A consciousness perspective

What is Moving The Edge about?

As individuals we can all be seen as entrypoints for consciousness to manifest in the world. (So can all other living beings for that matter – but plants, insects, birds, fish and other animals can’t make the choice of showing up in Aarhus in March, unless they hang around there anyway.)

I use the word consciousness, but I am comfortable with using words like life, love, mystery, spirit, beauty, will of God, evolutionary impulse too, knowing that there are many doorways (words, concepts, experiences of reality) to the nameless. I think that by now, you know what I mean, even if you normally use other concepts, come from a specific tradition of knowledge, or have a specific spiritual practice. We don’t have to agree on this – I only want to pave the way for sensing into what follows:

In an evolutionary perspective we have as individuals served as self aware entrypoints for consciousness for hundreds of thousands of years. And have discovered and evolved social structures like families, tribes, societies, worldwide organizations. In doing so we have learned about being together and acting together. As we have engaged with each other, networks of relationship have come into being, each time forming a field in between us, in the center of the circle, in ”the middle”.

Whenever a ”middle” has come into existence by our giving attention to it, that too has served as an entrypoint for consciousness to flow into the world.

What seems to be happening in our time is, that we have refined our individual skills of being present, and our social skills of being together to a degree, where ”the middles” that can emerge can be so rich entrypoints for consciousness to flow in between us, that we literally can experience a field of collective intelligence (emphasizing the intelligence-aspect of conscioussnes) being present. (By ”experience” I mean direct cognition, not just entertaining an intellectual idea.)

This opens many questions, for instance on the relationship between the individual, the group and the middle,  or on choice; can collective intelligence make choices – does there exist such a thing as collective intellect? Can we engage collective intelligence in service of evolution, health of our planetary home, humanity? How can we do it? What could be supporting practices on the indidual and social level?

Moving The Edge is about creating an intentional gathering for learning into questions like these. ”Intentional” in the sense that this is what we gather for – not for our own individual learnings or outcomes or projects.  We gather to make ourselves available for an inquiry that needs the establishing of a field of collective intelligence to happen. It can only happen if we (or somebody else) do it. It takes each of our individual decision to do what we each have to do, in order to be able to show up and take part.

On the ”cost-side” of that individual decision is the time, the travel, the acommodation cost, the opportunity-cost of other things that could have been done at the same time, etc.

On the ”benefit-side” is......?  To be honest, I don’t think anyone can know that. If we succed as intended, we will bring something new into existence, a vertical rather than a horizontal movement, meaning that it transcends what we can see from this position before the gathering. And maybe it can really only be valued in terms of collective intelligence it self; how well will we as individuals be able to connect with that?

But, also in service of honesty, I have a strong belief that there are benefits on the individual level from being part of an inquiry where ”collective intelligence is engaged to understand collective intelligence” – benefits that will far outweigh the cost-side for those who make the choice to come. The words initiation and transformation on both individual and collective level comes to my mind, although I am aware that it may sound overly solemn.

I think work like this has taken place in many forms, by many people and many places in the last decades. I also think we - by The Caleidoscope Cafe in Hazelwood and the Evolution Salons (to mention those I have recent, direct experience of) - have come to a new level of awareness about this work, so that it makes sense to talk about a phase where collective intelligence becomes aware of it self.

I think we (together with uncounted other initiatives happening at this time) have a possibility of ”keeping the prayer wheels turning”, so that the entrypoints for consciousness in our middles can be sustained and substantiated. In this way more consciousness can flow into the world, more life, more love, more beauty, more mystery, more spirit....

I do think it is important. I don’t think it is important that I or you do it, but if we are the ones for whom this perspective makes sense, then we are the ones that can act upon it.

*”At least one”: There are other perspectives held on Moving The Edge – for instance valuing the get together of peers and pracitioners, sharing the best we know and learning from that. Moving The Edge can also be seen as a European cousin of the Evolutionary Salon community. I don’t think these perspectives conflict with each other. I share this as my perspective, in the spirit of inviting your pespective to be voiced too. Maybe the perspectives wants to play.

I hope to see you in Aarhus in March.

Finn Voldtofte