Authenticity and self-discovery in Open Space

Fri May 26 10:51:03 PDT 2006

Well, I think that the short form of the answer to this question is largely
what I have been looking at with Michael Herman for the past three years and
that is, practice.

Open Space disappears after a while.  I think Harrison, you might have had
this experience in Japan recently if I'm not mistaken.  "Come and be with
us," people say.  And it is because you are who you are that people want you
to be with them and work with them.  You might not even do an Open Space.
But when you do an Open Space, it isn't anything special, it is just what
you do.

For me, it has been interesting over the past 10 years of so watching how
Open Space has shaped who I am and how it has led me into thinking about and
seeing the world in different ways.  And these ways of thinking and seeing,
rooted as they are in an Open Space worldview are pretty unusual still in
the world at large.  So when I show up in different settings asking
questions that we ask if we come out of an Open Space worldview, then it
often seems as if a breath of fresh air has come into the room.  Whether we
end up doing an OST even or not, it's that presence that seems to matter.

What I have learned is that presence is no mere accident.  It is the result
of years and years of practice, informed and supported by folks like the
ones on this list who fill my inbox with scads of things to work on, to
continue to refine my view of things.

My view does not always land with complete acceptance in others, and
probably most of us here have had the experience of people think we were
completely nuts.  That's fine with me.  I just don't work with people who
think I'm crazy.  I find though that the ones that do get what I'm saying
seem to have a hunger for this type of "being" in the world and our working
relationships become very deep.

For me trying to figure out who I am has the effect of wanting to place a
boundary around myself if only to make it easier to define what is within.
The practice perspective does the opposite in my experience...it allows me
to continue growing more and more open and even in doing so, find my core
more and more reinforced.  It's when the boundaries start slipping away,
between work and practice, between process and product, between Open Space
technology and open space, that things really get interesting.

Chris

On 5/26/06, Harrison Owen <hhowen at verizon.net> wrote:
>
> Thinking about the manifestation of masculine and feminine in each one of
> us
> took me to another place, and I suppose it is all related. But I may have
> to
> go several times around the barn in order to find the door!?? In other
> words, I will probably wander a bit, but I think there is a point.  It is
> all about authenticity and self-discovery.
>
> From the very beginning of this Open Space adventure it has been very
> clear
> to me that anybody with a good head and a good heart can "do it." It is
> not
> that training and experience count for nothing, but they are clearly not
> prerequisite for doing an Open Space. If you can sit in a circle, create a
> bulletin board, open a market place, you will get on with the business. At
> some significant level, the capacity to open space doesn't have a thing to
> do with training and experience; it seems almost like a natural act. This
> was certainly true with my first Open Space. It seems like a long time ago
> (21 years), and at the same time it is only yesterday. But long or short,
> it
> is very clear to me that I didn't have a clue what I was doing. No theory,
> no training, no nothing - but it surely felt good.
>
> And as things went along, I watched other people having the same
> experience.
> Without a book to read, training program to participate in, or colleagues
> for support - they just jumped in. And everything just worked out perfect.
> Of course, once you have done something and it seems to work, there is a
> natural tendency to attempt some improvements. And so some of my friends
> began to think of other things they could do, ways of integrating
> (combining) Open Space with whatever sorts of approaches they had been
> using, or had recently learned about. Interestingly enough, as I watched
> their efforts, it seemed to me that they more they fiddled (added,
> changed,
> sequenced etc) the more cumbersome and less functional the experience in
> Open Space became. My personal approach went just the other direction, and
> I
> found myself thinking about one more thing to leave out - not do!
>
> It was not unlike peeling an onion. Layer after layer disappeared, and of
> course, if you keep on going eventually you get to a point where there is
> nothing there! I pretty much reached that point and simultaneously found
> myself with a marvelous conundrum - the less I did, the better things got,
> and if I ever were to reach a point where I did nothing at all, that
> should
> be the best of all! Fair enough - but then what did I bring to the party?
> What was it about me that was significant?
>
> I suppose this could sound like longing to be loved (Somebody, please
> NEEEED
> ME!). Guilty as charged, I am sure.  And I think the question is a real
> one.
> Who am I and what difference does that make?  I guess the simple answer
> is:
> I am me, complicated by the fact that "me" changes over time. The only
> "thing" I will ever bring to the party is me, nothing more, nothing less -
> just me.  And the only thing that seems to matter much is that the "me"
> that
> shows up is really me. Not some abstract me. Not some new and improved me.
> Not somebody else's version of me. Just me. Just the way I am. I think
> that
> is called "authenticity."
>
> At this point the waters get a little muddy, if only because the "me" I am
> changes day to day. Or what may be the same thing; my awareness of this
> little old me changes. So just who is this "me" that shows up? The
> traditional approach to such an interesting question would be to engage in
> some form of self-analysis prior to showing up. But that never worked for
> me. The harder I tried to figure out who I was, the more confused I became
> -
> and I suspect that confusion was also draped in a mantel of
> inauthenticity.
> More often than not, I came out looking like something I thought I should
> be, or that somebody else wanted me to be - all under the heading of
> self-improvement.
>
> So I just showed up, any way I could, and did what I was able to do. No
> apologies. Sounds kind of in-your-face, but it definitely worked in a most
> unexpected fashion. Somehow or another, the Open Space environment
> (whether
> I was the facilitator or participant) striped away all of the
> should-have-beens, might-have-beens, could-have-beens.  And in retrospect
> I
> discovered elements of me I never expected.
>
> So where does this tour around the barn leave us? Speaking personally, I
> have found that the experience in Open Space to be an incredible dialogue
> between the me that showed up authentically and the emergent self that
> that
> greeted me at the end of the day. If nothing else it sure beats
> psychoanalysis and is a lot cheaper.
>
> And for whatever it is worth, one of the things I discovered about me is
> that I am bi-polar for sure - Masculine and Feminine.
>
> Harrison
>
>
>
>
>
> Harrison Owen
> 7808 River Falls Drive
> Potomac, Maryland   20854
> Phone 301-365-2093
> Skype hhowen
> Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com <http://www.openspaceworld.com/
> >
>
> Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org
> Personal website www.ho-image.com
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-- 
CHRIS CORRIGAN
Consultation - Facilitation
Open Space Technology

Weblog: http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot
Site: http://www.chriscorrigan.com
Open Space Resources:  http://tinyurl.com/r94tj

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