Spiraling up...
Submitted by George Por on October 21, 2006 - 10:56.
What could become possible if we had interactive concept maps of the forces that are shaping our world, including all shades of the evolutionary movements, transformational technologies, and their inter-relatedness? I have been holding that question and earlier variations of it for two decades, as central to working for a better world guided by conscious evolution.
The night of our knowledge cafés and my workshop during the Learning Day of the European Commission, Toke and I stayed in Helen's house in Brussels. In the morning I had a chance to invite him to see with me into that "What could become possible" question and sharpen it if possible.
As I was talking about why that question has so profound meaning to me, and why it is so essential to large-scale evolutionary breakthroughs, I started doodling.
This was one of those times when I really wished we had a recording device handy but we didn't. So, what you see below is only an outline of the key ideas from our rich conversation about the Art of Hosting conscious evolution, using the sketch on the left as my memory aid.
1. The "what will become possible" will be clearer if we engaged the "how to map the unmappable" question, the path to which starts with one or two individuals who hold a lived, next-level pattern that they are passionate to host.
2. Then we need to form a hosting team and invite the practitioners of the various disciplines, as key stakeholders in mapping the unmappable, to help drawing the picture in which most dots connect. The "connecting the dots" expression refers to, in this context, the areas of where the separately originated, upward moving and expanding vortices touch and interpenetrate. Each vortex represents one of the evolutionary disciplines and its community of practitioners.
3. We need a couple of good patterners on the hosting team, cartographers of our Emerging Planetary Reality. They should include people who not only have an eye for grasping large, complex patterns of meaning but can also express them in forms that can be navigated by attenuating or amplifying the representation's complexity, as needed.
4. What can become possible through the "AoH of Conscious Evolution" process as an infinite game is nothing less than the emergence of the next of level of our world and human relationships.
Where we go from here? My sense is that we need to expand the conversation, by inviting those whom we sense could be good mates for this particular journey, co-crafting the Call to a hosting team and form the team. I can't see further than that but don't even need to, the process will reveal itself.
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Presencing the potential
Next comment by George/Duri,
Beloved Anne and other lovers of Emergence,
Inspired by Aviv’s reply, I stepped into the fire of presencing the potential, what is enfolded in this very now. (Presencing is a full-body experience, when the whole of who we are connects with the Whole.)
Thank you soooo much, Aviv, for sharing the emerging themes from the evolutionary dialogue between Barbara and you, which you recorded 2 days ago. Look at an example, below, of how the generative memes of your dialogue may travel and interact with other generative memes. They are pregnant packets of evolutionary intelligence flowing through the nodes of the field that we are when we tune with it in full engagement.
“When our emergence is merged (e-merged) at that point of ‘full engagement’ we become a fractal of the unified field.” -- Barbara Marx Hubbard and Aviv Shahar
Like an imaginal cell awakens another one to experience their exquisite resonance, your words touched on something I doodled last year, inspired by an generative dialogue between Toke Møller and me. When you look at the attached sketch, rest your eyes on the small spheres where the spirals connect.
In my morning sensing of what is I needed I heard again Barbara’s words that I quoted in so many places, “The larger social structures are proving to be inadequate to solve the problems they're creating. New social innovations are emerging everywhere, but they are not sufficiently connected or empowered. So right now, any effort that we can make to connect and create greater synergy and participation in this awakening process is probably the most important thing we can do."
The synergistic co-arising of the spirals--evolutionary learning communities--calls for connecting our circles, thus creating/discovering new patterns of consciousness.
“When we bubble up in conversation, it is one neuron firing for connection with another neuron - so that this part of the Universal Mind may be lit up.” -- Barbara Marx Hubbard and Aviv Shahar
Yes! Your use of the “neuron” metaphor awakened the possibility that I see for learning from the role of neurons’ firing in memory formation. Memories that enable new learning to stick, are created in the collective mind “when clusters of hundreds or thousands neurons fire in a unique pattern.” -- The Mature Mind, by Gene Cohen
Dr. Cohen also says, “The more often a particular pattern is stimulated. The more sensitive and permanent are the connections between the neurons in the pattern. This process of memory formation is summarized by the phrase ‘neurons the fire together, wire together’.”
