Congruity

[Chris Weaver]

Thank you, Artur and Uwe, for this thread.

Artur wrote:

>5. Finally, if changing tacit knowing (old models, values and habitudes)
>is so difficult, one must question if "training" (in any disciplines or in
>anything really) has any real value to create the free energy that will
>allow for old tacit knowing to be "unlearnt" and so replaced by a new
>tacit knowing? In other words how can we facilitate personal,
>organisational or social "metanoias"?
>
> I need not add that in my opinion the way to organisational metanoia
> is "repeated OSTs" - this also helps (but is not enough) to individual
> and social metanoias. I am still in search of ways for those...

Let me share with you a description of a current project.

In Asheville there is an organization called the North Carolina Center for
Creative Retirement.  The mission is about "life-long learning," community
involvement, etc.  The educational methodologies used have been traditional
until the past few years, when one staff person began experimenting with
"learning circles."

The circles organized around a question or concept, and met for five weeks,
without an "expert."  The art of facilitation involved generating questions
that evoke stories from personal experience, thus accessing everyone's
experiential expertise.  In light of Artur's posting, these to me are
stories that reveal the tacit realms for the deeper understanding of both
the listeners and the speaker.

This learning circles program spawned a group that calls itself the
"Transitions Think Tank."  They are a powerful group of free-thinking
elders.  They heard about OST and invited me to work with them.

On February 15th, this Learning Circles program will hold its first OST
meeting.  We have called it a "Transformational Learning Festival."  The
theme is "Living on the Edge of New Growth - What Sort of Learning is
Relevant in our Lives Right Now?"  We expect between 50 and 100 people; the
majority will be retired, but all ages are welcome.  One of the "givens" of
our event is that we will resist straying into opinion, abstraction, and
debate, and will ground our discussions in the practices of storytelling
from experience, and crafting questions that evoke more stories.

I share this in response to Artur's posting because our "festival" is a very
deliberate attempt to, in Artur's words, facilitate personal,
organizational, and social metanoias.  And yes, if this event goes well, the
Think Tank is ready to consider holding an OST meeting quarterly, with a
multiple-group learning-circle series in homes in the community during each
season in between.

I also will share a fine quotation about this type of learning.  The author
is Chris M. Bache, Director of Transformational Learning at the Institute of
Noetic Sciences.  I don't have a link, just these words on a paper (from an
article called "What is Transformational Learning?")

THE DANCE OF CONTENT AND RESONANCE

The stronger, clearer, and better focused the mental field of a given
learning circle, the more likely it is that skillful inquiry will spark deep
changes in people's lives.  This is so true in my experience that I have
become convinced that the intellectual exchange of ideas is but a vehicle
for a more fundamental energetic exchange that takes place "underneath" the
verbal dialogue.

Everyone knows that words not supported by the energy of personal experience
carry much less power to influence others than words which are.  This
happens, I think, not because the words themselves are different or are
delivered with a different inflection, but because when people speak, they
unleash a tangible but invisible power into the space around them.  This
power comes ultimately from our experience and from the energetic access
that our experience has created in us.  Our words float on this power, like
a canoe floating on a rushing stream.  Moreover, it is not just the
speaker's power that is important here but the power of the
mental-emotional-spiritual field of the entire group.  The strength of the
class's "need to know," the intensity and authenticity of their involvement
in their own learning, influences the strength of the energetic stream that
underpins our verbal exchange.

In this playful dance of content and energetic resonance, ordinary learning
sometimes crosses the threshold to become Great Learning.  Education becomes
transformational learning.  What may begin a an intellectual exercise cracks
open to reveal penetrating and timely truths.  When learning reaches this
white-hot level of intensity, old boundaries can fall away in seconds, old
wounds can open and be drained of their accumulated poisons, the hard can
become soft and pliant once again.

So, Artur and Uwe, I too am asking:  What are the best conditions we can
create for this to take place?  Let us tell stories about what we discover.

Warmly,
Chris


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Opening the Space for Inspired Collaboration
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