Letting Go

loughrey loughrey at nbnet.nb.ca
Sun Jun 24 14:58:22 PDT 2001


I love your comment - I always think I have done a good job when at least
one person in the group says towards the end of the open space - "what did
we need her for?"

Carol E.A. Loughrey
28 Eagle Court
Fredericton, N.B.
E3B5Y3
Canada
fax 1-506-455-0944
Phone 1-506-452-2157


-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU]On Behalf Of Don
Ferretti
Sent: June 22, 2001 1:11 PM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Letting Go


For me the "letting go" is the letting go of the 25 years of training and
experience I have as a "Facilitator." The training tells you that you must
preplan agendas that are meaningful to the group, and that will lead toward
"meeting outcomes" that you must think through possible pitfalls and design
"interventions" and "preventions" so that the group does not get off
track,etc.  Also, in traditional facilitation, the facilitator often takes
on the role of timekeeper to make sure that people are moving from one place
or activity to another so that the meeting ends on time and the praise is
that "we got a lot done and ended on time" and all of this feeds the
Facilitator Ego. We learned about this as the shadow side of facilitation,
and our balance was in recognizing the shadow, never questioning the
validity of the mental model. A great thing about my journey as an Open
Space "practitioner" ( the only way that I can describe it to myself) is
that I have tons of things to let go!
 of, and every time I think I have purged the last "tool" held by my
Facilitator Ego another appears that I can happily let fly away, but some
times they don't fly very far away.  I know this is mundane, but remember
this paraphrase of some old Chinese saying: The good facilitator is the one
who people praise, the bad facilitator is the one who the people despise,
the great facilitator is the one who the people will say "we did it
ourselves". Or something like that. Keeping the space open inside and out.

Don




>>> on.the.edge at SYMPATICO.CA 06/22/01 08:44AM >>>
Dear Artur, Meg and all!
I agree...
The process of evolution - letting go - is like peeling back the
layers.  I love both the shift of consciousness topic and the embodied
experience sharing, and would appreciate hearing more.
To that end, some playful questions have come to mind:
- What are we 'letting go' of?
This, for me, has been the adventure that I formerly experienced as
embarassment, pain, etc...  I now can play with myself, let the universe
play with me, and even play with! :-)  From my perspective, the bumps I
hit become rides in self-awareness.

- What are we 'letting go' into, if anything?
Is the open space between states of being?  Or is it an end unto
itself?  If an end unto itself, what is the ultimate open space?

I hope someone will want to play with me! ...

Best wishes to all!
glory
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Glory Ressler, B.A., Dip. GIT
Avalon Consulting & Associates
www.edgeofavalon.com
"...the edge where 21st century scientific insight and ancient
storytelling wisdom meet in the service of transformation and growth"

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>From  Mon Jun 25 09:59:28 2001
Message-Id: <MON.25.JUN.2001.095928.0400.>
Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 09:59:28 +0400
Reply-To: brynza at online.ru
To: OSLIST <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
From: Raffi Aftandelian <brynza at online.ru>
Subject: Re: letting go
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

The radical letting go aspect of Open Space-- what I describe to myself
as "profound non-intervention" as a way of coming to an understanding of
the essence of OS-- gets me scratching my head when it comes to...doing
"traditional" facilitation and training.

For example, I likely will be doing a conflict resolution training
(maybe some are familiar with Alternatives to Violence Project)  in
early July. And a big part of me says I can't continue to do things the
way I used to do now that I've been trained in OS. The Basic level AVP
training is a prepared program with a set of exercises and games. OF
course, we can always make changes to the agenda.

I see an excellent opportunity to do a 4 hour optional OS on learnings
from the training and their application to life after the training, but
I am curious how OS has informed people's "traditional" facilitation and
training work?

thanks much,
Raffi Aftandelian
Moscow

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