Gathering #9 December 24, 2020 - "Money Visions"

This gathering is intended to complete a cycle we began in gathering8.

Suggested agenda:

1. Sound-in and check-in.

2. Money Round 4: From the present moment, informed by the time we've shared together in this crew, what do you envision emerging from our work together (long term, beyond the current cycle)? Are you open to the possibility of this crew implementing the generative process? In which conditions? More importantly (via negativa), what are the "no-gos"?

3. Ripples from Money-Round-4.

4. Check-out and sound-out.

Though we are "officially" still "barely stepping into cycle 2" ... a retrospective thought came to me that we've actually had a very meaningful cycle2 ... and this may be its closure. I don't feel it is imperative to decide/declare an ending of a cycle ... I do feel compelled to acknowledge that something whole, valuable and complete has occurred.

I wonder how you all feel about this and if this deserves some space in the agenda?

I am interested in at least a short round (written here or in the gathering) about if we feel the session like the ending of a cycle we did not expect/plan or the ending of an intense phase of the cycle we planned.

@Alex Rodriguez since you haven't been able to express yourself in writing on the async questions would you like to allocate some time after check-ins to speak about your thoughts regarding them?

I will share a response today, and have enjoyed reading all of the others' responses so far! Thanks for the kind offer Ronen but I think we'll have lots to discuss already in the agenda.

This is the text I told you about in our last gathering in which I make the distinction between providing and caring.

It seems I am going to open the thread we discussed exploring asynchronously: a retrospective of what cycle2 has been so far.

A Stress Test

The metaphor of breath is most appropriate for me to describe what happened and how we responded. The breath, if I remember to observe it, provides me a deeply integrated sense of my well-being. When I am in correct effort the breath is full, present and supportive. When I step beyond correct effort the breath signals. It can signal subtly ... by slightly straining and it can signal in a blunt way ... by collapsing. The breath switches, to quote my teacher, "from being available to me, to being demanding of me". When that happens I need to tend to the breath itself until it is once again "available to me"

We entered the cycle with increased specificity. In retrospect that was not (yet?) right for us. That focus created a strain. It started out with some stumbling around ... trying to see what can be done to "stay on track" ... until we lost our breath. I think that it manifested through @Toni Blanco who has since been able to elaborate his sense of losing orientation. He tried to put in more effort ... to absorb the stress ... he tried to "create useful artifacts" ... until we had our one-on-one where some relaxation was possible ... and from the relaxation came some reflection and a sense of some restored clarity.

The other expression of tension (as i interpret it retrospectively) was @Josh Fairhead commenting on "taking for granted" ... which also triggered a collective sense of "taking a deep breath" and reflecting.

My emotional body has a tendency to feel like I am going to be deserted ... that I am going to be on my own ... and I often do orient my life so that, if I have to, I can live alone. I did NOT feel this way at any time during the cycle ... I did NOT feel that the integrity of the crew was at risk.

To me, this speaks of a kind of intuitive collective health ... a soft, responsive resilience. Under pressure we didn't crack ... we softened, bent ("like a reed in the wind" if any of you are Dune fans like me), relaxed and re-formed ... resolving some stresses and integrating others.

For me, this all evoked a deeper sense of our collective being ... a deeper trust. @Alex Rodriguez spoke to this directly when he talked about his sense of the longevity of this crew ... that we will still be around in 5 years when so many other things will have changed or passed. That touched me!

Money-Ground

Though I don't recall exactly how the theme of money emerged, I am very glad it did. There was an intimate aspect to the conversation ... simply knowing more about the financial realities which we all inhabit. And there was a practical aspect to the conversation ... I feel more confident that the long-arc of our lightning-journey will find ground.

I feel deeply privileged to be in a crew where:

• all of us have individually created some sense of personal financial stability (each in a very different way!)

• which means that no one brings a sense of burdening urgency to the table to "make money"

• AND in addition to that we have all made ourselves available to this collective inquiry ... and this availability has been stress-tested!

These, I believe, are precious (and in my experience rare) collective conditions!

