Chapter 1 Initial Mapping and the Eternal Mystery of We-Space: Cartography, Capacities, and Consciousness in the Inter-Subjective Field
Most of the readers of this book are likely familiar with the notion of multiple lines of intelligence. The theory, first posited by Howard Gardner in the 1980s, has become a widely accepted idea in developmental psychology and serves as a corner stone for integral theory and practice. The general concept is both simple and intuitive: individuals develop across multiple lines of growth; each line is somewhat independent from others as it develops.
We all likely have known someone in our lives who is extraordinarily brilliant yet lacks a certain capacity for social and interpersonal competency. In the context of multiple lines of intelligence, we might say that the person has a high level of cognitive development but a low level of interpersonal and emotional development. Clearly, cognitive brilliance without interpersonal skills does not lend itself well to skillful group leadership.
The basic notion is simple: all of us have the native capacity to develop sensitivity to collective fields and, with practice, we can all learn to cultivate an increased level of awareness to that which is emerging within groups of people.
When We-Intelligence first emerges it is caught in its own web of narcissism. Often experiences in intersubjective fields trigger a painful sense of self-consciousness or in extreme cases paranoia.
However, at this stage, because the gravitational pull of self-consciousness has not yet been reached, the perspectives of others become highly influential social queues for one’s own behavior. This leads to an orientation that seeks conformity to social norms in the group field. Participation at this stage is simple, reflective, and safe.
As development continues along the spectrum of growth, We-Intelligence begins to show signs of a more comprehensive orientation that transcends and includes the reference points of self, other, and context. This means that the capacity to hold both deeper context and contact that unfolded in the previous stage remain, while the individual also develops a heightened meta-cognition that is able to sense into the collective experience as a whole. This level of holistic sensitivity can see, sense and feel the inter-subjective field almost as if it is a single entity and in a way that is not so caught up in content based on self and other.
Without doubt there are further stages of We-Intelligence emerging (some of which Dustin explicated in his book Streams of Wisdom). For now, this list will suffice for our purposes here.
As is commonly referenced, many people often fear public speaking more than death. There is a cultural conditioned sense that many people have difficulty feeling fully comfortable in expressing themselves without feeling self-conscious, unsure of themselves, etc. Anyone who has been in an introductory or even advanced We-space group has seen and most likely experienced within themselves or others a nervousness or lack of confidence about the value of their contribution when speaking up in the group.
The intention informs the implicit level of commitment to showing up as radically, authentically, and transparently within such a space. If the intention is simply to look for collective creativity, that might stifle the attunement towards aspects of individual and collective shadow that get invited through the intensity of collective presence. If creativity is made the primary area of focus, there is an implied message that what seem like “non-creative” or insecure aspects within individuals need to be liberated or compartmentalized before they can fully participate in a creative emergent space. Another perspective would suggest that whatever intention people have to come together, everything that arrives within the collective, moment to moment is emergent creativity. When we expand the definition of what creativity looks/feels like, it can encompass the feeling of a group flow state, disgruntled participants arguing without attuning to the impact it has on the group, people sobbing or displaying even more intense expressions of affect and behavior. Simply put, whatever is arising in the moment is the creativity of Life and it is our task to surrender to what is arising and open to how and what it is here to teach us.
Over the past five years of WEpractice, we found that setting the shared intention for awakening has the greatest potentiating effect. To be sure, the word “awakening” can mean many things. And because each group is free to interpret and use the phrase in a way most meaningful to them, all uses of the word can be useful. For now, we’ll discuss two different types of awakening: Awakening with a capital “A” and awakening with a lower case “a.”
Awakening might have a spiritual connotation, relating to the capacity to come to know the nature of Ultimate Reality. In that case we refer to “Awakening” with a capital “A”. Awakening with a capital “A” relates to our intention to sustain a sense of nondual freedom in relationship to all experience. This allows us to engage with things as they are and in a way that allows us to remain available as a vessel for creativity. This orientation, if engaged comprehensively, enables us to show up quite radically within the We-space. We learn to authentically engage spontaneously in service to the whole. Outwardly, the actions themselves may not appear radical, but culturally and socially, the freedom of Awakening can allow the individual to transgress…
When the offering from Awakening is authentic, the group usually finds itself at a deeper and more coherent space than it was before, even despite the potential discomfort. If Awakening with an upper case “A” is the underlying intention of a space, an individual is able to come from a space of non-separation, take interpersonal risks of speaking their truth, daring to be totally honest in response to how they feel about someone or the situation at hand, and is willing to let go of the…
Concerning “awakening” with a lower case “a,” this form does not necessarily require a spiritual orientation towards your life and reality. Within this approach is a deep curiosity and thirst to understand life, one’s own, other’s and the collective psyche, and is more interested in where things come from than the surface manifestations of reality. We are seeing this arise more and more in the mainstream marketplace with the introduction of mindfulness within organizations, conferences such as Wisdom 2.0 and approaches towards…
As a group culture expresses these qualities of curiosity and a willingness to receive Life’s agenda as opposed to imposing individual or group opinions onto reality, the next move into an…
It is challenging to truly delineate what creativity could look like from an Awakening perspective vs. an awakening perspective. In many ways, novel insights, deeply present interactions between participants, and state-experiences, to name a few, can be forms of creativity that arise in both spaces. The important distinction is that in Awakening oriented spaces, participants might have more experience navigating state-experiences through their previous spiritual practice and do not become seduced by a spiritual state of consciousness and remain focused on what continues to emerge beyond the state. Another distinction is that Awakening oriented spaces might have more comfort in framing experiences in consciousness terms that more congruently describe the energy and experiences that are occurring rather than trying to “translate down” spiritual experiences in more secular terms that do not do them adequate justice. Even what seems like a minute shift in languaging can impact the energetic quality and aliveness of the space. Ultimately, it is the quality of collective presence and welcoming of what is arising that most impacts a We space, and this of course can be the case in Awakening and awakening informed We spaces.
One important expression of the messy enactment of the We space is around feeling a sense of completion. There is usually an innate desire for completion and resolution within an experience. We see this is the arch of mainstream movies where there is a hero or heroine that goes through a process of struggle that eventually comes to a place of understanding and completion where the audience can go home happy with their sense of resolution. Consciously or unconsciously, we are looking for this sense of resolution and feel incomplete or undone in some way when this is not the case. If we are really open to the mystery of the unknown when we come together, sometimes there will be a sense of mutual understanding and completion and sometimes emergence requires us to hold ambiguity about things not being tied together neatly in a bow and invite us to show up the next time with fresh eyes and curious minds to see where we are to go next from where we left off. The ability to handle this ambiguity is a quality of spiritual maturity that enables a dropping of this agenda of needing completion to truly be open to the way the We wants to move.
When a group commits to a certain number of sessions, there is usually a sense of completion at the end, yet within the middle there is often a non-linear flow of clean endings and messy unfinished business between people and the group. The glue that ties it all together is the willingness to not have an agenda for what happens to look any certain way and to hold the creative tension of life…
The bottom…
of the messy enactment of the We space is an invitation to drop ideals, preconceived notions, agendas for loving connection and dive in with…
Trust is a big factor in engaging agilely in We spaces. By engaging in almost a hyper-vigilant way, one has difficulty trusting their innate ability to respond when a response is needed, is not trusting that whatever is happening is what is needing to happen, and more importantly, is not trusting that the We would self-correct if something spoken or enacted was really “off” in the space. A balance that we find
essential is likened to that of zoom of a camera. If one is zoomed too far in, their view is myopic and this can lead to a sense of not trusting what is happening, a tendency for controlling behavior and holding a limited and limiting view of the whole. Conversely, if someone is too broad or zoomed out, they cannot adequately feel the contours of the We space, cannot attune to subtler moment to moment movements, and often their human hearts are not “touchable.” It’s been a helpful inner metric to zoom in and out in a dynamic balance given the changing landscape of the We space moment to moment. When we can honor and understand the minutiae within the context of the greater whole, our study of the specifics informs emerging relational structures that support the evolution of the space as a whole.
