Massive Societal Change is Already Happening

Otto added the context of our current moment. While the initial vision for the Summer School was a 10-year journey to make awareness-based systems change mainstream, Otto highlighted that the context of the COVID pandemic has accelerated this process and made clear that massive societal change is not only necessary, but already on the way. He also pointed to the need for bringing in vertical awareness, or the awareness-based systems change perspective, to shed more light on the source dimension of how profound systems change is happening. 

Arawana Hayashi then brought us into a moment of stillness practice, reminding us that in many Asian traditions, mediation practices started as a research process – an inquiry into what it is to perceive, to be human and to explore the working of the mind.

 

What Is Awareness-Based Social Field Research?

Having grounded in our bodies and in the moment, small groups formed to consider the question, “What is awareness-based social field research and how does it show up in your work/life?” In the chat and harvest, group members shared:

Awareness based social field research is about approaching disruptive social conditions with curiosity, compassion and courage to lean into an emerging future. It's about observing, engaging and reflecting on the social creation of reality through empathetic engagement with those marginalised by the system. And it's about collectively building models of the system to shift relational paradigms of thought towards collective wellbeing.

Quality of relationship and how to experience and 'know' that this quality is shifted?

To understand deeper how narratives drive transformation - for individuals and organizations

How to integrate different parts, system thinking with contemplative practices, for example. And how we approach the concept of social fields.

Learning is an act in present moment, always in motion. The moment learning becomes knowledge it belongs to the past.

Awareness of what connects us and what differences us, and really listen

One thing that has shown up is how the knowledge is often tacit, embodied and it is often difficult to name, to find a language for the magic that is happening in the social field. So something is required event to start finding a language for it. 

 

New Organs of Perception

The group then moved into an awareness-based research exploration to inquire into the deeper dimensions of the social field. The experiment was based on the Stuck exercise from Social Presencing Theater. Otto framed this as drawing our attention to the deeper realms of the social field that are less visible to the eye, moving from the what (object) to the how (process that gives rise to the object) and then the deeper source conditions that give rise to both. He highlighted the need to investigate these through all perspectives – 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd person.

Otto then provided a further frame, sharing that we can think about these source conditions as both interior and exterior, individual and collective - four quadrants. He highlighted that we are particularly interested in the collective, interior conditions, as these are often paid the least attention – even though, particularly in our current moment, they are the most important. Before moving into the investigation, Otto shared a quote by Goethe, which he said represented the essence of Theory U:

Every object well contemplated opens up a new organ of perception within us.

- Goethe

 

Making the Interior Condition of Social Systems Visible

Arawana framed the experience, first reminding us that the root of the word ‘theater’ and the root of the word ‘theory’ are the same, meaning ‘to make seen’.

She shared that SPT has been used as a research methodology in three ways:

1. To investigate archetypal patterns: the way leaders, individuals, and organizations are stuck and unable to move forward.
2. To explore the conditions that enables them to move forward in fresh, new and innovative ways.
3. To investigate a pattern language: How do we give words to these field shifts?

The premise of this work is that that we can use the body-mind system to access this knowledge within the social body and field, because bodies are visible and communicate an interior condition. 

Arawana invited us to viewed a video compilation of images submitted by GAIA participants, who shared images of their “Stuck” sculptures 1 and 2, the words that surfaced for them in relation to each sculpture, and the shift from 1 to 2. 

Arawana reminded us that, while the images might seem completely personal and psychological, as researchers we are looking beneath the surface and asking: “How can these images inform our investigation of field shifts?” She asked if by witnessing the individuals, we might get a sense of the whole and – if so – what does this tell us about operating from source? 

Once again led into a grounding in the body, participants were then invited to view the Stuck sculptures from a place of openness, attention and presence.

 

As video compilation ended, Otto invited us to sit with the resonance from the experience. We then investigated that resonance through guided journaling around the questions:

• What resonated with you personally?
• How does what you just saw resonate with our current global moment?
• What does this have to do with social field shift?
• In what way does this experience (exercise and journal inquiry) relate to my own work?
• What is the question I would most like to explore with others now?

The final journal question seeded an open space process which led to open space groups forming around research topics such as:

• SPT playback as research methodology
• Creating spaces/conditions/mechanisms for structural love (i.e. multiplicity and inclusion - and exploring blind spots)
• Translating this new knowledge into the traditional academic language to catalyze a paradigm change in science
• Assessing and measuring shifts in awareness-based systems change
• Exploring indigenous wisdom and traditions within the work of understanding and making visible the social field
• Sensing into the potential of our global moment (COVID-19) by using the social field as an organ of perception for the collective / global field

 

Some of the comments shared upon returning from the open space groups were:

In the group of assessment - we recognize the difficulty of assessing the intangible, that it relates to the internal condition of the individuals and the collective, the relational dynamics, and structural elements, but also the process of self and other awareness, self-regulation, an orientation towards collective wellbeing and systems change, and the shifts taking place within those relationships and structures. Expressive and creative processes may be the most effective in capturing such shifts. Hard to standardize due to the multifaceted, context-dependent, subjective and embodied experience

How might the use of indigenous wisdom and traditions be understood and integrated into this contemporary work of understanding and making social field visible? Some strands of the conversation were that indigenous wisdom seems already so close to Source level wisdom and unknowing, that it is also difficult to put into language, the impact of colonisation, how to engage communities through indigenous wisdom, that wisdom holders seem to be able to occupy or access different dimensions of knowing, that it can be accessed through ancestry and lineage and that it feels like a blood knowing and that there are ways of touching into wisdom and sources of knowing that are up to 80,000 years old.

An aware social field just beginning to open to the current global moment: strengthening the field without "othering", but moving as a whole, aware of the language and Framing of the current Moment, turning organizations into Organs of perceptions, operating from past rules vs. in touch with the present/future

 

The work begun during this gathering has continued since. Several of the open space groups seeded have been working together since the May 14^th gathering. Participants were invited to propose and host Research Circles throughout the months leading up to the second Social Field Research Summer School gathering in October. Some of the circles that formed are meeting regularly and are working on topics such as: SPT as research; conversational quality as an indicator of social field quality; validity criteria for social field research; the relationship between inner and outer transformative change; deep dialogue as a relational research methodology; and the role of ‘letting go and letting come’ in transformative change.

 

Below is the animated scribing created by Jayce Pei Yu Lee during the virtual gathering, accompanied by music Improvisation by Antonio Moya-Latorre: