Readiness for the messiness
Note: Substantively edited & updated September 2026
This article, like several others, has been through many iterations. The updates reflect deepening discovery and reckoning, as we face an anguished threshold.
The noun coalition originally derives from the Latin root coalitiō. We can go deeper…. It’s messy.
‘Being unstitutional,’ is an ethos, inspiring many ways to unstitutionalize what no longer serves and what never meaningfully served life. Borrowing from coalitiō, we also reorient the context in ways that shift the meaning — to discover together.
Most coalitions are formed as factions with the primary purpose of establishing a position of solidarity against some other group or force. Lobbying, fighting, opposing or out-competing others reinforces divisiness and recursive pendulum swinging. Dysfunctional polarizing win-lose patterns and dynamics play out over and over. These kinds of coalitions remain trapped inside the architectural co-ordinates of a dominator configuration.
Rather than oppositional, our reframing is relational with people joining together, in essence, facing one another in a spirit of open inquiry and discovery, deepening understanding and working together. The many divides, artificially constructed, have bolstered an illusion of separability while contributing to the experience of separateness and the real deep-rooted harmful consequences.
From the interstitial space between…what originally wasn’t separate…the essence of our collaborative commonsing, is deeply relational…beyond artificially constructed divides…sectors, disciplines, cultures, genders, generations — all walks of life.
What we sometimes playfully describe as our big hairy collective quest…to reboot society’s operating system is not a reboot at all. This is bigger than all of us, stretching out well beyond our lifetimes, actively engaging many people with gifts differing.
Pervasive domination-oppression patterns recur and cling — manifesting in many forms…
Forceful driving push strategies propagating everywhere are perhaps warranted under some circumstances, some of the time.
Pushing harder invariably leads to countervailing push back — with opposing force(s) doubling down on efforts to strengthen or recoup influence or power base. This exacerbates a familiar zero-sum game that keeps things stuck…or worse.
Despite and with the best of intentions this driving push paradoxically falls seriously short…while going too far prescribing, designing and orchestrating. (Unintended) harmful consequences manifest in myriad forms…over and over again in recursive loops.
Efforts and energy that emanate from othering positionality fail to address root issues. Relationships tend to remain transactional and extractive with focus on the gains being sought.
Without facing the relational nature of life we cannot meaningfully move, adapt, inspire, discover or uncover the openings or portals that might allow the birth of real transformative shift. Deep subject.
There are many ways to get started with living lab initiatives — facing and living into life-affirming commons-based work that attunes to the spirit of life.
Note: We realize that even the word ‘work’ is loaded. Work, as generally assumed and expected, carries heavy baggage. Exploitation and extraction underlie the labour through which dominator systems operate, produce, overreach, occupy and violate. When we speak of the work, we connote a very different meaning that aligns with our ethos and ways of being….a labour of love and derived from ‘essence.’
“Essence is what makes every living system and being unique and it is THE source for ongoing and life-giving creativity in your life. When we lose sight of it, we can more easily feel lost in who we are and what we are doing with our lives.” ~Carol Sanford
(Co-)catalyzing might get hearts started, inviting and listening to what is present…essence, spirit and soul…consciously choosing how to engage as an open-ended relational unfolding discovery.
Preliminary readiness groundwork might involve iterative and variable elements that set the tone, contexts and conditions. While we might describe this as ‘evolutionary wading through,’ the underlying meaning and intent is about ways of being.
Note. We experience and witness life and work as intertwined, inter-relational, messy and spiritual, unfolding and dynamic, moving in ebbs and flows. We don’t advocate destination-oriented outcomes or focus, defining a trajectory of travel towards some future state or place. The future is not a place. We sometimes still use familiar words like co-navigate, journey and wayfinding. However, these terms and associated practices entrap us in recursive generator/producing functions that maintain human exceptionalism and subject-object observer positionality. Assuming we can objectively and comprehensively scan, map, navigate and achieve a transformative trajectory prevents transformative phase shift. What is described with the term emergent is also captured, as if the process is describable and explainable from the ‘observer’ position. Transformative phase shifts are not explainable through causal logics. “Attraction is the pull of the not yet. Attraction does not point. Attraction draws.” Deep subjects! For a deeper dive, see Twistification.