What is beautiful about We spaces is that there is a potential to drop the sort of meta-responsibility of care-taking or managing a space and really rest into the stance that an individual is simply one set of eyes with a unique perspective on the wholeness of the group and is also deeply part of that wholeness. The We needs to hear from all the perspectives, or at least feel all…
It is the attuning to the greater felt sense of alignment beyond personal agenda, and leaning into sourcing from the future potential of the We space itself that will enable people to drop their need for things to be a certain way to help them feel secure and be open…
There is no gold standard of how one must participate in the We. This is because the heterogeneous stance and experience each participant holds is an essential ingredient to the creative dynamism that makes exploring the unknown…
One is the ability to sense into an emergent order of reality based on the future. Normally we take experience in the moment and try to fit it into a schematic of reality based on what we have known before. This is a human habit that serves a false sense of security that the future extends from the present in some linear fashion. In order to truly step into the unknown, a lack of categorization of…
have known reality to look like in the past, we are limiting the scope of creativity and the true shaping of our worldviews through novel data and experience that arises. In a We space, there could be a civil conversation taking place and all of a sudden someone abruptly interrupts another participant by voicing their frustration with the overly intellectual conversation and need to attune to another quality of being within the space that the previous conversation was not honoring. If one participant was attached to the flow of the conversation, they could be indignant with such an interruption, one that obviously was not connected to what was being said. Again, the We space ideally is attuned to both the process and the content. In this case, the individual was feeling an aspect of the process being neglected through focus on one area of content. In this moment, the facilitator(s) and participants must now support the group to integrate this emergent experience within what has already happened and be open to seeing where that intense movement catalyzes the next step in the process. Without We agility, the group could revert back to what they were saying after the outburst, ignore the outburst, or tempers could start flaring,…
Another quality of We agility is to stay grounded and open and hold the conscious recognition that nothing is ever out of place from an ultimate perspective. Being grounded in one’s body allows the truth that Life is unfolding perfectly, no matter how wacky things might seem on the surface, to be an embodied realization as opposed to a more new age aphorism that is used as a way to rationalize intense circumstances that one does not know how to deal with. If we have ideas for what we need to experience to feel safe, seen, understood, etc., when life shows up in a way that is beyond our threshold, there is usually a shutting down or moving away quality that arises. Robert Kegan (1982) speaks about development as a series of periods of stability and clarity and times of instability and confusion. If we are…
For anyone involved in We space practice, intensity arises in myriad forms from interpersonal disagreement,…
the room,” and moments when the collective surrenders enough that a palpable intensity of the “energy of the We” permeates the space. Staying grounded amidst this intensity allows individuals and the group at large to steward the creative energy while remaining present and attuned to the movement the group wants to make, despite aspects of our personality that are in protest in response to feeling overwhelmed by the intensity. The more we cannot become seduced or overwhelmed by intense energy, interpersonal chaos, and any thought form or judgment that arises in our awareness, the more we can perceive the emergent trajectory of the We that is sourced from the future potential of these people coming together. If what is arising is confusing or overwhelming, the task of the individual is to sit with these feelings and stay curious about how they are ever changing and how they…
Meta-cognition is the ability to more readily reflect upon what we think, feel, perceive, and experience in any given moment.
Michael Brabant, Ph.D. has been trained in both the academic and clinical settings as well as studied with shamans, mystics, and intuitive healers. By synthesizing the most potent inner technologies and the nuanced conceptual understanding related to true transformation, he offers a body teaching and practice called Divine Humanity to help us build the energetic, relational and emotional infrastructure to live our lives as if every moment and everything contained within it, is both sacred and deeply intelligent. You can learn more about his work at livingdivinehumanity.com
Chapter 2 Embodying Higher Consciousness: Awakening Through We-Space to a Higher Frequency of Life Stephen Busby
Embodying Higher Consciousness is a coherent set of practices that have emerged over the last three years through groups engaged in collective inquiry in various countries. The groups that I have facilitated have tended to consist of between 15-40 people, and occasionally larger, in formats ranging from intensive trainings to weekend workshops to week-long retreats. I will explore here what is cultivated through the practices, the implications for our understanding of embodiment within we-space inquiry as well as its awakening potential, and how in groups we work phenomenologically to effect systemic change at cultural levels.
Interpersonal Attunement
In interpersonal attunement exercises, in pairs or triads, we listen and learn to sense into the subtle context behind whatever overt themes we are exploring. I note here a fine line between myself as facilitator and participant within these groups, which leads to a sometimes blurred linguistic distinction in referring to myself, to participants, and to the “we” as a whole.
In the exercises we attune to and offer feedback to whoever is speaking from a theme. Participants are encouraged to allow feedback to arise through the felt space of their pair or triad from beyond the content of whatever is being explored, to check for the felt resonance of the feedback, to learn to direct their awareness with intent, to hone and focus subtle perceptual and attunement abilities, and to sense the energetic vibrational qualities of we-space. Together we witness the amplifying effect of these practices: how the space of inquiry becomes intensified often through spontaneous insight and a sense of de-cluttering at the mental level. We become alert to the properties and potential of small-group space beyond where our agenda for it may take or limit us.
Our questions and responses can take on a more essential quality, appear to ‘hit home’ and strongly resonate when allowed to arise and be shared spontaneously. Through suggested phases of reciprocal feedback and mirroring we become more present to ourselves and with whatever is arising somatically through with the subtleties of the body-mind system. People are encouraged to learn to listen beyond the conditioned self, attuning to the quality of their own internal experience as well as that which appears to be outside selves. We deepen into interiority primarily through the feeling-sense, opening to physically based sensation,
textures of energy, emotions and images. The felt energetic space can become clearer; whatever is shared is expressed more transparently: more essentially, economically and powerfully with intensity and insight. Participants become sensitive to and expressive of the content of the subtle realms and may experience more of the collective field ‘from the inside’: more attuned and aligned with its essence, its shadows, its potential for unfoldment and growth.
Feeling Capacity
We provide containers for each other where feeling and emotion may be transparently present or allowed to emerge. In one exercise we support whoever has the focus to inquire into the quality of their inner contact with something that may have
been previously experienced as (or believed to be) ‘too much’ to bear or be felt. In this we are sustaining ‘movement towards’ rather than away, foregoing our conditioned tendency to retreat or contract away from wounding. We are withdrawing our investment in the inner structures that underpin our conditioning, loosening the ground in which unhealthy autonomous ego-structures find nourishment. Cultivating inner intimate contact like this in an exercise may support someone in validating their own presencing capacity, i.e. their ability and readiness to bring into contact within themselves, through sustained awareness, whatever may habitually be excluded from that contact.
Witnessing
The core of witnessing practice consists of focused external observation and simultaneous strong inward self-attention, noticing and sharing aloud perception of whatever phenomena are concurrently arising through subtle sensation or awareness. This bi-directional attention is often experienced as a kind of interior stretching. It tends to surprise and awaken people to their potential for working at vibrational levels: learning – through the feeling-sense – to notice and track energetic shifts, and increasingly experiencing people, structures or systems from the inside. There is “a felt sense of both our internal experience and our oneness with the life around us. We can therefore experience oneness with another person while remaining attuned to our own internal being” (Blackstone, 2011, introduction, para. 13). We support each other in dwelling within feeling-sense. Through attunement and feedback we learn to witness where somebody is living within their body and where they are not – where relationship within is being withheld.
