Constructively-Critical Reflections on The Integral Living Room 2013,
Part 3:
Theme: Clarifying/distinguishing concepts around and about we-spaces
This is the third in a series of 6 blogposts, which are supplemental to the Notes from the Field report I wrote about the Integral Living Room event for the January 2014 issue of Integral Leadership Review online journal.
(http://integralleadershipreview.com/11117-integral-living-room-boulder-colorado-usa-october-31-november-3-2013/ )
These blogposts represent my more personal constructively-critical reflections and musings, and are not purposed for reporting, as the Notes report was. They'll make limited sense if you haven't read the Notes report, but, I hope, are of some general usefulness.
(http://integralleadershipreview.com/11117-integral-living-room-boulder-colorado-usa-october-31-november-3-2013/ )
These blogposts represent my more personal constructively-critical reflections and musings, and are not purposed for reporting, as the Notes report was. They'll make limited sense if you haven't read the Notes report, but, I hope, are of some general usefulness.
Note: This blog contains only a couple of my reflections as a member of the ILR Harvest Team; there is much more to be said, and that is a future blog, around our questions, our process, and our relationship to various elements of the Integral Living Room happening! These are dear to my heart and closer to my Divine Passions than some of the reflections and musings below, and more important to the world, IMO, than some of what is below, but these posts got written in the timeframe I had up until now. Stay tuned!
The blogposts are about various themes I’ve organized my reflections into:
Part 3. Theme: Clarifying/distinguishing concepts around and about we-spaces
That's this post, read below. Find the others via the links to them.
That's this post, read below. Find the others via the links to them.
Each theme section is independent, so you can skip around if you like!
Part 3. Theme: Clarifying/distinguishing concepts around and about we-spaces
Maybe it wasn’t necessary or optimal to be making a lot of conceptual distinctions related to we-spaces as part of the gathering, but I am extremely grateful and glad to have been provoked/evoked by my own discomfort at their absence, into a veritable flood of them before, during, and after the event. I am inclined to believe that had the ILR space been more invitational to everyone expressing such insights as they arose at the time, people might have gone home with somewhat clearer conceptual frameworks which would facilitate their growth, individually and as we-space participants and co-creators. (Granted, conceptual clarity about this phenomenon/capacity at this phase of humanity's evolution toward and into it, consists mostly of vague senses and questions!) And that’s not to minimize the growthful effects of the subliminal and experiential aspects of the gathering! It’s just to suggest additions.
Distinctions I have already begun to explore include Yellow, Turquoise, Coral and Teal stages, dominant monad of a we-space, parameters of description of we-spaces, all six First-Tier stages of we-spaces, and other questions.
(Of course there are a thousand questions about we-spaces which are unanswered by humanity yet, and worthy of considering. I will soon publish a whole blogpost just listing the questions I know of! These following below are just the ones highly relevant to ILR 2013 as it unfolded/played out.)
Here I’d like to focus on
a) distinguishing among the concepts of interaction, conversation, group, community, culture, and we-space
b) distinguishing purposes for we-spaces
c) distinguishing among developmental stages of we-spaces
d) distinguishing spiritual and relational lines from 2T we-space characteristics
e) distinguishing Second Tier and Green we-space shadows and limitations
f) distinguishing “Second Tier” from Green
Sub-theme A: Distinguishing among concepts of interaction, conversation, group, community, culture, and we-space
One of my blogposts made a bare beginning of drawing such distinctions, but if there is "something" we all believe is valuable, even essential, to create, foster, become skilled at and even embody, then we need to know what kind of thing that is, and what it is not, (and for whom and when,) and what the relationships -- supportive or not -- are with other similar kinds of things. For example, the ILR was billed as 2T conversations, but as some noted there, conversation between 2T people isn’t necessarily a 2T conversation nor a 2T we-space! Even before we can address distinctions among developmental stages (and other relevant variables) of we-spaces, we need these prior distinctions to guide our inquiries.
As one example, it was mentioned by one of the Hosts to “shift to join energetic fields and be One.” Well, does that pertain for a conversation, a group, a we-space? And at what developmental stage of individuals would such an injunction be comprehensible and desirable and even achievable? And what kind or stage of we-space or conversation would that result in, if achieved?
Sub-theme B: Distinguishing purposes for talking about we-spaces
We talked at ILR about “building capacity to identify as a ‘we-field.’” First of all, as I have been saying with respect to conceptual distinctions, for whom does that phrasing even make any sense? But then beyond that, we might need to ask and answer:
