IS: The power of wondering
Upcoming events:
- Friday August 15: IS Connection Call
- Sunday August 17: Community Hub Call 19.7 for members
- Tuesday August 19: The Oasis with Intentional Ventures Tent
Last week's newsletter was "Coordination is hard" and the Community Hub session was titled "Relational Circling".
Today in week six of our Developmental Practice Series we practiced Inquiry Spiraling, in which a small group... asks questions. And that's it. (on the surface.)
There's also some art to it, to subtleties like:
- Where you "source" questions from
- How you take in and relate to other people's questions
- How you let aliveness lead you to the question that's wanting to emerge
- Weaving your attention thread with others'
- Going from thoughts to speaking to writing in short loops
But the number one key to this practice is actually just "don't try to answer the questions." Just keep on wondering! As you hear other people inquire into their own related-but-different questions, you gain new/additional perspective on your own unknowing.
Underneath the hood (of consciousness, uh if it were a car), our brains in this practice are still working hard at making sense of things! But we're not in the "answering the question" mode which actually can shut off our curiosity engine. In exploring the inquiry space, we're doing something like relevance realization that helps us diversify our perspective-taking and increase our understanding. And, doing it relationally super-charges the process because we're leveraging both the brain-power and the parallax (the difference in vantage point between their brain and ours) effect to boost our contemplation.
You can do this in real life by approaching a friend and asking them, "will you hold this question with me? No answers, just get curious with me." (Good coaching provides this effect too!) It doesn't have to be a formal structured group practice. But I do think it's tough to get the same benefit by yourself. Writing (like, journaling or essays) might do some of it via the process of crisping up our thinking, in which we model a reader and try to communicate with them. Borrowing a friend's brain just works easier and better, IMHO.
What question are you chewing on right now? (Or should I say, is chewing on you?) Hope you can hold some space for it to breathe and unfold for you!
Cheers,
James