As groups of practitioners we are cultivating a dual capacity to focus narrowly with intensity upon the foreground of our experience while holding a wide focus upon the subtle background canvas of our awareness. In doing so, most people discover that they are simultaneously deepening sensitivity to a subtle informational field, sometimes referred to as the evolving Akashic or zero-point field, which carries in-formation that shapes or provides blueprints for material reality (Kinney 2014). Deepening the felt-sense is an integrative way of bringing different kinds of information together, an integrative perceptual skill. Most of us are not well educated in honoring inner information, tending to dismiss it just as we were most likely dismissed when sharing it in childhood. Learning to direct and sustain our attention bi-directionally tends not to be supported in early education or generally in occidental cultures. Yet if participants inquire here – through an exercise or through directed inner work – with a focus freed of intent, then they may experience that their sense of self – whether localized to their own internal body-space, to the small group or to the larger collective – is rendered transparent to higher intention and more easeful manifestation in life. This facilitates and furthers the deeper collective purpose of those who gather to pursue these kinds of practices. I believe there is no deeper capacity we can cultivate than to honor whatever arises in awareness, whether or not we experience that as ‘our own.’ In doing so we open ourselves to a quality of love and unconditionality that transcends our conditioned attempts to ‘get something right.’ Or, framed differently…
I am learning to attune to interpersonal space while simultaneously witnessing whatever is co-arising ‘inside and out’ then I am becoming more identified with the powerful ways in which it is possible to be with others and with myself.
Synchronizing what were previously
perceived as two separate spaces enlarges consciousness. I will be less identified as an autonomous separate structure with opinions and packages of experiences, a less crystallized as ego-structure, and will be more allowing of what wants to come through me and the space of…
will have a growing sense of a larger, less personalized movement of intent and a stronger ability to surrender through inquiry to where that sense of intent may carry me. We are learning: To direct our awareness to our inner felt experience – to the parts of us that are naturally drawing our attention, and then connecting with them by feeling them. This involves switching from willful output mode to receptive mode… [If we direct] our mind toward the parts of our energy body seeking our attention, and we feel these parts of ourselves, we are connecting with life force and building energetic strength and a clearer navigational compass… [We are] available to notice, feel and spontaneously act upon what is wanting to happen moment-to-moment… where actions organically follow…
Structures of…
Learning to notice different energetic qualities and vibration in whatever is arising within, and to discern there a call to spontaneous action, require for most of us sustained spaces of practice, at least until noticing-capacity becomes more integrated as a natural state. We discover that there are: A whole host of energetic processes occurring in our bodies all the time… Beginning to feel these subtleties will allow them to manifest more and more clearly. Our awareness creates a sort of amplifying feedback loop, because the outer reflects the inner: that which we give our attention to will determine what we experience on an ongoing basis… Your physical body (and the senses that…
I call these templates ‘structures of being’: inner scaffolding through which we unconsciously filter and determine our experience and…
Through the quality of her relational presence I am able to explore this, and may encounter a sense of layering – structures leading to structures. Slowly she guides me in investigating and sensing their shape and contours, and some shadowy places where I tend to leave contact. She’s there as I return and reconnect more fully within myself and to her. I gain a feeling-sense of how the structures show up in my life: their energetic regressive characteristics and qualities; slowly I may uncover – through further layering – what feel like roots, perhaps even a possible original defensive or protective function. Here I am presenced by my partner in some strong emotion which wells up. I’ve a sense of how a…
Shadow and Transparency
Transparency nurtures my ability to both feel the ways in which I tend to separately identify from others and my capacity to witness others and myself more intimately. Interpersonal attunement in turn nurtures transparency. Transparency within and between people requires a willingness to explore and confront forms of personal or collective shadow so that their energy may, in turn, become available to inquiry. The challenges many of us encounter in this – the extent to which we are stretched – tend to enrich and deepen relational space. In small-group transparency exercises, participants may find that the energetic embrace of awareness allows something to be felt more wholly, and that there is a sense of inner movement, perhaps allowing them to re-integrate those aspects of themselves from which they have dissociated.
Shadow that is explored through intensified intersubjective space is no longer ‘mine’ in the sense that it: … can only exist as long as there is an outer life that collaborates with it. If you and I are not aware of the same thing it will continue. If one of us is aware of it [then] it cannot continue, because it is now becoming aware of itself. (Hübl, 2014a) In witnessing the expression of shadow through inquiry into its symptoms – in consenting to sense and inhabit its vibration and to fill it with the light of our awareness – we are also witnessing the ways that structures of being manifest in our lives in real time.
other words, the ways in which they have formed and are expressed through the egoic framework, and how they form still: how the personality tends to nourish and update them, creating fresh ones unconsciously. There may be insight too into the ways in which we invest in each other’s shadows, negotiating reciprocal agreements to restrict risk in our relationships and maintain familiar dynamics, and how we contribute to the ways in which culture – through us – does this.
Relational Space and Healing
For those who are sensitive to the inner flow and shifting texture of energy, it is as if a structure is touched with a quality of awareness in a certain way for the first time. We are consenting to re-connect with those aspects of ourselves where subtle energy has crystallized, and to bring them into conscious relationship. The effect is often felt as a relief and release: something moves within our structures and emerges through us with recognition. Attention has enabled energetic transformation.
Insight may accompany and accelerate the process – sometimes a spontaneous whole-view of how an inner system has held itself in integrity: how
structures of being are inter-related, perpetuating themselves through compensatory behaviors and beliefs, perhaps as physical symptoms or crisis. Through trauma we creatively develop early subtle holding patterns for defensive-protective imperatives. Healing is enabled because these patterns can be met…
The heightened energy we are being invited to embody tends to attract to each of us those next layered issues in our life that are available for awareness. Judith Blackstone notes: “The subtle body is imprinted with memories, desires, tendencies and attachments [and that] these imprints produce life circumstances for their fulfillment or resolution” (Blackstone 2008, p. 58). She asserts that repressed or denied needs, memories and emotions embedded in the tissues are “too tense and rigid to be easily penetrated by our consciousness” (p.) and that “as long as our body, energy and consciousness is bound up in the past, they are not available for present experience” (p.). The practices described here, whereby one may experience a strong stream or ground of…
Through small-group exercises, participants inquire into whatever life-theme or issue is alive, moving or stuck in their life, attuning to its outer symptoms – to the play of symbols…
Through honoring the role of such strategies – consciously including them – and through mirroring and feedback, I am enabled to feel and relate to dimensions of myself that may never have been held in authentic contact. Whatever is held in relationship reveals movement. By consenting to stay in contact – outside and in, I will be able to attune through my feeling-sense to densities and shifts in the energy of whatever structure is being touched or triggered. There will be movement, however subtle, as subsequent layers are exposed. Personal issues will always touch and connect in other people too,…
The Transformation…
We are vessels for unresolved residue from the past and, because of its crystallization within us, may tend to take on a false sense of individual ownership of this. That which is being worked through us, at the causal level of Soul, is not (I believe) exclusively ‘ours.’ The healing movements witnessed through we-space are embedded aspects within larger fields of healing. As practitioners we are tapping into unlimited realms of potential and cannot claim that the work of ‘our’ we-space is separate from the wider field, nor that our wounding is just our own, just as we cannot know the whole extent of what we construe as “healing work.” Healing is a side effect of a larger movement in human potential, one that…
Thus we are learning to disrupt our templates of reality (our received notions of what is ‘real’), to leverage our awakened potential, to wake up “from the view of reality that [we] know[,] into a new way of being aware of the world” (Hübl, 2011). Such awareness feels to me generative of new worlds, as I learn to embody insight into – and take responsibility for – how I re-present life. In relational space practitioners explore boundaries between seen and seer, witnessing a heightened sense of transpersonal connection. This can seed a radical shift in their locus of awareness and prompt insight into a less referential version of the self; a version that is less bounded, discrete and autonomous and more a flexible self-process where, “our identification with the localized self diminishes and a broader and more
generative sense of self begins to arise” (Senge, Scharmer, Jaworski & Flowers 2005, p. 100).
