The balance in the world and within myself currently doesn’t represent the highest level of health. Symptoms of imbalance are everywhere: pollution, violence, corruption and depression. Seeing something as “wrong” is an old way of looking at the world where duality rules and there is little room for mystery or perfection in the natural way of things.
Yet I don’t want to be soothed, told that everything will be okay. I want real change, real action. “Systems cannot be understood by analysis. . . but can be understood only within the context of the larger whole” (Capra, 1996, p. 29). I want to know balance and the highest capacity of a system.
The possibility for wisdom, creativity and vitality is greater than the sum of a system’s parts. These emergent tendencies arise as a living system forms. Right now there is the possibility to step outside the cultural system, step outside habitual ways of being. Collectively wake up. I know the possibility, and I am still learning the action.
I can feel the edges of the paradigm (the underlying thinking which organizes a community); the feeling that the external ‘authority’ is making ‘us’ do things that ‘we’ don’t want to do. “The shift of paradigms requires an expansion not only of our perceptions and ways of thinking, but also of our values” (Capra, 1996, p. 9).
A new way of being in groups is only as close as we can live it moment by moment, day by day. This is both the hope and the fear as I see how often I react with my habitual patterns. “The difference between a healthy group or organization and an unhealthy one lies in its members’ awareness and ability to acknowledge their felt needs to conform” (Flowers, Jaworski, Scharmer, & Senge, 2004, p. 32).
Right now I feel myself between the current system and the arrival of the next. . . I can feel the possibility of a living system forming, where our individuality is honored and the group supports these differences as strengths of the whole. This must be the beginnings of emergence (life arriving out of a collection).
When the ‘group field’ emerges, it has its own identity and tendencies. "You can only talk to the group at the speed of the communication between its members." (Knowlan, 2005) Which means the more connected we are, the faster the group can respond. Each member’s health is tied to the health of the whole.
I have felt myself taken over by the “group field” and begin to channel it more than once. I figure that this is a useable skill, if I could just learn to work with it more consciously. The most necessary task of overcoming a life of habitual distrust and internal control to fully bring myself to the group (and my life) feels like the hardest thing anyone could ask of me.
What I want is nothing less than a new way of being with emotion, with task, with people, with myself. Finding the place in between collapsing (repressing everything) and striking out (exploding). Health. So far, I am alternately flailing and swimming in working in this new way with moments of clarity. I am afraid. Luckily, the new paradigm includes room for learning, imperfection and growth.
“Group leadership is like dancing on a rocking boat where a great deal of the rocking is caused by your dancing” (Spivak, 2005). There is a paradox in the innate perfection of the world and myself while always being room for infinite improvement and learning.
Capra, F. (1996). The web of life: A new scientific understanding of living systems.
Flowers, B.S., Jaworski, J., Scharmer, C.O., & Senge, P. (2004). Presence: Human purpose and the field of the future.
Gell-Mann, M. (1994). The quark and the jaguar: adventures in the simple and the complex. New
Knowlan, A. (2005) From a lecture at the Matrix Leadership Foundation Training, Boulder 2004-5.
Spivak, J. (2005) From a conversation at the Matrix Leadership Foundation Training, Boulder 2004-5.
3 comments:
It's interesting to me that participating in matrix groups, especially over some duration, is a great big opportunity to experience oneself being different in groups. And that whatever that experiment is with being different, it is still distinctively different from most everyone else's experiment. And yet we can all share some amount of similar impacts about what being in the experiment was like. Dunno if that makes sense, but I was appreciating, Arlyn, that without being in your matrix foundations training, that your post let's me know something about your experiment, and has me remembering mine too.
I have found that matrix leadership is about believing in the network of interconnectivity between us all, and trusting in the integrity of this truth. If I create a thought, communication or action in the world, it will impact every part of the web. Hence, just by being, I am in the matrix.
Although society is in a place where this is not yet common knowledge, I act as if it is. I use the principles in most endeavors, and when I am not conscious enough to be present in my thought/word/deed, the challenge is to wake up as quickly as possible.
Yes indeed...dream ourselves awake...in connection....
Perhaps there is no "whole" if even one member is ostracized. If even one person is seen as too different or too wounded or simply unintentionally marginalized because she doesn't speak as quickly or as often as her more verbally assertive colleagues or family members. When a group identity is shaped by pressure to
conform--even to so-called "higher consciousness" or values, there is a risk of rigormortis occuring insidiously over time.
A great deal of work exists that supports individuals to see others as parts of themselves--even "shadow" parts. A great deal of wonderful methodologies exist to support dialogue between oppositional parties. In Matrix work we go a step further. We look to take back the parts of the group or system that we have ascribed to others. We expand our own personal range to include behavior, styles, and roles we previously left to others to express. Here's a systems awareness practice:notice in any of the groups that you are in,
1) Who do you reject or feel repelled from in some way?
2) Who do you sit back silently applauding? Whose voice /view elicits a sense of relief?
Amina
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