Space finds facilitator

[Gerard Muller]

Dear all,


I really enjoy working in beautiful spaces. More often than not however,
clients have already rented
one, usually too cramped or sterile, without any spirit. Sometimes 
there is
a wonderful room I did not yet know.


The worst space I ever worked in was when I was opening space for a 
regional
tax office.
They had decided to have the meeting in their cellar - to save costs. 
The
ceiling was low,  it was a long and narrow rectangle. It had to hold 195
participants. I wasn’t happy.


To my surprise the problem they had to solve was so bad that it did not 
seem
to make a difference.


Sometimes I find the space I am to work in is unusual, or wonderful, or
both. I have worked in tents,
in barns, in police stations, in city council meeting rooms, in museums,
hospitals, castles, monasteries, churches, and so on.  Over the years I 
have
found some places I really like to be.


Sometimes the client has not yet booked something. Especially when it 
is not
an internal meeting but a system, I find it useful to ask what location
other than a normal meeting space would symbolise and offer the right
environment for what they want to achieve. Again this has produced some
remarkable spots.


This time around, however, I could select the space. It concerned a 
rather
special meeting; the seminar
on Harrison’s Wave Rider Tour in the Netherlands.


Then something strange happened.


All locations that I know and like were booked.


I wrote to my network and asked for suggestions. Some twenty-five
suggestions came in, most of which I did not know at all. In good 
spirits I
started to check. All that I contacted were booked, too.


I finally called a suggestion our collegue Gijs, a Dutchman living in
Shanghai gave me when we met
at WOSONOS in San Francisco. I called the secretariat of the
Sufi-organisation and explained them
I was looking for a special meeting space. Yes, they did have some 
meeting
facilities, but they were definitely not a commercial conference centre.
Only meetings with a strong spiritual link could be held.


What came to my mind was to say that our meeting was to be about 
creating
dialogue and enabling deep conversations that matter, but that I was not
looking for normal facilities, but had heard they had quite a special 
place.


There was a pause on the telephone line. “You must be reffering to our
temple”. I then remembered Gijs actually mentioned a temple.


I was then given the name of the guardian of the temple. A few hours 
later I
was there and had a wonderful conversation with a perfect stranger in an
amazing building: a Sufi temple, a perfect square with a golden dome
transparant enough to somehow pas on the light into the space.


The story of its foundation is, that Sufi teacher Hazrat Inayat Khan, 
sent
from India to Eaurope to create a link between the East and the West, 
had a
special experience during the summer school of 1922. He blessed the 
spot and
gave it the name Murad Hassil, which means "wish for filled".
He said to his students that anyone who prays with honesty, would 
experience
this blessing.


So, Wave Rider in the Netherlands will take place in the Sufi Temple, 
not
far from Amsterdam airport.
And by the way, it lies at on a dune at the seacoast. It comes including
real waves.


If you feel like coming, drop me a line.








Gerard Muller
gm at openspace.dk

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