Tag: #humantohuman

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Not Rushing On the Inside

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Yesterday was a full, full day. Six phone calls / meetings that were an hour long. I started at 7:00 a.m. with necessary preparation (after returning the evening before from a holiday weekend with my son — it was a transition that required some compulsion). I finished just before 8:00 p.m. What space there was in between was largely about todos resulting from calls, or prepping for the next call, or tabling (literally) some of what could wait for later in the week. They were all good calls. With good people. And satisfying. Just full.

It was my last call of the day, with Kinde Nebeker, when I realized how much of an aversion I have to rushing, which is a lot of what I felt I was doing during that full day. Kinde has become a good friend. She’s got a deep soul that calls out more of the deep soul in me. We make sure that we have a good check-in and a deliberate check-out. In the middle was lots of good imagining for the upcoming series that we are hosting, The Inner and Outer of Evolutionary Leadership: Knowing Our Nature. We both got excited about this. It builds on what we hosted previously in the Spring.

It was in our check-out that I realized something. I shared with Kinde that I was feeling the rush of things. All of those meetings. All of those todos. A growing list that is big enough that I need some luck and some real patience to get it all done. I discovered it, aha style, as I was saying it out loud to Kinde. “I don’t like to rush. I’m not at that stage of life. Depth matters more to me. But I do enjoy the buzz of getting things done. It’s just that I don’t want to feel rushed in here, on the inside,” I said, gesturing towards my torso and belly. “I don’t want to feel ungrounded here, or unpresent here.” I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Kinde and I were talking about presence. It is a big part of the series we are offering together.

Well, I know that many people I work with feel a similar rushed and hurried pressure. A hurry. A worry. A fear. A juggling of a deadline. An enslavement to a schedule that is not their creation. An obligation to organizational patterns and habits that haven’t been interrupted or challenged in weeks, months, or even years. “Why are we doing it that way? — Because that’s the way we’ve always done it (and we don’t have time to rethink how we are doing it).” Argh! That’s rough isn’t it. The battle grounds that are institutional and organizational life require coping with this reality in very brave ways. We share our busyness, and our ungroundedness — the rushed on the inside parts — like they are battle scars that we are proud of. And then we move on, finishing that last sip of coffee, back to the battle. I bet you’ve seen some of this, right. Sigh.

What if, we created more room for the calming and presencing on the inside? More of the inner work that so changes the outer work. More of the presencing that makes a big difference in the outer convening. I think it is what many of us are doing. And what many of us, institutionally need to do — I meet people everywhere desperate for depth and meaning.

Not so rushed on the inside.

 

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Circle Energetics

Rock Stars

I love this picture above. It is all participants from The Circle Way Practicum earlier this month (except two that were unable to be there — we had collages they created to represent them). I love the picture because it brings back a palpable energy and memory.

One of the teachings that I really found helpful at the practicum was the one on Circle Energetics. I think I found simple words that I’ve been searching for to help describe and understand what I’ve been observing and feeling for a long time in groups about the more subtle yet essential dynamics at play. It comes in these three statements from one of the handouts.

“All living systems emit registerable fields of energy — including us.” I think of it as a vibration. It helps me to think of the first science classes I had when introduced to the properties of waves. They have a frequency (how many cycles in a given time period), an amplitude (height of the wave), and a wavelength (distance between crests). I can see the squiggly lines on paper from those science classes. It helps me to think of those lines when I watch people interacting. I’m making it sound more tangible that I mean it. I mostly feel it, this field of energy. I give myself permission to describe it as vibration to understand even more.

“All interactions between living systems activate these energetic fields.” I think of any human group as a living system. At the practicum, it was the group of 22 of us. My cohost, Amanda Fenton and I designed in a whole lot of interaction for the group — partners, small groups, the full group, solo reflection, play (and of course meals, social time, and sleep). The practicum is more than teaching a methodology, though it is that. It’s activating an energetic field. Now we are getting somewhere, right. It feels like a magician’s secret made clear to help make the uncommon, common.

“Circle organizes the energy emitted by interaction.” This one is the kicker for me that I’m learning the most about. My experience is that Circle creates container for that interaction, and that energy, to make more sense. It creates a kind of coherence that seems fully natural and palpable. One of the things that has helped me learn this more fully is to notice how that energy dissipates when the circle is complete or when the event is over. What felt really clear and simple, becomes fuzzy and more difficult to remember. Almost like a dream — you wake in the middle of the night with it thinking you’ll never forget it. By morning, you wake for the day and it’s completely gone. It is my experience that Circle organizes and clarifies — the best description of depth I’ve found is that it is organizing that energy so that we can access information in another, and often shared, way.

It was a fun piece to teach with Amanda. And it’s been a fun and helpful piece, this clarity of Circle energetics, to notice staying with me. Like the memory of a good meal shared with friends. Or a good party. It stays with us, right. My guess is that it’s the energetic that most lingers.

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The Open Road

Open Road

I have grown up and lived all of my life in the western part of North America. The first half was in Canada. Central Alberta. Edmonton. Edmonton is a prairie city. The city is big enough. But to get from that prairie city to another, or to the mountains of southeast Alberta and British Columbia, it took some driving. There was open road.