Co-catalyzing might feel more like herding cats, in the beginning…and that can also set us up for trouble. This isn’t herding work! This isn’t about trying to get folks to go along. It’s messy. The people involved have generally functioned separately and independently of one another. In many cases there is no relationship — yet.
It’s an understatement to suggest that the readiness work of working through difficult stuff is an uneasy uncomfortable paradoxical dance that calls for supreme patience, courage, compassion, steadfastness and willingness to yield to inherent tensions, build a threshold of trust, deepen understanding of underlying issues and assumptions, face and wrestle with tough truths, honour differences and friction…and let go of expectations and control…
We’re discovering, with some difficulty, how to heed intuitive and counterintuitive senses. If we find ourselves trying hard (again) to make something happen…that’s usually a sign to breathe and let go…to allow space…to stay with the anguished uncomfortable unknowing messiness.
There are many long beginnings, messy middles and layers of readiness work involved…
Without real readiness, meaningful work and relationships rarely manifest meaningfully…beyond superficial layers and talk. Much (painful) ongoing experience over the years help us discern and explore ways to relate and engage.
Pushing forward along a linear path feeds recursive dysfunctional patterns. Fixating on a directional trajectory doesn’t nurture ‘healthy ways of being’
There are also indicators that tell us when it doesn’t make (much) sense to keep ‘trying’…
Living into living lab potential begins when we face one another relationally, working together in earnest. From the outset and onward, attending to underlying human system factors — our humanness — is a high priority.
It opens the way, often stripping away layers that get in the way. We begin to experiment with ways of being— norms, rhythm, tone and tempo. We legitimize the need to attend to ongoing normative operating principles…establishing from the fragile outset that not only is it okay to share and work through the tough stuff…it’s essential in order to be fully present and move meaningfully in ways that potentially deepen understanding, uncover portals, and allow the space for unseen possibilities.
Positioned this way allows the space for the kind of covenant that honours what already exists, who we are and how we choose to work together. Together, we undertake preliminary layered diagnostics— identifying and understanding barriers, challenges and potential alternatives. As we peel back the layers, we can discern some common(s) purpose. We might begin to explore gifts differing that can contribute in a variety of ways. We might identify some key (flexible) roles, capabilities and perspectives…mindful that these are permeable and not boxed-in.
Some of the critical early questions to explore as this iterative process opens up, might include:
🔮 Who…people, organizations, roles…might need and choose to engage directly, from the start? Who’s missing?
🔮 What enabling conditions…hard and soft…can help to set things up wisely and well?
🔮 What barriers might block these enabling conditions? How might we recognize, address and unblock barriers? What must we stop doing?
🔮 What potential ways of working might be considered, without making assumptions or prescribing?
🔮 What preliminary support and resources are required and what form might these take?
🔮 What will help us walk-the-talk-and-listen-while-we-walk?
A spirit of open inquiry is essential. While many layered questions, needs, aspirations and concerns invariably surface, warranting mindful attention, at the early exploratory stage, more often than not…less is more.
Trying hard to move far and fast is indicative of a ‘driving push strategy,’ being set up to block relational co-discovery and foreclose on unseen, unknown possibilities. Deep-rooted issues and pervasive inequitable structures and patterns concerning power, justice* and authentic care (love) cannot be bypassed or downplayed.
Clear discernments are necessary, knowing when and under what contexts and conditions we need to close some doors and draw clear red lines with dedicated laser sharp clarity.
