an attempt at an answer

Raffi Aftandelian raffi at bk.ru
Sun May 22 00:12:19 PDT 2005


Hi all,

Harrison, you lovingly/mockingly (I imagine) asked a few days back that you were
almost afraid to ask what I think the next paradigm might be.

I am going to give this some more thinking before phrasing what I
think the answer is. I have a sense as to what the next two paradigms
on the learning curve (which as a model of course, has its limits)
are. I also have the sense that once the 5th paradigm comes up, the
6th one will come up in 7 years after the 5th one.

Nevertheless, it gives us a framework. But, maybe a better forum for
this discussion would be Halifax.

I can say what some of the ideas are that are flirting with me, what I
think is pointing to the answer/question. I put it in slashes because
I am not sure what the question is yet.

Below are some as yet rough ideas that somehow I think may hint at the
question/answer:

1. Yes, OST works very deeply, at the level of essence. But isn't
there and hasn't there always been something beyond/before essence?
What is beyond/before essence and does OST work with it?

2a. Consciously or unconsciously OST facilitators worldwide have chosen
not to be a community in my opinion. What is the price we are paying?
Can we who use a method that builds "community" (of course, the answer
is still open, we still don't know what community is) and choose not
to be a community? Unfortunately, I have not done my homework and have
not combed through all the archives to understand what the learning is
that the listserv has done here on that score.

2b. To my knowledge we haven't used OST as an approach for sorting out our
internal issues/challenges as a "community" of facilitators.

3. OST works directly only, perhaps, with human consciousness.

4. A while back I believe on this listserv there was a mention of
something called Beyond Budgeting. Might that also mean that there is
something beyond accounting, the metaphor used in the User Guide?

Probably, there is more to come.

5. It is hard to acknowledge that someone with only a BA, who has
never done an OST meeting with a group larger than 50 people may
indeed have something new to offer.

6. It's really hard to mirror the level of openness who spends much of
his time wearing very few masks and to take seriously someone who
seems to act like a little boy.

I might be terribly wrong in all my thoughts. I don't really care
because it's fun, it feels right, and I can live with being wrong.

Since, for now, all we've got is open space, the only thing I know how
to do is open more space.

The original task of this listserv was a forum for people involved or
interested in OST.

So maybe this conversation is too big for this list. Quite frankly
there have been times when the space hasn't been big enough for me,
times when I have felt sadness and anger from replies from people
offlist. And I know that I am not alone in having had this experience.
For me creative process *maybe* I need a place where I don't have to
censor what I have to say.

While I have never received any hateful emails from people on the
listserv, I know of one person who has. And all of those feelings, of
course, are fine. Whatever happens...

I continue to very much enjoy the list and have trouble imagining that
I'll leave it.

That said, I am creating an electronic group which I hope will maybe
make a contribution to the conversation(s) I am hoping to have. My hope
is that the space on that group will be bigger than what we have here
right now. And the invitation to participating in it is wide open. And
the invitation to helping me think through what the list will do, what
it should do, its "given", its purpose is also wide upon.

The group's name is "a breathing circle." For now, I see its place as
www.smartgroups. I see the group as a forum
to discuss anything this is important, important to others, important
to oneself. The only given I can think of right now is that none of the
messages will ever be deleted, openly accessible archive, just like
here. People can choose to write in any language they want to.

I am also creating a companion group called "a breathing marketplace."
I have a less clear idea of what this group needs to be, but maybe it
could be framed as a post-e-bay/post-amazon.com/post-online trading
post forum for any kind of trading. Basically, if you have anything to
buy or sell, this would be the place. It could be something small, it
could be something big. And again for me it's an open space with the
same given(s?) as "a breathing circle." Any ideas on breathing
marketplace would also be welcome.

Thank you,
Raffi






                          mailto:raffi at bk.ru

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