On Living, Leading, (Re)designing, and Coaching

Living from the right hemisphere ...

This TED Talk has been making the rounds on the internet lately.  But it is so good - perhaps the best TED Talk ever - that I wanted to share it. Enjoy!

A year or so ago, I was working my way through Betty Edwards "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain." If anyone is interested in how to make the switch between a left-brain observer and a right-brain observer, her work is one excellent place to start.

-Steve

What is Effective Activism?

What makes for effective activism?

Lately, I've been having a conversation with my girlfriend Donna about the topic of activism. We've both observed that as activists protest and "fight" for what they think is right they are 1) either preaching to the choice - namely, the other activists with them or 2) alienating passers-by with their outrage. Not very effective, eh?

A comment made by noted spiritual teacher David Hawkins at the outset of the second war in Iraq comes to mind: "Pacifism is not peace." He was criticizing the pacifists who were protesting and pointing to the performative contradiction that they are waging war on war.  This isn't, as Einstein famously said, addressing our problems at a higher level of consciousness that the level that created them. Instead, this is addressing them at the same level and also not very effective.

Of course, there is a lot in the world today that is "protest worthy." Domination of business by mega-corporations, practices generating climate change, social injustices, pollution, human rights abuses, war, occupations, corrupt politicians, political special interest groups, and on and on.

Then there are "awareness raising" groups. These groups aren't protesting or fighting but instead are pointing to what's really going on. Pachamama Alliance (who I am a big fan of) comes to mind. But I have to say it - awareness (insight) is not behavior. New awareness can lead to new behaviors but often those new behaviors aren't sustained. Why? Because the structures that reinforce the old behaviors over the new ones are still there reinforcing old behaviors.  So we may buy a reusable grocery bag and use it once or twice but then the convenience of paper and plastic bags usurps the function of the reusable bag soon after.

I'm currently working in Ireland on a large culture change project for a major bank. Certainly there are parallels between that kind of change - spotting provocations to change, introducing new interpretations and new practices, shifting assessments, and generating new results - and the kind of change that activists wish to bring about.  Of course, very different scales from several hundreds of people in my culture change case to millions if not billions of people in the changes activists are trying to bring about.  But I wonder what activists might be able to appropriate from the practices we know to be effective in changing corporate cultures.

Here are some (early) ideas:

1. People have to clearly see and own their current way of being (as a reaction from the past to get things to turn out a certain way, for example, so they can be safe, be happy, be satisfied, be recognized, etc.).
2. People have to feel that their current way of being isn't being attacked by others. Instead, it is being appreciated and understood as an expression of people's good intentions and as reasonable and rational ways that people have adjusted to and dealt with past difficulties and traumas. If they feel their way of being is under attack, then they will entrench and defend and some may even go on the offensive (as the U.S. did after 9/11).
3. People have to see the pay-offs they are trying to get in their current way of being (to "be" something or someone) and the tremendous costs they are suffering to get them.  And, of course, how out of balance those things are and how unnecessary the costs are when being isn't somewhere to get to but instead somewhere to come from.
4. The difficulties and traumas have to be "completed." Those difficulties must be owned.  Yes, that's what happened in the past. Pay homage to it. But stop reliving it. Stop acting from it (really, reacting to it). This is where working with the strong emotions that are fueling the current way of being comes in.
5. A new way of being must be declared by the people (who step forward as leaders in the moment). Think of the Declaration of Independence as a good example of this. A group of influential people mutually declared their independence from King George and a new way of being and living together was created.
6. Then people have to be shown and demonstrate to themselves that there are ways to live in the present and respond to what is actually occurring from this new way of being that address the concerns they already have better than the old ways (instead of reacting out of the past to get things to turn out in such a way that past difficulties and traumas aren't re-experienced).
7. Then all the structures that were born of the old way of being and put in place as controls to get things to turn out must be undone. People will feel nervous about doing this. They will feel unprotected. People need lots of support from each other at this juncture. Life isn't safe. You can't always feel protected. But you can always respond to what's happening in the moment. And often, with time, we come to see that in the past we wanted to feel protected but the limitations and costs of protection were actually more painful, more damaging, more traumatizing than the threats they were supposed to protect us from.
8. New structures are born of and reinforce the new way of being.
9. New behaviors and new results are generated and sustained.