That importance and possibility of that “wiring together” is beautifully summed up by Ken Carey’s words: ""Electronic media is to be one of love's most powerful and effective tools of transformation during the last days, facilitating education and catalyzing widespread awakening."
May the vision of Evolutionary Nexus http://www.evolutionarynexus.org/node/12 that came through a few of us but not yet found its full expression, be heard, seen, and at service, in the context of the Radiant Network conversation.
Anne, thank you for your wisdom and dedication to keep your deep inquiry alive in yourself and invite us into it. In gratitude, I will hold space for this river of conversation, with you and all those who’ll step in it, and help co-realizing its highest potential.
Co-evolving with you,
george
The narritive, the story of this emergence
Response by Aviv, email May 9th, '07.
Thank you Anne for your courage and leadership and for these delicious questions…
You say: "With this note, I am wondering do you feel “heard”, “seen”, and “loved”—even by the people with whom you are conversing? Do you feel you are engaging fully (using all your intelligences!) with each other and the whole in this exploration?"
I am not sure… I don’t know… I am struggling to answer these… I am therefore caused to reverse the questions: Do I “hear”, “see”, and “love” the people with whom I am conversing?
When I do, when I “hear”, “see”, and “love” what is emerging on the inside and with the people with whom I am conversing I AM fully engaged.
Yesterday, Barbara Marx Hubbard and I recorded a second conversation in a series of evolutionary dialogues. We are experimenting, exploring and developing in these conversations the narrative, the story and the theology of this emergence as it now unfold for us. It resonates with these same reasons you describe here: "We are now entering a cycle of conscious collective-ism—wherein human collective life will be/is individuals living their spiritual practices entering collective manifestations of life force as they are consciously aware of spirit moving them. Collective life in this case, arises from individuals living in harmonic resonance with ALL that is."
A theme (a thread of consciousness) we explored in our call yesterday is that
- The Universe (the co-creative field) is purposed with the emergence of consciousness.
- "As above so below" - we experience this purpose in the yearning to develop consciousness ourselves.
- We further experience it in the yearning to be witnessed and to give witness, to communion, to connect, to discover ourselves as part of the greater Whole.
- When our emergence is merged (e-merged) at that point of ‘full engagement’ we become a fractal of the unified field. We call this experience and state of radiance 'collective intelligence', 'greater consciousness', 'I-Thou' and variety of other names given depending on the shared frame of reference, the Mystery School, lineage or spiritual practices we come from and are engaged in. Our search for new language is part of this emergence for evolution to become conscious of itself.
- The Universe is purposed with this emergence for it's own evolution. As it evolves now, this Universal region (our Universal zip code) seeks to be absolved and we seek to be absolved within it from darkness. This is the nature and meaning of our current crisis.
- The evolution of the universe is purposed to release God from its loneliness by having the 'Universal Human' now arising in us to co-participate in the creative act.
- In this we are each a neural-end within the greater brain-mind of the universe.
- When we bubble up in conversation, it is one neuron firing for connection with another neuron - so that this part of the Universal Mind may be lit up.
- This is how we allow and help God-the-Universe to discover itself and its own evolving conversation through us.
This is how I perceive and experience what you say in:"Here’s what I am receiving about what I am doing at this time:
In exploring the nature of consciousness and what people are calling “co-creation”, I am participating as a “one” sensing/feeling/intuiting being-- guided by “The One”, known by many names: God, the Field of Universal Consciousness, the One Source, etc."
Thank you Anne. I look forward to discover our next neural connections in this conversation with others on this list, those I have met before and those I am meeting here for the first time...
Blessings,
Aviv Shahar
www.ambercoaching.com
The questions that I am exploring
Sent by email by Anne Stadler, May 9, '07
My new mantra: “Inside, beyond ideas of right and wrong, there is a field...I’ll meet you here!” with homage to Rumi!
