in search of a story and more...

[Raffi Aftandelian]

Dear friends and colleagues,

I need your help. A professional association of trainers and
consultants I belong to is going
through a challenging period and different members have off and on our
professional electronic list have felt that the upcoming (next week) annual
conference will be a make or break conference. Either we break out of
being in an infant stage (Adizes cycle www.adizes.com) or die. We have mused about using OST as part
of the conference. But curiously, we have agreed that OST just doesn't
feel right, as much as we love the method. It just feels too much like
doing...right now.

And then it came to me-- we have all the 7 years of our existence
asked ourselves "Who are we? What do we want to do? What services do
we want to offer?" And never found a satisfactory answer. It's like
we're hooked on this doing or its illusion. And it came to me that the appropriate
thing to do would be just to have an evening of storytelling about our
organization within the framework of the conference. Happily, the
organizers have responded positively to the idea. And I have been
running it thru my head and heart how to run the storytelling, really
stripping storytelling down in terms of its form: first I really
wanted to use my tibetan (it turns out, apparently, that they're
nepalese) bells. But my bells have been pissed at me recently. So, no
bells...So, it will be very simple.

And I have been thinking about the opening of the storytelling
evening. I have thought about using a Whole Person Process Facilitated
(Genuine Contact Program) tranfer-in for the beginning, but that
doesn't feel right. In a  conversation with a very
new OST colleague today (she's on this list), I got a very good idea:
Start with a story to set the tone.

I would like to start with a story/parable/myth about a child becoming
an adolescent, about a person becoming who she/he is meant to be.

If you know of any such stories, please share. Any other
ideas about the opening for the storytelling would be great, too.

                                **********

This talk about story also brings me to another idea. I have been
working with the idea of reality a lot recently. And found myself
settle with the thought that the only thing that is real to me are my
dreams, whether awake or not. If I were to express what my job is
right now, I'd express it as "do my seeking a little more
consciously." But, my OST colleague introduced me to the ideas of
Susan Glassmore who probably is saying a lot more eloquently and
completely what I have been thinking recently: consciousness does not
exist. What we call consciousness is really "a backwardly assembled
narrative." Maybe my colleague and new friend would care to elaborate?

What initial implications does this have for OST and next paradigm
thinking?

(BTW, if I just learn to do OST properly, I think I will
have done plenty for the planet, but unfortunately, sometimes it simply
feels right, very right, to be rude to Harrison publicly, to ask those
apparently impossible, big questions. Yesterday, I opened Harrison's self-published - Abbott Publishing- and probably
available by Amazon.com book "Spirit: Transformation and Development
in Organizations."  Go to
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/104-9817687-2604765 Costs a whopping $3 (three bucks).

In this early, (formally) pre-OST book, Harrison
says some very important things, probably not said the same way in his
other books. I first tried reading it last year and I had a very hard
time reading it. this year I picked it up and just felt such joy and beauty. A part of me was really sad
that I had been so rude to Harrison online...)

A first implication is that there really is no such thing as a
learning organization/open space organization/conscious open space
organization. The only thing that we have is our experience (or
dreaming/illusion of it).

If that is the case, what do we choose to do with this dream? What are
the implications of how we choose to do OST in creating "learning
organizations, etc." if all we are doing is creating a painstakingly
assembled dream/illusion?

Might we say that the best we can hope to achieve in "life" is
"conscious" (bold quotes) dreaming?

On a related note, in this conversation with an OST friend I learned
that for some people in this world we have until September of this
year to figure out what the f___ we want to do with ourselves as a
human race. Others, I understand, say we have until 2012. In the
meantime, human "systems" keep on giving off flirts (farts?) like
black-outs and brown-outs that hit the entire east coast of the US. Or
like last week in Moscow, parts of Moscow were entirely without
electricity. Thousands got stuck in the metro. Traffic lights stopped
working and many people literally walked 3-5 hours to get home. That has never really
happened here before. In the 70 years of its existence, the metro has
been closed only once  Runet (the Russian part of the Internet) partially shut
down-- which is why some foreign friends/colleagues could not send me
mail.

This year I have figured out some of my personal work ahead. And of
course it's tied up with that now-adolescent aged (but in her heart
still a baby; why she's still a baby may be worth discussing at
Heavenfax) method called open space.

My personal assignment by September, I realize, may be just to stop
fearing death.

If anyone knows how not to fear death, give me a holler.

Raffi


                          mailto:raffi at bk.ru

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist