How to open up space if/when people’s inner space is closed? How to open up a space for spiritual connection and personal growth?
Convenors: Bayyinah/Malay?
Participants: Gayle, Peter, Janet, Michael, Peter, Andree, Christine, Johanne, Tony Coyle(recorder)
Summary:
How do we naturally think about and frame this issue? Do we think about people being open or closed, fixed in their views or flexible?
We shared our opening frames including people’s examples of their experiences with people who were dogmatic or even obsessive-compulsive in their beliefs.
One conclusion is that we may (and routinely do) overemphasise the power of thinking-as compared to other ways of knowing of which there are many. These inner spaces, not located in the frontal lobes, have power and presence beyond discursive cognitions. And yet we don’t know how to easily give voice to these or honor their value. Peter talked about his research on Passion mapping and the identification of 25 different energy states or energetic spaces, which include but are not limited to thought or that which we can easily put into words…
We sense this…how limiting it is to live in our heads only. And yet we oftentimes get trapped there!
Does Open Space make a difference to this? We were some way into answering this question with many ideas when Michael challenged the group to come present and attend to what was going on in the group, here and now with us. This was a sudden and dramatic shift in inner space and a powerful intervention. It was further punctuated by four people choosing that moment to leave the group…..
Interestingly, one of the leavers later described the “extraordinary tension” they were feeling existed in the group at that time.
So what happened when the group process became the content, when what had been in the background became figure or foreground? Hard to say or describe but some other energy came into play and we all felt this….A palpable release of tension, a paying attention to and honouring of the real time experiencing of each other, an honest and directness in talking, we slowed down, “dropped the masks” as one person described it. And we laughed! Christine described how she now felt a belonging in the group, an acceptance of each other….
One tentative conclusion of all this is that there is something in the structure of Open Space which allows a space to move from content to process, or to have the process become the content, which is profoundly liberating. And because the leadership and facilitation functions are distributed around the group, everyone and anyone can intervene at any time to shift the inner space of the group.
Overall this was a positive experience for us, we felt we grew a little together, and we expressed