A powerful metaphor
for the interacative merging of numerous seeding ideas comes from the authors of The Cultural
Creatives: How 50
Million People Are Changing the World:
Imagine a hundred rivers
from the North American continent
flowing
together into the
Atlantic Ocean
. Heated
by the sun,
they
create a new Gulf
Stream that reaches
all the way to
Europe
. The
current is almost
invisible at the surface,
because
unlike a river, it
has no clearly visible boundaries.
But
within itself, it supports a
different kind
of life than
the wider
ocean.
We believe that something like this is happening
now in the life
of
our larger culture. Influences of different kinds are
converging
and creating a general movement for change.
I
believe, like you, the key is how we together learn to operate out
of a quite other modus operandi than what most of us agree is a patently
world-destroying construct, and one shallow but meaningful
descriptor is that 15%/85% divide, which is one of many reasons your
ideas are so exciting.
Your dynamic model is
making headway in highly exclusive networks, but this is something
so immanently helpful, it needs to expand its immediate and direct
influence vertically as well as horizontally within the
comparatively ethereal circles within which you customarily move.
Nor do I think a trickle down from the top should be seen as
‘the answer’ per se, although that’s certainly an essential
contribution.
You are speaking about things that are happening and being
recognized within many conceptual frames of reference.
Some kind of merger, if not a veritable “rosetta
stone,” needs to become accessible to everyone, that
everyone recognizes from their own experiences – internal and
communal languaging – and even reality models.
Bottom line is, the most powerfully affecting referents are
going to be those recognized by the most people and that are most
inclusive and universal. But we ever must honor the reality of
different strokes for different folks; not everyone is going to see
it the same. And yet given many roads and markers, such as the
hundred rivers analogy, this should bring us closer to recognizing
together, in spite of our preferences, that they are [heart-wise]
same-same. The
more people see themselves, recognize their own understanding [or
they would not be able to recognize others as same-same], the more
easily they will be able to assimilate other living metaphors for
their very personal experiences. In
this way we are better enabled, across the widest disparity of
seeming differences, to perceive in each other, and each other’s
experiences and articulations of those experiences and derived
meanings what is essentially the same living dynamic manifestation
from Within, which is where the primary credit is due.
I really think it’s a mistake to concentrate on what
looks like merely a top-down leadership phenomenon, and I’m sure
you don’t mean it this way in any case. I recall you
expressed a sensitive concern about avoiding the
done-to-death-and-good-riddance classical hierarchical
model. And in the meantime, you simply do what you
are most called to do within the affinitive networks that call you
within the management systems you are given to work with.
Maybe this has been waiting simply for the right
opportunities to present themselves, where others would then pick up
the ball and run with it into still other unaware populations,
where- and however that might naturally develop.
I guess you could say that’s exactly what I’m doing.
Because
the fact is, this awakening process is occurring, emphasis on
spontaneously, in people from all walks of life and all over the
world, mostly by far on the basis of one by one, through the kinds
of Experience that have lived in each of you.
Your revolutionary concept needs to be thrown into the
cooking pot with all the others, stirred up, and mellowed into a
savory stew we can all enjoy, that we can all recognize and
appreciate from our very personal points of view. Imagine a
community pot to which everyone was welcome to contribute.
And the people brought all sorts of things – carrots,
broccoli, tomatoes, collard greens, various spices and herbs, oil,
salt, and so forth. Each
person feels to be a contributor, and as all are later served they
each appreciate the whole and are in turn appreciated for their recognizable
contribution.
So
that regardless of what angle we may be seeing from, we can, as much
as possible, all begin to see we are experiencing and talking about
basically the same thing. Same-same.
That’s a thrilling discovery for anyone when they realize
others can identify with their own most personal experiences of this
nature. It’s another
enactment of what happened when the psychiatrist Raymond Moody, Jr.
published Life After Life, in which he identified [labeled]
near-death experiences [NDEs].
A
typical example of what happened when NDErs discovered Moody and his
book: Dannion Brinkley had his first NDE in 1978, and for the first
year after, he and everyone who knew him thought he was crazy
because that’s all he could talk about, and it sounded awfully
religious for a man who was a self-acknowledged "assassin for
the US government" [Special Forces, Vietnam].