To me one of the interesting aspects to this approach is that it doesn't fight to change the current way of being but instead builds a new way of being simultaneous and co-located with current way of being and simply invites people to make the jump.

This is what I have learned about culture change in corporations.  It isn't an easy journey. It isn't a safe journey. But it is the journey of life - fully of vigor and vitality, full of drama, heroes and heroines, successes and failures, grand elations and deep disappointments. Making the journey takes leadership but not the kind of leadership only offered by a figurehead. It takes leadership by those who are willing to create the new way of being and those willing to make the jump in the context of their own lives. These people are the true leaders.

How this plays out on a larger scale is still a mystery to me. Maybe you all can help me make the connections. I'd love to hear from some of you ... what makes for effective activism?

Take care,

-Steve

The case of Aravind

The following video shows what's possible when you declare a new future possibility and act in the present to make it a reality.

I hope you are inspired by this as I have been.

Take care,

-Steve

Being a leader in our life, our relationships, and our work

This article is written by Steve March and Julie Manga, Ph.D. and is being simultaneously published in New Ventures West's newsletter Distinctions and this blog.

This is the first in a series of articles in which we explore the practice of leadership. The publication of each article will be followed by a FREE teleseminar to discuss the topics raised. To register for the teleseminar refer to the instructions at the end of the article.

What kind of leader are you called to be in your life? Surely, there isn’t just one answer to this question. And, there is no way to answer the question once and for all. Instead, we offer this question as a way to stay present with what’s occurring in your life, as an opening for creatively and effectively responding moment-by-moment to the opportunities and challenges you face.

In addition to the many challenges we face globally – ethical and sustainable development, clean water for everyone without conflict, bringing population growth into balance with resources, meeting growing energy demands safely, improving the status of women worldwide, etc. – each of us is also challenged locally in our work and home life. The certainty of work and livelihood is eroded for many. We face an overload of information, without a sense of how to discern what is useful.  Our lives are tightly scheduled with many competing commitments. Families and communities are increasingly fragmented. And the pace of life in our society continues to accelerate.

Leadership is called for in order to face and address these challenges at all levels, but what kind of leadership? We suggest that it isn’t useful to think about leadership as a particular role or position, such as CEO, President, or Prime Minister, or as set of personal qualities like charisma or steadfastness. And leadership doesn’t require followers. The kinds of challenges we collectively and individually face and the accelerating velocity and unpredictability of our circumstances call for new leadership ways of being from us all. More of the same won’t work.

Each of us is called to lead. We are each called to respond fully to our situation moment-by-moment with everything that we are in order to bring about something that is bigger than ourselves. Each moment is an invitation to lead. Repeatedly accepting the invitation to lead requires developing ourselves – for example, our self-awareness, capacity and resilience, and professional and personal relationships – so that we have the compassion, wisdom, and courage to move things forward in the face of difficulties.

Each of us has already answered the question “How am I going to respond to the situation of the world?” This is a fundamental choice that everyone has made consciously or not.  Do we step in, sometimes quietly, sometimes audaciously, risking who we take ourselves to be, or do we step back and take care of our own world as if it were separate from everyone and everything else?

Many of us step back because we look at famous leaders – Mohandas Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Margaret Mead, Martin Luther King, Jr., Colin Powell – and say to ourselves, “I’m not like them, I can’t lead.” True, we aren’t like them. We are like us. Comparing ourselves to famous leaders is a self-defeating path that ends in resignation. We have a tendency to idealize famous leaders and to forget that they are human too. Let’s not let our imperfections stop us from courageous acts of leadership and instead bring all of ourselves into those acts.

Leading is an action that we can all take and that we are called to take. Many of us may have the experience of a junior team member stepping up and overcoming difficulties to move things forward. In this moment our colleague is leading, stepping into leadership, stepping into being a leader.

Maybe it’s time to stop waiting for someone else to declare you a leader and to declare yourself one.

We invite you to attend a FREE 60-minute teleseminar on February 26 at 9 am
Pacific time (Noon Eastern) on the topic of stepping in to your life, your relationships, and your work as a leader. In this teleseminar we will lead you through a personal inquiry about your own capacity to step into life as a leader—how you experience the call to lead, obstacles you encounter and ways of relating differently to those obstacles. Space is limited. To register, please call Julie Manga at 617-869-9638.