We are also healing the culturally conditioned perceptual reflex whereby we tend to perceive mutually exclusive opposites rather than complementarities or even integral wholes. Through witnessing practice we may find ourselves “connecting with a deeper reality in which all distinct or separate things are aspects of the unnamable, in relationship” (Busby 2012a, para. 3).
Intelligence and Transmission
As we change and become present to more of each other and to the inner landscapes of the we-space, we are able to embrace more depth of field, like a camera with capacity for stronger resolution. We pick up more ‘pixels’ or particles where before none were discernible. We tend to develop a vibrational register that sensitizes us to the contrast between someone skilled in being and speaking from or inside this field experience and someone who instead is talking about it – with less aliveness and concision. We notice immediately when language starts to be used by the unhealthy aspects of the egoic mind rather than the deeper presence of connection, and may even feel the precise instant of disconnect. When participants are encouraged to reflect this transparently then the dialogues that unfold through attunement in the exercises become vehicles for an alive form of creative intelligence that is becoming more aware of itself through the space. Such dialogues may take on their own energy and purpose and direction, independently of any one person’s position. They become containers for enhanced multiple perspectives. We who are participating may experience ourselves as more conscious channels for the intelligence seeking expression through us.
When we allow our attunement and feedback practices to become ever more informed by subtle content then there is a felt intensification of the field, and the impact on us of the information that becomes available is also perceived to increase. Its impact is sometimes referred to as evolutionary in that it awakens people to their next steps in terms of evolutionary unfoldment, facilitating the emergence of higher-level human capacities and sensitivities. For instance we learn to discern the vibration of inner information that is suggestive of innovation, sometimes framed as ‘future-based’: arising in us ‘as if from the future.’
Thomas Hübl reminds us that this is not the future that we think of as tomorrow but rather that which is available to us as the highest potential – enfolded and available within the present – as a result of the embodied presence that we cultivate: The future… is that which is calling to us to bring itself forth into existence. The Creative Future is a desire, an urge from the Source to give birth to creative new potentials and it requires us to tap into this urge, follow its movements, and bring it to life on Earth. It is Us and We are It. (Dierkes, 2011)
The outcomes of our we-space work often include new projects, partnerships and creative forms of collaboration, as we learn to embody the future together. We are doing much more than accessing information about what the future might be and are instead becoming living emergent expressions of this future, portals for evolutionary unfoldment. We are not ‘getting visions of the future’ but are becoming agents of it, now. If, in relational space, participants allow themselves to be guided by the subtle dimensions of life then they are opening to what is more original, essential and causal, rather than speaking from concepts that arose in the past. The field from which the content of communication is arising vibrates within people as listener-receptors and its vibration is often distinct and discernible. There is more direct communication from higher dimensions of consciousness and more felt resonance with it than in habitual relational space. This resonant vibrational quality we call transmission.
Primary Knowing and Essence
Increasingly available to many practitioners is a deeper quality of agenda-less attention and essential presence that is (more) empty of any subtle therapeutic intent. In time, some participants are more enabled to affirm to each other “the reality of the quality of the unfolding experience” (Schmidt 2006, p.110). To the extent that most of us usually fail in this stance, we are confronted with the unconscious strategic agenda that underpin most of our social interaction. This is why in the exercises I encourage people to invite a slowing-down of attention and intervention, so that resonance with the subtle realms is heightened and the feeling-sense may be relieved of the burden of any driven restlessness and unconscious intent to change something or someone. Slowness leads to more silence, which invites more slowness and more opening, so that we are even further relieved and educated, “the more we are present and the more fully we are experiencing and being our essential presence, the more we will experience things slowing down” (Almaas 2008, p.).
Perhaps this is ‘primary knowing’ which, according to Eleanor Rosch, arises through perception of: Interconnected wholes, rather than isolated contingent parts, and by means of timeless, direct presentation… Such knowing is open rather
than determinate, and a sense of unconditional value, rather than conditional usefulness, is an inherent part of the act of knowing itself. (as cited in Senge et al. 2005, p.)
She also speaks of allowing perception to arise from the whole field; “primary knowing is possible because mind and world are aspects of the same underlying field,” and equates this with the field knowing itself (as cited in Senge et al. 2005, p.). My understanding and experience is that this is a feature of the essential presence of higher consciousness, whereby we consent to embody more of our multidimensionality.
Systemic Constellational Process
In the groups, we practice slowing further through another variant of this work, seeking to explore through other channels the healing movements that higher consciousness makes available. One exercise integrates the witnessing principles and systemic phenomenological inquiry, pursuing a process-oriented refinement of Systemic Constellation work (in its family and organizational forms) that I have distilled. We use systemic principles to inquire into subtle space through heightened somatic awareness.
Life-themes with heightened resonance may include, for instance, ‘perceived impediments to my unfoldment’, ‘my experience of soul’, ‘the nature of personal and transpersonal intent’, and so on. As issue-holder within a field of inquiry, I will ask my two or three partners to stand for (represent) unknown aspects of my theme. I will set up the field by intuitively positioning the others while staying attuned to the theme in me. The ensuing inquiry process unfolds slowly through inner listening and mutual witnessing which, with systemic somatic principles, give rise to intuitive movements, emotion or insight within and between each representative. Whatever arises may become more acute as I intentionally refrain from any attempt at understanding, resolution or closure. Instead, restraint, heightened awareness and a refined witnessing capacity all amplify the translucent nature of the field. As is customary in Constellation work, we attend to phenomena arising through bi-directional awareness, yet here – as issue-holder – I will forgo any facilitation of my own issue. Rather I will encourage sustained attention and be as interested in the nature of my own personal unfolding intent and impulses as I am in any external movement. The exercise is a marvelous mirror for those structures in each of us that tend to speed up, manipulate or step over insights or phenomena by way of compensation for discomfort.
Schmidt writes of learning to observe “the unfolding of an autonomic process” (2006, p.110), reminding us that: Systemic implies that we see what is not obvious, reckon with interconnections that are not explicit, and reach beyond the immediate experience of things. We learn to discern what is not being told, what is not… conspicuous at first sight, but to look at situations in terms of interconnected realities and effects rather than linear, one dimensional cause-effect chains. (Schmidt 2006, p.132)
There is much that can heal, and Thomas Hübl’s invitation is stark: Humanity is literally crying out for new developments that enable us to work through our individual and cultural traumas. If we do not succeed in this, the traumas that have not been integrated will force us to repeat the corresponding traumatic experiences again and again. This principle applies to the further development of the world as well as to the individual journey of healing. (Hübl, 2015)
Towards Embodiment I believe that systemic phenomenological inquiry can mirror our varying capacity to embody life and be incarnate – to allow the light of higher consciousness to permeate through those who participate in it to the degree that their somatic sense of internal depth becomes their ground in life. Through the practices described here, participants can learn to presence themselves and each other wherever someone may tend to disconnect from the stream of consciousness or from life around them. When witnessing disconnection we are inquiring into those layered structures that are next available for awareness. I will only be able to include everything within my inner reality without dissociation to the extent that my awareness and presence are integrated. Referring to ‘radical inclusion,’ Thomas writes that in developing higher levels of coherence within ourselves, “we are able to include everything within our inner reality, and may even experience ourselves as everything. Then we learn to participate in life as a constant creative process. We speak from within life rather than about it” (Hübl 2013).
This is a radical inquiry: its implications are far-reaching in evolutionary terms. Each iteration of it – each of the exercises to which I have referred – will reflect the incarnational heights to which many of us aspire and the terrain stretching in front of us. We keep walking, held within a more immense we-space than we can ever know. “The deeper [we] embody, the more aliveness [we] experience” (McNamara 2012).
The Emerging Potential of the Practices
There is an acceleration in consciousness; more people are feeling called into the field. The work is spilling into more organizational arenas, where some people and places are beginning to enact future-based governance and leadership, and starting to stretch their innovation capacity. Many of us engaged in these practices are learning to ground and stabilize in higher dimensions of consciousness, to integrate more inner and outer awareness – to develop higher-order integrative perceptual skills. We are deepening subtle we-space capacity, “tracking and directing the energy of a group or a whole system” (Francis, 2005) and we are becoming awareness that can be bigger than a collective dynamic: an urgent evolutionary imperative. As practitioners we are learning to bring light and movement to all those dimensions of ourselves where we hold back from a fuller expression of life while, at the same time, becoming more aware of the one body – of source, of life. My experience is of awakening to higher unified levels of consciousness, consciousness that can contain more, that is more world-aware and Kosmocentric.
I believe to consent to more consciousness is to choose to transform structures of being, for oneself and all others, through awareness, rather than to have to induce change through crisis and circumstance. Choosing this entails a constant clearing and polishing of our individual and collective vessels which thereby become increasingly synchronized, and through which healing movements arise. Perhaps this is less about awakening and more about responding to a call to higher collective responsibility. To listen to this call is to learn to cultivate relationship to what is consciously unknown, to allow that to move and become ever more embodied through us and our practices. Join us in deepening our inquiry, becoming a clearer we-space for an ever-higher frequency of life.
. I note here the significant contribution of Thomas Hübl’s work to the field of we-space inquiry through his Transparent Communication® practices. According to Chris Dierkes, the transparency Thomas speaks of “is a radical simultaneous addressing of all dimensions, lines, and levels of being, as well as individual and collective communication” (Dierkes 2011). Other formative influences include Judith Blackstone, Bert Hellinger, Judith Hemming, Richard Moss, James Finley, Arnold Mindell, Thomas & Gitte Trobe, and David Spangler (ref. more complete sources at www.stephenbusby.com).
Chapter 3 A We-Space Process Ecology: Navigating the Paradox of Injunction and Method-Free Process Facilitation – a Praxis Report.
Anne Caspari & Mushin Schilling
“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Properties such as self-organization, coherence and structural elegance, as it is often found in nature, are at the root of emergence and cannot be designed in our view. They evolve over time with the participation of all elements. An ancient jungle can well be described as being in an authentically chaordic process in a continually emergent, dynamic whole: everything adds to its life and nothing is wasted. If, following our guiding metaphor, we look at group inquiries in this context then this would mean that some form of “chaos” has to be a necessary and intrinsic part of the process in order to arrive at such a natural and generative way of being. For reasons that will become clear in the course of this chapter, it seems that in the field of researchers of this process there is little awareness of “chaos” being an intrinsic requirement of a process that aims to reach a truly “natural order.” Rather all facilitators we have seen so far are trying to make it happen, trying to maneuver group-members into a natural participation in a chaordic field. This is often painful as we will see also, with little resemblance of the elegance as it unfolds in our forest.
We, the authors of this chapter, have been involved in the application of meta-theories in the field of transformative collective processes and their emergent action logics to gain new insight and to finding new types of processes and outcomes – for “prototyping.” Our action research focused mostly on the basic phenomenology of such processes in individuals and groups, including phase and pattern recognition in relation to mapping adaptive pushback, resistances to change and methods for correcting it.
Priming – No-Priming As part of our action research, we also participated in three experiments at the Alderlore Insight Center (AIC) run by Bonnitta Roy in Torrington, Connecticut. While the first of these experiments at the AIC was both primed and facilitated, the last two were run deliberately with neither priming nor facilitation, which was an integral part of what we have come to call minimal elegant process design.
Usually group processes are directed by specific practices and methods using specific rules geared to come to particular results. This, for us, differs from the unfolding of a complex process interaction, mediated by a process of self-organization (Ashby 1947, Maturana & Varela 1980, Prigogine & Stengers, 1984) Without chaos, in our view there is no real emergence and authentic participation remains elusive. At the very best, in our view, you get domesticated participation; domesticated in the sense that it is geared towards getting insights into the known, whereas we are of the mindset that in authentic participation there is a high probability for an emergence of what we do not yet know.
Simply labeling phases, states and phenomena as, for instance, “the bottom of the U” or “causal”, “source”, “circle being”, created priming, expectations and in some cases even fallacies and traps. In hindsight we observed that it actually activated pushback and shadow and thus created more chaos. We found that a good way to avoid turning the naming of phases, states and arising phenomena into something negative is instead to surf the paradoxes created by this naming activity, and stay aware of the priming power of concepts while using labels.
Any attempt to skillfully facilitate it away failed and thus just added to the chaos. The atmosphere became more real as participants dropped polite forms of discourse and aspects of their learnt roles, moving closer to what really moved them. What we observed was, the more painful the chaos felt, the more strategies were sought to get away from it, which only deepened it. Any attempt to give the process a direction was thwarted, sometimes immediately, sometimes after a few minutes of “let’s try this.” At that time, in that space, there appeared to be no way out of the chaos at this point, so we had to stay in what was coming up and sit it out. It was only in hindsight that it became clear to us as core group how important this phase of authentic chaos really is, at the time it was simply difficult for us. What also dawned on us was that any kind of priming and facilitation leads to an outcome of a different nature, outcomes that are already on the map and possibly much desired for and helpful in particular situations but not new and unmapped, not chaordic.
To better understand why this is so let us introduce the way we use the concept of the “social self.”
The social self develops more or less adequately in social settings by continually adapting to the sociosphere in which it lives, while the generative self emerges and evolves (Roy & Trudel, 2011). We take the generative self to be the self that naturally springs to life in a human being.
For example, participants learn to recognize their own coping and escape mechanisms, which occur and feed into the authentic chaos phase – learning not to take themselves too seriously when in that phase. Alternatively, they might distinguish between coherence and cohesion, which have distinctly different outcomes and learn to harvest these depending on the purpose of the group process.
Endothermic Process: Burning out Relational Dynamics From polite beginnings, where every difference is equalized and anything that could cause conflict is immediately down-regulated, warded off, neutered, stereotyped, or corrected, to name but a few of the tactics used to keep everyone in a civil space, the participatory process moves into chaos relatively quickly, certainly once participants in a group with diverse backgrounds start to express themselves more authentically, often at first as a kind of rebellion against polite statements.
We found that the minimal elegant design of this process is simply resisting all temptations to intervene in order to balance, lead, integrate or catalyze. Interventions do happen, but they are self-organized and self-organizing, arising from the process itself. Anything else can only lead to a paradox à la Watzlawick, “Be spontaneous! Be authentic! Come from source! Stay in the causal! Find deeper meaning!” In our process, none of the above ways and means sketched work, which becomes obvious, and finally all participants gave up trying to direct the process. One could say that a sense of “capitulation” settles upon all. Emptiness. Silence, which may at first feel gloomy and has the taste of failure. Then the surprise: tangible clarity sets in.
