Intentional Society: Making visible the unseen
There will be an orientation call this Saturday September 11th, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Daylight Time (4pm Eastern, 8pm UTC). These are a prerequisite to participation in our Sunday general sessions.
The past few weeks we've been looking at perspective expansions that we've experienced -- sharing stories in small groups, listening with curiosity, responding in resonance. These are stories of growth and transformation, specifically the kind of shift where we gain a new outlook on life (or some significant part of our life).
It has been said that what has been seen cannot be unseen. How, though, do we come to see the unseen? Being inside a perspective, how-when-where do we come to know that there is an outside view?
It seems like this would be mostly out of our control -- no less laughable than waking up one day and saying "today, I shall become enlightened." But there are definitely forces moving in and through us, with which we interact and have some kind of choice in our degree of openness or receptivity. The push of life circumstances, of discomfort or pain, is also the pull of opportunity, of new possibilities and peace.
Sometimes the loss is deep -- we may lose a loved one, or a religious belief system, or a place of belonging. Sometimes the way that we previously modeled things was a "load-bearing" part of our self-identity or self-worth. Other stories are of merely bumping into a new idea in the right zone for the ongoing expansion of our maturation, like going up a shoe size. I quite like that metaphor: we can't "make" our feet grow, but we can notice when our shoes are pinching our toes.
This is all ties in with our season's exploration of developmental edges and how to find them. The spotlighting approach can have a resemblence to "looking for one's keys under the lamppost," versus the scaffolding strategy being more like a flashlight pointed where we last saw them. However, sometimes we might need the big picture illuminated, versus a small key.
So how can we best en-light-en our ways of seeing to better serve ourselves and the calls that life places upon us? Look to the maps that others have drawn from their experience? Tune our wayfinding skills of reading the terrain of our own sensations? How do we cultivate those practices individually and together to support our ongoing awareness?
In the next few weeks of Intentional Society we'll be harvesting meaning from our explorations and integrating our learning into our future intentions. Season 4 will start on October 3rd.
Cheers,
James