Learning To See

A summary of:
Senge, P., Scharmer, C.O., Jaworski, J. & Flowers, B.S. (2004). Presence: Exploring Profound Change inwards People, Organizations as well as Society. Nicholas Brealey Publishing: London.
Introduction & Part 1 – Learning to See

As I mentioned inwards my reflections on The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace, Wertheim showed how Giotto's fine art was the firstly instance of an only novel way of seeing: alongside perspective, alongside depth. It was the offset of representational art, as well as paved the way for ‘physical vision’ to supervene upon ‘spiritual vision.’ In other words, 1 variety of seeing came to dominate, spell our powerfulness to come across differently eroded over time. The authors of this volume appear to hold upward making the instance that nosotros demand to recall our sometime way of seeing, a spiritual way of seeing; as well as that this is the key to shaking off the shackles of modernity that preclude us from achieving our truthful potential.

The authors of this volume accept a systems (or fifty-fifty ecological) approach to agreement why alter doesn’t happen… but how it could. They scrap that resistance to alter tin hold upward understood every bit an ‘immune system’ response, an inborn self-preservation machinery that seeks out as well as destroys ‘otherness’ (35). This happens inwards organizations too: the members larn ‘vehicles for presencing the prevailing systems of administration because those systems are most familiar’ (9). The other way of explaining this same phenomemon is habit (or fifty-fifty Bourdieu’s habitus), which is easy, as well as comfortable, but dangerous: “As long every bit our thinking is governed yesteryear habit – notably yesteryear industrial, ‘machine age’ concepts such every bit control, predictability, standardization, as well as ‘faster is better’ – nosotros volition proceed to simulate institutions every bit they receive got been, despite their disharmony alongside the larger world, as well as the demand of all living systems to evolve” (9).

Another danger of this resistence to ‘otherness’ is that it prevents a salubrious (and spiritual) procedure of ‘suspension’. “As the noted physicist David Bohm used to say, ‘Normally, our thoughts receive got us rather than nosotros having them.’ Suspending does non require destroying our existing mental models of reality – which would hold upward impossible fifty-fifty if nosotros tried – or ignoring them. Rather, it entails what Bohm called ‘hanging our assumptions inwards front end of us.’ By doing so, nosotros get down to notice our thoughts as well as mental models every bit the workings of our ain mind. And every bit nosotros larn aware of our thoughts, they get down to receive got less influence on what nosotros see. Suspension allows us to ‘see our seeing’” (29).

Suspension helps us come across clearly; inwards a way, defamiliarizing our reality so that nosotros tin come across it differently. The authors scrap that this novel ‘seeing’ is necessary if nosotros desire to brand major change: “Most alter initiatives that cease upward going nowhere don’t neglect because they lack grand visions as well as noble intentions. They neglect because people can’t come across the reality they face” (29). And inwards damage of businesses as well as organizations, the key epiphany they must sense is that they “become aware of themselves every bit living. Once they do, they tin so larn a house for the presencing of the whole every bit it mightiness be, non just every bit it has been” (10). In other words, Step one: come across reality every bit it is; Step two: envision an alternate reality; (Step three: start walking inwards that direction). (And notably, this is just the procedure that Corus underwent inwards the offset of their cultural alter program.)

Another of import thought from this offset department of the volume is the notion of non-judgment. There is no signal inwards self-reflection if yous are going to hold upward judgmental of what yous see; otherwise you’ll just revert to your comfort zone as well as resist change. In fact, you’ll resist your ain genius! The authors cite a written report of genius which showed that “up to the historic menstruum of 4, almost all the children were at the genius level”… but that yesteryear “over twenty, the genius score proportion of subjects sank to 2 percent” (30). The enquiry is, What happened? Where did it go??? “It didn’t travel anywhere; it’s covered over yesteryear the Voice of Judgment” (30). This is why people who write virtually “creativity” (Csikszentmihalyi, De Bono, etc.) travail to larn people to laid aside their judgment: “What we’re trying to do is gear upward situations where people tin laid on the Voice of Judgment as well as access their deeper creativity.’ Ray believes that nosotros tin consistently convey our inventiveness into our lives yesteryear ‘paying attending to it’ as well as (30) yesteryear edifice the capacity to suspend the judgments that arise inwards our mind… that restrain creativity” (31).

But of course of written report nosotros also come across this thought of non-judgment inwards the practise of meditation. For example, physician Jon Kabat-Zinn describes meditation every bit a procedure of “‘purposefully refining our capacity for paying attention, ultimately to anything as well as everything that mightiness hold upward relevant to navigating inwards the populace alongside opened upward eyes as well as hearts’” (50). We mightiness empathize ‘open eyes’ to hateful ‘suspension’ inwards Bohm’s damage (or ‘concentration’ inwards Kabat-Zinn’s: “‘When yous get down to focus,’ he said, ‘two elements come upward speedily to the fore. One is that the heed has a life of its ain as well as tends to travel all over the place. By cultivating paying attention, yous tin larn less reactive as well as agitated. That’s called the concentration facial expression of meditation’” (50)). And so nosotros mightiness empathize the ‘open hearts’ facial expression to hold upward this non-judgmental aspect, which the authors would telephone outcry upward ‘redirection’ (51), as well as which Kabat-Zinn calls mindfulness: ‘Then, if yous convey a sure enough variety of open, moment-to-moment, nonjudgmental awareness to what you’re attending to, you’ll get down to develop a to a greater extent than penetrative awareness that sees beyond the surface of what’s going on inwards your patch of awareness. This is mindfulness.” (50). And this combination breeds creativity, as well as perchance fifty-fifty genius: “’[he continues…] Mindfulness makes it possible to come across connections that may non receive got been visible before’” (50)…. [and the authors add] mindfulness explores the possibility of dropping ‘underneath our conventional as well as highly conditioned way of seeing that separates as well as reifies a discipline as well as object’” (51).