We call the internal state that participants now fall into sensory clarity. It does not obliterate unique individuality in any sense, but the social self has certainly stepped back. Nevertheless, one’s boundaries are no longer experienced as limits: we-being, we-fullness, we-space – this experience has led to a number of terms centered around “we.” The phenomenon we call sensory clarity does not correspond to the “causal” state of consciousness that Ken Wilber described as awaiting us all at the bottom of the U (Scharmer 2003). We take this to be a simple confusion of state-qualities. When authentic chaos has removed all filters, masks and maneuvers, what remains is simple and feels utterly natural: sensory clarity.
If the group or the action researchers can remain in sensory clarity and let possible contradictions, apparent paradoxes, strangeness, etc. “be whatever they are,” a next phase of clarity can unfold which we call subtle energy/emotional clarity. This alludes to the participants’ capacity or willingness to remain clear in these sometimes quite strong emotional dimensions.
Emergence Imagine eight people sitting on the grass of a huge garden. They have passed through all the stages of authentic chaos. They have learnt that the chaordic phase of the process is both individual as well as collective; individual in the sense that they have dropped all social self-strategies of choice, of trying to gain any control over what is going to happen next. All of them are effortlessly present, senses and emotions are clear. One of the eight mentions something important to him. A few minutes later, another adds something seemingly disjunctive, not fitting from the point of view of a social self, that is; but because the eight aren’t responding on that level anymore, what has been said is just another audible object in participatory space, just like the “important issue” before. And as participants utter things significant enough to them it seems like a larger intelligence is at work constellating or orchestrating the utterances which half an hour later leads to an important insight for the one that started up this particular cycle within the larger chaord. But not only to him, for now someone else has a seemingly unrelated but important enough insight for her to say, “Holy fuck!” as she’s unwrapping some of the communicable part of this insight even more related and unrelated matters fall into place for some participants and a whole series of significant insights ensue. Then silence, a rich space where nobody feels a need to say anything; maybe because the insights all of a sudden create clarity where before things were obscure or because it is a joy to sit with people in the grass, simply present without social selves interfering.
The ancient forest, our guiding metaphor, is a good analogy to what happens in a participatory process in its authentically chaordic phase. Nobody is doing anything
in particular other than what really moves him or her to “put an audible object in the participatory space,” coming, so it seems to us, directly from the generative self. We hold that one cannot thus access the generative self without having gone through authentic chaos. It is not required to have that happen in one long process if people have enough experience with going through it; but our experience is that even then, a certain amount of authentic chaos is bound to happen as social habits are amazingly strong.
Dancing with Paradox In closing, we believe that what emerges in a participatory process of the kind we have been describing includes authentic chaos and cannot be predicted or foreseen. Any attempt to do so is priming or facilitating it in directions that steer it away from real emergence. Being authentically chaordic is experienced as wholesome. It seems that we humans are very able to recognize this way of being regardless of our level of development, just as we can recognize light or darkness however much we have further developed the intricacies of what is visible. Conversely, the interpretation of what emerges in the collectively experienced lucidity and how individuals use in their life, does depend on their personal and collective development. Since, in our view, the capacity to allow for authentic chaos grows with every developmental stage, it may be that in earlier stages priming and facilitation are inevitable; further action research is needed to determine if this is actually so.
If we are allowed a socio-psychological comment here: there is a conviction in civilized humanity, it seems, that if we’re really authentic than “nothing good can come of this!” It seems to belong to a deep-seated collective fear of the “wild”.
They have published articles on their experiences and observation in the German Integral Perspectives paper. www.mindshift-integral.com; Caspari and Schilling are Partners at Entz von Zerssen, Caspari & Partner Coaching & Consulting, www.ezc.partners
Chapter 4 In, As, and Towards the Kosmic We Geoff Fitch
While the GTC’s structure has evolved over its history, it is currently a 9-month, intensive leadership and personal development program. In this time period we have
facilitated and engaged with dozens of different integral collective we-spaces, involving over 200 individuals and over durations ranging from months to several years. The core of this exploration has been the GTC program, which enacts and facilitates a new way of being and relating, which we refer to as Causal Leadership. This chapter describes our intentions, theoretical orientations, experiences and learning with our experiments in integral we-spaces, as well as offers what we see as key practices for we-space development. A foundational orientation to this work is a developmental understanding that spans the concrete, subtle, causal and non-dual worlds through which our conceptions of I and We emerge and evolve. The term ‘concrete’ refers to the world of the senses, of ordinary perceivable matter, of individuals and groups in their concrete appearances. The ‘subtle’ is the world of mind, with its conceptions, emotions, constructions and contextualization, the world of imagination and subtle contexts and systems. The ‘causal’ is the domain of awareness itself, of the unconditioned mind, full and empty, the witness and the manifest phenomena of all concrete, subtle and causal realities. The ‘non-dual’ world is that which is beyond, includes, and unifies all distinctions, the world beyond mind that also births mind and all forms.
In these spaces, the ‘I’ is not backgrounded but rather unique personal expressions are highly valued in an unattached, non-demanding way, as are collective expressions. The experience is of one arising phenomenon in the paradoxical coincidence of seemingly individual and collective consciousness. What we think of as collective intelligence is heightened, but so is individual intelligence.
First, as we engaged with the long-term development of the participants in the program, we began to recognize the limits of the frameworks we were holding, such as Integral Theory (Wilber, 1995; Wilber, 2006) and Spiral Dynamics (Beck, Cowan, 1996), and of our understanding of them to inform the transformative processes with which we worked. We wondered – how do people develop, really? How do they actually show up differently as they grow through stages and develop new capacities?
Second, as we encountered the interpenetration of I and We, we began to see its implications for transformative change. To understand interpenetration, you might consider the move from either/or to both/and consciousness. In the latter, two aspects remain distinct but are understood to be in a deeper kind of relationship, more interdependent. Interpenetration is the next step in this process, to a recognition of “one within the other.” The implication of this leads to an understanding of unity beyond distinctions; one is many and many is one. Understanding subtle interpenetration, for example, one can see that, because no one is truly independent of the collectives in which they appear, they cannot truly change without a change in their relationships; likewise no social system can transform without a transformation of the individuals involved.
Third, this opened the question of leadership: what is transformative action and leadership from the causal ground? What is choice, vision and motivation from the groundless ground where we find the distinction of I and We interpenetrate and become more paradoxical (O’Fallon, Ramirez, Fitch, 2014)? How does leadership and followership occur when I and We collapse into the background (Ramirez, Fitch, O’Fallon, 2013)?
Fourth, we explored how to stabilize the deep states of openness that the individuals and collectives were touching into, which represent an extraordinary potential to which we all have access. This spawned two other important paths of learning: How does shadow relate to this work, as we so often encounter disowned shadow material in this process and see that our conception of I and We is limited by our defenses against a fuller and deeper whole. And, as human beings touch into these deeper spaces, how do we integrate the universal with the personal? How do we hold our highest and deepest realization, while attending to the extraordinary limits of our personal will and resources?
Evolving Conceptions of We-Space
The developmental framework that grew from these inquiries (O’Fallon, 2015) makes several unique and important contributions that are relevant to understanding we-space.
Table 1: Six distinct understandings of I and We. Our conceptions of ‘I’ and ‘We’ evolve through concrete, subtle, and causal perspectives.
