Author: Tenneson Woolf

More to add from Tom Atlee and the earlier post I shared about “What’s Really Going On at Occupy Wall Street?”

For me, I’m asking questions about consciousness shift. What is underneath all of these gatherings that represents a consciousness shift?

I feel an awe of the expressions from that consciousness, the expectation to gather, to create voice. Not as showman. But indeed as irrepressible expressions of a self-organizing world in rapid change.

http://www.truth-out.org/occupying-wall-street-what-went-right/1318173044
Occupying Wall Street: What Went Right?
J.A. Myerson: “Of all the criticisms being hurled at Occupy Wall Street, the most substantively interesting is the issue of scale. How large can the living-society portion of the occupation grow, dependent as it is on a reasonably small living space and an inspiringly simple if limited amplification system? Questions like this are worth pondering, and I’ll be taking some of them up here at Truthout in the coming weeks, but let us pause for a moment to consider how astonishing it is that this is a concern at all.”

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http://www.nationofchange.org/where-99-percent-get-their-power-1318173459
Where the 99 Percent Get their Power
Sarah van Gelder:  “Powerful movements build not on a laundry list of policy demands, but on principles and values…. Powerful movements create their own spaces where they can shift the debate, and the culture, to one that better serves. That’s why showing up in person at the occupy sites is so critical to this movement’s success. In hundreds of communities around North America, people are showing up to make a statement and to listen to each other. They are also teaching one another to facilitate meetings, to take nonviolent direct action, to make their own media. They are taking care of each other, gathering food supplies, blankets, and clothes that can allow people to remain outdoors even as the weather gets wetter and colder.”

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eve-ensler/ambiguous-upsparkles-from_b_1003908.html

Ambiguous UpSparkles From the Heart of the Park (Mic Check/Occupy Wall Street)
Eve Ensler

• Berkana’s new website is live. For learning and collaborating with others. bit.ly/mRmxkp
• At the Art of Hosting people meet in their humanity and meet their humanity. Thanks Maria Scordiolu for this.
• Byron Katie = Neurological De-Colonization (thx Caitlin Frost).
• Open Space Technology = Practical De-colonization (thx Chris Corrigan).
• CBC doc (21 min) on impact of concussions. Told from a hockey perspective. Glad to see NHL looking at this. bit.ly/qs2up1
• Steve Jobs reflecting on living – “You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
• From my friend Dominic, research on the value of organic vs conventional farming: rodaleinstitute.org/fst30years
• RT @dfrieze: Can the #Occupy Movement be a Turning Point? @doylecanning blog on Yes Mag: bit.ly/nvz9nx
• RT @EricSPeterson: Just saw sign in @CityWeekly office that reads: “In case of fire, exit building before tweeting about it.”
• RT @NoeticOrg: Shamanism, love, and medicines necessary to heal damage of our modern times – mp3 excerpt A Arrien: bit.ly/mU8KEW
• Noticing my need for still in my soul, some quiet. And, need for being in creation with others. A dance of these days.
• Dig this and come. Support a young and emerging leadership community in New Brunswick: Full invite here: bit.ly/ohBIyi
• RT @berkanainst: “Re-imagining Waste (and the new Berkana.org!)” bit.ly/ofvtJI (Pls RT!) #upcycling #walkoutwalkon
• Lovely poetry reflections from friend / colleague Dave Pollard. Perspective on this life, freedom, ease. bit.ly/ouzGjv
• QIN: Our traditions were taken from us. Our relation to the land. We need to relearn skills and community like when we dig for clams.
• QIN domain groups meeting: Wellness, Learning, Community, Prosperity. Sharing preferred futures, indicators of wellness, goals.
• With Sono & Teresa at Quinault Indian Nation: Strategic Plan to invoke tsooto / hope.

You know how some learning friendships and colleagueships are so bounteous that having a journal nearby and pen in hand are utterly essential? The ones where you want to catch the ideas because they are good ones. This is the kind of learning relationship I feel with two friends and colleagues in New Zealand. Glen Lauder is a long-time friend, met first at an Art of Hosting training near Boston. He is a facilitator rich with insight, imagination, fierceness of purpose, clarity, and generous heart. Phillip Barker is similar. A gifted co-thinker and younger social entrepreneur. Inspiring. Honest. Gentle. Fierce.

Together we have committed to a deliberateness in learning, exploring, harvesting, and offering. Linking together these home bases (me in Utah, Glen and Phillip in Richmond and Nelson respectively, on New Zealand’s south island and Tasman Bay — it may not remain “Utasman,” but it is how I playfully think of it now).

Yesterday was the first of what will be several regular skype calls in the next year. For this time it was Glen and me. It had the feeling of starting to nibble at content and process of something very important. Bites that nourished and called forth my appetite for more. Insights that come in the company of friends. The beginnings of content and format that will feed the work that we offer together and individually (writing, coaching, workshops, programs, exploratory dialogues).

Some of this is here (my journal and pen were well used). Glen’s question, for example, “What are the qualities that bring aliveness into dialogue every day?” stayed with me as we shared stories of dialogues that have been flat, or stayed at a superficial level. We shared stories of dialogues that have popped also. Into what feels like a new kind of consciousness, accessible to all that are present. The way that showing up with full attention and presence (or intending / practicing this) births a new entity. A new organism that is the constellation of people in heart, mind, and more. It is the kind of work that Otto Scharmer gives much attention to, “presencing the future.” What if dialogue were a means of birthing a future as a living entity? I do think of dialogue this way.

Cheers to these beginnings — more to come.

You know how some things take on a momentum and movement that nobody planned on. They way that the group spirit becomes a defining identity that was more than anyone imagined. It is inspiring to me to see what is happening in this light on Wall Street and in other “Occupy” locations around the world. I hear it as a call to stop the patterns of unexamined, unsustainable growth and greed. I don’t know the answers. These are deep issues. The dialogue feels very important.

Below are some helpful insights from friend and colleague Tom Atlee. His full post on this topic is on his website.

“So I realized: OF COURSE Occupy Wall Street doesn’t have “demands.” Demonstrations and protests have demands. But although O.W.S. LOOKS like a protest and a demonstration (and occasionally turns into one), it is actually something more, something else: It is a passionate community of inquiry acting itself out as an archetypal improvisational street theater performance embodying, in one hand, people’s longings for the world as it could be and, in the other, their intense frustrations with the world as it is. These longings and frustrations reside in the whole society, not just in the occupiers. The occupiers are behaving and reaching out in ways that release and activate those suppressed transformational energies all over the country and world. (Arny and Amy Mindell call such archetypal energies “timespirits” after “Zeitgeist”, the spirit of the times.) To think of Occupation Wall Street as primarily a demonstration or protest misses the profound novelty and power of what they are doing. All of us – they and we – are figuring out what it is they are doing as they do it. They are kinda building the road as they travel.”