VISCERAL EMPATHY  - Apr 9

The point is NOT whether he said this thing, but how we UNPACK and how we RESPOND.
In polarized issues, people easily mishears what others say. When we're in a polarized field, we are all on edge. So I'll go slowly and ask someone to repeat me.

Complex move: speak as someone else. Somebody says .../ It's not the case that ...

Imagine being that person, in the minority, vilified by the mainstream for not being caring even though
VISCERALLY IMAGINING
Imagination & curiosity is a crucial to the future
IF you can't imagine, be curious
@I'm trying to protect everyone from evil. I'm in despair that those I love are endangering themselves and think so badly of me. I'm trying to hard to care for them and they think I'm uncaring. I'm so hurt.

When you're guessing (their emotions, needs) you are still IN YOUR PERSPECTIVE, talking about them.
When you tell their lived stories from their terms/ perspectives, we are stepping into their shoes. We have a visceral, tangible sense of people who're different from us, instead of abstracting them.
Their meaning world might not necessarily has feelings and needs. If we're trying to speak, the words will be more nuanced and involved.

I want to give you something to do, NOT RIGHT NOW, I want to stay on topic, you can try speak from her perspective. NOT go into something general "we are all humans". She wakes up and pee and shit and have friends and tell her friends stories. Be her, tell her stories.

What is it that we would want to be able to do, so that we are not continuing the spiral of polarization and demonization, whether or not you're able to do it?  How can I respond to someone who called me stupid when I am a minority?
@nurse my wound
@mom: I can't see why you do such a stupid thing, going for meditation, starving yourself, hurting your spine, wasting your time. What are you after, nunnery & enlightenment?
@She's not against me seeking sustainable peace & happiness, she's just concerned her needs aren't in.
@Do you know how precious you're to me? Why are you taking on unnecessary pain? I don't understand.  Can we just hold hands and isn't that enough? Am I not enough for your happiness, all these things I've tried to do and provide? I make myself so nice & convenient, not needy at all.
@I feel angry, are you demanding more love from me, I already worked hard to make you happy.

=Search for the root of separation within me, find a path towards the other person with humility. "I don't know the whole truth."
=A deep truth of NVC: Our vulnerability is a bridge-builder. When we hide, we're more likely to escalate cycle of humiliation. When we share in full: "I'm gonna pick myself from the floor where I've been hurt, did I hear you accurately that you said I was stupid? Did you really say?" Check with them, not ensure.
=I hold it different, and they way I hold it is "these words are inherently separating". If I don't know what they think I'm stupid about, I don't know what thinking "maybe there's a grain of truth in that, that I'm really stupid".
=Deep humility: they're disagreeing with me, what can I learn? Learn, not just settle for "maybe I truly am stupid".

8 billion people looking at the universe in different way. They're not shouting at us face-to-face.
I'm going to issue that invitation again. Please bring forth your voices. You're precious and make this conversation meaningful, precisely because there're fewer of you.

=I'm in trauma --> I know deep inside I want to understand you, but I cannot at the moment.
=Try it in your own words.
Trauma & addiction take away our choice, especially capacity for discerning what you want to do. But capacity for instruction doesn't. If we make AGREEMENT of what to do, step 1-4 on a card, then in a traumatized moment you can follow it and be able to walk through. You need to have a great relationship with yourself that you trust yourself enough to follow your own agreement.
Big pack of prefabricated cards: in these classic situations, you show it to the other person.

How much, in this moment, am I willing to risk belonging and comfort, to say the truth? Just take one microscopic step beyond my comfort zone.
Unless it's false, don't retract. We can add to that, or say it differently.
Express difference without evaluating

We can completely love and care for each other, protect each other from harm, even if we disagree. Even when you're condemning me, I want to find a way to co-exist
  1. FIRST: humanizing themselves, eat and drink without talking about abortion, meet themselves as human beings, NOT as straw-people carrying opinions
  2. Share the lived experiences that led us to believe...
  3. Share the grey zone: What I'm unsure about in my opinion
  4. 6 women leaders, 3 from each side, have continued conversation for years, then co-author an article together. They still hold on to their opinion, but love each other to bits.

