How to put into words the trusting process of believing… of aligning oneself with instinct, when one simply knows, when one is aligned or synched with natural rhythms – with natural harmony – with values that support and enhance life. Passion has truth to it. Love has flow. Consciousness echoes truth further than any logical reasoning. Sound dreamy? That is what Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer and companions explore, following visions, dreams, or in their words: presence.
Learning and understanding depends not only on introspection but on our interaction and service to the whole. Outside of individualized living a plethora of possibilities abound.
NASA’s James Lovelock would say the Earth works as a self-regulating system. All living systems integrate feedback loops to learn from their environments and adapt. If we, as humans, are to fit into this natural logic, we need moments of reflection, and consciousness of belonging. What does change look like aligned to natural evolution?
Reactive learning could be described as “fight or flight” programming. Presencing is not to reenact the past but to manifest the emerging future. It comes after observing, at the deepest depth of a transformation model, fashioned after Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, designed after interviews with thousands of change makers.
Emerging from this U is a place of creativity, a place where head = heart = hands a shedding of judgement, cynicism and fear. “The longest road you will ever walk is the sacred journey from your head to your heart”.
From a mythopoetic point of view, this descent is a delving into an individual or organization’s wound or shadow. Connecting to source would be an enveloping in nature’s logic (eco-literacy) to then emerge into the consciousness of all living beings. To understand oneself as a biological niche in the web of life, as the entire universe enacting certain archetypes. No longer individual and separated, but systemic and integrated. The world coming into being through me.
“Soy el tejido y el tejedor. El sueño y el soñador” (I am the weaving and the weaver, the dream and the dreamer) – Traditional Mesoamerican Medicine Song
This interweaving of reality, occupies a different perspective of subject and object found in traditional science. A phenomenological approach is interested in the interrelation between the internal and the external. What ecobuddist Thich Nhat Han calls interbeing.
“Great scientists are distinguished not by their instruments but by their refined capacity to imaginatively examine the awareness their instruments enable…As my gaze sank deeper into the flames, the flames also seemed to sink into me…Every object well contemplated opens up a new organ within us.” – (Senge, et. al.)
Regular logic is associated to reasoning and deduction, using preconceived concepts or a priori logic to understand what we perceive. From a phenomenological point of view, “seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees” (R. Irwin).
‘Presencing’ is not rushing to match observations with a preconceived notions, or named concepts. It is to confront confusion, frustration and adversity, to delve into and not suppress emotional responses. Open heart. Embracing uncertainty. “The less you pack, the more awaits you.” Letting go of end and expected results. Delaying gratification, seeing long term repercussions, quietness of mind, lifetime dedication, guidance by masters, letting go of appearance of control. Freedom is dancing with destiny, committed to serving. Winston Churchill said “Leadership is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm”.
Seeing from the whole. Connecting with larger purpose, intent becomes extremely clear. Mother Teresa said “You cannot do great things. You can only do small things with great love.” The National Dairy Association in India is comprised of 100k co-ops. When learning from “deep source”, seeds may take weeks, months or years to germinate. Self cultivation: study, meditate, serve.
“Be quiet in your confusion, and bewildered
When you’re completely empty within
that silence, you’ll be saying.
Lead me, open me.
When you become that helpless,
God’s beauty will act through you”
-Rumi