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Category Archives "Uncategorized"

108257391650935805

April 21, 2004 By Chris Uncategorized

Dave Pollard on recovering our sensuousness:

So here we are, unable to remember the way home, unable to escape the prison, the solitary confinement into which our minds have been so seductively and systematically lured by the culture and language of civilization that now forms and informs the very neural structures of our brain. Only in art, in poetry, in wilderness, in music, and in the rare book that attempts to liberate us with those very abstract words and text-images that carried us away in the first place, those clumsy tools that are simply not up to the task, can we even hear the echoes of the world we have left behind.

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108257250356892066

April 21, 2004 By Chris Uncategorized

In working with groups, especially doing planning, I am constantly struck by how hard it is for people to move from ideas to action. A lot of the time people are happy to brainstorm, and then consider action planning to be little more than a list of things starting with “we need to do this” or “we should do that.” Sometimes (!) groups will even get as far as making tables or lists with responsibilities assigned to specific names. But that is still not action.

I often wonder if the size and magnitude of some tasks dissuade people from taking action. In fact, action is a process and it unfolds in stages. One need not do everything right away. All one needs to do is the first thing. And then the next thing. Doing this makes things easier. When I am working with groups on planning, whether in Open Space or with another process, I always invite people to identify the one things they can personally do to get ideas out of the room. Often this is a simple as setting a time and date for a follow-up conversation. Regardless, it is the simple, small, steps that bring big ideas to life.

I was trolling through the weblog of guitarist Robert Fripp the other day and I came across his advice to his students on action. Fripp has only just started to use permalinks, so I’ve quoted him at length as the piece now seems to have disappeared:

Dear Team,

Here is a question: what do you do when you have no enthusiasm, no interest, and no energy? The answer is simple. You cook lunch. And then you wash it up, clean the bathrooms, run the office, practice guitar, practice silence, and cook dinner.

Here is another question: what do you do when you can’t do anything? The answer is simple. You do what has to be done. Like cook lunch, wash it up, clean the bathrooms, run the office, practice guitar, practice silence, and cook dinner.

The principle is this: suffer cheerfully. You are now being asked to deliver on your commitment to the course. Any fool can change the world, but it takes a real hero to cook lunch without demur, without complaint, and with a smile. This point of reliability is the basis of the spiritual life.

The one greatest single thing that I have learnt from Guitar Craft, this remarkable and unfolding action of which we are all privileged to be a part, is the inexpressible benevolence of the creative impulse. The Creation is creating itself all the time. This is not a finite event. It is ongoing. And we are part of this ongoing creation if we wish to be, and if we wish to place ourselves at the service of the creative impulse. Guitar Craft is only one example of the remarkable emergence of a major action of healing within our troubled world. The creative impulse, which invents Guitar Craft as it goes, is itself a vehicle for a far greater power, the power which maintains the Creation. In a word, love. The healing power, the power of making whole, of making holy that which is already holy but fragmented, acts through agents. Love does not exist, because it is not a power which can be constrained by existence. But, as we all know, love is quite real. To be present in the world it must be borne and carried by loving agents. The creative power is also a power which is beyond existence. To be present in the world it must be expressed through play, this creative action which is quite necessary. Play is spontaneous, in the moment and seeks no outcome, no result. The play of craftsmen and artists is in the moment, but moves from intention and seeks to generate repercussions.

I suggest that all of us have some sense of this, whatever words we may use to express it.

If we wish to participate within the loving, creative unfolding of our world, we place ourselves at the service of this unfolding. Because this is so much at variance with what we would call “a normal way of living”, most of us need instruction, techniques, exercises and help. If we are clear that this is really what we wish, we test this wish.

The particular challenge of a Level Three course is crossing The Great Divide. The Great Divide is with us in many small processes throughout our day, but generally we can escape from it, for several reasons. But over a period of three months it hits hard. The Great Divide is a necessary and inevitable part of any and every process. It is where we are too far from the beginning to go back, and too far from the end to go forward. It is the point where processes break down and go off course.

If we wish to be vehicles for the creative impulse, it is no good falling apart en route. The passenger gets thrown out. Our friend love gets dumped in the mud, and our pal healing action gets helped into the ditch. So, we must introduce a small point of certainty. This is commitment. Commitment carries us through The Great Divide. Commitment comes from who we are, and exerts a demand upon what we are. I have just read again the aims declared at the beginning of the course. Consider them again for yourselves. Is this real for me or just fine words?