Hello folks:
I am sending these musing to YOU because you are part of the conversation I’ve been guided to notice and participate in. Many of you do not know each other. However, you and others you are networked with, are (I believe) exploring some aspect(s) of what I am describing below. These explorations are often happening as we work together— so that if any of us is actually participating with other fellow explorers in a meeting or workshop activity together, we have the opportunity for bits and pieces of this exploration.
Sometimes our encounters are in small circles: Mixed Nuts, Souls on Deck, Fluency circles etc. It seems to me, we are each being called to come together in various configurations to explore the underlying questions and meaning of this time in our human evolution.
With this note, I am wondering do you feel “heard”, “seen”, and “loved”—even by the people with whom you are conversing? Do you feel you are engaging fully (using all your intelligences!) with each other and the whole in this exploration?
I am writing this to fully “show up”, and to engage with each of you.
I realize that I have seldom put into writing the hypothesis I am exploring. So here is a very short version:
The human species is right now dealing with survival issues as the demands of our next cycle of evolution emerge. I am part of that creative emergence.
The first cycle of human evolution was living collectively--as an embedded member of collective life, with one’s role determined by the connection between need of collective and one’s own innate pattern (what we call “Aboriginal” culture).
The next cycle was individuation—expansion of each “cell” (AKA person) to its ultimate potential (“Western” culture), with collective life being the result of many factors: power and the need for order being crucial ones.
We are now entering a cycle of conscious collective-ism—wherein human collective life will be/is individuals living their spiritual practices entering collective manifestations of life force as they are consciously aware of spirit moving them. Collective life in this case, arises from individuals living in harmonic resonance with ALL that is (no separation between “inside me” and “outside me”). (Thich Nhat Hanh’s “The Next Buddha will be a collective.”)
It feels to me as if we are all taking the baby steps of this cycle—being guided to create opportunities for ourselves and others to come together and learn what we need to learn. Essentially we are finding each other.
It is obvious that this hypothesis assumes there is a universal field (consciousness, spirit, implicit order, the No sphere) and a process of emergence (incarnation) into physical form, and then back into the universal field (dying). Such an assumption seems to be fundamental to human consciousness on this plane. It is explicated in many religions and spiritual practices, as well as in some aspects of physics and scientific thought.
Here’s what I am receiving about what I am doing at this time:
In exploring the nature of consciousness and what people are calling “co-creation”, I am participating as a “one” sensing/feeling/intuiting being-- guided by “The One”, known by many names: God, the Field of Universal Consciousness, the One Source, etc.
The degree to which I (one) live in guidance all the time, is the degree to which I (one) feel happy, at ease, in harmony, etc. AND the degree to which everything seems to be synchronistic, and work is love made visible. I am called to explore this in my daily life, in making all choices, etc. My practice is living in fluent communication and learning how to BE in guidance as I live my life. A habit of observation and inquiry opens my path. The practice of “hearing, seeing and loving” accesses life force in all my encounters (with all beings). I call this radiant networking.
My observation is: there are many of us and many circles exploring versions of this hypothesis. As I told Lee recently: it’s like bubbles bubbling up all over the place. If any of us wants to explore with others, we just need to choose a time and place and invite.
AND, the question arises: Are these bubbles and trickles part of a stream, a flowing river, an ocean? (a slime mold? :-))
Radiant Networking IS happening!! We will put up the RadiantNetworking.net website as a form this summer (right, Mark??!) That will be a place where we can all “post” our invitations, musings, inquiries, calendars, links to each other, etc. It will be a visible signal of the presence of this conversation/inquiry/exploration/ playground.
What is stimulated in you by this communication? What is wanting to happen?
Love and blessings to all of you!!! And, borrowing from Arun: thank you, thank you, thank you! for all you are and BE!!
Anne
What I am grateful for to the year that went by...
The morning of my birthday, a couple of days ago, I spent some time contemplating what I am grateful for to the year that went by. In my mind's eye, I revisited places and people, the connections with which felt particularly inspiring. I noticed the emergence of generative, self-organizing circles, seeds of co-arising and expanding spirals of creative, life-affirming social energies.
(Ria made a little blog entry about her experience of this evening.)
