In some recent meetings, Jordan has invited "the women" in the room to hold space.
That has worked well in instances and been important - AND - there is a positive step beyond that...
Which has to do not with inviting or reinforcing a "class" of people, but honoring and inviting specific individuals who carry the needed gifts for the moment.
The same people would still be known to be the appropriate ones for the moment... and it could be done without inadvertently (tokenizing / alienating) any "class"...
This is probably a super critical element of shaping the Culture of Lionsberg in general... in that we want to check the classes at the door, see through the categories that often divide us, and see how we can really honor and rightly relate to one another for who we each are...
Picking individuals who are good at something... is a step beyond... choosing just a class of people
each of us has a gift, and right now the gift we most need is from person x/y/z...
In this discussion, we intend to explore a different kind of meeting - how to create and hold more reverent space to facilitate deep listening, being together, dia-logos, etc. etc.
Fellowship Meeting
Roles
Weighty Friends
("staying low") / humility
wise elders, respected by the community
What We Desire To Happen
counter the tendencies to try to race towards:
what might be "right" (but may not be right, may just be something that sounds right in a rush)
what might get me individual acclaim (because I thought or spoke of the "right" thing)
what might give me power or dominion or hierarchy over others
slow down for clearer, deeper thinking
uncover deeper meaning and goals for our project
"sense" / discern Wise Right potentials, courses of action, ways to go
Deepen relationship / rise towards Right Relationship in community
Deeply respect and value the (spirit / inner guide / spark) in each person and in our community together
Deeply listen to anyone who has a concern / nag / intuition that a course of action or potential, if undertaken, could hinder our ability to progress towards The Goal.
Allow higher order solutions to emerge that reconcile and resolve the concerns
counter "charismatic" effects of "fast" meetings
look for "weak" signals that usually would get drowned out in regular meetings
Positive Examples
Quaker Meeting
OGM Thursday calls
Revival Meetings
How to get people into synergy, and then Aim the energy in the Wise / Right / Good direction.
Negative Examples?
political rallies with negative intent
Maybe good learnings on how people enjoy being together and "rallying"... that could be pointed towards better direction
Quick Detour Into Neuroscience
Pete brought in a theory of how brains work (William Calvin's How Brains Think, etc.)
Ringing in response to the stimulus
neighbors get a little of the signal from that...
they try to harmonize / resonate...
and each one has a neighbor on the other side trying to influence it to...
First the process of reception
the the conscious knowledge of an object
then different neurons start singing the tune of what they think it is
some think its a ball
some think its an apple
With the sensations coming in and neurons singing - end up with choirs of competing throughts about what we are seeing...
end up with clusters that have convinced themselves that it is an apple or tennis ball
recruit more and more neighbors...
there is a point where it makes
and depending strength of resonance and input coming in... then suddenly the whole thing tips and everyone agrees...
Quick Detour Into Bees
Jordan's current best understanding is that this is also how bees make decisions...
by clustering around potential solutions and "dancing" for them
The bees who believe the most and are dancing the loudest end up with all the others who are less "convinced" joining the one dance...
So it is similar resonance / emergence towards unanimous group consensus...
reference a book called Honeybee Democracy?
Refletions
wow - you could simulate that... each person is one corticol column... you could simulate large brain
in a meeting you can kind of see that happen...
Hypothesis
maybe humans - there is a fractal self similarity to the way humans make decisions...
If you think about the patches of tennis balls and apples - what happens is evolutionary competition of a process of thinking..
Angels and Demons on our shoulders...
because its happening in our brain, we end up replicating that up...
if you think of bees - someone does a dance, and the convincingness of their dance helps recruit other people, and the whole thing tips
for good things
or for bad things...
a fellowship meeting is a purposeful way to change the physics of the way that happens...
in a board meeting or planning meeting...
we fall into the trap of "charismatic effects" of "fast" meetings...
There is an interesting irony, that letting one person speak is a way of finding the right person speaking, rather than listening automatically to the person speaking...
A lot of a fellowship meeting...
is you are looking for Weak Signals... which are really important
There is Truth in here some place - we want to develop a Receptor for the weak right signal...
Like a tuning fork -
we are going to ping, looking for someone who will speak out a very weak signal....
let our brains and beings process, then think about if we want to amplify it...
vs the mechanics of forced harmonization to the loudest tuning fork.
This is also like the idea of harmonizing with the Fundamental Tone...
With the deepest fundamental tone being the Highest Order Unity and Logos of the entire Living System...
Each of us is vibrating at some degree of "fit" / "conformity" to that ultimate reality...
And if... we all helped one another come into harmony with the Fundamental Tone, we would thereby all be in harmony with one another
And we want to avoid...
Group think / charismatic leadership that brings us into a cluster of vibration that is internally in sync but out of sync with Truth / Reality / Living System / Logos / Wisdom...
Irony - by being quiet and letting one person talk...
one might think we would entrain our selves to that...
but what really happens is we listen to them deeply, process consciously, and then deciding whether to amplify that signal
The slowing down and Deep Listening is key because otherwise we don't actually perceive / and can't process the true Signal that might be trying to come through them.
We don't want to react to what we think they are saying on the shallow level - we want to try to listen "beneath" that shallow level...
This comes back to the deep respect for the "spirit" in each person and the community... and being willing to hear through language, dress, classes, statuses, etc. that often caused us to discard one another's opinions in the Old World.
this also ties back up to Pete's opening invitation to move beyond initations to "classes" of people to meet a moment... to individuals possessing hte unique gifts for that moment
We have heard Native American elders refer to the "Medicine" that each being brings to the community
We have heard Christian elders refer to the "gifts" or "gifts of the spirit" that each being brings to the community.
Conventions
"we have heard", or "I have heard it said" is shorthand for hearing and thinking a particular thing, but that we are also humbly open to more enlightenment and viewpoints
A Native American elder told Jordan that speaking to one another in this way allows the listening to receive the saying and choose its merits in a different way than if ideas are presented as "I Think X" - which can be resisted / rejected almost subconsciously.
Jesus also used these tools - "As it has been said"... "You have heard it said that xyz"