Integral Leadership LLC provides powerful methods for people to uncover and express leadership in their life and work. Being a leader doesn’t call for abandoning parts of ourselves. Each of us, as a leader, is called to bring all that we are, all that we have learned, and all of our skills and creativity and focus them on bringing something into existence, making something happen, and generating results. Investing ourselves in life and work this way is challenging and fulfilling. In our programs you will directly experience your ability to be a lead authentically and develop your capacity to respond in an integral fashion to situations that call for your leadership.

Unsettling Our Common Sense

The world is a mess.

Mechanisms can't cope with messes. But people can.

Here is a pair of important questions for anyone who wants to address the world's messes:

1. What so special about people that we can cope with messes? Find that! Conserve that! Expand that! Apply that!
2. How can we unsettle our common sense that supports and promotes mechanisms (e.g., technologies in the outer world, and fixed reactions/conditioned tendencies in the inner world).

Here is a hint ... work with the fears that support and reinforce the mechanisms until you discover that who you truly are is really more than big enough to cope with the messes.  Oh ... and the messes ... they are mostly if not wholly created by our fixed reactions to our fears.

Take care,

-Steve

A little humor

Banging your head against the wall consumes 150 calories an hour according to Chris Chittenden in his latest newsletter.  That's too funny ... I couldn't resist sharing it.

Hope you are all having a good day.

-Steve

Living in an "Age of Fluid but Stable Identities"

We all have many identities. For example, I'm a good, smart, and athletic person. But also I'm not enough, wounded, a failure, and an idiot. And I'm also a coach. I'm a Californian and an American, and a son and a brother. I'm a tennis player and a blogger. Sounds familiar? Of course, you aren't me, you're you. But just like me you have identities - many identities. Reflect for a moment about all the ways you know yourself - about all the identities you have.

Identities are really important. They bring focus to our lives, relationships, and work. They open certain possibilities as well as close them. Anyone who has tried to make a mid-life career transition knows too well the power of identities to open and close doors not only in the eyes of others but especially in our own eyes.

Some identities - like being a Mom or a Dad or a winner - can bring great satisfaction and fulfillment. While other identities - like being a loser, someone who was fired, or someone who made a mistake - can bring embarrassment, shame or guilt. In some basic way, the quality of our life seems attached to our identities.

We get that identity is important from an early age. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” is a common question that we get from relatives and other adults when we are kids. We are also socialized into group identities. That is, we get that there is an "us" and a "them." And further, we get that we have to protect “us” from “them.” I grew up in the cold war era where movies and the nightly news were a frequent reminder of the threat "they" posed - real or imagined.

And we reinforce our identities throughout adulthood. We introduce ourselves as our identities ("Hi, I'm Steve and I'm a leadership coach."). And through our conversations we reinforce our own and other people's identities ("Did you hear that she cheated on her husband?" "She's cute, what kind of work does she do." etc.).  We know people and interact with people as if they are these identities.

And notice that even as we pass from this world, we have great concern for how our identities will live on beyond our death through our legacy ("He was so generous with his time and money." "He was the winning quarterback for Superbowl 2007.")

I think that through the lens of legacy we begin to get closer to what identities are and how they function in our lives. Through identities we deny our death. Life is full of change and uncertainty. We've been hurt before and we want to be protected from the threats in our life. We yearn for security and certainty and in our identities we find hope that our yearning is not in vain. And this yearning that identities seem to fulfill, it ties our quality of life to our identities.

In order to provide this security, protection, and certainty identities must be fixed.  That they are fixed is what generates the sense of security, protection, certainty, and legacy we desire. Our identities have a "once and for all" quality to them. For example, "Once and for all I am the winner of that race" or "Once and for all I am the President that year."

But are our identities who we really are? No. Fixed identities live in fixed assessments of a fixed world. But the world isn't fixed and neither are we. Our identities veil what is actually happening by projecting their fixations onto what's happening. Our identities are sourced from the past in continual reaction to the past events and circumstances.

Earlier we noticed that in some way our quality of life seems attached to our identities. It follows that if our quality of life is poor then one option is to change our identities rather than trying to buy, accumulate, or consume our way to happiness.

For a long time, we've held changing identities as suspicious - as something done by con artists and impersonators. Changing identities has been on the margin of society, perhaps with the exception of actors who take on identities for entertainment. But there is a shift happening in the world.

