Intentional Society: The core of being
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<turns on microphone> *tap tap* ahem:
"Intentional Society is a community of people who want to grow — to develop into be the people we want to be. We create space for growth by communing with each other in relational practices, practicing being and becoming."
...at least once a week, I'm explaining to someone what Intentional Society is. Wordings condense and smooth out slowly over time, like water wearing down rock. But there are tipping points, too, where the erosion uncovers a new path for a section of the river.
When I'm trying to describe what we do, what and how and why we practice together, I feel on the verge of connecting a couple frames of our cultural core. Here goes my exploration this week — which will surely not be the final description.
Frame A - Activities
We have three core categories of practices: perceiving, expressing, and (re)interpreting. I could also say listening, speaking, and thinking. All the practices that we do contain all three of these activities; it's just a matter of emphasis. I categorize them thusly:
- Perceiving: Empathy Circling, Collective Presencing
- Expressing: T-Group, Circling
- Interpreting: Case Clinic, Edge Case, Coaching
Again, that's a matter of different weights, not a disjoint categorization. You still speak in CP or EC, you just spend more energy on listening. A lot of energy goes into present-moment perception when Circling, but communicating feels even more important. Interpreting (a bit more general than "sensemaking") could be argued as inextricably bound with perception and expression loops, but there's a deliberate intentionality in those practices where there's a connection outward to system/world interaction that's the "point" of them, at least as much as the process.
Frame B - Consciousness
There's another (deeper?) level, an alternate frame, with which to look at what we're doing. All the way back in the original IS call over a year ago, I was talking about the importance of awareness. To clarify my definitions:
- Attention as the focused spotlight of what we know we're "paying attention to"
- Awareness as the broad field of what we're "aware of" on some level even if we're not paying attention to it at the moment.
So attention is small and narrow, awareness is broad and diffuse, and this "spotlight model" of attention is aligned with the usage of McGilchrist, Ashcroft, and the broad meditation/mindfulness field (and partly conflicts with some neuroscience usage).
As a frame for Intentional Society, I'd characterize our practices as intentionally playing with, expanding, focusing, shifting, our attention and/or awareness. We practice awareness of our attention, in order to focus on what we want, e.g. in EC paying attention to our understanding of the speaker versus the reactions or judgements that our attention might usually wander to. When we place our attention on our awareness, it expands, e.g. in Circling we notice more about what our bodies are signaling, and that the stories in our head are stories inside our heads, distinct and different from what's inside someone else's head across from us. This frame feels harder to communicate — wobbly, without confidence in transmission/understanding.
Synthesis?
Increasing our self-awareness is (mostly?) the core of the mindfulness movement. Increasing our other-awareness is (arguably?) the core of social skills and systems thinking. Relating and connecting these things brings us to the subject-object shift that is very much the core of Adult Development — gaining an "outside view" on things we used to be trapped inside of, unaware of other possibilities.
Perceiving, expressing, and interpreting are 3 core skill areas in which to practice expanding our awareness. AND Focusing/harnessing our attention and expanding our awareness are core skills we can apply to being with ourselves, others, and systems in the world.
We do these activities to expand our consciousness. AND We expand our consciousness in order to improve our abilities/capacity in our actions/activities.
So many words... too many words indicate not enough understanding — it doesn't feel simple (yet?) to mash all that together. There are these core activities... and these core aspects of being conscious... and a fuzzy relationship with undefined (and circular-feeling) flow.
We want to grow to be the people we want to be — for me, that's a person with secure emotional grounding, deep and wide compassion, skillful relating to my parts and others, unhijackable sensemaking, boldness and humility, deep acceptance and courageous action.
Last Sunday we produced some developmental "headlines" and/or themes. After that zooming-in, we'll zoom out this week, using Empathy Circling to practice hearing others and ourselves. Speaking, hearing, reflecting, listening — these things change us, and in a nourishing way. We know what to do, even as we (or at least I) keep searching for the unification of the layers of why.
Cheers,
James