We give up on each other so easily. 
White Right: Meeting the Enemy: a 2017 documentary film by Deeyah Khan.

@You believe I'm precious
@I'm really torn, this is what brings me life, and YOU brings me life
@Why I want to go, that moment when I'm down
@share the grey zone
@why this work for you, not to agree with each other, but to really know

If the person doesn't know how important they're to us, they won't know how much they hurt us.

Polarization is an easy illusion way out

HOME HERE - COLLAPSE - Apr 16

Sign-up sheet for VM:

This is a mirror of the unravelling of the world. Unravelling of the systems that hold the functioning of human groupings. Just stress on the system to continue our level of consumption.
The society we live in is unsalvageable. You don't need to take too much weight on my belief?
40 harvests left before we deplete top soil
The point is not debating whether there will be collapse or not. The course we're on will end. How do we show up? What leadership do we take? How do we care for ourselves and others? What matters? What is mine to do? How can we come together?
Invite us into the gravity of the world we live in. If we choose from there, we're in leadership. If we choose the default, we're just continuing.
We are all in the same boat, not in the same deck.
Shielding of privileged people is beginning to erode.

I don't have problem of content, but when there is polarization, impact on people.
Facts about certain groups of people. I can say challenging things, but not target people.
When I don't state my opinion, I can be available to a wide range of people/ perspectives.
=The moment there is disagreement, I leave the territory of content and establish togetherness.
=After 27 years, there are things I can say generally work, but this area of establishing togetherness can make more conflict.

Ask it from within tenderness, from care & trust
Imprint themselves that it's possible to disagree, yet stay in complete connection

Dishes Story: Attempts to come closer actually create conflict
A: Can you do dishes?
B: I'm very tired. Let's talk about it.
A: Never mind, I'll do it. I always do it anyway.
B: I want this to work for both.
A: You make complicated out of everything.
B: Each just say a number from 1-10 how unwilling we are. Then we decide.
A: What about I'll do it don't you get?
=If there isn't willingness to come into togetherness, I can't do it.

Weave a web of meaning, continue the projectory of meaning
You are actually willing to feel what many other stay away from. I almost say you're feeling it for all of us.
You reminded me of this dance, wrenching to see them put clothes back on.
=Are you now open to hear what is coming for me?
I'm not sure what Gandhi meant, but I can tell you what I think.

I'm confident that there's a vision in you what is possible, that lives in a burning way, we feel the gap.
=How far can I walk into the gap and still maintain my connection to the vision, not get consumed by the gap? How can I influence whatever is happening and invite it into the vision?
=How can I stay connected to myself? How can I untwist the field around me?
All of us need home, I can take off my clothes and be received. If we don't have that place, then our experiments will grind us down.

This is the brutality of what I'm going to say: Come to this community to be fed, and go back to your flesh community to feed others. You need to get enough food here, so you can go there and feed unconditionally, not expecting them to eventually come around and feed you.

Find your home, get fed there. Then go to what is yours to do. Remember us. Remember that our hands is on your back. You call it out of us by asking for it. Hold it, let it wrap around you.

=I'm happy about that, and worried. I will die statistically before you. I want us to lean on collective capacity, not on some exceptional individuals.
=I'm so amazed you asked me to say I'm here. You don't have any bonus point if you don't ask, you lose.

Action agreement: I can ask him anytime to send me a voice message saying "I'm here".
People who feel impact most have less power to do anything. When you're out of the system, you can easily see the system's impact, but it's harder to do anything because life is about survival.
Not easy to walk away from the system's rewards. Instant barrage of logistical nightmares.
A narrow band of people: enough comfort not to struggle to survive, but little enough we don't get trapped into comfort
=Urgency & stress everywhere. They keep the system going.

I had zero interest in their success. High-class prostitution
Both the longing & the trap.

When people express nervousness, I want to bring in softness and slow it down. Breathe. Even if you only say 1/3 of what you need to say, I want you to say it with full presence. I just want to hang out with you until you feel ready. 

Put themselves in harm's way, rather than disrupting what others are doing.
They don't mean to disrupt, but to change the relationship. Vision implementation, you don't protest, you want to create the future you want to see, willing to risk the law for it. Disruption for a purpose, not disruption for itself.
Turning point for Civil Rights Movement was when white people who were supporting the black were being hurt.