My attention sampled the ones that I am in touch with and feel moved to support. It felt like a constellation wanted to happen, a sensing of how they relate to one another, and a discovery of patterns of high potential for breakthroughs to a new stage of social innovation.
I was also intrigued by the possibility to experiment with a new form of group constellation that may make visible the invisible dynamics of those collective players in the global social field of Emergence, using objects as their representatives that we can place on the table in various spatial relations with one another.
So, why not use my birthday as an excuse to come together to celebrate Emergence, by co-sensing that tiny part of its field that we can access to those arising circles that I am connected with and holding in loving attention. I prepared the objects and when my friends arrived, I told them the story of my contemplation and after dinner, I introduced the objects representing the circles, an updated and hyperlinked list of which follows.
1. A circle of European friends, seasoned practitioners of facilitating transformation in self, organizations, and society, was formed in a retreat last December to discover and realize its highest contribution to the good of the whole. We jokingly call it a "Jedi circle." It is concerned by large systems change, the future of Europe, and being ready when there's a genuine call for support from us.
2. The conveners team of "Collective Intelligence Convergence" is an initiative that I started with Tom Atlee a few years ago. That idea went through many incarnations. It has been gathering momentum since last Summer, thanks to the future-responsive commitment of the current conveners, a source document called " Collective Intelligence as a Field of Multi-disciplinary Study and Practice," and the support from the invitees of the Convergence itself that will be an online-and-on-the-phone process to start with.
3. A co-initiation circle of the now forming institute to support the work of presencing, inspired by the forthcoming book by Otto Scharmer on Theory U, copious excerpts of which are downloadable from his website.
4. Fledgling communities of practice (CoP) of CoP cultivators and facilitators in my client systems that nowadays, tend to be international organizations. Those CoP are all in early stages of their lifecycle (potential and coalescing) and deserve a lot of tender loving care from me; not only because that's the only line of work that I am actually paid for but also because given the high visibility of those clients, the success of the communities may have wide-reaching ripple effects on organizational and social innovation in many countries.
5. The Art of Hosting Fellowship / is, in the words of one of its fellow members, Chris Corrigan, "a global community of practitioners dedicated to uncovering the new and emerging forms of meaningful conversation and organizational shape." It's been around for years but I became involved only last Fall, which happened to coincide with a new, more expansive phase of AoH work. I am also a member of the hosting team of the AoH Europe event that will take place in June 2007.
6. The Art of Harvesting conversation circle is an informal group of friends engaged in discovering and developing successful practices in documenting and collaborative meaning making of productive conversations held both locally and non-locally. You can learn more about it in Chris' blog and in the Harvesting forum of Evolutionary Nexus .
7. The Collective Intelligence Practitioners Initiative (CIPI) in Denmark started by the recently departed dear friend, Finn Voldtofte . CIPI is a very alive part of Finn's legacy, his wondrous gift to moving the edge of the evolution of consciousness. Recent lessons from the CIPI Salons are documented here . I met with CIPI members at the Moving the Edge event that they helped organizing last March, and can hardly wait to see them again, end of this month, in Aarhus.
8. The Rivendell Gathering of evolutionary hosts occurred last November, on Bowen Island, British Columbia. What called me to fly there, besides the company of friends, was this paragraph of the invitation: "As an emerging edge of conscious evolution, its evolving nature demands new, transcendent, coherent, integral leadership and facilitation models, organizational forms, cultural norms, and social systems based in the deep patterns and fields that we sense at work in the world. This evolving nature invites us to embody, provoke, and transcend (evolve) the fundamental wisdom and insights of our existing practices and understandings.
9. The recently renovated castle of Heerlijckyt that hosted the AoH training and other transformational events, wants to become a new kind of learning center. According Helen Titchen Beeth, the author to of many beautiful Heerlijckyt photos it is "a haven on earth in Vlaams Brabant." In the last month of 2006, a hosting team was formed to steward its journey. I made myself available to them for advice and support, as needed.
