Intentional Society: Dare to contemplate heavenly glory
Last orientation call of the season, this Saturday April 9th, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Daylight Time (4pm Eastern, 8pm UTC) — come if you'd like to get involved next season beginning April 24th
This Sunday will be our seasonal big-picture retrospective-cross-envisioning. Sensing, not just from what's there, but also from what's not there. Thinking about this possibility space right here right now by myself, the thing I'd like to confront is the question of whether/how I am holding Intentional Society back.
This is a good question to ask oneself regularly even if nothing at all feels held back, but something "in there" is already calling me to diagnosis. This wouldn't be the first time: I've held IS back in the past by being tentative about my leadership, uncomfortable with the power embodied in my founding role. For better or worse, I currently do and drive a lot of what IS is structurally, and so any limitations of our evolution are probably tangled up in my own shadows or rigidity of direction.
The thing that's calling to me from outside of the current IS boundary is some kind of "deep yes" resonance, a "know it when I see it" state of systemic rightness, a fitness-to-purpose that's tangible when a whole system starts humming with the self-reinforcing energy of tipping into a new gravity well/attractor basin. I've tasted the potential of truly high-performing teams, and I've seen when a plan comes together in a complex domain, when awareness and intentionality and values and purpose all combine to produce a new mode of being-and-doing far beyond conventional capabilities.
We, it, Intentional Society, aren't there yet. I'm not hedging that statement, though "there" is a personal perspective. I enjoy what we're doing, but I remain convinced there's so much more potential. Heavenly glory at an unknown distance, always looking tantalizingly close. It's not a simple hill-climbing algorithm to get there from here — the top of this hill doesn't touch the moon.
Society at its root is "people organized together." Organizing how we relate to each other, what capabilities we can make possible and normal, what value we produce for all of us through our cooperation. The world we want to live in, starting with the way we want to live, but the way we want to be is incompatible with many aspects of the world in which we currently live.
What we've produced so far, in our relational space of Intentional Society general sessions, is a place and a way of being that is accepting, connecting, authentic, challenging — expansive and capacious, enough to feel and inhabit the quality of being the people that we'd like to be. But is this a lamp hidden under a bushel? How do we expand the reach of that light, or bring more into the space of its glow? Let us seek accordingly together.
Cheers,
James
P.S. If you're not a current attendee but would be interested in contributing something to this evolutionary challenge (this Sunday or another way), drop me a line by replying!