Commitment is to be practised daily. And here is a small beginning to this practice. It is an exercise called The Job For The Day (exercise omitted). There are three areas in which jobs may be done:

1. For ourselves;
2. For the house;
3. For the community.

The principle which I find helpful when confronting The Great Divide is this:

Establish the possible, and then move gradually towards the impossible.

So, when nothing seems possible, look and see one small action which is possible. And then discharge it. It may be as heroic as getting out of bed. And then cleaning your teeth.

The Level Three gives you a taste of what is actually involved in basing one’s life on craft principles, whether we have any interest in playing guitar or not. Our rule of life is this: act on principle, move from intention.

Basing the significant on the insignificant, the great on the small, the impossible on the possible.

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108243799702152240

April 20, 2004 By Chris Uncategorized

Ten pieces of interesting linkage for you collected over the last couple of weeks:


  • An Interview with Martin Prechtel on indigenous soul indirectly via Jeff Aitken

  • Very interesting work on measuring social capital in Northern Ireland

  • Collaborative policy making resources from the Centre for Collaborative Policy via Happenings

  • Youth as e-Citizens, a groundbreaking study on engaging youth activism online via Happenings

  • Bruce Elkin’s resources to support coaching and personal, organizational and community success, including his book Simplicity and Success

  • Nurturing a Faint Call in the Blood: A Linguist Encounters Languages of Ancient America via Jeff Aitken

  • I’ve just spent the better part of an hour browsing tripping’s pictures of Toronto while listening to The Tragically Hip. Makes me want to go home, a little.

  • Wicked Problems and Social Complexity: bringing collective intellegence to tough issues via Tesugen

  • The Etiqutte of Improvisation also via Tesugen

  • Black Elk Speaks online (along with others)

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108244119559013463

April 19, 2004 By Chris Uncategorized

Great. I wrote a couple of days ago about how hard it is to facilitate in Canada during the hockey playoffs. Tomorrow I’m working with a group and tonight the Vancouver Canucks suffered a spectacular playoff-ending overtime defeat.

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108240367135545643

April 19, 2004 By Chris Uncategorized

I was truly honoured yesterday to sit with 15,000 other people and listen to the Dalai Lame give a talk on Universal Responsibility yesterday in Vancouver. (You can view the video of the talk online) The Dalai Lama was introduced by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in a way that made it feel as if he was introducing a good friend to an audience of good friends. It was a wonderful afternoon.

There were many parts of the teaching that resonated, and it will take me a while to process the entire experience. Just being in the presence of these two great men, and 15,000 people who care enough about peace to have gathered to hear them, was an overwhelming experience in itself. At times, it simply made me hum being in the same physical space as the current manifestation of Avalokitesvara, the Buddha of Compassion.

There were some things that did stand out for me, especially in light of the other teachings that are flowing into my life at the moment.

The Dalai Lama had some very interesting comments about opening and closing energies. In speaking about emotional energy he said that positive energy is opening while negative energy is closing (see his comments starting at about the 45 minute point in the video). “Hatred must find an independent target. Positive emotions are helpful to see a holistic perspective; negative emotions are the opposite,” he said. The lesson here is that in order to exhibit negative emotions, you must collapse your world onto a specific target. It is a closing energy that inhibits compassion, inhibits a holistic view of the world, and inhibits the ability to transcend personal issues and problems in order to express compassion.

Compassion is about understanding that our personal interests and the interests of others are essentially the same. If we are able to do this, then we see that, as the Dalai Lama says “war is out of date…the destruction of your neighbour is the destruction of yourself.” The Dalai Lama advocates genuine dialogue to explore interests in a way which holds open the truth of all perspectives and refuses to collapse one in favour of another. In today’s world, where we are more and more connected in the concrete world through economics, communications and environment, it follows that a more transcendent acknowledgement of this connection is required for our collective well-being. Narrowing one’s focus of the world increases the potential of negative emotional energy because it ignores the reality that we are increasingly and deeply connected. Simplifying things gives rise to the simple, one dimensional targets that hate requires. Keeping the world open and complex allows for less opportunities for negative emotions to arise, and therefore preserves our field of practice for compassion and dealing with the world in real terms.

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