Creating a world that works for all.

In order to get people to be okay with impact on others, there need to be early brutal training to disconnect from self.



Leadership & Caring & VM Goddess - May 14

Goddess Structure: Vision is a kite pulls us to what is possible; Action Agreements ground us in reality 
  1. Vision
  2. NOW
    1. My Internal: Openings, Strengths & Limitations
    2. World Around Me: Capacity & Obstacles; Sphere of Influence
  3. Values & Purpose:
    1. Values: How we live now that models the vision, to increase capacity towards the vision
    2. Purpose: How we take action around us to change the conditions in which we operate, so we increase capacity towards the vision
  4. Theory of Change:
    1. Considering the overall capacity and the extent of the gap, where does it make sense to focus energy?
  5. Principles & Mission:
    1. Principles & Intentions
    2. Mission, Goals, Objectives, Tasks
  6. Action Agreement: e.g. I'll brush teeth twice a day, not vague like I want to take care our health. 
    1. Not to regiment our life, but to anchor us in possibility instead of falling into the groove of the patriarchal trance
    2. When we hear 'agreements' we think 'rules'. 
    3. =Check it out, do you do that? Release that. We choose agreements because they ground us in what we want to be.
    4. I over-mobilize, e.g. I made an agreement to track what I ask for support, things that don't need me. But I forget, I have charges against it. So my podmates help to remind me.
    5. =2 people in conflict have less capacity than 1 person.
=When you rephrase me, it brings the group forward. Plant a seed: "I might try saying something, too" since you said it and I approved it.

Purpose: To accelerate individual and collective liberation in times of global crises through live coaching and engaging actively in co-learning nonviolent leadership

Liberation: “the undoing of the effects and the elimination of the causes of social oppression.” 
@being strong & loving - nonviolent leadership

=People can facilitate without leading, and lead without ever facilitate.

2am, planning. Gets up and moves through the table and places their hands on each person. If you don't see that as leadership, then we don't have the same definition.
  • Not a position, not an action, but an orientation.
  • Taking the first step and pulling people towards a vision --> is just a type of leadership
  • =If you have a lived sense of what leadership is in this space, please step up. Because I've said this a hundred times.

  • You can't wonder if that's what you're hearing because that is what you're hearing. I think what you're wondering is whether what you're hearing matches what you wanted to be heard about.

  • =Liz also opened up a vulnerable part of her and I wanted to catch that before going back to Giu.

  • =I thought you only were being empathetic, then I realized you were exposing. I offered a re-do of what you said which was completely mis-attunement. 

  • =I want to specifically appreciate the way you can say really intense things without me never ever saying you saying anyone being wrong. I don't think I've appreciated you a lot publicly. So I'm curious if that sustains you in any way to hear this, and it's fine if the answer is no.

