whatever happens...is personal!

Fri May 11 11:38:26 PDT 2007

Good point Joanna! The effective meaning of words is most often to be found
in the ears of the listener - no matter what the speaker may have intended.
And that meaning can and does change. And with that change, very often comes
new and deeper understanding - sometimes surprising new understandings.

I think this is really true with the 4 Principles and The Law. On first
hearing, I suspect most people take them to be funny (odd) or outrageous.
Maybe, outrageously funny. I am not sure how much our (the facilitator's)
explanations change any of that. More to the point, I am almost certain that
most people (participants) don't remember exactly what we said anyhow - but
they do seem to remember the principles and the law. Probably because we
have them posted around and about. Maybe I am stretching a bit, but I think
that the original definitions are almost beside the point. What counts is
the sort of dialogue that seems to go on between the participants and the
principles/law over time. People find meaning, then new meaning, then deeper
meanings as they go along. And our part in all of this seems to have less to
do with the 15 minutes of fame we have up front (Thank you Andy Warhol!)
than with the way we are over time. In a word, the most powerful
statement/definition of the 4 Principles and One Law, so far as we are
concerned, is our being - the way we are. The first principle comes alive
(maybe) when we treat each participant as absolutely the RIGHT person. The
2nd Principle comes alive (perhaps) when people experience us as being
totally in the present moment (absolutely present and totally invisible) -
with Zero concern for what could have been, might have been, should have
been.

Harrison

Harrison Owen

7808 River Falls Drive

Potomac, Maryland   20854

Phone 301-365-2093

Skype hhowen

Open Space Training  <http://www.openspaceworld.com/> www.openspaceworld.com

Open Space Institute  <http://www.openspaceworld.org/>
www.openspaceworld.org

Personal website  <http://www.ho-image.com/> www.ho-image.com 

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-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Joanna
Fletcher
Sent: Friday, May 11, 2007 12:45 PM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Re: whatever happens...is personal!

Hello! [smiling and waving]

I'm loving this discussion, and have a tiny contribution - that it seems
clear from what people have said that everyone, facilitator and participants
alike, hears the principles as they are. The principles cannot exist as dry,
objective, concrete concepts; it's impossible, because they must always be
filtered through a unique individual's perception. Resist them, fear them,
embrace them.the reaction depends on the person.

This is one of the things I love so much about storytelling - every listener
hears a different story, the one they are ready and able to hear, and learns
and grows from there. Stories, and people, are designed that way.

Much love from sunny Calgary,

Joanna Fletcher

Lion Life Coaching

403-837-1866

The principles in Italy

 This is how normally people reacts to the principles here in Italy - at
least in my experience (from the latter to the first one).

4. When it's over......: It's definitely the principle that hits more the
imagination of the people. My feeling is that happens cause this principle
invites people to break some of the rules that they can't normally break
during their daily life.

3. Whenever starts.....: this is the Italian principle, as Harrison has
always said. People don't seem to be really caught by it, probably cause
this principle is so strongly part of Italian culture that for most of the
people is simply "a fact of life".

2. what ever happens.....: same experience as most of you, a lot of the
people reacts to this principle with a bad feeling - they perceive it as an
invitation to be fatalist. More then a time it has happened to me that
during the talking stick people have commented this principle, saying that
in the opening they had a bad feeling while at the end they had understand
the real meaning of it.

1. Who ever comes .....: normally people seem quite neutral about it. And
some times my feeling is that they perceive it as a sort of justification of
the work of the organiser - something like "I apologise for the absence of
some important actors, it's not my fault and please don't be influenced by
it". So in some way they perceive it as the exact opposite of what it should
be.

Presenting and explaining the principles and the law

Few weeks ago I was discussing about how to open the space with a colleague,
and she was saying that in her opinion the presentation of 

the principles should not take too long - exactly cause they are simply
"facts of life", everybody knows them. And that their presentation is useful
only to make clear that the big issue of an OST is the NOW. 

Now this is exactly the opposite of what I have been doing in this years
(and she was suggesting me to change my way of opening the space). When I
open the space I spend quite a lot of time introducing the principles. I do
this cause:

- I want to give participant the right (control) comprehension of the
principles.

- Even if the idea that the principles are "facts of life" is fascinating
and probably deeply true, when I introduce the principle I normally end up
with a sort of final invitation that sounds like "even if this principles
and the law may appear to you not very important or even a little bit
extravagant, be aware that they are really serious and that the productivity
of this open space will depend strongly by your ability to follow the
principles and apply the "one law" of the open space. You all know how
difficult is to let them go :-).

A big ciao 

ge

Gerardo de Luzenberger

SSF - Scuola Superiore di Facilitazione

Via Venezia 23

20099 Sesto San Giovanni (MI)

tel: +39 02 241 26 646

 <mailto:info at scuolafacilitazione.it> info at scuolafacilitazione.it 

 <http://www.scuoladifacilitazione.it> www.scuoladifacilitazione.it

  _____  

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