PracticeSpace

Smoke, fog, fire and grace: California wildfires, Big Sur, Carmel Valley and the enormous generosity of spirit

“…It still amazes us—Abbot Steve Stücky, Mako Voelkel, Graham Ross, Colin Gipson, and myself—to recall the speed in which the fire descended and converged on Tassajara simultaneously from four sides: from Flag rock to the northeast, with 30- to 40-foot flames; from Hawk mountain to the northwest, rushing down right above the hill cabins with 10- to 15-foot flames; over the Hogback and Suzuki Roshi Memorial trail to the west, and from the south via the Overlook ridge, its progress cloaked by the canopy of trees above us. It was difficult to determine which head of fire would reach us first, so we split up…”   —from Tassajara Director David Zimmerman’s account of the Tassajara Fire

Last night I posted some of the anger and frustration I have long be feeling that the CA Wildfires seem to so aptly mirror. Meanwhile, Richard, my husband, wrote, too, using our shared memories, history and the sense of a heart on fire I feel.  I imagine all, even you at a distance, may feel this, too, whether is about the California Wildfires and/or the suffering of any aspect of our world.

Here is his posting from Albion News that we started a few years back: Sitting with the Fire, Albion News

This morning, after reading Richard and watching a YOU Tube video sent by Kelly Hunter, on the celebration of Guru Light, I am "lightening" it up.

Lightening started the CA Wildfires and many many beings have acted with enormous and almost super human grace. And many fumbles and meanness but still grace exists and I want to have that kind of light and grace be what is spoken here. So here is a bit of a reframing of what I felt last night:

I sit in historic Monterey under foggy skies, the fog feels like the first of a generally foggy season.For now I welcome fog.

This fog is different. It is mixed with the smoke of fires, 122k and more acres burning just ten to twenty miles from us.My house is dusty; the air is acrid and hard to breathe.

We have many friends who have evacuated and yet we are oddly isolated. Meeting friends in the street I may mention ash on my car or hear of a bear being run out of the woods as I check out at the hardware store but we really don't connect.

Some of us seem to be in shock.

And so many many have been true heroes. I bow to the spirit in all that provides grace. This morning simply in awe. Now my shock shifts and I glimpse awe wonder and gratitude.

As the coastal fog drips and adds precious moisture, promising growth in the cycles of nature, I see grace in all that we are experiencing, even in my personal sense of angst. May each and every one and find gratitude, clarity and compassion that helps me/us sit with grace watching our own fires, each day, especially when the fire roars.

 

Co creating the Future: Oasis School of Human Relations Presentations

I began this PracticeSpace web log in order to share stories and information on friends practicing in fields of human relations, facilitation, education and business, especially practices that were based on the whole person and knowing-in-relation.

I have a basic assumption that the best, most effective human actions, emerge from practices that are holistic, based on a sense of personal integration and the ability to act together for mutual benefit.

After years of working in methods using humanist and transpersonal psychology, I still felt a deep "rankle" with something. Eventually I found that discomfort was that I was being entrained into methods that still relied on "expertism" and kinds of authority outside the self, that did not really help participants/learners become autonomous, discerning experts themselves. I wanted to help myself and others become self generating expressive individuals, able to work together, tolerating the dynamic tension of relationship.

I sought then, and continue now, through community work and this PracticeSpace Weblog, to move beyond methods based on paradigms and world views that I feel continue the old paradigm in which the world view is one in which post-modern angst thrives as authoritarianism based on leadership and control provided by authorized "experts".

My personal longing and goal here, and as Lived Learning, has been to further explicate and share experiences of methods based on a philosophical paradigm and experience of a world that is inclusive of human relation to all of nature, based on more than mere dialogue and deliberation, facilitated by experts. I seek to broaden my own world view towards a embodied knowing of more faith and confidence in my own capacities and those of my peers.

I sought methods that transcended the theoretical and the overly intellectual; that often shut out intuitives and non-dominant culture members. I sought out methods that provided ways of working that might even eschew the need for words. I sought methods that brought out the artist in each of us and validated the simplest expression as possibly as profound or more profound than that offered by academics and experts.

While there are many methods that are able to do this creating of a co created space for emergence and mutual action based on integrity, few explicitly base themselves on a philosophical ground that I feel helps to empower those outside power. I seek to develop a world view based on the knowing of effective, satisfying peer to peer sharing, in which the power of individuals to know and practice together for the benefit of a greater reality, rather than individual gain and further estrangement, effectively co create ways to survive the coming times.

For some time now I have appreciated especially the work of John Heron and the process he designed for group process called co-operative inquiry. This work is being further developed at the Oasis School of Human Relations. 

Heron's friends in Boston Spa, West Yorkshire, seem to be doing an amazing job of furthering the work by providing opportunities for learning at the Oasis School for Human Relations as well as through publications.