Change is being embraced more and more. The world is changing and change is accelerating. We no longer expect careers, employers, spouses, or communities to be unchanged over the span of our life. More and more people are experimenting with virtual identities (avatars) on the internet. The internet encourages us to understand ourselves as decentralized, multiplicitous, and flexible. And we also get that the identity we are in Facebook or Second Life or, dare I say it, Match.com isn't really who we are - its just an identity.

This shift that we are beginning to experience around identity opens up new possibilities for improving the quality of our lives. More and more we see that we have many identities - none of which is truly who we are - and because of this we can construct and reconstruct our identities to heal past wounds, generate more self-esteem, lift the burdens of shame, make a career transitions, and on and on. Changing identities is no longer on the margin of society but is on the move toward the center.

We live in an “age of fluid but stable identities.”

Take care,

-Steve

Persistent Complaints

Lately, I've been applying the insights of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy to the problems faced by some of my coaching clients.

One observation is that many people have persistent complaints - complaints about "the way other people are", about "the system", about "working for the man", about "the way things are", etc. But having these complaints doesn't really change anything.  In fact, they're more of a burden that we carry than an effective way of getting our needs met.

IFS approaches people as having multiple Parts and a unitary Self.  From an IFS perspective, Part of us has a persistent complaint.  The beauty of this distinction is that we get to be Self and to work with the Part of us that has the complaint instead of just complaining.  The distance that we get from the Part allows us the space to explore what the Part is really up to?  What is its job? What does it fear will happen if it isn't doing its job?

One of the key insights of IFS is that every Part has a good intention. The Part of us that has the persistent complain is actually trying to protect us in some way.  In other words, there is an underlying care that gives rise to the complaint.  Our reactiveness - our persistent complaints in this case - disconnect us from what we care about. When the Self consciously recognizes and aligns with this underlying care rather than allowing the Part to reactively complain, new possibilities for effective action arise to express the Part's care.

Here's a short self-observation exercise for you to work with this:

1. What are some of your persistent complaints?
2. What are the good intentions and cares underlying your persistent complaints of your Parts?
3. What new possibilities for action (other than complaining) open up through owning that you have these caring Parts?

Take care,

-Steve

Richard Strozzi-Heckler in Strategy+Business

Recently, Strategy+Business magazine published an article on the work and contribution of Richard Strozzi-Heckler, founder of Strozzi Institute (which I am a graduate of) to the development of embodied leadership.

I thought you all might enjoy the online "reprint" of the article called "The Dance of Power."

Richard's notion is that leadership is neither an art or a science but, instead, is a practice.

I hope that you take some time to learn from Richard's experience, compassion, and wisdom.

Take care,

-Steve

Different Ways of Leading and Organizing Generate Developmental Mismatches

Just as individuals develop so do organizations. More to the point, we could say that the ways individuals organize develops. We've all experiencing the difference between a team leader that organizes projects well and those that don't.  A big part of the difference, I suggest, is in the way of organizing taken by each leader.

Around 1999-2000, I developed a model for several different styles or ways of leading and organizing that follows the well-understood trajectory of adult development (from developmental psychology). My premise is that the way individuals organize expresses the level of development of their observer.

Here is a high-level summary of the model starting with the least developed way of organizing.

1. Assessment responds to the need to ground organizing in our concerns about what's happening
2. Vision responds to the need to establish a direction, identities, and offers
3. Opportunity responds to the need to make immediate progress
4. Task responds to the need for being effective
5. Process responds to the need for improving efficiency
6. Knowledge responds to the need for diversifying offers and renewing (revisioning) identities
7. Compassion responds to the need for placing people (that develop) at the center of organizing
   
8. Wisdom responds to the need for timely action and conservation of energy when acting
   
9. Love responds from the inherent interdependent relationships in which we exist to the organizing challenges
   
10. Presence response from the inherent temporal and spatial co-presence in which everything occurs
    

Together these ways create and respond to the challenging situations every leader faces daily. To achieve effectiveness, efficiency, and the fulfillment of customers and employees in the short and long-term, all ten ways need to be alive and healthy.

Each of these ways displays different self-reinforcing patterns of awareness and action, of concern and response, of language and practice. Each is way is a different observer of the organization and the challenges it faces. And each way has a different way of responding to the challenges.  What is crucial is to match the demands of the challenges that the organization faces with the appropriate response.


