Like having my back towards the future, sensing a vast, vague “better”, slowly, slowly becoming more reality. Like those times I’ve been asleep having an unpleasant dream, realising beyond my back (and above and around) there’s a wake state that I remember and see, realising it’s also somehow simultaneously present …..

I read Priya Parker‘s latest newsletter and found this:

When preparing a team/community gathering and looking for a compelling invitation title, here’s one way:

STEP 1 – answer this:
What is a deep and burning question within your team/community that you can’t answer alone?

STEP2 – answer this question with at least one other person until you have a spontaneous eruption:
If you were to host a panel on that very question, what’s a title that would pack the room?

Priya:
“Recently we had a workshop about this, and I asked one executive to share his imaginary title with the room.
‘Listening to Customer Feedback,’ he read.
‘Punch it up. Raise the heat,’ I told him.
‘How to Build More Responsive Products,’ he responded.
‘Keep going,’ I coached, ‘What’s at the core of this meeting that you want to name?’
Finally, he blurted out:
‘Why Do Our Customers Hate Our Product?: A Roundtable.’
The room burst into laughter and started applauding.”

Edit: This blog post is a quote by Arnold Mindell. After posting I learned he passed away that same day. Below the quote I now have added some words in honor of him and of how he has influenced me. What a positively childlike elder!

“Wholeness could be really exciting. We will be present in the workplace, not only as money earners, but as real people, as citizens of our town, state, nation and the world, supporters of the environment – including the psychological and spiritual that so profoundly affect our spirits.

[With wholeness] we will be involved in how our company invests its money and utilizes the time it has to give to the community. We will insist that the business is itself a member of the community, that business prospers only if the community does, that the barometer of its success is not dollars but its vitality as an organ in the larger social body.

Best of all, we will get bored with making only those on top the evil ones. Given the chance, we know we can be just as evil.”

– from “Sitting in the Fire”, book, 1995

Arnold “Arnie” Mindell was a pioneer in big-group conflict processing and often involved “unseen” dimensions of the human experience like intuitively sensed urges – welcoming these into expression in the form of what he called “ghost roles”. If you are familiar with constellation work and representation, it’ll be familiar to you.

Arnold Mindell was ahead of his time and it’s hard to separate him and his work from his wife Amy and hers – they did so much as a pair and also separately. Today, we are familiar with the term “privilege” and phrases like “check your privilege”. Arnold Mindell called it “rank” and 30 years ago, in “Sitting in the Fire” he wrote:

  • “Rank is like a drug: the more you have, the less aware you are of how it effects others negatively.”
  • “People who belong to groups that once outranked others want to be treated as individuals once their power is lost.”
  • “Rank-conscious people know that much of their power was inherited and is not shared.”
  • “Some of your messages and signals are intended; others are unconscious [‘double signals’]. Double signals, as long as they are not made conscious, make mischief and upset relationships.

    Instituitions also send double signals, for example The U.S. characterizes itself as a democracy and sends out the primary signals of equality and goodness. And its secondary signals tell a different story: other countries experience the U.S. as dictatorial and dominating. They cannot understand why the U.S. has supported the decimation of native and African Americans and why it supports repressive regimes around the world. Yet most white Americans are not aware of their country’s repressive and dominating policies. When they travel abroad, they are surprised to be met with hostility. They are amazed to discover that people in other countries think of them as pushy, insensitive and arrogant.”
  • “Democracy, or sharing power, requires awareness of rank, not only in politics, but in face-to-face interactions. Everyone has both more and less rank than someone else. The trouble is, most of us are aware only of the rank or power we [see in others].”

In Place, the minds of the inhabitants were inseparable from the physical world. Whatever an inhabitant would think of – be it something frightening or wonderful – would instantly start to appear. The more minds thinking of the same thing, the faster it would appear. The more vividly they would envision it and the more they would feel it, the faster it would appear.

If you lived in Place, what would you think of?

… seems to be a project where every cell is supporting something/someone they themselves will be the body of. I’m wondering – are they aware of what or “whom” they are birthing? To what extent does it feel completely new and to what extent does it feel familiar?

In 2005 in Israel a seed sprouted and grew into a palm tree – after 2000 years.

Yes, you read that right. The seed was formed over 2000 years ago and then remained a seed. Seeds seem to be somehow “sleeping”. Then one moment, unfolding was possible. Suddenly after all this time, the surrounding conditions allowed for it to awaken.

I like to think as humans, maybe we are similar? That only when conditions allow for them, some aspects sleeping inside of us unfold. The contidions need not be optimal. But they need to be present.

Methuselah, judean date palm
Palm from old seed. Photo: Benjitheijneb, wikimedia

Story of the tree: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/tree-grown-2000-year-old-seed-has-reproduced-180954746/

A room is as safe as the readiness to defend it. In a garden, if I sow a plant and put up a sign saying it must not be eaten – is that enough? If a rabbit starts to gnaw on it and I say “I condemn strongly” – is that enough? How set am I on the idea of the plant growing in peace? Do I have smart tools like a small protective fence or a milieu where the rabbit can still its hunger with something else?