Category: Edited

Yes, I continue to learn much from the quantum paradigm and world view. At one level, there is a way in which I feel I can relax my certainty of gaze into feeling the fluidness of invoking energy into material form. So many more choices that become available. For me, it is more like stepping into the playground and being able to feel it. The learning is about how to work with it. What to do with it.

At another level, it is about beginning to see difference. I appreciate some of the comparisons: linear to complex, Newtonian to quantum. These themselves have limits, of course. That is what language does. It reveals and it conceals. Sometimes even tricks us into an old energy pattern. Reifies a form that is just another guess of what is happening. But the language creates invitation to see differently. I find if I don’t get stuck on the words, or even the concept of words (if that makes sense), the field of seeing becomes much larger.

Here’s a few of those comparisons that I just saw from a colleague, Howard Mason in Kentucky. I met he and his colleague a few years back at an Art of Hosting training.

Newtonian
-Atomistic (focus on functional parts)
-Abosolute (assumes certainty and predictability; emphasis on control)
-Reductive (the whole is the sum of the parts; parts exist independently and are interchangeable; coordination must be imposed)
-Either / Or (selective and exclusionary; there is only one truth and one best way; there is inescapable tension between the individual and the group)
-Certainty (focus on here and now, facts, actuality; values ignored)
-Subject / Object Split (leader is detached from people of the organization; the world is out there)

Quantum
-Holistic (focus on relationships and integration)
-Indeterminate (value in uncertainty and ambiguity; requires trust and intuition; nurtures emergence)
-Emergent, Self-Organizing (whole is greater than the sum of its parts; each part is defined by relationships with other parts; order or patterning emerges spontaneously)
-Both / And (inclusive and synergistic; individual and the group are mutually defining in dialogue with experience)
-Possibility (focus is on creating; thinking outside the box; exploring unknown, potential; value are central)
-Participatory Universe (leader is “in the world;” both are mutually defined)

From the world view, the leadership capacities become more clear.

Kathy Jourdain is very good friend. She lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She is one of my dearest teaching and hosting companions in the Art of Hosting Network. I love the way that we connect with each other — one of those friends where the right timing always seems to show up without effort. I also love the way that she is a committed writer. She is committed to the practice of writing, which I’ve also been learning a lot about lately.

Kathy has written three pieces recently that feel like essentials for contexting the Art of Hosting and the deeper patterns that become available to participants and those of us that steward this work. I see them as fabulous pieces to offer, particularly when people are just starting to explore what this work is or whether to come to a training. Her context to me helps invite the awareness of really important skills, and, the rich, rich possibility underneath those skills that shift paradigms and becomes ways of being.

One AoH Training Does Not a Practitioner Make — I love the call to practice here. Not as role-playing. And not as volume or certification. Rather, as getting the deeper pattern and resonance.

Becoming an AoH Practitioner — Some further description and guidance on beginnings. I’ll add this piece also that I wrote a while back on Credentials as Practice. It speaks to the need to just start and learn as we go.

The Art of Stewarding — I love the reference here to knowing and feeling the resonance of people gathered in learning. Also, the importance of self-work (and clearing, etc) to change the relationship of holding group. What is underneath has always been a compelling question for me. I wrote some of this here, Hosting What? Consciousness, Wellness, Wholeness, and Resonance.

So much to explore. For me, I give attention to world views and practices from the quantum paradigm, intuition and alchemy, energy and light, reification. Like Kathy, and gladly, with her, finding some really helpful levels of essentials that further feed this beautiful and practical Art of Hosting choice for doing good together.

• I assume capacity to act. To get busy. To go fast. To get things done. To be smart. All qualities of doing. An… (cont) http://deck.ly/~llnfU
• When energy is brought into form, it becomes accessible. Writing does that. For the energy, the form, and the process of touching energy.
• Learning that, for me, writing is a practice of letting consciousness flow through me so that I can occasionally express it in words.
• Berkana’s Bob Stilger: “decision happening” rather than “decision making.” Uses collective discernment, inquiry rather than driving quickly.
• Friend Chris Corrigan on emergence: when everybody leaves from the party with something that nobody came with.
• Simple bits of encouragement on meditation forwarded from my friend Christy Lee-Engle: http://bit.ly/kkku2D
• http://yfrog.com/kk8tmrj That’s my son Elijah. A walk tonight in the neighborhood to feed carrots to the horses.
• RT @acuginotti: When we learn that knowing models are not enough to succeed, we have less copyright madness and more collaborative action.
• At Four Winds energy medicine school. Fire ceremony, bands of protection, and other practices in deep levels of hosting.
• Fireflies and sheet lightening tonight in Stockbridge, MA. Nice for a walk after more at 4 Winds energy medicine school.
• At the Stockbridge Bowl, last evening before completing at 4 Winds. http://yfrog.com/hslnndcxj
• What is possible in working with light, developing a relationship with light? Learning illumination practices as healing energy.
• Delighted to welcome Yuya-san and Katsu-san tonight to our Lindon home. Catching up on Japan stories, ALIA, and more.
• Some important work from my friend Margaret Wheatley on comfort with uncertainty. Times are changing. http://bit.ly/pfheUk
• Life as practice. Not role-playing. As being in process of learning, improving. As imprinting. As gaining cellular memory.
• Two upcoming AoH trainings. Early bird registration now. Saskatchewan: http://bit.ly/onlybj. Bowen Island: http://bit.ly/nit7Bz
• Lovely from Judith Blackstone: It is through inward contact with our own organism that we become capable of true contact with other people.