The second half of my life I’ve lived in Utah, and increasingly, Seattle. Lindon is bordered by the Wasatch Mountains on the east. A giant valley and the Oquirrh mountains on the west. I’ve been able to drive, many times, travel open roads, all the way down to San Diego, and all the way north to Edmonton. Twelve hours to the south. As many as 19 hours to the north.

I love the open road.

When I’m alone, I think. I sing. I talk out loud to myself. I wonder. I get sparks of ideas. It’s a kind of meditation time. When I’m with others, the same thing happens (but perhaps with a bit less singing). We think. We talk. We wonder. We laugh.

I took the above picture in southern Montana. It’s the open road that I’m on today. I’m following I-15 up to Butte, then I-90over to Missoula. Montana is known for it’s big skies. They are awesome. Breath-taking. Lot’s of time to think. Lots of time to wonder. Lots of time to be held by the big sky.

It’s not open road that I need every day. But there are some days when it feels utterly and gratefully essential.

Thanks Montana, and your lovely big skies.

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American Politics as Reality TV

Warning — it’s a bit of a rant.

The American presidential election process continues. It goes on. And on. And on. And on. It’s a two year process that started feeling like bad reality TV quite a long time ago. Drama. Name-calling. Hyperbole. Grandstanding. Partial truths masqueraded as whole truths. Spin. Spin. Attack. Argh! There is little that is attractively compelling to me. Participating feels more obligatory, like cleaning somebody elses’ mess in the kitchen. It’s needed. Just not much fun and a bit unfair. I still watch, trying to understand and make sense of it, including some of the Republican Convention last week, and likely some of the Democratic Convention this week. They both feel like a circus — they have my curiosity, but are really a bit creepy.

I have three things I’ve noticed about the process in the last months, one of them this weekend. In the recent months, it is that the behavior in the process feels very adolescent. Adolescence run amuck. This is very much the Donald Trump phenomenon. “I don’t like what you said about me — I’ll strip you of credibility.” It’s aggressive. It’s pouty. “I don’t like what I’m hearing — I’ll speak more loudly (yell) to drown out voices.” It just reminds me of a neighbor’s teenaged son from many years ago that was all bravado in appearance, but everyone knew that insecurity was what laid beneath that persona.

Let’s pretend this is true — adolescence run amuck — for a moment. The problem for me isn’t that one person is acting this way. That’s Donald. The Donald. So be it. The kicker for me is that people are buying it. To watch the frothiness, the doting by the masses for the adolescence that exists in both U.S. political parties — that says something scary about the system and culture of people that we are all living in (well beyond the presidential election process). Eldering please. Just a bit more, please. Grow it up a bit.

My second observation is, I suppose, a commentary from Democratic VP Elect, Tim Kaine. I saw a brief clip where he and Hillary Clinton were being interviewed. One of those Sunday morning news programs. I didn’t know much about Kaine and wanted to see how he carried himself. The interviewer asked Hillary Clinton how she felt about what she was being labeled by Donald Trump. “Crooked Hillary” was the reference. To be clear, I suspect the label fits in some ways. As it likely does for Trump. Or for anyone. There is more maturing to acknowledge, or search for the way in which any of us are crooked. OK, tone it down — not completely honest. The honesty of that is far more helpful than the jacked up reciprocated denial. Sheesh!

Clinton responded with something quite strategic — “I want to talk about the issues.” Good for her. It was political strategy. But it was Tim Kaine’s remark that made me laugh in it’s “get to the point” quality. He described how Hillary Clinton was doing a good job of letting that water / insults run off of her back. But then he added, “for most of us we stopped name calling in the fifth grade.” Good for Kaine. And maybe that is what good VPs, seconds, are supposed to do, so as to preserve dignity of the person who will hold the office of president. Name calling, though entertaining, I suppose (adolescent reality TV) isn’t truth-telling, even when it comes from a person running for the office of president. Makes me think this election will be remembered as the tabloid election — a peek at the absurd is sufficient, but I really came to the store for some milk and essential groceries.

OK, on to the third point, which is less of a rant. I’ve been thinking and writing a fair amount lately about emergence. For sake of today, to say that emergence is what arises when parts of a system interact. It is a quality that the system possesses, but not the parts (or far less of it in the parts). I wonder, does the system that is American Politics — or more broadly, American culture, or western culture — arise as a systemic property that has the parts acting in ways they wouldn’t otherwise? I suspect so. Donald Trump is more accusatory. Hillary Clinton is more boisterous. News reporters inflame difference and guffaw. Voters numb ourselves, watching more blathering — and expecting it — because it is more entertaining than last nights baseball game or ridiculous summer block-buster release that is really a crappy movie.

The system possesses the quality that none of the individuals are responsible for by themselves. I think this is true. It’s not completely clear to me how it is true in more subtle ways.

Maturing. I believe this is what is called for in all of us. As individuals. As nations. As a planetary community. Less jumping in to the fray, which perhaps I’ve done here today — more deliberate pause and stillness, which might just be the most helpful thing we can do. More real encounter with gardens and forests, lakes and oceans — less Pokemon Go glued to the virtual.

OK, rant complete. It doesn’t happen that often — and I wouldn’t want it to. But sometimes, it’s a must in the company of friends, no?

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