Leaders and organizations often struggle because they have mastered one or a few of these ways of leading and organizing but the challenges they face demand a different way of leading and organizing. However, instead of learning new ways of leading and organizing they simply do what they've mastered over and over, harder and harder, with the same unfortunate results. In short, they are stuck and not learning or developing.

Many leaders don't even know that other ways of leading and organizing exist and are possible. And those that see that other ways are possible often don't step into the action learning that is requires to develop those new ways.  For sure this is a hard road to walk. Developing a new way of leading and organizing can take years. And in today's business climate, it is rare for leaders to willingly step into a multi-year deconstruction/reconstruction of how they lead and work.  However, on the flip side of the argument, the acceleration of change we experience in today's world demands that companies reinvent themselves approximately every 3-5 years. In fact what is needed is to take on the practice of development (of transformation) as an ongoing and continuous endeavor. Indeed, it has always been so whether we've known it or not. Better to take it on consciously that to be dragged kicking and screaming unconsciously into the morass that so often accompanies transformation and deep learning.

One early step to taking on this endeavor is to have a map of the territory and a reading on where you are within it. The 10 ways of leading and organizing provide one good map. More than one map is required. And when using such maps one must always keep in the forefront that "the map is not the territory."

With a map of the basic developmental contour of the territory of leading and organizing, you can make an assessment of which ways have been learned and mastered by which leaders, which teams, which functions.  The dynamics are complex between levels of organizing and within the interactions between organizations. As one simple example, teams that are attempting to organizing using a higher ordered way - say Process - will struggle if there management or their collaborators are using a lower ordered way - say Task or, worse, Opportunity. Being able to observe and diagnose such developmental mismatches opens up new ways to respond to organizational problems effectively that didn't exist before.

For sure the description of the map above is insufficient to perform an assessment. If you want to explore performing such an assessment in your organization, contact me.

In the meantime, I'd love to hear what y'all make of this. What new possibilities open up by seeing that there can be developmental mismatches between the styles or ways of leading and organizing used by people.

Take care,

-Steve

How to conduct an effective Project Review conversation

One of the most common "diseases" I witness in leaders, teams, and organizations is failure to act in a centered and grounded way. When we fail to ground our actions in reality, we undermine our chances of being successful and increase our chances of getting stuck.

Here's a common example of not grounding action in reality. Several years ago, I attended a project review for a team of about ten people who were in the middle or toward the end - we couldn't tell - of a project originally estimated to take nine months. I was asked to give an assessment of what was going wrong and make some recommendations to get the project on track because the project manager had, for the third month in a row, slipped the schedule by one month.
         
During the review, the project manager presented a list of all the tasks that had been completed since the last review and a newly revised schedule and completion date. There was some discussion of how some tasks were completed and a discussion of the potential negative impact of the slipped schedule. Based on this, the project manager was asked to do some rescheduling, shift people and task assignments around and pull the date in by two weeks. However, no one talked about where the project actually was that day. The decisions that were made in this review weren't centered and grounded in what was actually happening. Instead, they were a response to what had happened, what might happen, and the fear of the impact of what might happen.
         
After the meeting was over I pulled the project manager aside to ask him some questions. I started by observing, "You presented what happened in the past month and a prediction for what might happen in the months to come. Thank you. That was really helpful context. And it was good to get an update on when you believe the project will finish. However, I still don't know where the project is today and I can't make any sound recommendations." He looked at me with some surprise. "What do you mean? We're 75 days away from completing the project," he said. "Well, last month you where about 75 days away from completing the project too and clearly a lot of work has been done in the last month. You probably aren't in the same place today as you were a month ago. So where are you today?"
         
What was happening was that he was inferring where the project is today by looking at what's happened in the past and what he predicted will happen in the future. Grounding action in reality means knowing where the project is today and responding to that, not responding to predictions. He was making a common mistake of doing planning only for prediction.
         
A better use of planning is to create a language for identifying where the project is today. Discussing where the project is today grounds action in reality and enables successful management of the project to completion. Planning that creates a language to identify where the project is today is different than planning that only creates a prediction for completion. Before we example how planning creates a language that helps us coordinate action and create value, let's look at the structure and content of a good project review.
         
