Simple conditions for real engagement

Thinking today about the challenge of engaging community for real change, and I am playing around with two simple on the surface, but difficult to execute ideas. I think though that if these ideas are executed, it creates the best possible conditions for sustained action and transformative change.

The ideas, expressed as patterns, are: operate from a clear centre, and embody your future now.

I was riding the ferry with my friend Patti DeSante who is at the moment in deep Zen training with Roshi Joan Halifax and exploring many aspects of embodied practice in the world. We were discussing what it takes to act fearlessly and enter into transformative work in the world. She shared a story with me that was simple but important. She told me about her days as an energy broker and how the sole reason her company existed was to make money. It was a simple and powerful centre around which the company organized itself. It provided an easy way to evaluate what kind of action was worth pursuing. It allowed the company, and the people in the company, to be out in the world fearlessly, knowing clearly why they are there.

In other words, the company had a centre. To me the idea of centre is more than a mission statement or a vision statement. It is instead an assailable reason for being. Something you can feel, that is core to who you are, out of which you act. As Brian Arthur has said, in martial arts, if you think, you are dead. So to with any fearless action: if you need to think about why you are doing it, you are not operating from your centre. When you drink water you are acting out of an unstated need, a powerful and compelling centre that makes drinking a natural act. In martial arts we train in acting from that place as well. Developing a centre means developing clarity. If you haven’t got it, you move in the world from a position of confusion, and that kind of moving creates lots of problems: unnecessary effort, poor choices, emotional stress.

Developing a shared centre is not something one does overnight, or in a weekend retreat. In involves much work and diligent attention to being in relationship with each other, discovering what is true and powerful for us and exploring the way that centre can unfold into the world. Otto Scharmer provides an excellent map for the work that is required to do this, and most of the facilitation and dialogue processes I use are designed explicitly to, with enough time, connect to that source and act from it.

The second pattern is the pattern of embodiment. This is also about operating with clarity and it requires a deep discernment process. Embodiment simply means to bring into practice the principles of the world you are seeking to create. For example in the work we did on Vancouver Island with the Vancouver Island Aboriginal Transition Team, we chose “Children at the Centre” as our primary centre from which we operated. In practice this meant all kinds of things, including meeting whenever possible with children present, or placing their pictures in the centre when we met. It meant making a practice of thinking first about how children would live with the decisions we were making. It meant taking inspiration from children for the work we were doing. When planning our engagement process, we asked ourselves “How do children inspire us to engage with them?”

Embodying these beliefs and centres in the world is a kind of deep practice. It makes daily work a spiritual practice, and results in tremendous emotional power and momentum. Taken to the broadest level. It finds it’s practical expression in Gandhi’s quest to transform Indian society by implementing his beliefs in peace, non-violence and equality at every turn, even being sure to clean toilets as a mark of solidarity with the lower castes..

Creating a centre, and finding its creative expression in the world. Sounds easy!