The Transformative Power of Conversations

The Transformative Power of Conversations        “To be in a field with magic in the middle transforms those that make up the field.”   ~ Finn Voldtofte   Finn’s work on the transformative power of conversation has deeply shaped the development of World Cafe, and in thinking about a theme for the November Community World Cafe, we felt it might be time to sit with Finn’s inquiry together, as a global community.   So this month, we invite you to join colleagues from all over the world in sharing our experience and what we’ve learned through conversations that have transformed us, our life, and our work in one of the November “Transformational Conversation” Community Cafes. The Asia-Pacific Community Cafe takes place on   Wednesday, November 23   ONLINE   8:30 – 11 am in New Delhi | 10am – 12:30 pm in Jakarta & Hanoi 11 am – 1:30 pm in Beijing | 12 – 2:30 pm in Tokyo 2 – 4:30 pm in Sydney | 4 – 6:30 pm Wellington   Tuesday, November 22 7 – 9:30 pm in San Francisco | 5 – 7:30 pm in Honolulu     REGISTER NOW      Fee: A sliding scale is offered. Let us know if the cost is a challenge. These Community Cafes are for all.    For Community Table subscribers: please use the code that you will find in the Community Table calendar.              The World Cafe | Website

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Everything Speaks

Everything speaks,
The breeze,
The hummingbirds,
The gardens,
The trees,
Birds, squirrels, bears, and bees.

There are seasons when everything speaks,
that is – seasons when I hear them well –
Times when I see there is only one story being told and true,
ever.

These are poetry moments.

Then there are times when I can only listen to their voices,
and not speak.

Recognizing the timber of truth
But unable to discern their words.
I walk slowly and listen
and let them heal me.

The Death of Merlin

What now is,
What may become,
And the lever betwixt and between
Whose grip Love alone can fit
To move and lift from fate to grace.

A place to stand she offers him,
The lever he reveals to her.
As one hand they honest grip and stand
And fulcrum Time at their command,
The mountain moves into the sea.

The painted circle spins, but not in-place,
Seasons return, but not to where they left,
Never back to here again,
Where the lever works but once upon fresh manna.

That elusive living lever —
That betrays both shield and spear,
That melts into the mist when less than Love draws near.
There are no lines that lead to it,
No circle passes through it.
Yet it waits for us beyond all secrets
Where Love’s vision never fails
And death is no farewell.