  • And you make it look like there are many years of uphill, determined practice that got you here. 
  • I'm wondering before we part if there's anything that you could imagine would be supportive for you, in this moment of vulnerability, like for example, seeing a show of hand if this or that is true for people. If there's anything or would you like me to guess something?
  • I still want to ask, not for Liz because she's completed, if anyone has taken a step forward on account of this exchange so far?
  • I want to go back to Giu and not pick it up from before but pick it up from now. Where are you now and how do we move forward together?
  • Leadership inspire me or tell me what to do.
  • So far no one is answering my question, which is delicious.
  • Inventing our own language & reclaming the old language, energetically pointing in a different direction
  • If everyone steps into leadership, the system we're in would collapse in 5 minutes. Because right now we're kept disempowered
  • =We'll go slow, very slow, as slow as you need to be here WHOLE with your tears. Are you able to speak in full?
  • Can I pause you for one moment? Here is an act of leadership. 
  • I have a lot of difficulty stepping up. In life or here?
  • @Expressing needs & impacts
  • =I think you're using your emotions to come forward in service.
    • If the wane of emotions come, stay with it, don't fight it. I can handle it. And when I can handle it, I can handle it.
    • My capacity to be verbally present with you is limited but my capacity to energetically and emotionally be with you. is super easy. Does this help?
  • =Where did you get the idea that you had to take care of everybody? It's not your job.
    • You fear that if you say it, somebody might have a reaction. There's absolutely no way you can prevent people from having a reaction.
    • If you can kiss that one goodbye, your life will lighten up. Can you release it?
    • That's the standard that I hold myself to: I hold myself to the standard that I speak with the most truth that I can access to, and the most care that is within my capacity. When we can't do both, we prioritize truth over care. We'd rather hear something truthful rather than nothing at all. But you need a very trusting relationship.
    • Care is not about impact. It's about what energy you put into the words.
  • There was a chunk of something 
  • Block yourself & back paddle because you were second-guessing what other people might think. When you stepped up you flowed so articulately.
    • Sometimes being mirrored by others
    • you need to integrate the truth fully into what you're saying and not try to hold back
    • my big wish for you is to reclaim the fullness of your power that you had, as a small child
  • Right now, I'm having a bit of a struggle about continuing this engagement. -- I'm okay with going off.
  • Random speaking what's alive in me VS. Saying for it out of CARING FOR THE WHOLE, not just to shift out of oppression. Because the concept oppression creates a 1%.
  • Care for the whole & Coercion are mutually exclusive. Bracketing this and putting this aside for a moment.
    • WHOLE depends on context, capacity & purpose
    • I seem to be able to fathom caring for 8 billion.
    • Life planted in us an intuition. Patriarchy undermines & extinguishes that intuition. If you allow yourself to care, and then ask yourself from within that care what's the next thing to do? Don't try to figure it out, you'll fall back to the system. Tune in.
    • Care for the whole must always include each unique individual. Even if what that individual wants or is doing lands in me as dangerous. We maintain an invisible list of outcasts. As long as we're doing that we're playing the same game.
  • Unless others ask me to speak on their behalf, I always just speak up from myself, though I may have an intuition that it is what is needed in the field
  • How do we relate to other people & other people's leadership, that's the topic for another week.
  • We take the risk without knowing if it actually serves, but we're willing to do so because it matters so much.
  • I feel what you're saying as if someone is holding my back.






Mourning VM - May 7

To envision something, to take in information requires capacity.
"How much of the gap to look at" requires us depends on our capacity to remain human in the face of what we're looking at
=Mourning is not where we are as a group
= I'm only useful for those who trust me. I can do magic. But when I'm continually challenged I just don't have that capacity.
I'd like to pause because I don't know what to do. Someone could speak, but I ask you to wait 30s.
=What I offer isn't for everyone. I have no personal offense if it doesn't work, but I'm not ok with trying to make it work for whom that is the case. It'd be a financial blow if 80% of you leave but it's okay. It's a limitation of mine.
= Keep your hand up if you think what you say helps us as a group cohering. But if it's just for you now, I don't have capacity to pull this space together now, it's beyond me.

I don't want to put words in Sage's mouth but what I heard was "gap, now, mourning"

=Here's additional information in all that I'm weighing & holding, without a hint about what I should do.
I feel so free now that I have said if you don't like what I do, please just leave.

The piece of the vision I'm mourning: functioning in trust all the time, trusting that no matter what ppl do, they're not different from ourselves. If we can't make sense of what they're doing and why, we surrender to that. The overall ease at which we lose trust is patriarchal groove.

I'm not mourning my limitations. Given all I have endured, I'm a walking miracle.

=Would you focus me better? 

= This is a request and not a demand, I am experiencing sustenance from seeing your face and I'm wondering if you're willing to leave it on, and I may be able to track when I no longer need it.

Vision, action & mourning in the face of collapse --> from this focus group, find out what's mine to do
  1. Remain connected to the vision
  2. Enough action
  3. Mourning: paucity of results regardless of the results

Rigor & Anxiety:

-- Not about being anxious to find the right words, but the rigor of practicing dozens of word practices that I find really important for creating the field of meaning that I want to create
  • I review what I write & take out all instances of the word "but". I don't just replace with "and". I restructure the entire sentence so that the usual "one against the other" isn't there. 
  • "Why patriarchy matters, making sense of why we got here." - When we see the extent that patriarchy pull into the many grooves that we got internalized, we got motivated to maintain rigor. If not, we fall back in.
  • When people ask about words, I don't know beforehand whether it'd be a meaningful and generative conversation, or it'd take us away from convergence.
“The only decisions that we can make are decisions that are within capacity; trying to be someone that we are not is one of the ways that we function within our current societies that is really destructive."
All my life, I've been someone whom others have very strong reactions too. I have a steady stream of people walking away from me, every year 4 people leave.