At the sixth person perspective, this new ‘I’ is again backgrounded as it lets go into a much larger, causal ‘We.’ In the sixth level stages (6.0 Kosmic and 6.5 Illumined), the ‘We’ is all of concrete, subtle, and causal manifestation itself, the Kosmos, the utterly full and empty existence, eternal and beyond time, infinite and beyond space. Here one experiences themselves as this whole, with their apparent (even causal) ‘I’ birthed by and birthing the whole. At this stage we see a waning of the interest in ‘we-space’ work as it is normally conceived, which most often is identified with the concrete groups and subtle containers in which they take place. This is suggested by the term ‘space’ which suggests a context. We-space is a particular space, while at the sixth person perspective, attention moves to the one manifest reality itself, that which is and births all spaces.
As mentioned, each of these six unique perspectives of I and We is further divided into two distinct stages: first, a more receptive stage, which is about awakening to a new perspective taking capacity and exploring the many dimensions of it; and second, a more active stage, in which one wants to move forward and create with these capacities. Altogether, this points to an extraordinary diversity of the constructions of human mind and has deeply informed Pacific Integral’s seeing (and letting go) of we-space, informing this unique aspect of our work.
Principles and Practices
While holding this depth and span of diversity of consciousness in our awareness, Pacific Integral supports the emergence of what we came to call Causal Leadership collectives that consciously engage in developing their capacities for the embodiment of a causal awareness/field, while expressing those capacities as service in the world. This allows the emergence of a deeper intelligence to flow through them and to allow their subtle collective space to reflect their causal awareness:
A stabilized conscious causal collective begins to arise when enough individuals walk around with individual causal recognition and expression and share a collective experience and understanding of how they can source from this infinite causal intelligence, influencing concrete and subtle collective intelligence by collectively accessing the causal field of existence – that is, they begin to “causalize” the former, unbending subtle contextual-systems and concrete community expressions that they have lived within. These communities tend to release the subtle ceilings that hold people in place and give space for the individuals within them to soar in their individual causal expressions, seated in and arising out of this empty creative potential of the infinite causal ground. (O’Fallon, Ramirez, Fitch, 2014, p. 92)
The practice of holding a developmentally aware and fluid container is complex. It includes building capacity for self awareness of one’s own perspective taking, developing authenticity, witnessing practice, holding an open space in which participant’s perspectives are welcome and held while avoiding reflexive movement towards agreement, and learning to listen in new ways to the energetic movement of the whole.
Movement toward later stages implies greater maturity, but it also implies greater immaturity in that it may do nothing to address the unconscious shadow, incomplete growth and experience from earlier stages. While landing someone in a new place, even profoundly more rich and complex, this growth presents a whole new set of developmental demands. Causal collectives, for example, may touch into profound states of intuition and creativity, but may not know how to organize a meeting or resolve conflict in ways that arise out of and support this new consciousness.
Similarly, the same way modern, embodied spirituality has integrated the psychological understanding that causal states can be used to bypass (to avoid shadow and un-integrated parts of ourselves), the same is true of causal collectives. Deep states of connection, openness, pleasure, and presence that are possible in we-spaces can be used to bypass the conflict, projection, and defensiveness that can arise in relationships. The journey into deeper states and structures of awareness, therefore, must be just as much a journey to deeper intimacy, authenticity, and embodiment. This is expressed by the metaphor that growth can be upward (vertical development in states and stages), downward (integration, shadow work), outward (developing the breadth of maturity and capacities at each stage), and inward (self-understanding, soul work, truthfulness).
We have therefore continued to see this as ‘leadership’ work, and, while the construct has limitations, it reminds us that our deeper intent is to liberate expression, service and impact in the world.
Engaging in this service in the world, practitioners often confront outmoded perspectives and habits on organization and leadership. Unique challenges arise as causal collectives, who may be able to sustain deep meditative and relational spaces, attempt to organize, make decisions, and create together in the limitations of time and space. To address this, Causal Leadership collectives need to learn to sustain and embody the causal in the context of transformative action. The practice of developing this capacity is complex. At an individual and collective level, it involves being able to sustain and embody causal practice in distracting, chaotic and challenging moments. Organizationally, it involves adopting or inventing practices that reflect more complex, later stages, such as those suggested by Theory U and Holacracy. Socially, it requires that collectives develop the capacity to be energetically fluid, being able to let go, shift, and transform moment to moment. “In Causal Leadership one experiences that there simultaneously is and isn’t a leader, that one is simultaneously a leader and follower and neither, and the field of change is inter-systemic, holistic and complex.” (Ramirez, O’Fallon, Fitch, 2013, p. 11)
In the midst of this enactment of the wholeness that is shaped through these dimensions, there is absolutely a sense of truth, goodness and beauty that shapes and guides the experience of the We-Space. Miraculously, as each of us may tell quite a different story about what occurs in our collective, we know it to be one story. Although we might have distinct individual needs and impulses, there is a deeper heart that can recognize this truth. We breathe as one and resonate with the same intelligence that animates the whole, even while we seem to hold quite different concrete, subtle and causal points of view. Any sense of irony or paradox is outshined by the beauty and goodness that is this Heart’s Truth.
Learn more at pacificintegral.com and geoff-fitch.com.
Chapter 5 Trillium Awakening Sandra Glickman & Deborah Boyar, Ph.D.
Introduction
we-space is the fundamental context for our transformational work, and arises in multiple contexts—teacher-student dyads, sittings, peer-led mutuality groups, in-person retreats, online events, organizational work groups, and informal creative occasions. Each of our we-spaces embody our collective orienting philosophy, which is rooted in deeply held trust in Being—the totality of All and all, the existential reality of any moment, in its nondual nature as consciousness expressing as awareness, silence, and unmoving potential, as well as the radiant and dynamic play of dually alternating forms in the subtle and material worlds. Through this shared orientation, we understand the individuals in our we-space as continuous with Being, progressively and uniquely unfolding in awareness, personal and cultural identity, and embodiment of their full nature, both finite and infinite. We hold Being as an ultimate Mystery revealing itself in parts and glimpses over time, and consciously honor its wholeness.
Each of our we-spaces embody our collective orienting philosophy, which is rooted in deeply held trust in Being—the totality of All and all, the existential reality of any moment, in its nondual nature as consciousness expressing as awareness, silence, and unmoving potential, as well as the radiant and dynamic play of dually alternating forms in the subtle and material worlds. Through this shared orientation, we understand the individuals in our we-space as continuous with Being, progressively and uniquely unfolding in awareness, personal and cultural identity, and embodiment of their full nature, both finite and infinite.
We hold Being as an ultimate Mystery revealing itself in parts and glimpses over time, and consciously honor its wholeness.
Within this mystery, our teachers and
students access and anchor unshakable confidence in the unlimited nature of self and other. This trust includes a paradoxical core principle of our we-spaces: by descending into the finite—into personal story and conditions—and following themes to their resting point where attention is freed, a person and group are often delivered into the Mystery.
As the we-space effectively works its magic, the intelligence and discriminating force of Being is catalyzed, and begins to evolve, enliven, and ennoble the participants and the we-space itself.
Underlying Structures That Support Trillium Awakening We-Spaces
Alchemical transmutation is ignited by the we-space itself, which is profoundly supported by our cultural infrastructure, forged over two decades of engagement, exploration, reflection, and revision. We regularly revisit our orientation as new learnings emerge. Facilitators tend carefully to the quality of our we-spaces to support the most auspicious levels of contact, creativity, and safety. The energetic tone of gatherings might range from expressive to receptive, depending on the living reality of varying configurations of people in time.