Sacrificial-Playful

I have enjoyed experiencing how discord-chat (of which I was very wary!) has matured alongside this Loomio space. It provides its own unique rhythm to the crew ... and it plays nicely together with Loomio. I credit this mixture with the emergence of the sacrificial->playful thread ... which has and continues to resonate deeply with me.

The most subtle and profound expression of this was the shared expression, during this last gathering of 2020, that though we are aiming for something specific ... we would all wish to work together ... almost as if no matter what it is we actually work on.

Cycling

Having done this (initially personal) retrospective, I am leaning towards proposing this cycle be complete. I want to be able to look back on it and say "that" ... because it is demanding work that is easy to overlook and undervalue. However, I am awaiting and looking forward to hearing from you before making any such proposal.

I have a feeling that the next question of "what next" needs space that at least partially belongs to the wholeness of this cycle. I am experiencing a fountain of sacrificial-writing ... on the subject of "what next" :)

Reflections on cycle 2

Looking back on Cycle 2 the story arc seems to have moved from squirming on the ground together to trying to pick ourselves up... with a few slippages. I've been digging into spiral dynamics a fair bit recently and I'm seeing it both on individual and collective levels. It would seem to me that regardless of where individuals are at, in group we tend to start from the ground up.

The term "squirming on the ground together" was used to describe Cycle 1 at some point. I'd suggest that might be characteristic of the beige "survival" meme (at the group level), where the organism is struggling to hold itself together and survive. We passed that test and kept showing up.

Cycle 2 is thus perhaps more the purple the "safety" meme? We've been 'preserving sacred objects/memories' here on Loomio, 'showing allegiance to elders' (aka Ronen as progenitor) and observing seasonal cycles (which were currently reflecting on).

We started by trying to integrate a generative process. We also tried to integrate the sociocratic consent process but that derailed (yep accountability on me there for taking it abstract/meta). These things didn't really stick in a hard sense but they did become 'tales' or 'myths' amongst our 'clan'. My guess is that these strides were perhaps taken a tad too early, they are more fourth awakening memes - the blue 'order' meme. What did feel right however was the care work we put in and getting transparency on where we are all at financially... but beyond that I think whats important was the willingness to expose ourselves, both financially and emotionally - which is a quantum leap from most groups. I must admit that I felt more at home financially exposing myself than emotionally doing so (a personal weak point) but I'm building resilience there and glad to be doing it with you guys!

It's also been interesting to watch ourselves walking backwards as previously captured in my writing so recapitulating isn't really needed. Just that I appreciate that were doing the friendship route of Spiritual -> Hedonistic -> Transactional, rather than the other way around. The care has been nourishing and I probably wouldn't have gotten through some other stuff in Oct/Nov without the support. Amongst the chaos it was pretty hard to make time to fit our calls in (time/space was scarce - perhaps that energy seeped out in the "taken for granted" comment that was not reflective of this crew, but more the context I was embedded in at the time)... but taking the time anyway was life affirming so I'm glad I did and am doing more of that as a personal practice ;)

I think all that puts us in a pretty solid place to go forward together into Cycle 3... the worst of them all from my experience in other domains! If I'm not just over "modelling things" (I have a tendency towards abstract systems/models) then the next cycle may bring elements of attention seeking and cheap signalling. I don't want to project as I think were more mature than that, I just put this in writing for the next time we reflect on a cycle to see if the prediction holds up in hard/soft ways (I hope for the latter as the hard way is not fun! see: "context I was embedded in" comment).

In response to cycles and "whats next" I feel that this cycle is complete too, and going forward we want to anticipate the red meme and play it soft rather than hard; so I think that it might be worthwhile doing something enjoyable and maybe slightly competitive, but playfully so. Doing such would allow us bend and take the edge off it. However if the group thinks I'm just over modelling thats also fine, we can see what emerges naturally!

Anywho, looking forward to seeing you all Thursday (assuming I've got that noted correctly). Speak to you then!

Threads and strands from "cycle 2"

First of all, I feel like what we have been calling "cycle 2" is coming to a close with these retrospective posts---I'd support a motion to "close" it and start something else together moving forward.