Project reviews are structured conversations in which managing happens. Since managing happens at multiple levels there, multiple levels of review are needed. In general, each higher level of review will have decreasing depth of visibility with increasing breadth of managerial scope. However, any review can reach any level of depth in the service of achieving its purpose. For example, reviews by more senior management will tend toward reviewing exceptions and quality and process effectiveness rather than status about every task on every project.
         
The purposes of all project reviews, regardless of level, are:

1. To assess where we are today
2. To make decisions about what to do next
3. To create commitments that create boundaries of responsibility
4. To learn and improve our effectiveness in meeting commitments

This is accomplished by increasing the visibility of commitments, assessments, breakdowns, and resolutions and enabling decision-making. Regardless of level (depth of content discussed), project reviews follow the same basic format.

1. Assess the current state of projects against the plan and process of record

• What has happened since the last review? What is done?
• What is happening now? What is in-process?
• Are we on plan? Are we on process?
• What is our prediction about future milestones?

2. Identify project and process breakdowns (openings for new commitments and actions)

• Where are we not on plan?
• Where are we not on process?
• What commitments have we failed to meet?
• Where are we stuck? Where are we not taking needed action?

3. Learning from our breakdowns (where we are failing to meeting our commitments)

• What was our commitment (including conditions for satisfaction)? Is it still relevant and needed?
• What was our strategy (plan or process) for meeting it?
• What action did we take?
• What happened when we did that? How do we know that that's what happened?
• Do we have all the necessary perspectives on what happened? If not, how can we get them?
• What did we assume that turned our to be false (if anything)?
• What didn't we account for in our plan or process? Where are our blind spots?
• How do our actions and/or strategy need to change, based on what we learned from this breakdown?

4. Taking (new) action

• What new commitments are we establishing? What are the conditions of satisfaction? Who are the customer's of the committed action? Who are the performers of the committed action?
• What has to happen immediately, if anything? (What fires need to be put out?)
• What new action must take place? What is the new and revised plan?
• Who is responsible for what?
• How will the change in plans be communicated? To whom?
• What do we expect to happen by the next review?

Based on this structure and content of a project review, we can see how central commitment negotiation is to project planning and tracking.

Best wishes on the success of your next project review.

Take care,

-Steve

But is it integral? Who cares!

I haven't been reading much in the way of integral writings for the last several years.  Today, I dipped back into a few of them.

I keep finding people in the integral community asking the question "Is it integral?" about all kinds of things - leadership, psychology, medicine, law, coaching, etc. as if being integral was the goal.

Whatever happened to pragmatism - does it work?

I'm sure someone will say "But being integral means it works better and in more cases."  This is probably true - we'd need to look case by case - but what I find is that in promoting the question "Is it integral?" we are taking our eye off the ball. Many people who are new to the integral community (and many who are "old" too) are developing a really funky critical theory where being integral is "it" and not being integral is passé. How very non-integral!

Is it integral? Who cares. Picking up the banner of pragmatism, I suggest that a better question is "Does it work?" This question opens are more useful space of possibilities by putting us in more direct contact with the nature of whatever we're questioning and how well it responds to present circumstances.

Take care,

-Steve

Relishing Greatness

Much of the time we live life from the assessment that something is wrong. We do all manner of things because something is wrong.

We change jobs because something is wrong. We get married because something is wrong. We break  up because something is wrong. We go to school because something is wrong. We start friendships because something is wrong. We end friendships for the same reason. We have kids because something is wrong. We move houses, neighborhoods, cities, states, and countries because something is wrong. We call meetings because something is wrong. We launch new projects because something is wrong. We build new products because something is wrong. We discover new medicines because something is wrong. And on and on ...

Everything we do seems to be for covering up the something-wrong-ness of existence. But alas, the something-wrong-ness of existence appears to be bottomless with no end in sight.

This bottomless-endlessness of the something-wrong-ness points, I think, not to something that is true of life but rather something which is true of us - those who hold that there is something wrong.

What it points to is that we are that something is wrong - as an identity. And everywhere we show up ... guess what? ... we find that something is wrong.  That's what we bring to every situation we encounter.

What if the things we did were for being satisfied and relishing the greatness of existence? 

Who would we need to be - as an identity - to have this existence?

What keeps us from living as that identity?

-Steve

On the Power of Letting Go and Taking Another Look

The process of dwelling-in-a-distinction consists of repeatedly "getting" and "loosing" the distinction.