10. The World Café Stewardship Dialogue was held in Tomales Bay, California, last August. The purpose of the gathering was "to nurture and deepen the field of collective intelligence through which the World Café community of practice can guide its own development and the evolution of its work, on an ongoing basis." To get a sense of why I went there, read the context of that meeting. There are some photos and graphic facilitation notes from the gathering, posted online.
11. The "Women Moving the Edge" will be an adventurous inquiry into the possibility of women fully stepping in their own and what their role is in moving the edge of evolution. It's a women-only event that I support by spreading the word about it because I think it is of vital evolutionary interest that women awaken to their full power to shape the future, and it seems that event will contribute to it. Let interested women know about it. They can get more information from Ria Baeck,
ria (dot) baeck (at) community-intelligence (dot) com.
12. The Hub in Brussels is a social entrepreneuring idea spearheaded by Simone Poutnik, a friend and associate of mine, and inspired by The Hub in London. I'm looking forward with great interest to what it will become and offered to do some pro bono consulting for them.
Wow! As I read through the list above, I am impressed by all what is moving on the edge, and visible from even my limited, one-person vantage point. And that list is far from being complete! Other conversations that I am involved with includes Evolutionary Enlightenment, the "Nexus for Change" conference, March 22-23, 2007, and with Meg Wheatley about Using Emergence to Take Social Innovation to Scale. It feels like a new world is not only possible but is birthing itself in front of our eyes. If you would doubt it, take a look at the 600-page WorldChanging compendium (A User Guide for the 21st Century) or at that group's website.
Anyway, the point of this post is not to draw an overview of all that is moving forward, which would be impossible. You, the readers and hopefully commenters on this message, together know much more of much more emerging circles and spirals that I can dream of. This post is to share news about an experiment and a method of collaborative mapping the edge of one person's relationship with multiple edge-communities and their relationships with one another.
After dinner, we started with the list, and I placed the corresponding objects on the table, not thinking much initially of their respective positions to each other. They included a brain-shape coral for the Collective Intelligence Convergence, a lotus-shape candleholder for the "Jedi circle," various feathers for other groups, etc., things that I happened to have at home. There were 6 of us around the table and not all of them knew all the groups represented by the objects. So we gave a very brief intro to each of them. Then we started moving the "representatives" on the table to explore how it feels and what we are learning from one position versus another.
At one point, I asked, so what do we want to do with all these? Julian said, the better question would be, what they want to do with each other. That's where the constellation-like part of this exploration really started. In full-fledged constellations people use their body, standing or moving in space, and their felt-sense to draw information from the field of energy that the original question and they called into being by sensing relationships relevant to it. Here, we didn't have a clear question to start with, and the representatives were not people who could have spoken about their inner reactions to occupying this or that spot, facing this or that other representative… Yet, it was amazing how rapidly we discovered a fitting configuration, following Julian's question, with input from all of us sitting at the table. Simone took some pictures and when she will be back from vacation, we will post them.
We felt there's lot more learning from all this than we had a chance to touch on, and decided that we may continue it another day. Meanwhile I insert here one more link because I think this story is also connected with a dream on the Yoga of Shared Attention that I blogged about here.
What if we had a GPS?
What could become possible if we had a good GPS (Global Positioning System) of today's world-changing disciplines and movements, and their inter-relatedness?
What would such a GPS look like? I am referring to a GPS, because I am amazed by the possibilities of present day technology. Look at Wikipedia or this Evolutionary Nexus. In fact, Wikipedia already holds a lot of information on these disciplines and movements. But this information is often incomplete and particularly poorly connected.
I am continually searching for this kind of information/conversation, but I have never found such a good "map". Take SoL, the Society for Organizational Learning. It's a big network, but the website hardly contains any information and provides only few references (with direct links to the Amazon site). And there are many like this.
I would love to contribute to such a web tool, as I think that it would really have the potential to link up and open space for many.
Seeding the field
George wrote in an email (Nov 1st) to the hosting team of the Bowen Island gathering:
Dear Friends,
The hosting team wrote:
> On the other side of the myriad interpretations, conversations and complexity lie these questions: What is the pattern that holds us, what is the potential it holds and what are the practices that bring it to life?
Here are some seeds for furthering our inquiry into them.
