FootprintsintheWind.com

Best people
+ Best moments
+ Best conditions
= Peak experiences
~ What open space invites

When we bring together the best people (anybody with a good head and a good heart), and the best moments (space-times in which issues they care about are on the table and they really get into the meat of the issues), and the best conditions (a space in which they can safely, fully express themselves and hear all voices), we get the possibility of peak experiences; this is what open space and any conversation that matters proposes and invites. It is an experiment worth trying.

:- Doug.

There’s always something new to see
There’s always someone new to hear

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 913

You are busy. Your spouse, your children, your boss, your clients all want a bigger piece of you. How could it help if you increased your meditation to two hours a day?

Please pass it on.

© c 2009, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

We
are creating
new ways of
being persons—
improvising
interconnecting
group-engaging—
Not novel useful nor profitable
our purposings
We’re making poets-workers
so they make worlds

:- Doug.

It's not a future we're improvising
It's a now—
	one for another space-time-ego
	one to lose ourselves in the moment
	one of practical play
a now filled with different worlds

:- Doug.

Even
When we do not birth each other
We grow each other
Raise each other
In formative senses
And in this we birth each other

:- Doug.

All of this is not
The Tao of Conversation
For what you can say in words
Has not to this day expressed the Tao
Let go all these
& be in the Tao

:- Doug.

We may birth each other
& hear each other
but in this we are
forgetting
each other—& self
the old, defined selves
& are eager to meet the
new open creative one-
in-all

:- Doug.

Fear is the opposite of love; fear is the opposite of creativity: what does that say. “Absorption casts out fear” writes Maslow; is not absorption a word for love?

:- Doug.

Eager
we must be
for the diversity
of thinking
we truly need
from now on

:- Doug.

One risk of the expert at the front of the room syndrome: this expert’s solution to our puzzle is only valid if several things coincide:

1. Our set of facts is similar enough to the set with which the expert is familiar;

2. The expert recognizes all significant similarities and differences;

3. The expert has adequately studied and diagnosed our setting;

4. The expert is having a good day;

5. We are receptive to the expert to the extent appropriate;

6. The message of the expert is correctly transferred;

7. We have the will and means to do what the expert prescribes;

8. The expert’s prescription fits us.

There are likely other important prerequisites as well. If these don’t coincide, then what is our best course?

:- Doug.

Inspiring does not always need to produce something never before seen. A grade-schooler finally getting arithmetic can be at a life-turning, world-changing place. Honoring your inspiration is the thing: put it to work.

:- Doug.

What are the conditions for improvising?
What are the conditions for nexus?
Might they be the same?

:- Doug.

Improvising comes
in twos
of persons
meeting
between
among
hearing

:- Doug.

To find something new
get lost
with another!

:- Doug.

Improvising is the work of
wresting self free of time, space, self
This work is aided immensely
by other persons
nexus with others
Is nexus the sine qua non?

No improvising in time, space, ego
Improvising is birthed only
Between two persons in nexus

:- Doug.

People are extraordinary—particularly the ordinary ones. They just are bored. What does that suggest?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 912

What is my life about? There is a phrase in the Duino Elegies which calls to me: “But what is blowing like a breeze, listen to that, / the uninterrupted message forming itself out of stillness.” It is that message forming itself, the stillness that is G*d, all about us, out of which mist we walk, forming ourselves as we live, forming our lives as we live them, that I want to touch, to live, to simply live. Flowing, uninterrupted, it is. I am. I AM. All related, all part of the mist, the stillness, the is there. My life is about forming my life. My message is about forming my message. My work is about forming our life. It is all about us, forming, forming, out of the mist.

Please pass it on.

© c 2009, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

All ordinary people
Have capacity to be extraordinary
Acting together

:- Doug.

People are turtles
Turtles all the way down
Preferring to hide in their
Individual shells

:- Doug.

G*d is for me the mist in mystery
out of which we
form
unform
re-form
inform

:- Doug.

What does it mean to be
fully human in a group?
Can it mean you take in
a piece of these people to yourself?
Give of yourself
even without return?
Without acknowledgment?
Without their tears?
Can it mean there is more
to you beyond your skin?
And then the words explode—
beyond among around expand
create birth larger larger expend
more
and here—a diverse inclusive
circle?

:- Doug.

People are not whom they are
Shadows only of the more
Hiding from our above and beyond
None reaching if clutching each other
Would we but gather friends around
We, we can yet be whom we are

:- Doug.