Below is an email exchange I had this week. Some of it I offered through the Art of Hosting listserve. Some of it in response from my beautiful friend and colleague Maria Scordiolu in Greece. I post it here because it helps me to see more language for gifts, energetics, and human systems evolving with choice of what we hold in the central hearth to imprint in all of what we offer and become. And from the realness of revolution in Greece, a pattern showing up in many places in the world now.

Hello Everyone (July 2 — To AoH Listserve)

I wake this morning with an impression to share this context of AoH, one that many of you know. It was something that we sent out through Berkana last week to context a few upcoming AoHs. I like the simplicity of words and the expression of clarity.

I’m aware, reading this morning again of Maria’s postings. Her invitation to support those gathered in Greece, not just for Greece, but for the bigger system. Her and others continuing to share the story, the courage. I receive those stories as energetic activations — give attention to the beauty that is there in and among people, and by so doing, help that consciousness come to material form. It is some of the wizardry that many of us practice. At one level, it is hosting. At another, it is invitation to organize around what we love and have that at the hearth of what we do.

I’m aware of reading a financial analysis of United States economic systems of the “house of cards” kind of feel. An amazing system that feels like it could collapse in a number of ways. Such an illusion that has sustained for many years. But now, it shifts. Insurmountable debt. Deep budget cuts in all states.

My intention is not to speak of the fear. But rather of the masses of energy in people and in groups — with this kind of macro story. When we look at these levels of scale, the world needs some basics of presence. Even with fantastic skills and good people. There are energies that seem to be bursting at the seems. Why? I am one who believes an energetic pattern is shifting here on earth. That is spoken from many traditions. It is becoming more intense. Some of us humans are learning how to be in that. And some are just spinning in it. Those spinnings can quickly become wildfire.

The time for us to be in healthy patterns of our engagement, learning, wholeness feels very strong. AoH is a pattern for us to do that. I’m glad to be a part of that, knowing what shifts in me, and in what I see in remembering community and wholeness. I don’t mean to offer that in any kind of marketing way. Rather, with awareness, and invitation for all of us to be coming with our gifts and inviting self/ others into wholeness patterns, while being in what will continue to grow as experiences in immense energy.

Quite a thing to be human, isn’t it. And quite a thing to be remembering and evolving together.

Love from Utah.

Tenneson

 

Dear Tenneson, (July 2 from Maria)

What you are writing to – a gifting culture – where each of our gifts can be a contribution – is exactly what I have seen being practiced on a small scale in Syntagma Square.  People are simple being gifts to one another.  Some know about technology – so they set up the technology group – other are artists – so they set up the artists group – others are good at organising food and water – so they set up the food and water group.  Each person is just being a gift – to the whole.  This is a new form of economy – eco – home – nomia – keeping order – in other words – keeping order of our home – or housekeeping.  For now, Syntagma Square is the home – and people living there are living this form of economia.  Anyone can gift – and there are boundaries – please do not come here to put forward your political party or dogma – gift because you want this to be a part of your act of direct democracy – that is taking your place as a person who cares.

I am witnessing what Meg Wheatley spoke about all those years ago – a new form of leadership – anyone who cares and wants to do something about it..  When the something we care about is about life – and our place as people in it – in a way that has dignity and integrity – it really is not difficult to stand up and gift.  And it hurts – boy does it hurt – when this form of leadership is tear gassed and portrayed in the media as violent – when it just is the most basic of human rights – to take part – to contribute – to gift.  Why – for love!!  For connection.  For wholeness.

This is not about right or wrong –  this is natural law.  We humans belong to life – we do not create it – we do not direct it – we are it!!  We are coming back.  We are re-membering.  We are reframing.  We are be-living.  And it is taking so much strength and courage – to break through the delusion and illusion – so we can stand naked and realise – we are just part of this mystical and magical web – called Life!.

Much love

Maria