Preference/ willingness and capacity are on different planes, semi-independent variables. One can be greater than the other, the abundance of one can sometimes increase the amount of the other.

If I was operating by preference, I'd go to another planet. I actively dislike living in this world. The alternative is living a very small life. I'm choosing to engage with the world that is painful for me to be in, because it's what is given to me.

Equality is rooted in scarcity. All people's needs fully matter, I don't think they equally matter.

Caring for the whole:
We can only hold the whole that we can sense on a felt sense, tangible level. I don't understand how to care for microbes, even when I want to. For some people who's been wounded, caring for the whole of themselves is already difficult.

Nonviolence is the path of increasing our circle of care continually. Committing to nonviolence increases capacity. My circle will grow.

We usually equate caring is doing what I want. What does it mean to care fully while not doing what you say?

Example: What I care most about  on some visceral level is the 20,000 or so children who die every day on our planet from lack of access to adequate food. What am I doing to feed them, zero. That's the gap. I don't have any capacity to do something, direct for them because it's not mine to do. I'm not responsible for the movement of the earth. Only what I can do, what I can take in that is the right amount.
Caring for the whole doesn't actually mean finding strategies that everyone is happy with. It means that i'm doing what is within capacity to move in the direction that is most integrative of all that is on the table.
Questioning from within togetherness & Questioning that separates

@To all teenagers who're in despair, you only need to do what's within your capacity that moves where your heart yearns for. In knowing our limitations, we know our power.
@We're not coming together. I acknowledge I cannot care for everyone. 

Supporting Each Other's Leadership - May 14

=I'm explicitly asking people to tap into a reserve of trust that exists within us.
B is taking an enormous risk by stepping into leading a really large group of people who don't know her and didn't choose her. Trust her because you trust me.

=What do you see Barb doing that is supporting you to take in the content OR making it harder for you? What are you learning about leadership and facilitation from watching? her do this? If it's meaningful to you think about these questions in parallel with the content of what she's talking about, do it. If it's overwhelming or uninterested, leave it alone. 

=Is it okay, if I add something? I'm asking because I really want to honor your flow And if it will interfere for me to say things that I would like you to tell me 'not now'. Do you trust yourself to tell me?

Restorative Circle story - why system (=agreements):
  • Her strong emotion wanting to just jump in circles NOT set up system
  • If people KNOW what the process is, how to access, what next steps are after the circle, results is much better than going in all worried & cannot hear any instruction
  • If I don't set up the actual agreements that pull us in the direction of the vision, the force field of the patriarchal field in which we live is both around us and within us. We'll just replicate what we're used to.
  • Structure creates a scaffolding to help us imagine what trust would be like if we reach that point of trust

What is different about VM from other goal-setting techniques?
  • There Is No Alternative (TINA - Reagan) vs. Another World Is Possible (Margaret Wheatley): World Social Forum
  • Vision: #Often we write not a real vision --> merely doing as best as I can within the current structure
    #Everything pulls up to the vision without outstripping capacity.
  • Values: Not just an abstract value that you believe in once you have a vision, but the value is what it would be like to live in that world for someone like you. What would be the qualities that would stand out from you within that world? How do you live them now in daily life? 
  • Vision: the world I want is possible, even only in words. Limitations: the challenges are limited. Purpose: there's a piece for me.
Distinction between democracy (government of the people) & electoral politics. You want to dump the letter not the former.

=I see you have your hand up and I did want to move to the next section, and I'm in a dilemma.

= I love this sharing, you know, and I guess appreciating that people didn't abide by my request (HONEST) of just clarification questions because I connected to so much of what you said. So I'm just going to take a breath (AUTHENTIC) before I start the next section. 