But he didn’t have a recognizable context with which to
convey it and all the meaning and purpose that came with the
package. But someone
tipped him off about Dr. Moody’s conception, and suddenly
everything made sense. And
he was able to calm down and focus on what to do with all this in a
way he could not begin to imagine previously.
In fact Moody’s book proved to be a
phenomenal godsend for
untold numbers of people who had had experiences of this nature --
almost as dramatically transformative in impact as the NDE itself!
Their experiences and the cultural and belief structures
within which they each had lived were as diverse as Humanity itself.
Without such a universal identifier, it’s true that some
might mutually recognize the out-of-body component which
would in itself be a great comfort and liberator for them, sharing a
mutually validating basis for their experiences.
Some saw a Light or Light being, but not everyone.
Some met deceased loved ones, not everyone did, however.
For some NDErs, there was a prophetic element they would
together be able to relate to. For
many, again, not all, there was a life review.
Some found themselves in an infinite and infinitely
comforting dark Void rather than Light.
But it was Moody who first listed many if not all these in a
context that brought it all together so that, it seemed like almost
overnight, suddenly NDE became a virtual household word, seen for
what it is as a type of experience potentially available to
everyone.
This needed to be taken to the next level, which Rhea A.
White did so well with her “exceptional human experience
paradigm.” That’s a
large piece of what this web project has been focused on up to this
point.
But even this can and needs to be expanded.
Her work is not widely known, which I consider to be part of
my work. But her model
is not the only one now. There
is your work and that of Arjuna Ardagh; there are scientists from a
number of different disciplines, including not only physics, but
biology; certainly religions and various spiritual pathfinders,
starting with perhaps even Goethe and Swedenborg, not to mention the
original Gnostics and other pathfinders before and since, of every
description, who were trying to
make sense of all that pointed to this other-dimensional existence,
and an amazing array of metaphysical models – alchemy, Steiner’s
Theosophy among the best-known in the West, and in the East, the
“consciousness adventures of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, also
Sri Ramakrishna who undertook to discover the Divine through all the
major religions, and .... whoa, hoss, don't get me started!
Not all
of them share the same inclusivity, but they each explore a wide
swathe of the mapping process that invariably overlaps with
others’ mapping ventures. This
is what AtL / wHe strives to bring forward, the idea that we need to
look at all these treasures together to see what they have in
common, where they are mutually corroborative, especially in their
methods for cultivating and processing and integrating Experiences
in the fertile intermingling of the “two worlds.”
We need to let go our little exclusivities and be like a more
loving and whole human family, emphasis on inclusive. We're
all trying to make sense of the larger life reality of our
existence, even if we forget that's what we're doing sometimes,
maybe sometimes for whole lifetimes. But there have been, are,
and will continue to be individuals and perhaps even whole groups
who get genuine peeks into this larger life and our relationship and
purposefulness within it. Rather than keep "going
parochial," we could gain so much more through circling our
wagons across the grand prairie of our existence and take an
accounting of our valuable assets as a single species. What's
worked? What honestly hasn't? Where to we see patterns
that are productive toward advancing our especially Experiential
knowledge and as beings of eternity. There are some very basic
things we need to get clear on like that. A little
inventorying and 'studying on the subject' in a more organized way
and together would be a whole new turn of events on this little
marble, don't you think? But this work requires Presence and
Dialogue and a field of genuine mutual regard, not to mention,
collective regard for The Field of the Future that we honor and work
within.
On CollectiveWisdomInitiative.org,
Juanita Brown tells a story about the early days of the United Farm
Workers when they were trying to help farm laborers in a particular
dispute, but as a labor organization they were not allowed to talk
to the laborers, nor were the laborers allowed to leave the farm
property to speak with this group. How could the UFW help if
they couldn't even talk with workers? Everyone was about to
give up, even Cesar Chavez, whose group this was. Chavez
called a meeting of the whole UFW community in this area and asked
for any and everyone to come forward with just any possible ideas.