As feedback is offered, the voice of collective wisdom becomes more refined, evocative, and transformational. The field is activated by each contribution, and intensifies as the evolutionary potential surges for both individual and collective. The we-space enlivens people with uplift and bliss, which often burst forward at break times as refined, delighted awareness of the whole of “I” and “we.”
Trillium Awakening Lineage
Our we-spaces are grounded in conscious embodiment through moment-to-moment awakening and recognition of the utter non-separateness of manifest and unmanifest realms. In traditional parlance, all appearances are understood as the unity of consciousness and form. This principle rests firmly in Indian tantra (not Vedanta), and was exquisitely clarified and elaborated in tenth century Kashmir by the extraordinary sage Abhinavagupta (Dyczkowski, 1987). Our work received this orientation in modern times through Baba Muktananda, who was a living exponent of Kashmir Shaivism and a teacher to Adi Da Samraj, the guru of Waking Down founder Saniel Bonder, whose transmission helped catalyze our we-spaces. In Kashmir Shaivism, consciousness (Shiva) is not isolated or elevated above form (Shakti). Rather, Shiva and Shakti are perpetually conjoined; as one, they generate and infuse phenomena with radiance. In Kashmir Shaivism, their eternal wedding is a metaphor for our true nature.
In Kashmir Shaivism, consciousness (Shiva) is not isolated or elevated above form (Shakti). Rather, Shiva and Shakti are perpetually conjoined; as one, they generate and infuse phenomena with radiance. In Kashmir Shaivism, their eternal wedding is a metaphor for our true nature.
Embodied Awakening – The Second Birth
Through over two decades of experience, we’ve found that when our rejected, wounded, and frozen parts are empathically met and integrated in the nondual we-space of Trillium Awakening, defenses and contractions can melt. We relax at the core, no longer needing to present a good face or prop ourselves up behind masks and roles. The public personality can soften. Authenticity is invited and encouraged; people experience our we-spaces as a safe setting to be genuine and come out of hiding. Life force energy that was bound in suppressing unacceptable parts of self is now recovered and liberated. Participants regularly report feeling profoundly seen and heard, often for the first time.
Balancing Sacred Holding and Spiritual Fire
Sacred holding fosters a field where individuals and the group can feel safe to explore new territory. The personality is supported to relax and integrate past experience, including wounds and disappointment in the awakening journey.
Spiritual fire is present throughout Trillium Awakening, and is implicit within the quieter stance of sacred holding. As teachers relate from their non-separate, consciously embodied state, the fire of their wholeness flows freely into the field and quickens those poised to receive it. In this dynamic tension between holding for safety and activating for transformation, emergent aspects of personality and soul nature can be discovered, celebrated, and integrated. By remaining attuned to the field, a teacher calibrates to the needs of individuals and the we-space, steering between the stability of sacred holding and the dynamism of spiritual fire. This spectrum is also a natural polarity within any person, and contributes to aliveness altogether.
Practitioners drawn to spiritual fire are likely to be relatively stable and ready for change, and more equipped to integrate shadow in self and relationship. They are skilled at holding their process and listening for its energy to open and resolve. As they are also more confidently rooted in conscious recognition of non-separateness, they might show a greater intensity of expression.
Transmission
We honor the Core Wound as the very portal to embodied awakening, with its realization of fundamental wellness and the radical non-separateness of consciousness and phenomena. Neither practice, achievement of rarefied states, nor transcending human dilemmas are necessary to enter this portal, which is a realm of letting go, surrendering, becoming present to our deep human needs and vulnerability, and apprehending how they coexist with the infinite unbounded dimension of our being. Some people experience the Core Wound as subtle or more pronounced tension, and others register it as an underlying sense of incompleteness, separation, or existential anxiety. When unexamined, the Core Wound can drive much of our conditioned behavior. When examined, it can be an impossible, frightening koan the mind cannot hold, which the body yearns to resolve.
We do not try to understand these paradoxes; we simply drop into them
and feel them. Surrendering into the paradox of the absolute and relative can immediately catalyze the Second Birth awakening, although it often occurs more gradually. To know ourselves, we must finally BE ourselves—and what we find in that process is an encounter with the radical creativity at the heart of all existence, which is inescapably present in each moment. We affirm that we evolve by embracing our utter nakedness to this dimension of our existence.
At that point, the Core Wound has been integrated right through its darkest interior, and we are released from exclusive identification with our conditioned state and the separate, solid “I.”
. “Such Onlyness is… deeply suffused with the intuitive feeling-awareness that Spirit and Matter, Consciousness and Phenomena, Emptiness and Form, are even now and at any and all times and places already as if melted into one another. Such a realized one feelingly knows the essences of these great polar opposites to be intensified into indistinguishability – even while distinctions somehow continue to appear” (Bonder, 2004, p. 80). Holacracy is a social technology or system of organizational governance in which authority and decision-making are distributed throughout a holarchy of self-organizing teams rather than being vested in a management hierarchy. See Robertson, 2015.
Sandra Glickman MA, Transpersonal Psychology, MA, English Literature. A lifelong investigator of transpersonal and integrated studies, she has especially advocated exploration of Consciousness, and also study of types (through models such as Enneagram, Human Design, Somatic Experiencing) to facilitate recognition of patterns and shadow.
Deborah Boyar, Ph.D. offers an interweave of somatic awakening and transpersonal healing that continues to evolve over many years of study and practice. As a senior Trillium Awakening teacher and co-founder of The Institute of Awakened Mutuality, she supports students in an integral process of self-discovery through an open-source architecture of nondual awareness.
Bonder, S. (2004). Healing the spirit/matter split. San Rafael, CA: Extraordinary Empowerments.
Chapter 6 Uncovering Four Levels of Leadership Presence: A Dynamic Presencing Journey Olen Gunnlaugson, Ph.D.
For the purposes of this chapter, I will focus on the first Dynamic Presencing Journey which involves an excavation of the four lifeworlds: Being Real; Being Witness; Being Essence and Being Source. Each lifeworld introduces a particular synergistic culture of presence, relationality, self-sense and emergent we-space to engage with.
Being Real The initial lifeworld is Being Real, which provides an initial reference point to begin letting go of whatever is obstructing us from a more transparent and grounded contact with our humanity. The initial focus is to get in touch with ourselves in a more centered and undefended way. Contact with this initial lifeworld makes it possible for our collective journey to begin from a place that is trustable and aligned with our actual ground. The Real cuts through mentalized, disembodied or spiritualized habits that otherwise obscure our immediate experience as its arising.
Source establishes key ontological grounds for engaging our emerging, evolving world and kosmos. Connecting to Source unites us with the fundamental grounds of our experience. While the Real connected us to our fierce yet vulnerable edge, Witnessing opened us into an expanded sense of self and relational field and Essence reconnected us with our unique innermost sense of being, Source awareness activates a quality of presence that is not tied to the limiting and conditioning influences of the manifest world of form.
Author Bio Olen Gunnlaugson, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in Leadership & Organizational Development within the Department of Management in the Business School at Université Laval, in Quebec City, Canada.
Chapter 7 We-Space, Integral City and the Knowing Field Marilyn Hamilton, Diana Claire Douglas, Cherie Beck, Alia Aurami, Joan Arnott, & Linda Shore
Author Bios Marilyn Hamilton is the founder of Integral City Meshworks and the author of Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive. A city evolutionist, AQtivator, author, and research, Marilyn co-creates a global constellation of Integral City Meshworkers, Learning Lhabitats, Peer Associations and City Institutes. Learn more at integralcity.com
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