The holding pattern I found the most meaningful and inspiring is best expressed in a recent (attached) article on “Using Emergence to Take Social Innovation to Scale” by Med Wheatley and Deborah Frieze. They describe a scaling process from networks to communities of practice to systems of influence. How rapidly our networks (stage 1) can morph into systems of influence (stage 3), depends on how rapidly we can learn hosting and connecting our communities of practice.
The potential that the “Using Emergence to Take Social Innovation to Scale” potential holds is the emergence of collective intelligence at a scale sufficient to address the planetary challenges to human survival. Tom Atlee and I addressed this potential in more depth in our “Collective Intelligence as a Field of Multi-disciplinary Study and Practice,”.
There are two practices that strike me as providing particularly high evolutionary leverage:
A. We need to work with “communities of practice” not only as a metaphor but a specific and rigorous model of collaborative learning and co-creation, which has been explicitly studied and practiced by millions of people around the world for 15 years. Communities of practice go through lifecycles, each of which has a distinct set of challenges and opportunities that hosts and facilitators have to help meeting. I attached a slide from Etienne Wenger, the founding pioneer of the field, which can be useful to our explorations.
B. Among the practices that bring the potential of systems of influence to life, I see an important role for this question: What could become possible if we had good maps of today's world-changing disciplines and movements, and their inter-relatedness? It is discussed in this online forum on The Art of Hosting Conscious Evolution.
Looking forward to see you all at Rivendell!
Co-evolving with you,
George
This inspired Ashley to send this beautiful image by Joel Nakamura.
Smart, interactive map and mapping process
I’m also thinking of an integrated and web-enabled, interactive map and mapping process that help communities and organizations discover and re-discover their most unique function/contribution to the Whole, by being in continuous conversation with the surrounding ecosystem of evolutionary initiatives.
Social Maps, Project Maps, Life Maps
I've been excited about mapping for a long time.
I made a social map for the CommunityWiki: Social Map April 2006. You can see the Evolutionary Salon on it!
I've also been making (and advocating) "life maps" -- maps of the lifetime of an individual. I advocate this as an alterntive to keeping a diary or a journal; I find that it takes less time, and gives a much more insightful high-level view of a person's life. Unfortunately, Amber & I just finished moving, and the server with the images on it is down right now. :P
Finally, and most relevantly, is our CommunityWiki visioning into what we call: "The Project-Space Network."
Which... shoot, it looks like I was hosting the images for that on my computer as well.
Well, in a few days, it should be back up, and I can show you all what we were thinking of.
Regardless, there are a few points that the discussion here brought to mind.
Juanita's answer
Towards a community of evolutionary cartography practice
Dear Rik,
Thank you for asking and responding to the important question: "What and how does it serve? Probably the (always continuing) proces of mapping will generate unexpected links and contacts that will serve positive personal and worldwide changes." Indeed! A good map, continually co-evolving with the territory would certainly increase "the connectivity in the ecosystem of evolutionary initiatives," which is the mission of Evolutionary Nexus.
Your second question is also much appreciated: "HOW COULD SUCH A 'MAP' finally LOOK LIKE and how can it be used?" It will most likely take many shapes, over time, and evolving according to the needs of the global field of emergence that it is serving, and according the tools and capabilities of the emerging community of evolutionary cartography practice.
Mapping: how and what does it serve.
The diagram with spirals
Tenneson wrote:
Thank you friends. I am particularly drawn to the diagram with spirals up from the earth. What is possible in the field? What is possible as more begins to surface? What is possible globally, perhaps galactically, through local convenings, be it as groups or as individuals?
George, I suspect this will be a conversation at Evolutionary Hosts on Bowen Island in a few weeks. It feels to me like there is much energy surfacing here.
<!--[if !supportLists]-->- <!--[endif]-->At World Café Stewards, an open space group on underlying patterns across methods.
<!--[if !supportLists]-->- <!--[endif]-->At Bowling Green University in Ohio next March, a gathering I learned of from Peggy Holman with practitioners, leaders, educators, researchers on whole systems change across varied methods
Something is brewing.
Tenneson