The authors of this volume innovate a concept called ‘presence’, which is non so dissimilar from this meditation. This is how they define it: “We’ve come upward to believe that the essence capacity needed to access the patch of the futurity is presence. We firstly thought of presence every bit beingness fully witting as well as aware inwards the acquaint moment. Then nosotros began to appreciate presence every bit deep listening, of beingness opened upward beyond one’s preconceptions as well as historical ways of making sense. We came to come across the importance of letting travel of sometime identities as well as the demand to command and, every bit Salk said, making choices to serve the development of life. Ultimately, nosotros came to come across all these aspects of presence every bit leading to a soil of (13) ‘letting come,’ of consciously participating inwards a larger patch for change. When this happens, the patch shifts, as well as the forces shaping a province of affairs tin motility from re-creating the yesteryear to manifesting or realizing an emerging future” (14). This presencing is the key to radical change, as well as excogitation every bit well. This puts the next quote inwards some perspective: “As W. Brian Arthur, noted economist of the Santa Fe Institute, pose it, ‘Every profound excogitation is based on an inward-bound journey, on going to a deeper house where knowing comes to the surface’” (13). The lesson for me personally is that if I am going to come upward up alongside radical solutions, my procedure needs to hold upward spiritual. Hence the determination forthwith to exercise ‘creative engagements’, non-judgmental creations, every bit a way of accessing a to a greater extent than intuitive solution to the occupation of merging the technological as well as the spiritual.

And furthermore, it suggests that the aim of my PhD, spell admittedly incredibly ambitious, is potentially THE avenue to creating majority change. The technological solution I suggest needs to engage people inwards a spiritual, meditative process, so that a shift occurs within of them… thence facilitating spiritual growth. One writer relays a conversation alongside a peer inwards which they verbalize over avenues for radical change: “‘[He asked]…How tin nosotros shift the whole?...; [the other answered] ‘After reflecting a moment, he said he’s larn convinced that political, legal, as well as economical approaches don’t travel deep enough. By themselves, they won’t convey virtually the penetrating changes inwards human civilization that nosotros demand for people to alive inwards truthful harmony as well as residuum alongside 1 some other as well as the earth. He told me that he is convinced that the adjacent swell opening of an ecological worldview volition receive got to hold upward an internal one…’” (56). And elsewhere, this same message is echoed: “‘You know,’ said Joseph quietly, ‘When all is said as well as done, the only alter that volition brand a divergence is the transformation of the human heart’” (26). To reiterate, the lesson hither is that radical, profound change, must involve transforming people inwards a spiritual way. This is why I receive got refined the aim of my PhD every bit creating a cyber-environment inwards which spirituality tin thrive (or at to the lowest degree does non erode); but peculiarly to get down a dialogue virtually why this spiritual engineering scientific discipline is necessary, every bit a way of waking people up, i.e. offset a transformation of the human heart.

I think it may test crucial to my thesis to relate this (as these authors receive got done) dorsum to notions of this ‘shift’ that come upward from spiritual traditions. I institute this paragraph actually helpful: “Through our interviews, we’ve discovered similarities to shifts inwards awareness that receive got been recognized inwards spiritual traditions approximately the populace for thousands of years. For example, inwards esoteric Christian traditions such shifts are associated alongside ‘grace’ or ‘revelation’ or ‘the Holy Spirit.’ Taoist theory speaks of the transformation of vital unloose energy (qing, pronounced ‘ching’) into subtle life forces (qi, pronounced ‘chi’), as well as into spiritual unloose energy (shin). This procedure involves an essential quieting of the heed that Buddhists telephone outcry upward ‘cessation,’ wherein the normal stream of thoughts ceases as well as the normal boundaries betwixt self as well as populace dissolve. In Hindu traditions, this shift is called wholeness or oneness. In the mystic traditions of Islam, such every bit Sufism, it is known just every bit ‘opening the heart.’ Each tradition describes this shift a fiddling differently, but all recognize it every bit beingness key to personal tillage or maturation” (14). What’s swell virtually this – i.e. situating these concepts within spiritual traditions as well as invoking their vernacular – is that it volition assist justify to my readers why I exercise the term “spiritual technology” rather than, say, “humanist”; because I am trying to convey this profound transformation that nosotros tin actually only get down to capture alongside words similar ‘spiritual.’

This has made me think that it mightiness hold upward a actually expert thought to construction my thesis into dissimilar spiritual steps, e.g. suspension, non-judgment, revelation, etc.; to relate the procedure of constructing the PhD to a spiritual process, as well as inwards doing so hold a continuity betwixt ‘subject as well as frame’, betwixt what is described as well as how it is described, or every bit Frank Lloyd Wright mightiness say, to accomplish a sure enough metaphorical ‘truth to materials.’ One such section, for example, mightiness hold upward on ‘isness’, a term that I larn from Meister Eckhart to push clit the way inwards which all things are God; in that location is no differentiation (no otherness). Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 spiritual goal, then, mightiness hold upward seeing this profound ‘isness’; which yous mightiness also push clit every bit cultivating holistic thinking (“Bortoff said, ‘You receive got to cultivate a lineament of perception that is striving outwards, from the whole to the part’” (46); as well as “Dissolving the boundaries betwixt seer as well as seen leads non only to a deep sense of connexion but also to a heightened sense of change” (43)). This thinking is what allows yous to come across differently, for the “figure as well as footing to reverse” (49), which is a key to imagining completely novel solutions to problems.