Note. For a long time we’ve described ‘and’ as our favourite word…with some caveats. We’ve been muttering “hmm, maybe and no,” more often. Mindful discernment helps us diagnose when the open-ended ‘and’…focusing on multiple perspectives…paradoxically forecloses…by failing to distinguish, lacking a focus on the configuration that blocks shift. A staunch both/and orientation keeps us stuck, generating recursive patterns of domination that impede transformative phase shift potential. Much well-intentioned activity underway in the name of transformative regeneration along with prescribed transitional blueprints or roadmaps indiscriminately adds more and more ways to keep trying and doing (variations of) the same things….feeding transitional treadmills.
Our article, Happy anding or ending? When to ‘and’…when to ‘end,’ elaborates on the power of and, while uncovering an unexamined dark side of an indiscriminate both/and orientation.
Caveats! Saying “yes” to (m)any and all ‘ands’ in the name of collegiality and openness to multiple perspectives, lures us into insidious traps. Many promoted impact and regenerative initiatives don’t distinguish between perspective and configuration. Without a clear distinction, the power structure and degenerative harm are allowed to continue, unexamined and unabated. The occupying dominator position (configuration) sets context with the arrangement already established for what is allowable and possible.
This kind of work, as it begins to flow, invites diverse perspectives, while also facing real structural barriers…the configuration that establishes the context for what might be possible.
Ordinary people can become extraordinary together, bringing gifts differing, uncovering common ground, co-discovering shared purpose while honouring differences and allowing healthy relationships to form. As we work through preliminary challenges, understanding and breaking with dysfunctional patterns — life-affirming insights might break through.
Maybe…
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Note. We are unapologetically holding our perspectives lightly…saying “maybe,” often…making peace with the inherent uncertainty we face undertaking difficult unmappable work, with agency to choose and an authentic felt sense of relational responsibility. This reflects a deepening reckoning. We are so easily re-ensnared. We are humbly reflecting and dancing at every turn…not making assumptions, not becoming overly attached to scaffolding, frameworks and ideas and not presuming…claiming or occupying intermediary roles or interventions that uphold a dominating system of co-dependency.
It’s vitally important not to go too far without all key *stake/care/holders, especially those routinely and systemically marginalized, invisibilized and under-appreciated, actively and meaningfully engaged, with real agency. Too often the invitation to engage assumes terms and conditions that preclude real agency — the sovereignty to choose.
Note. We are not alone questioning the inadequacy of the term *stakeholder due to its associated etymology and baggage. We haven’t found anything in the English language that feels quite right. We prefer careholders as a way to communicate that might reasonably attune and be understood, mindful that even ‘care’ is easily co-opted and ‘hold’ maintains a controlling grip. We ask, Who cares? Who ought to care? Perhaps a deeper question…who holds jurisdiction that is routinely violated by unjust power and legal structures?
This piece on emotional sobriety, relational maturity, intellectual discernment and intergenerational and interspecies responsibility (SMDR) might offer some insights into our readiness, with ways to frame inner and inter-relational work.
Note: While deepening understanding, and inner and relational processes are important, this is not about individual enlightenment based on notions of achieving higher stages of development or ranking of human consciousness. As long as we remain structurally entrapped by a dominator configuration that perpetuates human exceptionalism, supremacy, dimensional compression and cycles of injustice…real transformative phase shift is still prevented. Hence, we’ve been calling for wisdom with teeth, as we’ve playfully dubbed it, to identify alternative choices not legible to a system that enforces domination and feeds on our recursive reactive patterns. Our updated article, Justice in society? For who? — We choose lifeforce, broaches the ways we remain tethered to a justice system that is unjust. Deep subject!
Opening and working from the interstitial cracks and fissures is how the light gets in…maybe…
…and really facing and working through challenging issues and predicaments is, in itself, real embodied work. This important work is usually underestimated or side-stepped as people engage from their comfort zones and (ad)vantage points, diving into professional technical content and topic areas that reflect and represent their own (vested or siloed) interests and (narrow/limited band and brands of) expertise.
