We-space-Collective Intelligence Groups Vary in Purpose

​ We-space (Collective Intelligence) Groups 

Vary in Purpose

(Apologies for the wonky paragraph spacing. Blogger simply does not obey paragraphing commands!)

As I look around the landscape of the groups I know involved in higher-consciousness we-space practices, I notice a distinction which could be unfolded as differences in purpose. In this blogpost, I'll begin to explore these, and I hope you join in​ with your experiences and observations!

The four purposes are:

1. Creating/experiencing/exploring

2. Experimenting/refining

3. Using, working with/as

4. Living in/as

I'm sure these are large baskets which could be further differentiated!

In my mind, these four purposes form a spectrum. A group could move through them, in order. Experiencing lays a foundation for experimenting, and experimenting lays a foundation for living as a collective consciousness group.

However, very importantly IMO, each purpose is an end in itself, and a group need not move beyond its current purpose. The members might be quite content to continue with the current purpose, and will, IMO, gain important insights and information which, if shared with others, will make any important contribution to the evolution of humanity's capacity to engage in/use/live as, shared higher-consciousness (by whatever designation we use for that, other terms are possible) -- which ideally will be brought to bear on our shared challenges as a species.

Also, it appears to me that some groups move around among these purposes at various times; the purposes are far from being mutually exclusive.

Examples of each kind of purpose:

1. Creating/Experiencing/Exploring

One example is: Andrew Carter MacDonald's "High Meadow" monthly conference call groups, http://www.soulworkcommons.org/ spun off from George Por's Mindful Together group on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/groups/mindfultogether/ 

The only stated purpose to the groups is to create and experience "the field of shared consciousness." Participants report on what they feel or think in that field, express themselves from the field, and explore to the extent of gaining experience of what being in that field is like. However, there is little interest in trying out new injunctions to see what difference they make, which to me is the hallmark of the 2nd purpose.

Another example might be the Integral Living Room http://www.integrallivingroom.com

series of events. Perhaps the most relevant exploration of the ILR within these distinctions is this one:

http://exploringsecondandthirdtier.blogspot.com/2014/01/reflections-on-integral-living-room_9543.html

My experience in the first ILR, and impressions of the others, is that one primary purpose is allow people to perhaps get their first taste of a collective awareness, and to find out what that's like, and to develop an interest in further learning about it. The event is sort of like "Here's what relating at/in Second Tier is like; let's begin to learn how to live this way more and more often in our lives." And part of that Second Tier relating, is moments or minutes, of a real, coherent field of shared higher-consciousness.

However, the Integral Living Room event designers also (IMO) definitely have an experimental attitude toward various higher we-space injunctions, so their purpose blends into the second one I've distinguished: experimenting and refining.

2. Experimenting/refining

The experimenters/refiners are familiar enough with the experience, and are curious how to "tweak" the field in various ways. They engage in trial and error. They try different instructions, different invocations, different guidelines. They might try varying who is leader, or who is members. They might experiment with varying lengths of time, or varying platforms.

Besides their enjoyment of the experiencing, they are scientists, checking out what variables are important, what changes in what variables have what effects -- not for any ultimate purpose (such as usefulness for particular work) but simply for the joy of discovery, of refinement, of greater richness of knowledge and understanding of this phenomenon.

Often, though, experiments are aimed at such purposes as assessing how to make a group "field" more robust to incoherent inputs (people who don't fit, technological disruptions,  challenging emotions that arise, etc.) Or how to get a group going faster, or with less sophisticated participants, or how to make a group function well in cyberspace, or across asynchronous communications. These are all, IMO, "hot research topics."

I don't currently know of any groups which are devoted solely or primarily to this purpose, but I suspect many of the groups facilitated by Andrew Cohen and his students in previous years, were primarily with this purpose. (Reference Appendix Two of 11 Days at the Edge, by Michael Wombacher)
http://www.amazon.com/Days-Edge-Spiritual-Evolutionary-Enlightenment-ebook/dp/B003YL4KXU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418885891&sr=8-1&keywords=wombacher+11

3. Using, working with/as

An example of this is the Gaia's Human Hive Integrators (aka Core Team) for the Integral City enterprise http://www.integralcity.com. A shared field is cultivated (and experimented with) for the purpose of making decisions about which projects to engage in, what next steps might be, etc. The method used to create a shared field has been Systemic Constellation Work (as being developed/adapted for work in organizations by Diana Claire Douglas http://www.inspiritworks.com/Pages/default.aspx -- but the group's intention is to operate AS a shared field, even outside of the official delimited times of a constellation.

I am sure there are many examples of this purpose in business and sports. Just for an anecdote, I heard a report on the radio here in Seattle that in the National Football League 2014 National Champs, our own Seattle Seahawks, coaches were working with the players to "think less and trust more" in making decisions of what to do in the moment on the field, and it was clear that "trust more" involved the premise of a shared consciousness. The example was basically, throwing a ball just knowing that a receiver was positioned right for catching it, rather than spending time looking over the turf and seeing where people were and consciously deciding when and where to throw the ball. Act on impulse, and trust, were the injunctions, and the assumption was, in my words, "our shared field of awareness knows what will work best for our purpose of scoring. We must learn to tap into it and then trust it to prompt and guide our behavioral decisions."

I am sure more and more business groups are operating this. I hope you'll share some examples.

Thomas Hubl's various groups all over the world, http://www.thomashuebl.com/en/?lang=en

 which have slightly varying purposes depending on who leads them, seem to me to be examples of those who "use" this way of relating, primarily for the purpose of individual and/or collective "shadow work," for clearing (in his languaging framework) energy blocks. Ultimately, this is intended to pave the way for what I am calling the 4th purpose, living naturally and easily in a shared higher consciousness, and (therefore automatically) using it to meet humanity's challenges.

4. Living as/in/from a shared field of higher consciousness. 

This is for people who have practiced so long, and so well, that they simply embody this kind of shared consciousness. Sort of, living in our natural state of relating. (I explored that definition in this blogpost: http://exploringsecondandthirdtier.blogspot.com/2013/12/we-space-simplicity-beyond-complexity.html)

They have experienced, experimented with, used, this way of being and relating, and it's even beyond "automatic practice." It is simply who they are. (Probably, in my terms, operating as a group in the Third Tier We-space. http://exploringsecondandthirdtier.blogspot.com/2013/11/third-tier-we-spaces-coral-and-teal.html)

The only folks I know whose explicit purpose is this one, are with Patricia Albere's Collective Evolutionary Collective/Mutual Awakening work. http://evolutionarycollective.com/courses/mutual-awakening-ebook-download/
While she facilitates groups with the first purpose listed above, she is also working longterm and indepth with a much smaller group or groups, to cultivate an actual community, ongoingly and constantly operating this way even while separate in space and time.

General Thoughts about these distinctions:

One usefulness of these distinctions is to not assume that every group involved in shared-consciousness explorations has all the purposes, and to not expect any group to have them all, or more than one. And to know which you are about to investigate or get involved with, so your expectations are in line with your probable experiences.

Are the injunctions/guidelines used to establish "the field" in each kind of group different? Almost certainly, but I don't presently have much to say about which is which, or how they differ. Can you say something on that?

What is the relationship of this developmental spectrum of groups to the "stages" of we-spaces I've explored elsewhere (links to several blogposts listed below) and which Andrew Venezia explored in his Masters' Thesis on We-space groups. http://newwaysofhumanbeing.com/2013/10/13/finally-my-thesisfinal-project/

What do you think? Are these distinctions useful? What challenges do they pose to you, and/or what refinements could you offer? Or what additional questions arise for you from this exploration?

Some explorations of stages of we-spaces:

http://exploringsecondandthirdtier.blogspot.com/2013/12/definitions-and-spectrum-of-we-space.html

http://exploringsecondandthirdtier.blogspot.com/2013/11/second-tier-we-space-yellowteal-vs.html

http://exploringsecondandthirdtier.blogspot.com/2013/11/third-tier-we-spaces-coral-and-teal.html

http://exploringsecondandthirdtier.blogspot.com/2013/11/we-space-states-vs-we-space-stages.html

http://exploringsecondandthirdtier.blogspot.com/2013/11/we-spaces-parameters-of-description.html

http://exploringsecondandthirdtier.blogspot.com/2014/05/frameworks-for-viewing-developmental.html

by Rev. Alia Aurami, Ph.D., Head Minister, 
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