Burning questions of the Evolutionary Salon participants

1)  What are the things you liked or valued most?

The most valuable aspect of ES2, for me, was the conscious work of creating an increasingly conscious field amongst and between the eighty participants.  The core of this aspect of the conference took place in the evening debriefs sessions when people gathered to reflect on the day and to discern what should be called forth the following day.  In saying this, I do not suggest that everyone at the entire event was not also contributing to building this collective field.  Of course, everyone contributed.  But for me, I believe very few people on the planet have a direct experience of collective consciousness.  Further, I believe that everyone at the January salon had, at least in some fleeting moments, a direct experience of collective consciousness.  And, for me, this was more than enough for one four-day event.  Yes, I have frustrations with some things that happened.  Yes, I have thoughts that I would like to 'push' people to more vulnerable levels of interaction.  But deep in my heart and soul, I believe people need to softly come to ever deeper vulnerabilities in their own pace and time.  When I read suggestions of more rigorous exercises, such as Jean-Francoise's or Tim's, I feel a flutter of anxiety. . . not because I am afraid of anything they might ask me to do if they were designing a 'rigourous' approach at a future salon because I tend to be much more open about my real life vulnerabilities than the average bear.  I can be so open, in fact, that it wearies many, I think.  I resist a more directed, 'rigourous' approach because I believe that each human being has to come to the 'right' awareness of what it means to be collectively conscious in their exact right time.  Yes, it might be nice to rush evolution but my instincts tell me it cannot be rushed.

 Having said the above, I also have an impulse to respond to some statements that open space might not have been the optimal container for this event.  During the event, I heard quite a lot of buzz with people saying "People MUST be told this" or "People MUST be told that" or "People have to GET this" or "People HAVE to get that."  I read comments that seem to suggest that for some people, they perceive the open space format to be fuzzy and to have lacked focus.  Again, I say, it might be nice to rush evolution but my instincts tell me that when people are free to follow what has heart and meaning for them, they are doing what they need to do.  It does not seem very evolutionary, to me, to think that it might be best to tell people how to spend their time.  If someone offers a session at a salon that they are absolutely certain everyone needs to attend because they are certain that what they offer is exactly what everyone needs to know, and no one shows up at that session, well, then people did not, in fact, need to know what that person offered.  I am pretty sure that it is not evolutionary to think we can tell each other what they need to know, what they need to do, etc.  Speaking only for myself, if future salons have lectures and presentations that everyone is expected to attend, then I probably won't come.  I do think we can do a better job of setting the context for the May salon.  I hope the May salon will begin with a presentation by Michael, for example.  I hope the planners think deeply into what is needed in May and that 'they' set a theme for each day of the May salon, to continue to maintain at least a minimal sense of shared context from one day to the next.  And I hope all of the people with great expertise will offer sessions, which could include lectures, of course, and that all the people that want to attend those sessions will go.  But for me, the single most important aspect of a salon should be a deep freedom within each individual to follow, in each moment, what has heart and meaning for them.  Truly, I believe the experience of this kind of freedom, in a collective of evolutionary thinkers and doers, is the essence of collective consciousness.  We are past the time when one of us can dare to say we know what is right for the next person in any given moment.  Yes, we can be full of passion and expertise and yes, the world needs our passion and expertise. . . . but I can tell you, that when I am free to choose to attend a lecture, I listen with my whole being when I show up to listen.  I can also tell you that when I am 'forced' to listen to a lecture, I tend to skip the lecture. Or, in the case of the Whidbey Institute, I tend to go for a walk.

2)  What could be improved, and how?

I agree that we can set a better context around thegreatstory for the May salon.  But I also think we can do a better job of explaining that an evolutionary salon is a living laboratory of experimentaion in collective consciousness.  I believe that spending four days with sixty five people all striving to gain an embodied experience of collective consciousness is actually at least as important as thegreatstory context. Well, for me personally, the experiment in collective consciousness is the most important thing.

But what does this mean when I say 'an experiment in collective consciousness'?  I think we could do a better job of inviting people into 'an experiment in collective consciousness'.  I think we could be more explicit about how the event is designed, how it will be held by the hosts from day to day.  

I think we could, maybe, try to explain to people that coming together for four days and consciously committing to steadily listening to the middle is the experiment, is evolution in action.  I am not sure.  I need to think a lot more about how I would set the context for the 'collective consciousness experiment'.

One thing I want to 'tell' people (even though I am no longer sure there is much point in telling people what they need to know or think. . . .) is that they need to come to several salons.  I think people need to have repeated experiences experimenting with collective consciousness in order to really begin to embody it.  Keeping in mind that I believe the experiment in collective consciousness is as important as the context of thegreatstory, I do not believe this is something most people can really 'get' with a one off participation at an evolutionary salon.  