🔮 How can we shift our ways of relating and working beyond compartmentalized, linear fragmented patterns and prescribed co-ordinates?
🔮 How can we relate from essence* and reciprocity?
Our article, “Left? Right? Whole? — a whole lotta ways toward wholeness?” elaborates further.
At the start, (co-)catalyzing and convening is more about allowing the space— enabling people to come together, from essence and in relationship…to begin exploring from a commons orientation. As people increasingly appreciate (trans)contextual perspectives and lived experience, we can understand key barriers and begin, in earnest, to engage and co-discover. Truly deeply collaborating calls upon us to honour diverse perspectives as partial witnesses. Accepting inherent tensions, dancing with complexity, paradox and engaging directly in difficult conversations means hanging in and uncovering deeper truths and common(s) ground…as partial witnesses.
We delve a bit further into ways and means of bonding in this article,“What might bind (more of) us together- in healthy ways?” As a primer, our article Coalitiō, living lab cultural themes and a world of collaboration ahead, provisionally describes themes that inspired and underlie much of our unstitutional inquiry and work.
Note. A pervasive pattern of the dominator configuration is a fixation on the containers…the structures, the organization design, the containment boundaries that box in and box out, and the rules or doctrine that govern what and who are and are not permitted. The container should exist for relational flow of human energy and spirit. Provisionally scaffolded living labs with flexible permeable membranes, focused on the spirit and flow, might allow and support a shift in the ways we configure and conceive work.
There are many varied potential opportunities to co-catalyze, convene and support collaborative living lab initiatives. Our article, Society grounded by consonance & common[s]sense — an unstitutional dance, explores some work-in-progress thinking.
We honour diversity, our disagreements, friction and differences, while nurturing deeper collaborative interplay.
We are yielding to a force that is greater than all of us, accepting uncertainty…allowing the pull of the not yet…the unknowability of transformative phase shift birth.
Tapping our capacity for love-of-life, we embrace lifeforce, perhaps not a force at all, the spirit of life that has been here all along, squelched, and buried under layers of sh*t…
… “Agreement eliminates difference. Consonance requires it. A room of creatures making the same sound is unison — the Uniform God applied to community. A room of creatures each carrying what their pressing produced, each sounding the note that the forge tempered into them, each distinct and each entering the field that the others’ sounding makes available — this is consonance. The sound that exceeds what any single voice could carry. Not because the voices agreed. Because the voices were each genuinely voiced.”…
Evolutionary Wading Through and unblocking field conditions — is nonlinear and open-ended, being present, attuning to needs, circumstances and spirit. Not roadmaps, blueprints or solutions that impede transformative phase shift.
Our article, “leaning into uncomfortableness,” explores themes that guide us. Becoming more comfortable being uncomfortable, together — every tiptoe and move is a test of our humanity, humility, reciprocity, courage and grace…
Sometimes a poem rises up and cuts through: Reflecting on Readiness, Messiness, Life, Love and Rippling.
Sometimes a paper offers inspiration, leaping off the surface of the flat page inviting deep embodied readiness work. Rewiring 4 Reality suggests adaptable inner, inter-relational inter-generational diving tools. We’re exploring ways to bring it forward, aligned with its spirit, across contexts, sectors, organizations, initiatives, and communities. It can support readiness, in the varied places where we’re working to uncover common[s] ground. Our mini-review elaborates on why this kind of inquiry is important at this juncture. It is also included on the R4R website, published in both audio narration and document format.
Readiness for the messiness calls for deeper diving…a healthy alternative to driving, forcing and pushing.
Our updated article, Re-patterning for life-affirming reality vs continuing to ru[i]n the world drills down deeply into recursive dominator patterns, the ways we become blind (again) insidiously feeding the paradigm we (cl)aim to leave behind. Laser sharp lenses can help us diagnose as we live into an unknowable future, now. Note additional reflections on re-patterning.
🔮 What are we ready to let go of and stop doing?
