I made a wonderful new connection the other day with Michael Jones, a talented pianist, consultant, and writer/thinker on the subject of beauty, leadership, and the power of imagination in forming our collective experience.
He is in the middle of some projects that I look forward to hearing more about, but in the meantime I wanted to introduce him and his writings to those of you who don’t yet know him, and take you to some audio clips where you can hear his delightful music…
This last Friday Craig & Patricia Neal from the Minnesota-based Heartland were here for September’s Thought Leader Gathering, the every-other-monthly invitational event that I help produce with the Neals & Firehawk & Pele of Resonance.
The conversation starter, Mal Warwick of BSR and SVN, was wonderful as each and every one of them have been since we started these evolutionary dialogues back in 1999, but it is immediately clear that the TLG experience goes far beyond the specifics of any given conversation starter.
What is happening at these gatherings is ‘presence’. The TLG calls us
to Presence… to be here, in this moment, with ourselves, with each
other, and within nature.
The methods are deceptively simple, as these things tend to be (after
all, Presence is our natural state), but profoundly effective. How many
of us regularly take the time in our busy lives just to ‘be’ together? To turn off our email and cell phone and tune in to the messages coming from our own inner being? How many of us have the deep pleasure of a community of peers where we have the opportunity to listen deeply to each other. To feel the fundamental connection between us as fellow meaning-seeking creatures, and the inspiration & catalytic impetus we can be to each other as a tribe of humans committed to making a difference in our world?
We sit in circle and speak our words, and listen to the words of others, and all the while alongside this profoundly satisfying level of connection and interaction, something else is happening. Our hearts are opening, and we are experiencing a deeper rhythm, a silent resonance between us. There is a calming of our everyday concerns and a re-alignment with the larger patterns that have a sense and reason that gives meaning and direction to the actions that will arise from our time together.
At the center of these gatherings, quite literally as well a metaphorically, is Beauty. Each time we gather, Firehawk and Pele bring abundant expressions of beauty – candles & fabric, stones or feathers or other ‘medicine’ materials from their cupboards & trunks, and flowers & plants & the all-important clippers with which they bring the outside in – and gather the elements into a beautiful patterm which is laid in a place of honor in the center of our circle. This ‘beauty in the middle’ is our anchor. We don’t have to speak it, it just is. Beauty calls us to presence, and shows us who and what we are at an essential level.
I was on Zaadz – an
interactive platform dedicated to fostering collective spiritual
conversation – last night and found myself wondering about the value of these forums…
Zaadz is an innovative idea, the only public forum of its size and popularity (they’ve had a lot of media support from friends at What is Enlightenment magazine and their colleagues at Ken Wilbur’s Integral Institute). They are dedicated to ideological principles I share and have a spiritual (rather than religious) viewpoint. These alone make it worthy of my support.
If that isn’t enough, I found a wonderful new ‘design’ discussion group
there, where I was turned on to this inspiring video by industrial designer Ross Lovegrove. The video (taped at the 2006 TED conference – I’d LOVE to attend TED
one year, but haven’t yet managed to pony up the $4,400 it takes to do
so) is brilliant; absolutely inspiring and informative. Another Zaadz design post turned me on to a design blog I really liked, too, one that will excite me creatively and help inform my work in solid, practical ways.
Ideological solidarity and these kinds of creative ‘finds’ should be ample justification for my participation on forums like Zaadz, and there would be no question here if I had more ‘free’ time in my life, but as it is I’m afraid I often don’t give myself that time. This, even though I work alone and know that this kind interaction with others offers essential creative/intellectual stimulation. I clearly benefit from my engagement with these forums (including the wonderful array of relevant blogs) – why don’t I make more time for the unexpected discoveries and opportunities for conversation & connection available to me out here in cyberspace?
Perhaps because there are just SO MANY of them, and I tend to be so gluttonous in my absorbtion of information and ideas that I don’t have any sense of sobriety once I get started.
What about you? Do any of you reading this blog participate in one or more online conversations somewhere (this is a trick question since if
you respond, you are part of an online conversation! :-)? If do, how do you make the time and necessary distinctions, and what do you find truly valuable in the experience?
You’ll know if you’ve read any of the World Cafe Stewardship Dialogue blog posts that every morning at this wonderful event was begun in ceremony, with Anne Dosher calling on the eleven directions. I was particularly struck by her evocation to the SW, addressing the Stone People, Guardians of Dreams.
This combination of stones and dreams is meaningful to me partly
because of my attraction & connection to stone circles. One of the
subtleties that most fascinates me about being in the UK & Ireland
is the pervasive presence of neolithic art. I recently blogged a brief
post (with pictures) in my Art & the Environment blog, about the stone art I experienced during my recent trip to those verdant isles.
weDialogue
Welcome!