 

~~~ Dedicated to Paul Squires ~~~

Special Assessment – Take 1

I want to begin sharing something with you that is a work in progress.  There is much more that I want to add, but I am having trouble getting to it.

Core Perceptions

Your responses are quite welcome and may encourage the work to continue sooner. Questions are especially welcome !

Respectfully,

Wayne

We Develop Fractally – We Have No Choice

Our minds develop fractally.

We learn things constantly from the time we are born, and even before, all our lives. We learn one thing after another. Just like Piaget’s “disequilabration” we learn things and then we learn that the things that we learned aren’t exactly accurate or are not even remotely accurate and we subdivide them. The things that we learn get refined and get differentiated as we develop fractally like the limbs and branches and twigs of a tree. And that’s just the of above-ground parts of the trees. There’s the unconscious aspect of below-ground parts of  trees, too. We learn things and they tend to be more true to us as they tend to be more in tune with other pertinent parts of life.

One of our major difficulties is embracing the unlearning of things that we determine are not true. When that occurs we have to backtrack through what we learned and find out where it veered away from truth. And then look at the rest of the things that we have learned to find out how they fit more fully into the things that are true. Learning how to abandon areas of thought that have a basis in untruth is a very difficult thing. It is difficult for us to let go of areas of things that we have considered to be our knowledge of the world. We then need to reattach ourselves in new ways to the things that are true. We need to discover the importance of the things that are true and learn how they support our lives in deeper ways than we at first acknowledged.

Many of us die still having many untruths embraced. But that’s the way of life. That’s the way of many fractals. If they continue too long it becomes socially accepted, socially believed untruths. A commitment to the discovery of truth in the midst of the difficulties of discovery is one of the highest callings for humankind.

A major difficulty in the realm of discovery and acceptance of truth is social acceptance. It can be difficult to convince people that you love them even though they believe things that are not true. Love is the central key. To love folks as they change is important. To love folks whatever their level of beliefs are is critical. It’s important to learn how to share what you see as being true with people without a focus on confronting the untruths that they believe.

People tend to identify with the things that they believe. They will tend to identify more tightly with things that are less substantial, less evidential, and less provable. So when we share things with folks we need to learn how to share what we see in a broad way and come down to details later. If we share what we see in a broad way they can entertain them. They can assess them over time. They can compare them with what they believe. Then they can make decisions during their life. It’s important not to think of contesting people in a way that  directly contests their identity. They can consider things over time and we need to allow them time.

Everything changes. It’s unstoppable. The study of consciousness is of critical importance. It surrounds our lives irreversibly and continually moving, continually growing. There are sicknesses that occur when we reach impasses. We often reach points where the things that we are thinking may be true hit an impasse socially, when we cannot share in a way that is receivable for other people. It’s important that we share what we think we see. The truth is that we must live in a way that allows us to prove things with others. It’s important that we love ourselves and love the people around us regardless of levels of consciousness. This gives us all a more open-ended freedom to grow. The more we learn to do this individually and with our friends the more it becomes a social norm. This is the social norm that we need to be focused on.

You may reasonably ask,  “How do I determine what’s true.”  Well, there are a variety of ways. One critical way is the way that science is developing. It’s important to make a distinction between science and technology. Technology tends to be more market oriented. Science should not be, although it often is, market oriented. The discoveries of new ways to determine whether a scientific theory or scientific hypothesis even is true or not is a critical use of technology. So, in that sense, technology is of high value. Technology via science is the means by which we expand our perceptions. It’s a means by which we expand our perception of reality throughout the electromagnetic array of the reality that surrounds us.

We are born with a rather limited set of perceptability that allow us to assess our immediate reality and determine who we are, what we need to do, and what is real. Learning how to make use of extended perceptions of reality is critical to us. Each of us must determine what we can trust, what perceptions we can trust. We have to determine what tests of perceptions we can trust. We can find the means to assess reality in a way that is deeply meaningful. We do not need to doubt our desire for deep meaning. We can assess deep meaning substantially. We can build a lively connection with reality that is fully satisfying.

The capacity to continually change our minds is of critical importance. We need to constantly test what we think we know. We need to learn how to discover that something we thought was true probably is not. And also learn to confirm things we had entertained in our thoughts to be actually true, probably. We need to let things have tests. We need to hold things in our minds in a way that makes them readily testable. And we need to learn how to release them when we discover that there was insufficient basis.

Challenging Beliefs

People choose to believe many things: a wide variety of things.
Things that are not compatible with each other.
And then defend them with no evidence.
Most folks are offended when they encounter beliefs which are inconsistent with their own beliefs.
Careful arguments are critical for achieving the things we need to learn.
Not arguments simply between people or about people but arguments about ideas.
We need to examine careful histories.
We need to look closely at textual criticisms.
We need to submit our ideas to scrutiny: careful, careful, scrutiny.
It’s never too late to adjust our thinking.

My Little Ropes

Today is a rainy day,
but I had to take a walk.

So I have my favorite little umbrella
made by a company called Leighton.
It’s very steady, very well-made.
It’s double around the rim and opens very nicely.
Though slightly small it is just right for little walks.
I like it.

The woods were noisy with rainfall
but it was all rain that was caught in the leaves.
As I walked out of the woods it was quiet again.
My first stop was the little shed next to the pond.
While in the shed it poured down raining.
It was delightful.
I like sitting in that shed when it rains.

The rain eventually stopped and I moved on toward the vale.
I stopped at my first special place to sit on a rock on the near side.
I sat studying the underside of my umbrella.
What a cool design.
And then – I noticed the rope.
I think it once held up a pump down in a well.
Then it got used for other things.
But I found this 18 inch piece laying in the field