🔮 What portals might be revealed when we invite deeper work, with supportive diving gear, letting go of pervasive driving patterns and unapologetically allowing space for spirit and soul?
🔮 What mindful discernments (choices) are we making on whether and how to wade through the inherent messiness of deeper shi(f)t?
The following series of short articles, published in June and July 2026, reflect our ongoing questions, provocations and discovery:
🔮 the spirit of inquiry 🎧 🎶
🔮 staying with the spirit of inquiry 🎧 🎶
🔮 Transitional Treadmills — how are we (still) feeding patterns of domination? 🎧 🎶
🔮 The True Spirit of Philanthropy does not Reside in Institutions 🎧 🎶
Note: We’ve been updating many articles that reflect some serious re-configuring, re-orienting and reframing with open-ended questions…precipitating a cascade of updates to several more articles in the coming days and weeks. They excavate recursive and arising dominator patterns that insidiously shapeshift, impeding transformative phase shift, despite good intentions. They explore the dimensional compression that continues to manifest in a variety of ways, literally discerning what counts and who matters.
Here are a few that shed more light:
🔮 Why Unstitution is [sort of] agnostic, [somewhat] omni-partial and [mostly] partial witness — a deepening reckoning as we let go of the impossibility of comprehensive total knowing in a world that still upholds human exceptionalism and performativity.
🔮 Building Bridges to Span the Void? How bridging feeds the void and avoids deeper realities — how intermediary layers and expert professional roles function like tollbooths, insidiously reinforcing co-dependence and feeding the industrial complex.
🔮 The beauty and reality of being a messy human 🎧 🎶 — peels back many layers on our existential humanness, the challenges (peril and potential) we face at this anguished threshold. It explores…the good, the bad and the ugly…that underlie our human systems.
🔮 A little bit about our ‘unstitutional’ why…and how…‘we can all be unstitutional’ — unpacking some of the backstory and describing the ethos that underlies our work
This article was updated again September 2026, reflecting additional perspectives and ongoing action research, as we continue to experience, witness, listen, assimilate and adapt — humbling eternal discovering for us all.
Unstitution was birthed as a collective commons and nested ecosystem. We support a wide range of collaborative living lab initiatives. Wading through deep shi(f)t and beneath the artificially constructed divides — sectors, disciplines, cultures, generations, genders and walks-of-life — we’re working on critical systemic challenges. With readiness for the messiness, unblocking life-affirming portals…and beyond dysfunctional polarization — is how we roll.
The links embedded throughout all our articles are a warm invitation to go a bit deeper, at any time.
Our regularly updated suite of articles, works-in-progress, are fractal-like glimpses into the unstitutional ethos. They serve as co-catalytic springboards, inspiring deeper inquiry, integrative understanding and meta-relational attunement. They reflect a small sample of the ways we are contributing as partial witnesses. Inspired and nourished by denizens anywhere in the world, we’re living into (re)-patterning principles and spirit — now. These provisionally guide our ongoing collaborative work, honouring and supporting ground and field conditions that might allow transformative phase shift birth.
Qualifying notes
Regarding the extensive use of italics…we recognize that so many words and terms are filtered and interpreted through different lenses. Deep shared understanding is potentially enriched through dialogue — active listening and inquiry.
We love writing…sculpting with words…as an expression of our eternal discovering. In case you’re wondering, none of the articles have been crafted or updated with the aid of AI — yet.
AI, driven by a generating function, primarily serves a dominator configuration. With wide-eyed discernment, and humbly recognizing that we need all kinds of real help, we appreciate engagement with AI consciously trained and challenged as companions-in-inquiry. We elaborate in our article, A Wary Eye on AI and Why: wading through ‘mindfully and playfully.
You can engage with our unstitutional unfolding on LinkedIn, where we are quietly present…witnessing patterns playing out on repeat-rewind. Some posts, comments and inquiry might pop up under hashtags #messyhumanness and #wisdomwithteeth.
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