The idea was not
to discuss and debate, but just to ""listen to every voice
that wants to be heard." The meeting went on and on and
many people had suggestions or insights to share, but nothing seemed
to offer a real breakthrough. When everyone was about ready to
give up and go home, an old woman who had not spoken hesitantly
said, “Well,
I know I am not qualified, but there was something...I had an idea,
maybe just a small idea, but maybe it can help. .." She
suggested maybe only God could help now and that they could build a
small chapel and hold a daily Mass and prayer vigil across from the
entrance to this agribusiness where the workers were located.
Ultimately this is what made all the difference and turned things
around. The name of the story is "The Least Qualified
Among Us."
The
elegant, heartful arts of Presence and Dialogue, in the ways
you have developed them share a profoundly
beautiful ancestry we can't even begin to guess.
Maybe the AtL / wHe can be another sacred space at the crossroads
where we can meet and re-member, give each other a chance to speak,
find our bearings with no one left out finally, and, as Mellen
Thomas Benedict suggests, join hands and walk out of hell
together.
=-
Inclusivity is IN; exclusivity is OUT.
I believe our human / planetary existence and quality of life
depend on this understanding and pathmaking.
We need to know that regardless of ways of communicating and
making sense of these experiences, which we must share and explore
with each other, it is the experiences themselves that are
universal. Here is where
we truly discover, as ONE, as so very many Experiencers tell us, the
universality of the MORE of our Humanity, which Dr. Jaworski and
also Dr. Maturana recognize as the heart, as love.
Their power is in their universality – we can all relate.
There’s a clear resonance in our bodies that says YES,
regardless of language or model or authority or lack of authority,
or even type of Experience. Through
the Heart, through Love, we all know ourselves to be the Self we all
are. Period, and as Dr.
Jaworski puts it, end of
paragraph.
=-
With
the participatory influence of a number of people who recognize and
are drawn to help manifest this future seeking to emerge, I believe
we have the potential to make a significant contribution toward
healing that infamous 15/85% divide and
the kinds of values that keep the machinery of all that operational.
Like Humberto Maturana, and all of you, I too feel in a very
real and dynamic and accessible way that transforms people – as,
for example, Dr. Jaworski has discovered through his numerous
collapsing-boundary experiences – that love is the answer that is
capable of breaking through. It
has to be experiential. A
pervasive re-education that articulates the new seeding pattern
these Experiences awaken people to needs to be implemented not only
from the top down, but as widely as possible from the ground-up as
well. In any case this
type of consciousness is growing among us like millions of
burgeoning green shoots after a devastating forest fire, popping up
everywhere, even amid fresh burns, red coals and smoldering ash.
=-
I
am reminded
of Dr. Scharmer’s wedding analogy – the
“joining
of two separate elements of a larger field.”
15/85 ; top-down / ground-up ; visible / invisible ;
materialism [or science] / spirituality [or religion]. Just
as in a worthy marriage, the two joined as one are not only more
than the sum of their parts, they become, as one relational whole, a
third and unique being or force or consciousness.
Ahhh-TheLight introduces you to the natural development of a
“third way” that can be said to be the outcome of a marriage of
this sort that is quietly transforming our Human consciousness, to
which Theory U, Presence, Dialogue, and Synchronicity -- and the
power of STORY -- are specially
relevant.
=-
…
experientially to reveal the new world that is already right here in
our midst and all around us if we can but see!
These ideas need to be seen in a wider context of similar
ideas, which lends its own credibility to your work and justifiably
that of others as well.
The validity found in the multiplicity is something to
celebrate!
=-
This
has been said elsewhere, but just in case you haven't noticed
it: Shifting from
my past to my future, I realize I’m dealing with great forces and
beings incarnate and discarnate.
I have to do this – this unique Voice is so important.
A “glamour shot” alone [iShift, Ken Wilbur, etc.] without
this
grassroots movement to
contrast to
it would be a terrible mistake. This
collective grassroots Movement’s voice, ultimately
that of “the meek”
-- those who are the bulk of Humanity as a whole -- that
Voice
is essential
in the global consciousness as a whole and in the worldwide dialog.
This is how that 15/85 divide will be healed.
