When being detached hampers real change
In Sept 2020 as I walked down the high street in North Sydney, close to my temporary office, I felt at peace with the world, calm and centered, and expanded in my energy field. Despite the ravages of COVID and extreme personal challenges, work was thriving, I felt strong and resourced to be able to deal with what life was bringing me.
I attributed this state of equanimity to all the ‘psychological, spiritual and developmental work’ I had done over the years. Yet deep in my bones I had a vague sense of being a tiny bit removed from life. How could I be so unaffected by the pain that surrounded me? Don’t get me wrong I was also compassionate, loving and fiercely protective, but the pain didn’t get to me to the same degree it would have before. It wasn’t that I was numb, I had a much greater capacity to deal with complex issues, without becoming overwhelmed. Having scored at the rare, later stages in adult development assessments, I dared to think perhaps I was finally awakening!
Then, with great intensity life dragged me down deep into reality. I imagine I’m not alone in this. Much as I tried, it was no longer possible to remain slightly removed - functional in the world yet slightly detached and analytical - heartfelt presence palpable, yet not fully embodied. Finding solutions, yet unaware of unintended consequences. Not really getting to the heart of the difficulty.
Now over two years later, after plunging down into the depths, I realise that I have been undergoing an intensive training. One I really didn’t want. One I’m sure many of you have faced. I am learning to Presence a bigger wider perspective through the minutiae and exquisite, sometimes excruciating, fluid aliveness of intense experience. At Source. Much less hovering above, slightly beside myself. Deeply in life, it is living itself through me, as it is through all of us. The result is more fundamental change that is leading to more sustainable solutions. My writing increasingly comes from that presence.
Another way of putting it is, learning to presence the whole, in and through the parts, the ‘we’ through the ‘I’, the universal through the personal. This happens first at the level of Self and then scales up to the level of the group and the wider collective. The mechanism is the same, regardless of scale.
Otto Scharmer (MIT), who is an action researcher and thought leader in the area of systems change, in conversation with Frederic Laloux (author of Reinventing Organisations) speaks about how the whole in a living system presences itself in the parts. They make a distinction between "a counterfeit whole, which is an abstraction outside the self" AND "the authentic whole which presences itself in the parts"
The reason this is important is because this capacity is crucial in these liminal times, as we find fruitful ways to be with uncertainty and Presence what is needed now for life to flourish, at the level of Self, the group and the wider collective. Not from a place of detached abstraction which leads to results, yet often misses the mark, but from the real, authentic whole.
Sending love and courage
Aine
Prompts for your Week
Prompts for your week
Focus on a complex, messy problem you are facing, something that has many moving parts, beyond being complicated (relationships tend to be complex)
Notice the tendency to ‘abstract from life’, get lost in thoughts about the issue, spend excess time attempting to figure things out, overanalysing, overthinking, controlling, manoeuvring
Stop and drop down into life … breath, feel, be in your body, sensations, nature, colours, smell
Allow glimmers to arise, which shed some light on what you’ve been grappling with (allow, don’t push)
Integrate the glimmers with your strategic mind and act.
