Subject: Religious Stories

Posted by Jan Morrison on 7/12/2005
In Reply To:Religious Stories Posted by Heather Blau on 7/12/2005

Message:

HI,
Re: "lasting solutions require us to understand the system from within", I believe this was a focus of "Presence". There were some very powerful stories. I am attaching a few excerpts from that text.
Jan Morrison



Presence
Human Purpose and The Field of the Future

By: Peter Senge, C Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, Betty Sue Flowers

Excerpts from text.

 Most change initiatives that end up going nowhere don’t fail because they lack grand vision and noble intentions. They fail because people can’t see the reality they face. (29)
 Embarking on and continuing this journey requires the willingness to accept many such moments of “profound disorientation” in which our most taken-for-granted ways of seeing and making sense of the world can come unglued (38)
 …the most important consequence of redirection: when people start to see from within the emerging whole, they start to act in ways that can cause problems to “dissolve” over time. In this way, redirection transcends the subject-object dualism of the problem-solving mind set. By reinforcing the separation of people from their problems, problem solving often functions as a way of maintaining the status quo rather than enabling fundamental change. (51)
 The fate of the human species is still very much in our hands. Certain things have been set in motion that will be difficult to reverse. But we have two openings that are immensely helpful. First, there is a higher ecological awareness emerging, a coming into personal awareness of our interdependence with other life and our mutual responsibility. An second, there is an earth based spirituality building a very rapid pace. (66)
 We did not put our ideas together. We put our purposes together. And we agreed. Then we decided. (78)
 At its essence, the theory of the U poses a question: “What does it mean to act in the world and not on the world.” (92)
 In other works, at the bottom of the U, the essence of what might be starts to become real in how we are with one another right now. (111)
 When you see what you’re here for, the world begins to mirror your purpose in magical way. It’s almost as if you suddenly find yourself on a stage in a play that was written expressly for you.” (114)
 The CEO, who’d always been highly successful at delivering the bottom line, had discovered that what really mattered to him above all else was exactly what John had said in Baja – the need for a fundamental shift in our relationships, not just with each other but with all of nature. (125)
 Not all visions are equal. Some never get beyond the “motherhood and apple pie” stage – good ideas that unleash no energy for change. Others transform the world. “there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come, “ said Victor Hugo one hundred and fifty years ago. (135)
 This simple point clarifies the nature of genuine vision: it is not the grandeur of the vision that matters but what it accomplishes. “It’s not what the vision is, but what the vision does”. (143)
 Perhaps what we call magic or synchronicity is simply what it feels like, from our personal vantage point, to be part of a field knowing itself and to be taking action informed by the whole. (164)
 That is why the embodiment and understanding that arise in completing the U movement also differ from what occurs in more typical learning processes and why, in my experience, collectively moving through the U can lead to creating new institutions or to transforming existing ones. (172)
 But I think what we’ve been learning with the U process is that the future can emerge within the group itself, not embodied in a ‘hero’ or traditional ‘leader’. I think this is the key going forward – that we have to nurture a new form of leadership that doesn’t depend on extraordinary individuals. (191)
 I’ve concluded that there’s only one real problem: over the past hundred years, the power that technology has given us has grown beyond any one’s wildest imagination, but our wisdom has not. If the gap between our power and our wisdom is not redressed soon, I don’t have much hope of our prospects. (193)
 This is the technical definition of complexity in systems thinking, when a cause and effect are no longer close in time and space. As complexity increases, the need for wisdom grows, even as our wisdom atrophies. (215)
 I worry much more today about unquestioned answers than about unanswered questions. (220)
 I think our culture’s dominant story is a kind of prison. It’s a story of separation – from one another, from nature, and ultimately even from ourselves. (222).
 What you’re saying is that no alternative path forward may exist without rediscovering why were here – because only then can we start to see what we actually have to give. (244)
 Fear can only separate us, said Otto. Maturana says, ‘Love is the one emotion that expands intelligence’ because love connects us. (246)

Follow Ups:

Religious Stories - Robert P. Giebitz 7/12/2005 
Religious Stories - sharada 7/12/2005 
Religious Stories - Prof. Dr. Niall Palfreyman 7/14/2005
Religious Stories - Linda Booth Sweeney 7/15/2005
Religious Stories - Clelia Scott 7/20/2005
Religious Stories - Robert P. Giebitz 7/19/2005
Religious Stories - Bill Ellis 7/17/2005
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Religious Stories - Bill Ellis 7/13/2005