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George Por’s brilliant visulization of how harvesting boosts collective intelligence.
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Excellent hacks using search terms to take care of Gmail size
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At the Council of Hosts gathering I helped co-convene last November, friends Thomas Arthur and Ashley Cooper gifted us with the most beautiful harvest I have ever seen. Visit the new World Cafe blog to view this short film that says more about our work together with images and music than any written report could ever have done.
And this is a lovely tribute to our friend Finn Voldtofte, who was at this gathering, his last conference, and who held space for us to be better and deeper and more clear at ever turn. Finn’s voice is the only one on the film.
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There is a lovely new translation of the Tao te Ching online, which I discovered thanks to the ever mercurial wood s lot. From the introduction to the Book of the Forest Path:
I am trying to accomplish a couple of things in the translation that follows. First of all, I have a particular philosophical interpretation of Taoism, and I am trying to see how far it can be reflected in a translation. I think it is not compatible with the translations I’ve seen. Second, I’ve tried to make it plain and cool English. My objection to the existing translations is basically philosophical and it is fundamental. I think the going translations (even the ones I like the most (Mitchell’s and Red Pine’s, for example)) still reflect a dualistic metaphysics. They take Taoism to privilege emptiness over existence, inaction over action, yin over yang, and so on. That is understandable and does emerge from the text. But I think the reasons for that are, from a certain view, historical accidents: they reflect a Taoism that is dedicated to a critique of Confucianism. Nevertheless the considered position of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu (another great Taoist sage) is that, finally, both yin and yang, both the world and the emptiness at its heart, must be approached with a perfect affirmation, and that they are, in fact, the same thing. I have tried to apply that insight – surely fundamental to Taoism, throughout the text. So, for example, the first chapter in my view just can’t possibly say that namelessness is good and naming bad, that desirelessness is good and desire bad, and so on. Such views would be more proper to Buddhism, for example.
In addition, the Tao Te Ching is an anarchist political text, and its radical attack on political authority and wealth have often been obscured by translators: I have tried to restore a sense of its pointed political critique, its direct attack on inequalities of wealth and power in ancient China.
Finally, I regard the work as more playful and aware of its paradoxes than most other translations make it out to be. There is a touch of irony, emerging in part from the self-awareness with which it says what it says cannot be said.
I never get tired of reading this book, in its myriad interpretations and translations. It is the best life guide I know of, and has the best sense of itself of any sacred text: what I am about to tell you is a teaching that cannot really be told. It exhorts us to practice.
My own version of the classic, The Tao of Holding Space, is free for you to download, and this summer I will be releasing a printed version as well.
[tags]taoism, tao te ching[/tags]
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I’ve been out of touch all last week, ensconced in a fascinating five day retreat with an organization that is working hard to make Open Space Technology a part of their basic operating system. We were working at a fishing lodge in Campbell River BC all week overlooking the Discovery Passage, which was filled with sea lions, eagles and a small pod of killer whales. I had very limited internet access, and it was actually a great gift to be unplugged during that whole time.
There is lots to harvest from the trip, and several bits and pieces that I’m thinking through, but here is what is on my mind this morning.
This group is using Open Space on a regular basis to take care of the work that is not in the workplans, not in the budget and not necessarily even directly a part of what their organization seems to be about. But what we learned this week is that Open Space, used in this way, takes care of the “bass notes” within an organization. There is a kind of deeper hum within every organization – call it the culture if you like – that supports the work, generates the working environement and connects to the purpose of each person. People who are highly satisfied with their jobs and organization will often feel connected to this deeper field. They resonate with the bass note, the fundamental note of the chord. When this note isn’t present, it feels like work is not connected into a deeper pattern. Understand here that I am talking not about organizational purpose – it runs below that. It is more like organizational inspiration, operating at the level of the spirit of the place. Making Open Space part of the operating system of an organization results in tuning this bass note, or perhaps sounding it again. We have a chance to open space to breathe a little, get some distance from the mundane tasks of our job and ask some of the bigger questions about who we are and where the organization is going.
The folks in this organization are lucky that the upper leadership wants to see things working this way and has provided them with the time and resources both to meet in Open Space and to carry out the small projects starting next week that keep the bass note humming. And of course, we tuned up relationships as well, brought familiarity and warmth to an organization that is spread thinly across the whole country so that people can remember how we were when we were together, something that helps them continue to work virtually.
And a few travel notes…
- There is a nice little espresso shack in Cumberland, a mining and logging town about an hour out of Nanaimo, in the Comox Valley. It’s right on the main street, less that five minutes off the Island Highway.
- The staff at National rent-a-car in Nanaimo are great. Always friendly, generous with their time, and helpful. They’ll pick you up from the ferry terminal and drop you off, but be warned that although the close at 6pm, their boss told them not to drop people off at the ferry after 5pm. It’s a bit of a pain, and I didn’t know that going in, so there was a 7$ cab fare to the terminal. Not a big deal, but it was a surprise. They were very apologetic.
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Anyone who has stood by a fast flowing stream cannot fail to have been struck by the endlessly shifting pattern of eddies and swirls. The turmoil of the torrent is revealed, on closer inspection, to be a maelstrom of organized activity as new fluid struct(tags: self-organization organization)