Author: Tenneson Woolf

I returned this week from an Art of Hosting Training, working with Chris Corrigan, Caitlin Frost, and Teresa Posakony. Bowen Island, just off the west coast of Vancouver, British Columbia, is suuuuch a lovely place to host. Rivendell, the retreat center holds a group well. It is quite cozy — which usually makes for great community and learning.

While there, I hosted an Open Space session on Intuitive Knowing. I wanted to explore this as a tool for shifting paradigms. It fit well in the context of this training, which began with a cafe on “Where do you feel stretched now?” It was affirmation together that the times are changing, and, yes, it is a time to not only pick up tools but to re-learn and un-learn learning itself.

It was great to see so many people interested. We each expressed a bit of why we were interested in intuitive knowing. This itself was quite helpful, some naming of desires. It included everything from seeking more efficient ways of being to working deliberately with dreams and visions. From the deep dives of trusting old wisdom and owning our roles as alchemists to the immediate beginning practices of strengthening intuition through journaling. A common thread for me was the desire to be better translators, better listeners, and better receivers through intuitive knowing.

Through sharing a few stories together, we began to listen in for a few principles and practices to strengthen intuitive knowing. Each of these feels like it can be a practice for living. Our full harvest sheet is here for perusing.

• Follow the impression, the ease.
• Own the calling (the times seem to keep speaking it to us) — who do I think I am not to do it?
• Welcome the wholeness of the world (life and consciousness seen as one entity) that wants to be in partnership with us and speaks to us through intuitive ears. What if the things that grab out attention are gifts of communication from this wholeness of the world so that we can learn at new levels?
• Remember old ways. First respect your elders. Then become one. Be your 100 year-old self (thanks Amanda Fenton in particular for this), sometimes welcomed through initiation by elders or mentors.

My experience of learning in this group, in and of itself, was great. What it opened me too was even more beautiful, this topic and inquiry:

The world offers us symbols
so that we might project meaning upon them,
and in so doing,
come to understand more of our inner condition
that is in fact creating our outer reality.

This is a deep learning for me. It is something that has been distilling now for a number of years. So, thanks to all the good friends at Bowen Art of Hosting! This is one for some further reflection and writing over the next season or so.

Some of the journey shared through tweets of the last couple of weeks. I’m finding it quite helpful to tweet — a level of attending to life through expression of snippets. I’m also finding twitter a helpful way of staying in touch, with the life stream of people, events, news.

– School for Hackers — Perhaps all in new paradigms are hackers (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/10/school-for-hackers/8218/

– On simplicity, from an NPR radio program on the ukulele: “An orchestra can tell you stories. But an ukulele tells the truth.” 🙂

– “@benjaminaaron: “queepening” = the process of deepening into a question through questions instead of seeking answers”

– Also readying for Art of Hosting in Arnprior, Ontario, near Ottawa (http://berkana.org/pdf/AoHOntarioOct2010.pdf). Join us.

– Preparing for upcoming work with labour educators in the Canadian Labour Congress (http://www.box.net/shared/1tjs2sc97l)

– Just walked 2.5 miles on Heritage Trail. From a townhome I just agreed to buy, to the Shoreline Trail in the Uinta Forest. Still and quiet.

– Jackie Wright (Red Cross) on Art of Hosting: “the process enriched my personal and professional life and bring clarity to my path.”

– Meg Wheatley 3 minute video (http://www.vimeo.com/12939130) — “Life seeks order but uses messy processes to get there.” Yes!

Twitter: TennesonWoolf

One of the books I’m perusing these days, and finding particularly helpful, is Peggy Holman’s Engaging Emergence. It is good to know Peggy well enough to see her face and  hear her voice when reading the words. I can feel the gift of her experience coming forward nicely in this book.

In particular, I’m appreciating some of her early framing. All beneath the umbrella of “emergence,” I can hear Peggy offers some simple invitations:

1. To notice the relationship between complexity and breakthrough. She talks about how many of today’s challenges are complex — in nations, organizations, teams, communities, and families. It’s natural to invite people together to do something about these challenges. But here is the rub — doing so can make it more complex! Peggy has a nice way of inviting the breakthrough that can arrive in that complex group of people. It is well-framed to notice that without the complexity, we may never get to the new solutions we so need.

2. To give focus to what I would call “our job” as we engage emergence. First, embrace the mystery. Second, follow life energy. And third, choose possibility. These help add to ways I’ve been naming “our job” with clients and people in systems. I often speak it as “surrender to surprise,” or “follow the spark of yes,” and as my colleague Teresa Posakony often says, “live at the scale of our dreams.”

3. To welcome the benefits of emergence. This is particularly helpful as I think about people and clients I know that are considering participative ways of working and learning. People want to be effective. There is often a worry / doubt / fear that engaging emergence won’t yield enough result. Here’s Peggy’s description of five benefits that feel like gifts in any system.
•Individuals are stretched and refreshed.
•New and unlikely partnerships form.
•Breakthrough projects surface.
•Community is strengthened.
•The culture begins to change.

Thanks Peggy. Well-framed for inviting and doing great work. Well-framed for helping to shift the culture and paradigm of leadership.

Last Saturday, through the Salt Lake Center for Engaging Community, I offered a half-day workshop on Open Space Technology with our local community. I wondered if four hours would be enough to get a helpful taste of learning about OST and of experiencing OST. It was. Quite remarkably delicious actually.

We moved our way from Welcome to Check-in. There was an immediate deepening and group appreciation as people shared stories of why they choose to come. I offered a few resource books — some of Harrison Owen’s books (Wave Rider, and Expanding Our Now), but also others that help set a broader context for using OST (Peggy Holman – Engaging Emergence; Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea – The Circle Way; Roger Lewin — Complexity; Margaret Wheatley – Turning to One Another, and A Simpler Way; Paulo Coelho – Life; Fritjof Capra, David Steindl-Rast – Belonging to the Universe). We moved our way into a one-round experience of OST just 25 minutes — Why talk? Of course we talked about the 4 Principles, the Law of Mobility, and Passion / Responsibility. I loved the feedback from this short round and harvest, offered by Erin Gilmore — “25 minutes; 100 gems.”

The harvest was in the form of simple Haiku:

From the group, “How do you deal with problems like negativity taking over?”

Feel it. Don’t fix it.
What I’m afraid of controls me.
Not swayed by crazy.

It vibrates from me.
What is the practice here now?
Open to deep space.

From the group, “How do we include the heart in our talk?”

Heart is present when
it is lov’d and unveiled.
Spirit feeling open.

And from the group, “…even when others don’t see the value?”

Unite and conquer.
Honoring the old and new.
Speaking our shared truths.

After a short break, we spent 45 minutes teaching and telling stories on a few basics to help each of us in our practice. 1) Preparation and Invitation, 2) Needed Physical Set-Up, 3) Beginning and Open Space, 4) Principles, The Law of Mobility, Passion & Responsibility, 5) The Host’s Job, and 6) Harvesting.

And then a checkout asking people to name a bit of  how the learning today changes what they do.

All in all, a great half day. A reminder to me of the power of the process, even when done in a very short time frame.