I often remind students in the Integral Coaching courses I teach in that throughout the year they will "get" what coaching is and then "loose" what coaching is over and over again.   And I tell them not to worry.  That this is the necessary process of assimilating and dwelling in new ontological distinctions.

Of course, what they "get" each time is slightly different - slightly deeper in richness and subtle nuances.

Indeed this was and remains my own path as a coach - getting it, loosing it.

Best not to grasp and try to hold on ... that only makes the process more difficult, confusing, and anxiety-producing.  Instead, always be ready to let go and to yet take another look.  Letting go, then taking another look is a very powerful way of participating in our own unfoldment.

Take care,

-Steve

Stuff

Everyone on the planet should watch this ... http://www.storyofstuff.com/. Shifting to a sustainable way of living depends on everyone understanding what this video is pointing to.

Enjoy!

-Steve

A Couple of Rat Turds - more insights on The Witness and The Observer ...

This post is an addendum to The Witness and The Observer posted a few days ago. As with that post, those of you who don't have an interest in the boundaries between hermeneutic-phenomenology and spirituality might like to skip this.

Adding to what was already written ...

The Witness is the home of meaninglessness. The Observer is the home of meaningfulness.

The Observer exists in the domain of opposites, polarities, and paradoxes (e.g., good and bad, warm and cold, male and female, existing and not existing). The Witness never experiences opposites, polarities, and paradoxes.

The Witness has no structure or form and is outside of time in the eternal Now. The Observer has a narrative structure and is temporal, having a past, present, and future.

From the interpretation of The Observer we exist as an historical being - a self. From the experience of The Witness we are an ahistorical being - a Self.

As a self, we have concerns, emotional reactions, beliefs, intentions, goals and agendas, and conditioned tendencies (habits). As a Self, we have none of that. As a self we have choices. A quality of the Self is choicelessness.

The Self is the self's possibility for freedom and transformation.

It is within the dialectic between The Witness and The Observer that transformation of The Observer occurs.

This dialectic at once (partially) deconstructs The Observer through experiences of meaninglessness and  reconstructs The Observer as meaning is construed and constructed.

The Self is the "nothingness" out of which declarations are created. Declarations always refer to the world of The Observer.

Transformation of The Observer changes the form of our existence to ourselves in the present. The Witness is never transformed for that which is formless cannot be re-formed.

Transformation of The Observer allows us to take greater responsibility for the historical being we are. In taking greater responsibility for our historical being, we can live into new future possibilities through declaration of new self-narratives.

This distinction of The Witness and The Observer is dualistic. This brings to mind the notion from the Heart Sutra "Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form." Form characterizes The Observer whereas emptiness characterizes The Witness. But as Hakuin says in his commentary on the Heart Sutra, "A nice hot kettle of stew. He ruins it by dropping a couple of rat turds in."

A couple of rat turds - form and emptiness, The Observer and The Witness. Perhaps we shouldn't ruin the stew.

I recall an instance when I was volunteering in the kitchen at Green Gulch Zen Farm with a friend of mine who is also a student of spirituality and philosophy. We were "talking shop" as we cooked and in the middle of our conversation he asked "But what or who experiences non-duality?" And without a moment's hesitation to think I said, "Non-duality 'experiences' non-duality." And within the distinctions I'm exploring here that means no Witness and no Observer can experience non-duality.

Hope you enjoyed this ...

-Steve

The Buddha's Business Narrative

Lately, I've been working on building three different businesses. And at the center of all business-building is  articulation of the business narrative.

The dramatic structure of the narrative follows the "plot mountain" that we all (supposedly) learned in grade school - exposition of conflict, rising action, climax or turning point, falling action, and resolution or denouement. Is it coming back? Not too nightmarish I hope.

A business narrative frames the conflict that the business addresses, how the it addresses the conflict, and what you'll get from buying the resolution from the business.

For some reason I had the weird idea to look at the world's major religions through the lens of business narratives.

One of the very first teachings Buddha gave after becoming enlightened was on The Four Noble Truths.  They are:

1. Life is suffering.
2. The origin of suffering is attachment.
3. The cessation of suffering is possible.
4. The way leading to the cessation of suffering is The Noble Eightfold Path.

This is Buddha's business narrative.  The exposition of conflict is Noble Truth #1 - life is suffering.  The rising action is Noble Truth #2 - recognition of the origin of suffering. In a way the second truth doesn't really get us anywhere because we can understand where suffering comes from but still not be free from suffering. But the second truth does give the Buddha some credibility. Perhaps this is leading somewhere helpful we might be thinking.