and I tied it around this tree that’s here next to where I like to sit.
I don’t know where the ropes were used last.
I’ve tied three ropes here, actually two ropes and one twine.
The twine was bailing twine. All of it is plastic.
The heavier blue and white rope that once held a well-water pump
is about a quarter inch in diameter.
The other twine is only an eighth of an inch or less.
I tied the bailing twine around a tree where I like to enter or leave the vale.
No one may ever notice it.
As a matter of fact, I don’t expect anyone to notice any of it.

Now I’m walking to the other side of the vale.
First I walked down the west bank to the vale bottom.
It’s not a steep climb down or anything.
It’s a small vale. It’s only maybe 100 feet across at the bottom.
Now I’m climbing up the east side.
I just passed the groundhog hole at the bottom of the tree.
Now I’m approaching my other favorite spot to sit.

You may ask, “Where do you sit without getting your ass wet when it’s been raining?”
I bring a plastic trash bag with me.
I unfold and set it down where I want to sit.

And now here I sit on the tree
which leans over at such an acute angle
there’s room for 4 or 5 people to sit on this tree.
It’s only 8 to 10 inches in diameter.
There is a little branch arising next to me
where there’s another blue-and-white rope tied.
I can see the other tree where the first rope is tied
but I can’t see the rope.
And I can’t see the rope at the wood line
where I will emerge when I leave for home.

It’s beautiful and green here.
There are lots of trees of different sizes.
It’s fairly rocky here too.
Some of the rocks are sharp and some are rather smooth.
That tells me something.
The sharp ones have been revealed sharp by more recent breaking pressures.
They’ve been cracked with sharp edges exposed.
The smooth ones have been weathered down by many years of rain.
It becomes obvious that water once flowed down this vale.
But it’s been a long time.

I expect glaciers left a lot of the soil here.
And trees left a lot of soil here.
Trees don’t grow very large here when there’s very little soil.
But they fall and become soil.
Then subsequent trees grow larger.
Then there’s the dust that falls to earth every day
that must add an inch every few hundred years.
The old old trees are gone entirely with no signs of the trunks
where they broke off or fell over.
There are a few trunks left from trees that have fallen over more recently.
And there are some that have been cut.
So there’s always an increase of soil.
Some of the trees seem to be growing right out of the tops of rocks.
Some trees are growing in soil that probably has good depth.
When the trees mature that have this deep soil my ropes may still be here.

My little ropes.

Raccoon Days

Yesterday was raccoon day.
So is today.
Yesterday a raccoon crossed my path as I was about to open the gate to the farm.
Today there was a dead raccoon in the road.
It wasn’t the same raccoon. It wasn’t big enough.
But that’s two raccoons two days in a row.

I learned today that the butchers son killed himself driving an ATV.
He was a young fella still in his teens.
He had served me numerous times in the butcher shop.
He had a slow but genuine smile.
It was always welcome.

Both he and the raccoon died on the road.
Both under circumstances that were easily avoided.
These fractal bodies of ours are easily lost.
Both of these bodies were young with no children.
Their friends and families know the impact of their lives.

I know little.

My Jeans Were Clean

I was walking toward my favorite vale.
My jeans were clean.
I spotted a beautiful butterfly on the path.
I stopped and spoke to it at length.
It flew up and landed on my jeans.
I kept speaking to it.
It stayed put.
I started walking slowly.
It settled and opened his wings again and again.
I kept talking to it.
It stayed put.
It seemed to like its position.
I was glad to have the passenger.
And I told it so.
Finally it flew up and flew around me
and then landed on my other leg.
I had kept walking
and I kept talking to it.
It appreciated the conversation.
It spoke back to me.
Not with words of course.
Words are cheap.
I felt claimed by a glorious presence.
I wished it well in all of its endeavors.
It is difficult to express how the small creature had made my day.
I changed from being a simple man,
to the butterfly person.
I’m still grokking that.
It’s a significant change in perspective.
I may never be the same again.
But of course when I got up this morning
I never expected to be the same anyway.
Shall someone who expects consistency and expects sameness from day-to-day from their human consorts expect to ever understand the change that has occurred?
Can I share this with my business associates?
Will my family understand?
Should I attempt consistency with my former consciousness?

Everything I encounter changes me, even dirt and stones.

I used to read a lot,
especially for the changes that humans could incur within me.
But I found I was digging in the shallow pool.

I could have eaten the butterfly, but that would not have been nearly as nutritious.
It flew away as we approached a puddle.
It said goodbye with a few flaps of its wings and got a drink.
I walked on. With gratitude.

I finally reached the vale where I like to sit and think.
A fox approached.
It gave me a look like ‘oh, you’re the butterfly man’.
What could I say?
Yes. I am.

Fractal Admission

There’s nothing to see but fractals: fractals and fractal fragments – there is nothing else to see.
Misperception of this phenomenon trashes the fractal world.
We should avoid the practice of seeking permanence.
We should focus on fractal qualities.
The things we love about life the most are fractal beauties.
Fighting for permanence destroys fractal beauties.
Yes, there are numbers associated with fractals
but fractals extend far beyond our numbering.
Things are less complicated than most folks think.
The simplicities of repeated fractals extend beyond our imagination.
We need to acknowledge that we think in fractals,
everything in our minds is fractals,
not just the things around us that we perceive,
but everything that we think is fractals.
Our imaginations can diverge from the fractal patterns,
but when they do it becomes destructive, they produce no beautiful fruit.

Take a walk in the forest, an unkempt forest.
Notice how the locations and the growth patterns of the trees that are unkempt by people
are all in perfect order.
They are in a fractal pattern, beautiful.

We must learn how to rise to our optimum power
and then learn how to diminish and to yield to subsequent fractals.
The trees understand this.
They know how to grow up and then diminish without ever failing to give:
to receive what’s free and give what ever they collect.

I have collected.
And you may have it all.

We must never grow in arrogance.
We must resist believing things which are not true.
The world did not begin evolving one day and then another day claim it was complete.
Every aspect has always been evolving.

This does not mean that our imaginations should be thwarted.
But even our imagination should connect to fractal patterns that precede us.
This means no diminishment in creative extensions of ourselves.
It means far more creative, and far faster, and far more meaningful extensions
that are sometimes pretested and viable.
We do not know that there is any end of new things under the sun,
but the new things under the sun continue to evolve,
continue to make new things – always.
Arising from our fractal roots there is no end to what we may become.