Embracing the liminal
The 21-Day Creativity For Change Challenge — Coming into Balance kept me busy in September — it was a powerful learning curve to dive right into the Spiral Process of The Work That Reconnects. One I’ll be digesting for some time to come.
For those not already familiar - the Work that Reconnects is based on the teachings of Joanna Macy and it invites us to take a fresh look at what we see happening in the world around us. It unfurls in a spiral journey with four stages: Coming from Gratitude, Honouring our Pain for the World, Seeing with New/Ancient Eyes, and Going Forth.
It tells of the “Three Stories of Our Time”: Business as Usual, the Great Unraveling, and the Great Turning. These stories reveal profoundly different lenses through which people can see, understand and create in the world we all live in.
In my last article I wrote about the first two stages of the Spiral Process and today I want to talk about the third — Seeing with New Eyes.
The Spiral provides landscapes within which to deepen our Creative Process, facilitating a transformative shift when we find a different way of perceiving what we are looking at and a shift in our understanding of our reality. This might sound a little ‘far out’, but there are a few simple steps to explore in this stage that I will describe.
1 A wider sense of self
In response to the question “Who are you?” you may state your name, and what you do for a living. We usually relate first to our identity — what we know as ego.
But if you are to answer this question several times over, each time with a different answer you might begin to describe where you come from, and perhaps begin to expand your definition of yourself out beyond the ego to recognise that you are part of the living earth.
“Recognising ourselves as part of the living body of the earth opens us to a great source of strength… When we align ourselves with the well-being of our world, we allow that desire and creative energy to act through us.” Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone
2 A different kind of power
The Work that Reconnects refers to the current mainstream mode of industrialised countries as business as usual. In this mode, power is perceived as a commodity; something you have or don’t have in varying quantities.
But what if power was not a noun but a verb? What if power is what you do and not something you can lose or gain?
The invitation here is to think of ways that you empower yourself and what empowers you. This shift in perspective changes the paradigm from ‘power over’ to ‘power with’ where you can begin to recognise your own agency, interconnection with others, and a new spectrum of possibilities.
“When you act on behalf of something greater than yourself, you begin to feel it acting through you with a power that is greater than your own. This is grace.” Tom Atlee
3 A richer experience of community
Community means different things to different people depending on where and how we live. Often we recognise the differences in our communities but in this work, the invitation is to reflect on four levels of community that we are all part of
- Groups you feel at home in
- The wider community around you
- The global community of humanity
- The earth community of life
This is another aspect of expanding - recognising that we are part of something bigger, and instead of feeling smaller we feel greater support and a greater sense of belonging.
“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. What affects one directly affects all indirectly” Martin Luther King Jr.
4. A larger view of time
The Business as usual model holds a very short sense of time, with most of us dwelling on the not-too-distant future rather than the present or considering the long-term future. Our governments commonly speak of 4–5 year plans. Longer views of one or two hundred years are unheard of.
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But this has not always been the case. The Haudenosaunee, still, when they meet in council consider the welfare of the next seven generations.
The invitation to experience a larger view of time invites us to connect with the many generations to come and the generations that preceded us, again expanding our understanding of this moment of time in which we are living and how it is part of many generations of lives.
Reimagining the creative process
In general creatives (artists, designers, etc) through training and practice make their way in life seeing the world with different eyes and sharing that through their creations: all of which are windows into their unique perspective of the world.
Between Creative thinking (which is generative, full of possibilities, open-ended, and Intuitive) and Critical thinking (which is analytical, objective, closed, and logical) the creative and design processes are vehicles for seeing the world with new eyes.
In most scenarios the story of the world that we work from, describes a world focused on power and influence and the need to sell to the consumer with the presumption that corporations and governments somehow know best and can ‘save the world’ by shimmying what they are doing just a little.
The Work that Reconnects speaks of a different story of the world; a different possibility called the Great Turning. Joanna Macy describes it as “the essential adventure of our time: the shift from the Industrial Growth Society to a life-sustaining civilisation.”
This approach dovetails beautifully with an existing thread of Design Thinking that is fed by the needs of communities and people, where the designer is a facilitator and a co-ordinator aligned with values of listening, discussing participation, giving people a say, and giving people autonomy.
It is grounded in the values of inclusivity, democracy, community, collaboration, and co-operatives with an emphasis on co-creation with the end-user rather than seeing them merely as a consumer. [Design thinking]
Currently, this way of creating and designing is relegated to the edges of our society - to Eco-villages and intentional communities, co-housing groups, voluntary organisations, and not-for-profits.
But it can be brought into our places of work so that we can transform our current story into one with new possibilities. [You can read an article I wrote about my two years living in 20 Intentional Communities here.]
Emergence
“In order to find your way, you must lose it. Generously” …“in losing our way, straying away from the marked tarmacs of the conventional, we might find ourselves in different, surprising places.” Bayo Akomalefe
Within the story of Business as usual there is an obsession with control and precise prediction; the need to know what is coming next and wipe away all risks, errors, and unknowns.
But there will always be unknowns and the future cannot unfold in a new way unless we let go of trying to predict and control. We must move beyond current ways of perceiving if we want to open to what else might be possible.
Bayo Akomalafe speaks of the liminal places of not knowing. To allow ourselves to see with new eyes “we need spaces to listen in for what might be wanting to emerge”, for the ‘not yet known’.
For this, we need to have the courage to slow down in urgent times, develop patience, and learn to navigate the unknown with greater resources. The Emergence network
Taking the leap to see the world with new eyes can feel exciting but equally, it can feel terrifying or even like the death of the life that we are living. It can feel groundless and disorientating as we leave the shore of what is familiar for a while allowing for something new to emerge. But as John Shedd once wrote — “A ship in harbour is safe; but that is not what ships are made for”.
Active Hope
The synergy between your own creative practice and the Spiral of the Work that Reconnects has the power to be a transformative force in your personal life, in your work, in your communities, and in the systems within which you live and work.
My own experience of this work is that it puts my life in perspective and brings me into a more balanced place. Sensing my responsibility to future generations and also the support of those who came before me. It brings me into connection with my body and my awareness of it being a body of the earth. It is a gentle reminder of who I am in the greater scheme of things and gives me a sense of agency for change.
Active Hope is a creative act of consciously believing that something profoundly amazing is possible, even when you can’t quite see it in focus yet.
I can’t say what a more beautiful world will look like, that is for us all to imagine, but I can create places and spaces where you can learn to see with new eyes, where you can learn to lean into the unknown, exploring the edges of your comfort zone and opening up to what is possible.
Wishing you a beautiful week.
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