From a fictitious conversation that Dave Pollard hosted between two competing sides of his personality – the expert and the generalist – comes this gem on invitation and teaching: Your job as an ideator is just to articulate the idea, as coherently and compellingly as possible, which is generally best done by telling a story. It’s not your job to research its plausibility, to become enough of an expert to know whether and how to make it happen. You just tell the story. Then the responsibility for implementing is left to each person to accept, or not. If the idea …
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Was listening on the beach yesterday to a good talk by Joseph Goldstein about four reflections that bring the mind to dharma. These relections are used by Buddhists to become mindful in everyday life. Mindfulness – individual and collective – is a resource in short supply in the world. A lot of the hosting work I do is about bringing more mindful consciousness to what groups are doing. These four reflections are useful in that respect. From a dharma perspective, the four reflections are: Precious human birth Contemplation of impermanence The law of karma Defects of samsara On their own …
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My friend Tenneson Woolf sent along a glimpse of the wholeness that is an Art of Hosting gathering. Tenneson and I work a lot together doing these things, and this is the best version of what happens over four days: 1. Arrival. Coming Present. Feeling Shared Purpose. The intention of this first time, often in an evening, is to help people arrive. Show up. Begin to see each other. Begin to see more of themselves. To open participants to being in the event context, in the learning space, and in the community for the next period of time. To begin …
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Day zero here at the Shambhala Summer Institute here in Halifax. The staff of the ALIA Institute have been working hard to get everything ready for us, and today people started to arrive. Over the past could of days the faculty have been meeting in a little pre-institute retreat, building our own field and grabbing the chance to have conversations with one another. We’ve been getting a little taste of each other’s modules, playing with some of the creative process that is going on and generally catching up with each and getting a sense of our field. …
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Thank you Euan. Now, there is a time and a place for judgemental skepticism and cynicism (I suppose) but somehow there is a widespread sentiment that associates these two stances with expertise and prudence. Now I don’t want you to think that I am all about squashing opposition or creative tension, but I have to say that when I am working with groups of people to create processes that will help take people out of their comfort zones, there is a particular cynicism that does not help. Euan Semple calls this “pomposity” and that certainly seems to capture the holier …