FootprintsintheWind.com

We are all one whole. I am enlivened by all about me, I enliven the whole as I enliven all about me. Let’s do this consciously, what say?

:- Doug.

The bulb and the image it casts and the screen upon which it is cast each means nothing without the others: the meaning is the whole system and process. The whole generates the centers, the centers intensify the whole and the whole intensifies the centers: each are necessary to the other.

:- Doug.

Centers are fields within which we work. If we work with another, the field is enlarged, the center strengthened. The center may be an idea or a movement or a feeling—this is what draws us together, not the person. Centers are these shimmering ephemera, very real, palpable, which draw us to working together.

:- Doug.

People are not centers. Things are not centers. Centers are centers. Centers are things, done physically. People are potential centers within the centers, but none alone is the center of the center.

:- Doug.

In growing a conversation, there is no one architect. Each center itself is an architect, or rather each person making up the center is thinking like an architect, How can we strengthen the centers? The process that holds it all together is the living question, the center of attention that asks How can we intensify the whole? Each person proposes new centers; all together decide and carry the good ones forward. But there is also something else going on here: they are creating themselves, larger and smaller.

:- Doug.

What is the biggest picture we can form of the world from where we stand?

Where can we stand to get a view of the world and the lever and fulcrum we can place?

:- Doug.

Tell the story of the future of our children, to see them in your mind’s eye. We are looking for broad concepts—color and temperature and stance to the world.

:- Doug.

A conversation is doing one small good thing, then another small good thing, and then another…with a view toward the whole.

:- Doug.

What if people come together in smooth steps, keeping what was there before?

:- Doug.

Evolution—my evolution—is growing the latent centers in my life, making stronger the existing and the new at once, preserving what is good, making new good.

:- Doug.

Building a bridge
Dropping a bomb
Designing a computer program
—Whatever humans do
—This is biological

:- Doug.

A myth is a story that might not be true, telling a deeper story true.

:- Doug.

This is the picture of the Big Bang! One thing, blasting apart, each separated entity seeking others, seeking relationships all round. These relations then are weaving and bumping and sparking new widespread creativity.

:- Doug.

We have been going at things all backwards when we try to make a team out of individuals, when we try to make a community out of individuals, when we try to make peace among countries. Instead, we need to see first the wholeness, feel it in our bones, and then work on specific projects to intensify life.

Nor is it what we have in common. It is what has us in common.

Humanity, love, tears, laughter: these are the larger, the macroscopic. The universe is one.

We intuit this when we keep trying to come together, when we look for a theory that makes everything fit, when we are offended because someone thinks us different or excludes us.

We are afraid of talking about this larger, afraid that its power might rip us to shreds. In fact it has power, but the power to put us together. What is on the edge of your thinking? About what? About how you fit in the universe, about what you most fear.

What has us in common? What is most human, most living, most universal among us? How are we capax universi?

What has us in common? It might be a cause, it might be a result we seek, it might be family or friendly or emotional ties, it might be something we do not like and seek to change, to better. Usually, we want things better. Do we just want for ourselves and if the others are bettered, it does not concern us? Or do we really want to see others bettered, because if all are bettered, we all have a better experience? Are we somehow not merely hard-wired to each other, but a part of the whole?

Seek first the wholeness. This is the path, the way forward. See how we are whole, then allow differentiation to unfold from that—different roles, different persons, different relations, many to many.

Seek our wholeness. How are we one? How are we not merely seeking the same thing, but seeking each other, for we are holes seeking to fill each other and be filled? This might be the cause of our obesity crisis—trying to fill person-sized holes with bite-sized pieces of food—over and over.

Where are we whole, where are we one? We need to look macroscopically, to see not divisions, nor sameness, but wholeness. Not a conglomeration of bits and pieces, but an outpouring of essential genii. This then gives fresh meaning to my kush ball metaphor—we are not individuals tied together, but rather growing out of a solid center, differentiating ourselves in order to make the whole better.

This is after all what we are about—making the whole better.

:- Doug.

Seek first wholeness:
From here arise
Roles, tasks, persons
Added unto you

:- Doug.

Start with whole: then differentiate

:- Doug.

Complexity arises from the whole differentiating rather than from trying to weave together disparate elements.

:- Doug.

Which more intensifies life: to gather people together and try to make a whole; or to gather a whole and allow people to differentiate? This is the advantage of open space because it gathers the whole-revealing passion and people differentiate themselves.

:- Doug.

Open space is different from audience seating where we don’t care if people fit to one another, only that chairs do.

:- Doug.

I am catching glimpses of smart creatures, having been programmed with generative instructions, set out in the world, working together, touching, loving.

This is a richer world, one of more possibilities, one calling upon us to be adults and agents acting. This is a world I love. For God so loved…. This is a world in motion, but not merely in motion, loving. This is a world of colors and dimensions and dynamics yet unexplored.

We are smart, expected to make good decisions, creative decisions, within a world wide with possibilities. Our instructions are simple and few, not prescribing, only proscribing and inviting.

What can we do, turned loose?

:- Doug.

Life prescribes no exact results, but invites within a very loose set of principles. There are instructions for making the organism, not a prescription for its exact architecture. The parts of the organism are players together in an ensemble.

:- Doug.

Like life: do whatever you are going to do like life does it, complexly, simply, lively; also make sure you are in love with life.

:- Doug.

In human dynamics, relationships can be generated or (theoretically) imposed. Thus, we need to allow for a process of generation, which requires thought and care and thus some time and space.

What do we learn from this? For one, it does not require that all relationships be worked out before hand: on the contrary it requires opportunities to adapt to one another.

:- Doug.