a tasty "taster" OST meeting

[Raffi Aftandelian]

Thanks, Michael, for your response!

I  wish  I had caught the expats stomping out on film (of course, they
would never have allowed me, I imagine, to take their picture; it sure
would be excellent for "training" purposes...

Ludmila and I were the sponsors and organizers (lots of work!).

Thank  you  for the Making money facilitating OST events idea. A great
one.

i  think  we  made  it  only one day because I wasn't sure that people
unfamiliar with OST would be ready straight off to do 2 days, but I'll
think about that for the future.

As  for building a resonant field, frankly I am not sure I can explain
it, because I am only beginning to understand this.

That phrase comes from my Genuine Contact Program training as a result
of  which  Birgitt Williams recommended that we read Stalking the Wild
Pendulum: the mechanics of consciousness (by Itzhak Bentof) to develop
a  better  understanding  of  the  science  of  OST.  It has been slow
reading.  Science  was never a favor subject, even if the author tries
to make it accessible.

I   imagine  a fair number of folks onlist are familiar with the book,
and at a later point I had the intention of posing questions about the
book to the list. I quite simply don't understand some things in it.

One  of  the  thoughts I have about OST from the little I have read is connected
with the following notion from the book:

When  you  use  a  super-microscope  on  matter  you  find that at the
micro-level there is in fact no such thing as "matter", rather all you
have is a field of energy, lots of space.

I  think  most  ways  of  working with groups have the assumption that
there   really  is  something,  that  there really is something called
content  (a  technique,  a  method, etc.-- a form of matter). In fact,
there  isn't,  and  the more we get into that method or technique, the
more  we  are  fooling  ourselves.  OST says, "listen there is no
content,  so  let's  get to building that field of energy, potentially
a  conscious  field;  let's  build  the  "matter" (which doesn't exist
anyway) ourselves.

I  think  when  people stomp out of an OST, this may be partly because
the  thought  that  "there is no there there" (as Gertrude Stein said of
one of my old semi-hometowns) makes them shit bricks. Too much.

As  for building the resonant energy field with the participants, this
is  a  leftover from a thread on another list about OST. It's exciting
to  make  this  slow  shift  in  my  facilitator  development from the
attitude  of "Ok, does this OST stuff really work?" to "Ok, now how do
I do this madness well?" And I am slowly, oh so slowly coming to learn
a very important lesson of taking the ego out of the picture.

Another  way  of  saying  creating  a  resonant energy field is simply
opening the space. The question-- i imagine it's an old one-- is *who*
really  opens  the  space?  The  facilitator?  The  participants?  The
faciltiator and particpants together? Spirit?

I know the thought is ill-formed, maybe someone can flesh out it, pick
at it, don't know.

Warmly,
Raffi
_________
> "Pannwitz, Michael M" <mmpanne at boscop.de>
> Dear Raffi,
> I would have loved to see those expats stomp out,
> especially at the moment when you talked about the Law.
> Who was the sponsor of the event?
> One thing that crossed my mind was a variation on the theme
> something like
> "Making money facilitating os-events".
> Or
> "Making a living facilitating os-events".
> Why only one day?
> What do you mean by "building a resonant energy field with the
> participants"?
> What kind of relation is that between you and the participants?
>
> I did read the special issue of JABS.
> (you asked how I got it in the mail to me, well I just ordered it via
> the Internet)
> There was something about os in the article by Susanne Weber who has
> been researching the spread of LGIs in Germany.
> But no article explicitly about os.
> I think that many of my OD colleagues are scared of os,
> and maybe the folks at JABS are, too. It defies much of the stuff
> that is accepted in the OD world (which was my world, too, for many
> years),
> such as notions implicit in concepts such as "change management".
> And then it is not a reliable "tool", you can never tell what will
> happen when used.
>
> One day soon, spring will break out in Moscow
> its arriving in force in Berlin
> mmp


--

 Raffi                          mailto:raffi at bk.ru

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