Temple Bells and other Esoterica

[Harrison Owen]

There is little doubt about it, OST is strange. But the strangest part is
not the use of Temple Bells - but rather the fact that it (OST) works at
all. As far as I can tell OST violates every single theoretical and
practical principle when it comes to the management of meetings, as well as
management in general. Everybody "knows" that nothing useful will happen
without the presence of The Leader, who takes charge of things, insuring
that the carefully made plan or design is implemented. The Plan is the
product of long and tedious hours and its implementation is accomplished
only by means of strict command and control. Anything else is weird,
counterintuitive, wrong, and probably illegal, immoral and fattening. Which
brings us to OST. Frankly it could not, and should not happen - But it does.

For participants around the world, now numbering in the millions, all of
this creates something in the nature of cognitive dissonance. You know one
thing to be true, and then the opposite happens! Fortunately, most people
(our participants) are much more interested in results than they are in
principles of theory and practice. And they get results - even have fun in
the process. What a relief compared to the usual state of affairs!

But for professionals in the field (managers, executives, other
facilitators) - all of this is a real problem. If Open Space works so well,
easily, and often, then one might question why they are working so hard. And
that would be just the beginning of the questioning. Some years ago, a very
senior official in ASTD (American Society of Training and Development) told
me that if what happened in Open Space actually occurred, then 95% of what
they were currently doing under the heading of Training and Development -
need not be done. That is pretty shocking, particularly if all your
professional status and salary depend on what you were doing. In that moment
it became quite clear to me why people (in general) love Open Space, and the
professional community does its best to ignore it, at the least.  Under the
circumstances, I would do the same.

My personal response to all of this has been to accept the challenge and
dive as deeply as I could into the puzzle: OST works. It shouldn't. What's
going on? It has been a lot of fun, and all of you have been deeply
contributory to the adventure. Collectively, I think we are beginning to see
some sense in the non-sense! For me a critical step came when I began to
think of OST as simply an example of the great force of self-organization at
work. This is not something we invented or created. In fact it seems to have
been going on for 13.7 billion years.

But clearly that is not the only way to look at things, nor is
self-organization the only thing that is operative in this funny thing we
call Open Space Technology. To this I might add the shamanic act of Bounding
the Circle, the age old mythology of The Hero's Journey, and of course -
Temple Bells.

"Bounding the Circle" may not be familiar to some people, but every time we
(as OST facilitators) walk the circle at the beginning of a gathering - that
is exactly what we are doing, and some people might call it weird. But I
think it is very important to understand how Bounding the Circle came to be
a part of Open Space. It just happened. Way back when - I found that at the
start of a gathering it seemed like a good idea to walk around the circle so
folks might see who I was, and simultaneously see who else was in the circle
as their eyes followed me around. Nothing esoteric here - just seemed like a
good thing to do. What surprised me as I and friends and colleagues did this
simple walk, was how powerful it seemed to be in terms of exciting and
focusing the spirit and energy of the participants.  

One day it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was simply doing what I had seen
countless Medicine Men doing when I was in Africa. In fact, it was a simple
ritual from millennia past. It worked then. It works now. Isn't it
surprising, the fundamentals of human community are still fundamental! But
the really important point is that I never sat down to deeply study Shamanic
Traditions, and then said to my self - Right, Let's do this in Open Space.
Quite the other way around! I did it, and then wondered why it worked.

I could say basically the same thing for Temple Bells and the Hero's
Journey. They just happened, and then we all had the wonderful opportunity
to ask, How come? 

This conversation has been basically ongoing, and for me it is one of the
richest parts of our community life. And now - What about Temple Bells? Or
the Hero's Journey??

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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