In April, Oasis will be offering a training and a new publication promoting methods of whole person learning, based to a great extent on Heron's Cooperative Inquiry, that many of us believe, through our many years of experience, lead to better outcomes, outcomes that support autonomy and cooperation and, if such transformative outcomes that were imagined don't occur, at least deep learning occurs.

Heron's work is based especially on an epistemology, that is also a method of inquiry. This method proposes that each individual has multiple ways of knowing and that the more integrated these ways of knowing are, the more personal integrity present within communities, more effectiveness will be experienced. As this work is done in groups, the whole group has opportunities for becoming more attuned and more effective, together.

My last posting, in which I wrote of the challenges of teaching in a private school for adult degree completion have, upon research, been validated by others in the US. The Oasis School of Human Relations clearly intends to do education differently. Bravo, Oasis!

An overview of Bryce Taylor's new book, exploring a radical new method for education is posted here in .pdf Download Learning_for_Tomorrow_Apr_07.pdf

As this announcement is being posted just as the book is to be released, you can pre-order a copy by contacting Yvonne at Oasis: yvonne@oasishumanrelations.org.uk

Lived Learning is proud to have been a part of the development of this wonderful new resource. Do consider it for your reading and your work.

And here is a description of the Oasis programme to be offered in April, which I believe will be held just near Boston Spa, West Yorkshire: Download Participant_WPL_programme_leeds_07.pdf

I firmly believe that if any method of teaching does not include the whole person, emotions, thoughts and practice within a community, education will continue to produce dissatisfied adults, full of ennui, angst and alienation. If peace and mutual benefit are to become realities, we must educate the whole person in relation.

Thank you Oasis, and of course, John Heron, who so beautifully have provided for future generations a way of learning together that has already shown great effect in the lives of many.

Thanks to Nick Ellerby, on the left, Bryce Taylor, on the right and all those working to making Whole Person Learning understood as the effective method I believe it is.

And of course, please do visit Oasis online at this link as well as John Heron and Barbara Langton's online site by clicking on their names here. If you are looking for a way to revitalize your life and your career I highly recommended the work of these folks of integrity and good will as resources for you and your community.

Teaching Integrity with Integrity

I have been asked to "teach" an introductory class in liberal studies, a class using reading, discussion and expression to help students gain experience and skill in the art of writing.

In a world as challenging as ours, knowing "where we stand" and knowing what we know are often very difficult.

I believe that we are most effective in our expression when we speak from experience, from personal knowing and reflection within community. I intend this class to be a practice space for intelligent reflections and expressions that emerge out of discussion of readings and sharing of our views together.

The biologist Gregory Bateson, one of my heroes, wrote in his final book Towards an epistemology of the sacred (1986), regarding two rather sophisticated ideas that affected me and that I remember vividly, often drawing on them for personal guidance.

The first concept was that we, as humans, are arrogant and often full of hubris that leads us to create out of theory too quickly. That is, he felt that we, especially in the sciences, invent stuff before we really think and discuss the possible outcomes. Bateson foresaw and predicted the ecological crises that are now tantamount in our lives today. He felt, as does quantum physicist, F. David Peat, that we need more reflection, especially in the sciences, a gentler kind of inquiry, before we invent any thing.

When I feel I understand what Bateson was saying and intending, I feel called to recommit to a life lived sensitively, to especially the arts, to work that nourishes and inspires in ways that are least toxic, most sensitive if at all possible. And I think twice before I buy one more consumer product and wonder how I might touch another human with my words and my actions most effectively. I feel I move from just creating things to acting more effectively, with a little more personal integrity. People seem to understand me better when I look more deeply and understand my self, my "position" a bit better, perhaps as Ann Morrow Lindbergh discovered in her holidays to the sea and wrote of in her Gift of the Sea, one of the books for this class.

Secondly, Bateson wrote that we need to "know what we know." This is basic epistemology and so Bateson was saying more. He was also saying that that we need to know what we know, and that that includes knowing what we believe or know we are capable of knowing (it means we also have, as philosopher's say, an "ontology" or a theory of what reality is).

Viewed this way, learning becomes an act of HOW we know what we know. Thus knowing becomes an active endeavor, an interactive, even sacred endeavor. In noticing what we know and how we know, we look deeper, more deeply than most education asks us to look. We experience our learning; we know because we look deeply at HOW we know.

The course I will teach this fall is based on a successful syllabus by another faculty member and I am impressed with the simple but elegant reading list. This list teaches "different ways of knowing" creatively and I am pleased to offer those books here, now. (Bateson's Angel's Fear (1986) is my addition to the list.)

When you purchase books here, you join the Lived Learning community as it grows and you support these efforts at integrated living. Thank you for this.