Welcome to my personal harvest from my Art of Hosting 2011 journey…
Monday – welcome back to the pile! A check-in (✓-in) to help us come deliberately into our learning space. Asking what you are breathing life into today? Reminder to also breath into the centre, where our highest possibility is held.
Forty five minutes of playing with structure and energetics to understand and embody the Six Breaths, based on Augusto Boal’s work (e.g. Theatre of the Oppressed). See Chris’ design here. I noticed that the part that leads me absolutely beamed later in the walking, and how I was so focused on showing emotion I missed whatever emotions people were trying to convey to me. Loved the invitation to put up a flip chart window frame where people could put up what they learned.
The question Tenneson that previously sat with: What’s going on underneath? What are we really hosting? The story about Glen and a conference where he didn’t want to leave poking his eyes out. The question of “What could church also be?” and asking “Who are the other people holding this question?” The spike that shows up right before “shit I hope this works!” and our role to not feed the fear. Having to do the business meeting in the middle. Lovely words of how we can’t do it alone and to imagine together what we don’t know alone. That a healthy system has more touch-points. Connects to more of itself.
Chris’ Six Breaths map of crossing the threshold of longing, moving from the world as it is to what it could also be, what’s possible – a long journey of listening, watching and seeing. The art of the calling, moving to the art of hosting, through to the art of stewarding and the threshold of demise. Where we make friendship with our demise, we do our work then just walk away.
What you see depends on what’s alive in you. When you look at #occupyvancouver do you see Open Space? Or a bunch of dirty hippies?
Importance of the core team’s practice. It takes a field to hold a field (versus rushing to structure). This is not a place for the heroic leader. The powerful question: “If we did this well, what would change forever”?
Onto the science of our times, of quantum physics and living systems. Schrödinger’s cat and how all possibilities exist at the same time. The cat is alive and dead, and when observed it comes into being. On how though our minds can’t know, our bodies know. Appreciative inquiry plays into this, manifesting something different (like the Mona Lisa that turns into a scary goblin as I pass). Participatory process invokes seeing a new way of being. What if the physics are changing? Not just the structure, but thought, consciousness, spirit shifting. And if you’re not confused, you’re not thinking. Me: reminded of Andrew Losowsky’s talk about the possibility space and the likely space, and the idea that hosting is about the possibility space. What are the ways we as hosts shift the likely space to the possibility space? Are we part of shifting patterns, shifting systems, shifting physics?
Teresa’s words that this all requires a different caliber of leadership, when we don’t know what to do, in times of radical change.
Moving into The Work of Byron Katie with Caitlin Frost and the patterns we attach to, where thinking shows up and gets in the way. The Work as a frame to hold myself in a different kind of conversation, and whatever those thoughts are, to meet the space of opening instead of closing. The first part of The Work is noticing the thinking and to identify (example: identify the place in your work where you are stuck or afraid). Then to ask what’s stopping me? What am I afraid will happen if I just go ahead and do this? Even if you don’t believe it, just notice the thought. Not about “getting rid of”. If you find yourself saying “may”, go to the edge “will”. Sometimes about following like a string to find the fear. If you’ve phrased something as a question find the answer that scares you. When get to the turnarounds, look for what is possible; not trying to disprove the initial thought. Holding it to the heat, burning it off. Turnaround examples to “they won’t show up”: I won’t show up for them, They will show up, I won’t show up for myself. Tip for me: look at the JYN sheet for questions to help frame my thoughts for The Work. Also “what am I afraid will happen when I talk to this person?” Chris’ great tweet on how one of the best parts about doing Byron Katie’s work in groups is making our shared fears visible.
Check-out: hearing David Whyte’s Self Portrait, something I could listen to again and again and again.
Up next: Knowledge Camps, World Cafe and Open Space.
See all my photos here.