If an evolutionary salon is simply a vehicle for getting information out about the greatstory, then, yes, I suppose a 'one-off' can get the job done.  But if another central reason for holding the salons is to see what can happen when a group of people begin to grow a deep, rich, shared experience of ongoing collective consciousness, then I don't think this can happen for most people by coming to one event. 

I have read comments that people wanted to see more action plans.  I love the comments where people are talking about wanting to see us 'scale up', to come up with plans to bring the story of evolution to large scales of humanity.  I want to see large scale efforts unfold in the world, too, especially efforts lead by people with a clear understanding of thegreatstory.  But it is my personal hunch that we have to build our collective consciousness more effectively, that we have to learn how to build a colelctive consciousness before we can scale it up and spread it to the masses.  Again, I don't think large scale action can come without building first a different consciousness between ourselves.  I have a hunch that this will be slow work at first but that it will rapidly scale up.  I would prefer that someone could come to one salon and then be able to change the world but I am not sure we are quite at that stage of development. 

I keep thinking about a flock of geese and how hundreds or thousands of geese can fly in alignment to each other, becoming, it seems to me, one unit for at least the time of one flight.  Then a flock might land and the geese revert to being individual geese, drinking water and eating, before arising into the scale again in unison.  I think that for groups of brilliant thinkers all engaged in some kind of relationship to the evolutionary story to come together, soar into action in large scale ways to 'save' humanity, while simultaneously living their individual lives requires new collective skills.  Until a flock of humans can soar in a consciously held, collective-alignment, there are no lecture/workshop formats that can impose this capacity onto people.  It might be nice to be able to hurry it up and it is my hunch that once large chunks of humanity become more adept at 'flocking in alignment with one another', that things will shift very quickly.  But I don't think the capacity-building can be done in four days.

 So I have a question that i would love to hear everyone's feedback on:  how do YOU think we can create a conscious, collective capacity to remain in steady alignment with large groups of people?

For me, this new collective capacity cannot come from someone telling me what I need to know.  For me, it is all about sensing into the middle.  How would YOU train sixty five people to better sense into the collective middle of sixty five people?  For me, this is the design challenge for the May salon.

3)  How do you imagine your gifts contributing to the future of this
movement (of which Evolutionary Salons are but a part)?

I am very good at holding the collective consciousness as it unfolds in groups.  One of the many things that humans have to shift is we have to begin acknowledging that people often have gifts that have not always been valued.  One of my gifts is that I am a high empath, deeply intuitive and more sensitive than the 'average' person.  My main gifts for the salons would be the evening debrief work at an event.  I am very good at sensing the energy, discerning what wants to emerge next.  I remind anyone still reading of my money circle at the January salon:  I was pretty much channeling the collective consciousness we had all co-created and I was only able to do it because I have been a tuning fork for the whole four days.  I hardly went to any sessions and I have had some regrets about that, esp. when I have heard buzz about sessions, but my 'work' was to be a tuning fork.  Do I sound flaky?  Maybe.  I very much regret missing so many sessions in january but I know the work I was doing was quite real and that I made an important contribution to the co-creationg of the field that just about everybody appreciated on the last day.  I believe we had to collectively work for three days to get that fourth great day together.  And I believe that the most people get together and practice this kind of collective work, the more quickly we will get to the kind of day we all appreciated on the last day of the January salon.  Wouldn't it be wonderful to be in that kind of spce for four days?  How can we co-create that kind of space if we don't keep getting together to practice?  Anyway, this is something I am good at, my gift to the evolutionary salons.

I am also pretty good at administrative work but I have a rigid streak when it comes to details.  I would like to be more flexible but I know myself pretty well.  I am good at designing an administrative system and managing it but I am not a very good 'staff' person.  I think someone 'good with details' has to have a bit of a 'rigid' streak because that's how the details get taken care of but I don't like the dragon lady inside me that sometimes pops out when details go awry.  I'm good in the back office, hopeless at the front desk.  Which is why I have arranged, for example, for a professional hospitality person to work the check-in desk for the May salon. 

I also think I can help to design the way the spirit/energy of money is held as we build our collective work.  I would like to help create a constellation of containers to hold this emerging 'movement'.  I think there is a role for a nonprofit, for a for-profit and, maybe, a foundation to fundraise and feed the movement.  I think we might create a 'new' for-profit corporation, one based on the principles of associative economics and one that might attract investors willing to limit the return on their investment because the right investors would be people who have a new expectation about the kind of return they need.  I think we could find investors who would consider seeing an evolutionary salon movement grow and prosper as a meaningful 'return on their investment'. . . that, and a few percentage points of profit.  I think we could create economic containers will new, associative, economic values. Such containers would explicltly ban unlimited profits and unlimited growth and would explicitly limit the kinds of profits 'shareholders' could achieve.  Just thinking aloud. . . . but this is an area where I think I could gift the salon movement with a lot of good ideas.