The climax or turning point is the Buddha's declaration in the third Noble Truth that the cessation of suffering is possible. What a radical departure from how we experience life.  On the heals of the climax, he offers us the way - The Noble Eightfold Path. This is the falling action that leads to the implied denouement - no more suffering.

Wonder how much The Noble Eightfold Path costs? :-)

Unfortunately(?), it costs nothing less than giving up everything you take yourself to be, everything you take others to be, and everything you take the world to be. In spite of his crappy pricing strategy, he's doing pretty well with anywhere from 350 million to 1.7 billion customers worldwide, including me.

-Steve

 

The Witness and The Observer

If you aren't interested in the ontology of the observer you can skip this post. It is somewhat philosophical and will only be of interest to a few of you, I suspect.

Last week I was reflecting on the notion that you can only observe that which you have language for in light of experiences I frequently have that I don't have language for.

An insight ... there is a distinction between witnessing and observing even though we usually consider these as synonyms in our everyday usage of the words.

Indeed you can only observe what you have language (distinctions) for. As a result, observations can be shared with others. What you can observe determines what exists for you - not what is real - just what exists for you. What can be observed is determined by our structure of interpretation. The observer is an interpreter.

From observations we get narratives and, perhaps most importantly, self-narratives. That is our notion of ourselves - who we are to ourselves - comes from observations.

As an illustration of this refer to Helen Keller's account of learning her first word "water" and how that brought into existence for her the meaning of meaning, temporal narrative (past, present, and future) and her sense of being a self.  Yes, all of that requires the distinction of language itself.

The witness can experience experiences for which there is no language. That is, the witness can witness what can't be observed.

Of course, the obvious question is what is being witnessed? Is it reality? All I can say is that what is witnessed cannot be described by any distinction and, in particular, cannot be described as existing or not existing.

This calls to mind Lao Tzu's claim that "The Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao." And just to cut off a road commonly taken he goes on to say you can't say the Tao is Nothingness or Beingness for those are distinctions too.

Of course, all I'm doing here is merely observing the witness. What of witnessing the witness?

This points to the answer to so many Zen koans ... "What is your original face?" for example ...

-Steve

Why we should teach philosophical inquiry to kids ...

There was an interesting post in TEDblog earlier this month called "Why we should teach philosophy to kids". The post reports on a study of 105 kids who were taught using the Socratic Method for 1 hour a week for 16 months. The study concluded that "compared with 72 control children, the philosophy children showed significant improvements on tests of their verbal, numerical and spatial abilities." Further, when the "philosophy children" were tested again much later, the differences between the "control children" remained or even grew.

This touches something that I've been thinking about a lot lately.  That our educational system often aims at closure rather than openness.  We don't want questions that open new spaces of exploration so much as we want answers that close down exploration. We want certainty and conclusiveness.

Think about it ... did you ever take a test in school that asked you to generate new questions? I hope that some of you will say yes and tell stories of the best teacher you ever had who taught you to think new thoughts instead of regurgitate old ones. Unfortunately, in my own education - K through college - as far as I can recall, they always asked me to answer questions. And this includes my experiences in the working world.

Is it any wonder that companies often get stuck when faced with the necessity to innovate?  Is it any wonder  that people often get stuck in bad habits?

My growing sense is that (philosophical) inquiry is essential to living the good life.

-Steve

What's the point?

Thought for the day ...

"Consider what we often want out of books. We want the episodes to be related to one another in some way, we want to see a plot develop, and in the end we want to be able to see the point of it all. Now, in books there usually is a point, and the author probably tried to put it there, which is why, if it's a good book, we read on. But is there really a comparable kind of point to be found when the text is us? Or do we create one, precisely so that we can live on?" - Mark Freeman, Rewriting the Self

Is there a plot to our lives and does it have a point?

Or do we create one as we look back over the trajectory we've traveled?

What do you think?

Lately, I've been exploring the notion of self-narratives - stories we have about who we are - and under what conditions our self-narratives change - instances when we realize we aren't the same person we were yesterday because we've learned something or developed in some way.  I highly recommend Freeman's book, however, I'll warm you that he is a philosopher and the book is about as far away from self-help as you can get and still be talking about this subject.

Take care,

-Steve