creative impulse at its very essence. 

 

The "being good to each other" is an extension of that right relation, it seems to me. We are all in this life-boat together, each a part of one another and the larger whole. Being good to each other is also being good to ourselves, and to life. Feeling the gratitude that is a natural response to the miracle of this world and our lives within it, "being good" is an accurate articulation of our true nature, and "to each other" is our true nature in relationship.

 

The "find/create community" piece is vital, and as I find myself deepening my own personal sense of community connection in several groups and places, my focus turns to what I feel is the next part of this key - "connecting communities".

 

I beleive that forging links and making connections between the communities/regions/nations we are each part of is the way we will access the collective consciousness, the wisdom, that is potenially ours as a species. It's the way we will face the challenges of our time... together, as individuals who recognize themselves as part of ever-increasing spirals of collectivity. A collective response from a humanity that, without trying to erase difference in the relative levels of existence, knows itself at the highest level as one body, one spirit.

 

When I think about the many collective challenges we are all facing today, I am both alert to the dangers and heartened by the opportunities for humanity to "jump level" and fulfill our purpose as true human beings.

 

May it be so!

 

Love, 

 

Amy 

 

~~~~~~*~~~~~~*~~~~~~
The BEAUTY DIALOGUES:
http://www.beautydialogues.com/

“... all experience of beauty is experience of cosmic wholeness, of harmony. Beauty is microcosmic intuition of macrocosmic reality.”

What's next?

Submitted by George Por on June 13, 2008 - 08:17.

Helen, I am in awe of te depth and clarity of your writing.

 

> Calling people into community is something we women do well.

 

Indeed, and there's no better time than the now to do it. 

 

> I for one can think of no more worthwhile and meaningful way to live life than to participate in its evolutionary unfolding towards greater wholeness, greater we-fullness, the awakening of the collective buddha.

 

What do you see as the next phase of that awakening in the co-arising of the four quadrants? 

 

 

Enter the feminine and awakening the collective buddha

Submitted by Helen Titchen Beeth on June 10, 2008 - 07:25.

George, this is a beautiful and inspiring gift that you offer us here. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

 

These days, I find myself only commenting on things that move me to tears. So I'm sitting hear sniffling, with tears on my cheeks Laughing

 

Finding our communities - this is what I see happening all around me, and most particuarly, what I am engaged in constantly. The inquiry "how can we become a living community of co-creating, co-evolving souls?" has started to transform into a witnessing of just that.

 

I don't know if it's 'just me', or whether others are recognising this too - I suspect so because of what I read in the communities I am connected to. I also know from experience the reality of the maxim: we see the world not as it is but as we are. But I really sense a shift coming, as people let down their guard and reach out in search of just that co-creative, co-evolving community.

 

Yesterday I was catching up with the conversation in the Women Moving the Edge community, where it was said that 'women are good at relating'. I think that this is an aspect of the feminine which is becoming more evident in the world as women begin to step into their rightful place alongside men in the governance of our species. Calling people into community is something we women do well. We do not see it as a risk, but a pleasure. It's still early days, but it seems unmistakable to me. Men, too, welcome this invitation to explore and develop the feminine aspect of themselves, just as women are exploring their agentic power in the public sphere.

 

All I have to go on is my own experience, but I am moving through daily life with a deeper sense of belonging than I have ever known. Belonging to these people, here and now, belonging to this species, belonging to this ecosphere, this planetary organism, this Kosmos. The reality is that we just have to look around us to see the ways we co-create and co-evolve together. And my current individual evolution is only possible because of the ground that sustains and supports that evolution.

 

So despite the pain, fear and turmoil, despite the shadows cast by looming threats, I sense more than ever before that as a species we are awakening to the preciousness and beauty of existence and the joy of stepping up to honour and defend it. I for one can think of no more worthwhile and meaningful way to live life than to participate in its evolutionary unfolding towards greater wholeness, greater we-fullness, the awakening of the collective buddha.