Leaving the known and navigating uncertainty

Purpose: Navigating the unknown and liminal space

This group exercise is great for beginners or a general audience without a shared intention. Participants are guided to sense into the shared elements (right) of facing a challenge, being open, and leaping into the unknown.

Case background:

This session sensing example was hosted for two community events: 1) The Stoa, a community and wisdom commons led by Peter Limberg 2) A workshop held at a community gathering and retreat at Whidbey Institute, WA. In both cases, the elements were generated from responses to a check-in question “What’s present for you?” The elements are shared themes and a synthesis of everyone’s shares. (right)

• Application

  We had each participant check in at the beginning of the call asking, “What’s present for you?”

  Here are the original notes from each share @ The Stoa session:

  • Openness

  • Curiosity

  • Learning

  • Beginner's mind

  • Working with others

  • Joy at recognizing others in community

  • Frustration at logistics

  • Beginning the practice

  • Being in liminality - being edge of a cliff – wanting to be at another and tensions wit that.

  • Learn from and with others

  • Family dynamics/ conflict

  • New friends/familiar friends

  • Connecting with different people/generations/ – exploring what others are up to

  • New insights, opening “insight reps”

  • Ritual, open creative, outside-the-box thinking

  • Intuition

  • Shift / jump into the void/something edgy “jump”

  • Frustration/anger / Stuck – how to release

  • Silence after the storm, empty

  • Jump, edge, voice (rollercoaster before it drops)

  
  With the group’s help, we synthesized into shared elements.

  We then offered a mini course and demo before the explorative journey.

  
  The explorative sensing journey guides each participant individually to sense — listen with all of their senses — each of the elements. Participants are encouraged to journal and jot down insights along the way.

  After the exercise, we had people share a round of reflections in small breakouts and then as a whole group.

• Reflection and learning

  Participants reflected that the experience was “emotionally moving” and that many of the elements felt surprising compared to what they originally expected to feel. For example, the element of liminality felt “playful and joyous” or “noisy.” For one participant, curiosity and openness revealed important insights about “wanting to see the shape and corners of something.” All in all most people were grateful for fresh insights and learning.

• Conclusion

  Like a collective gym, systems sensing can be a practice to enliven our sensing muscles and gain new perspectives.

• Capacities

  Individual and collective capacities cultivated:

  • Being curious, open, and courageous

  • Daring not to know

  • Being present, attuning, and acknowledging what is

  • Witnessing from a non-judgmental place

  • Widening our perception channels of how we reason

  • Staying with discomfort

Guiding question

Each participant is invited to craft a guiding question

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Elements:

• self

• curiosity/ openness

• challenge (i.e. fear, block)

• resource (i.e. trust, capacity, community)

• the leap

• liminality/ the space “in-between”

Tips:

• Create your own inquiry into these elements. This acts as a personal “entry door” into a shared or collective experience.

• Listen to what elements have to say with your inquiry. The inquiry helps define the scope and boundaries of what is brought to our awareness.

• The element “resource” can be an unnamed resource —anything that supports you or the system —for you to discover during the sensing journey.

• Play with it. Make it your own.

Resource

See video of 1 of 3 systems sensing sessions @ The Stoa (2 hours)