VM history
  • A force of nature that found us to put it in words and bring it to the world like a field of love that can surround patriarchy, a field of possibility, a field of greater greater capacity, a field of alignment that we can tap into when we work with it and let it work with us. 
  • VM is young. It requires experimentation. 
  • When we do our VM alone the pull of the patriarchal trance is stronger
  • VM is a live creature that needs feeding and tending and conversation and loving and feedback and whatnot, so that it continually evolves with you and with life.
“He drew a circle that shut me out-
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle and took him In!”

― Edwin Markham

How might each of these sections of the VM support you or others in responding to the call of our times? (=A big topic, B took 2 noodles from noodle soup)
  • Purpose: To accelerate individual and collective liberation in times of global crises through live coaching and engaging actively in co-learning nonviolent leadership. (choose my topic according to this)
  • One Action Agreement under Decision Making: Miki decides with individuals how to support them when they participate. (ask for how I want support)
STAY WITH CHOSEN PURPOSE if not drain group energy
  • Even the person who's sharing is quite unsure whether this serves the group's purpose, but the facilitator is touching what's alive in me, so I continue sharing. 
  • (1) I'm seeing that you're going somewhere that is meaningful, and it's different from where I was thinking of going on, I'd like to pause for a moment before continuing. 
  • (2) Go back to the purpose.  
  • (3) Reflect a specific thread that is on-purpose. Then drop that line and go back to purpose.
  • (4) Barb suggested: How would an action agreement support you in that?
=What Barb is doing is trying to tie the 2 questions together. What I'd say is that it doesn't matter, just choose what is more meaningful to you.

1. How do I decide?
2. Doesn't link to my vision of leadership in my project? works for me, you, our envi

=I'm appreciating the level of detail, I find it very compelling, even for people who haven't been where you are to understand.
=Is it important to say what you want to say about contributing to the learning?

Learning from Barb
  • I want to share how VMs are meaningful for me and hoping that it will be resonant for you. 

--------------
Ongoing, not measured by failures or lack of effort
See full humanity, try to connect
Not able to generate a force, but will continue to regenerate as long as you're alive. Not accomplishment but connection & impact
life is a positive sum game
how much respect have I given to all of me
if I give all of me, it's my infinite
@I'm in awe and wondering if I would respond to you as your names, or as these infinite things that we talked about.

I just want to sending my deep thanks to you and Paul, and to whichever field we are in, for that wonderful 15 minutes of dipping into something larger. I'll take home what you said about giving our all and trying to see our full humanity as long as we are alive. Thank you for making an effort to make space for my sharing, too. Sending you my best wishes 🙏


I just want to sending my deep thanks to you and Leyn, and to whichever field we are in, for that wonderful 15 minutes of dipping into something larger. Thank you for your reminder about loving the Lord our God and loving our neighbors. I've not been going back to those injunctions for some years and it's just nourishing for me to have the chance to check in with myself during our conversion, in which temple am I serving every day. Sending you my best wishes 

Thank you Barb for your story about Restorative Circle and that moment when you shared how much you want to just JUMP into the circle not setting up system, your emotion really pulled me into attention. And when you told Ranah "I see you have your hand up and I did want to move to the next section, and I'm in a dilemma.” that was such helpful leadership modelling for me.



Reading Group:

  • Group chat on Discord (Leif will send via email)
  • Run for 4 sessions however long that is, or readjust at a later date
  • Hold ourselves fairly lightly
  • See this as a chance to practice Mini-group VM
  • Ask when we need extra time to integrate, assistance with exercises, for permission to pull back if we spend too much time
  • Share responsibility of keeping the group going
  • Meeting possibilities: bring quotations, do exercises, discuss
  • For first 4 weeks of the group running Khang will send 2 pages per week, the pages will relate to concepts from the VM document


Khang: GMT+7 Vietnam

Asia: Poland CEST

Anton: Germany - (not too early in the morning i.e. 8-9 hours from now)

Leif: same as New York timezone 8am - 8pm, Tuesday-Thursday

Marcela: US Central Time


asiatomanek@gmail.com

khangnguyen.sop@gmail.com

marsfer4@gmail.com

antonroloff@gmx.de

vehicleshift@gmail.com

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