I like the spiral dynamics thinking as a loose guideline and am also very skeptical of Wilberite claims to universality (for reasons grounded in the politics of those spaces and their relationship to abusive dynamics that I could elaborate more on if it's of interest to others)...anyway, holding that in my pocket as we move through this space together.

One thing that has stood out to me about this phase of our work together has been the moments of surprise and serendipity--like Ronen's painting, the inspirations that have been shared resonating with other work I've done in surprising ways, how the concepts and ideas I've been introduced to here have a strange and beautiful way of burrowing into my deeper thought-processing and connecting with my own curiosity (thanks Toni!) in a very natural feeling way. I notice that I've been spending a lot of my shower-thinking time recently with the inspirations that visited me through our work together, for example.

I'm very grateful for the sense of camaraderie and fellowship that is emerging through these interactions. I also really appreciate the way that cycle 2 has unfolded at just the right "speed"---that is, things can live here on Loomio for days without a response, but they are still living in our shared thinking, and then there will be little pops or flurries like what's happening now with these retrospectives. And in the meantime, there is enough random tidbits of checking in happening in Discord for it to feel continuously connected. I'm also grateful that the steps I have taken towards "riskier" (emotionally at least) subjects, like my conflicted history with music-making, have seemed to be welcomed with enough spaciousness for me to also feel where the edges of that energy are living for me.

I'll say, too, that this felt less like a "cycle" and more like an "unwinding" or "unspooling" ... there is definitely circle-energy, like we were starting to understand how to work with the centrifugal and centripetal force dynamics spiraling outward or pulling us together. It felt like we gently tested our capacity to hold those dynamics skillfully, and we've managed to do so well. I also appreciate that there is a level of doubt that still underlies our work, which has manifested in a few different ways throughout this phase. Moving forward, I'd like to see if we can create a space to examine that collectively in more depth.

The idea of doing work together in a more materially manifest way is very exciting to me, even though I really have no idea what that will look like. I also am intrigued by how the spaciousness of our container might allow for a balance of something very dreamy and very practical to actually emerge. It seems to resonate for me with the "sacrificial-playful" thread we've begun to unspool, as well.

Although I do feel a sense of closing and completeness around this "cycle," I'm also appreciating how there are still a lot of "loose ends" that seem like they'll be with us as we enter into whatever we do next together. A jazz artist/academic who I've been following closely for the past decade, Vijay Iyer, likes to talk about the artist's path as being "radically unfinished" ... this has always resonated, perhaps even more now that I have a sense of how the sausage gets made in the art world ...

All of that to say: thank you for being in it with me, I look forward to continuing our work together, and am genuinely curious about the sounds and shapes that emerge in the year ahead!

More reflections on Cycle 2

I planned to write this some days ago, but the shocking events in the USA distracted me too much to do it. I combined it with 5 hours of podcast listening on the ultimate political conflict (the "New Jerusalem"); my ideas have not changed much, but I am for sure in a different mood. Oh, well.

I enjoyed a lot reading your contributions and they helped a lot to make sense of cycle 2. So here is my take to complement them.

There are two main topics in my view. On the one hand, as Ronen points out, we were not ready for the task we planned for the cycle. And after exploring some options, it is unclear that the task can be accomplished without more specific directions. On the other hand, the struggling helped to unveil the "phantoms" we carry with us because of previous bad experiences. We were very resourceful to overcome them.

Let me take now the Spiritual-Hedonistic-Transactional triad as a systemic and cyclical dimensions. I think that for obvious reasons (at least for us) we (each of us) are biased in general towards de Spiritual dimension, and that fact sets the starting point of a path for our crew (Spiritual -> Hedonistic -> Transactional). Yet we need always the other dimensions to make the crew move forward. My sense is that Ronen kept the spiritual compass, Alex brought hedonism, I brought "transactionalism" and Josh brought with surgical precision any of the three dimensions when needed.

I rescue two ideas of the unfinished invitation I was writing. 1) It is reasonable to look for a "generic" generative process (without specifying for instance some starting conditions)? 2) If we are inspired by Alex Christopher and the Tea House exercise, why do not designing the generative process of the space in which crews flourish? I am sure that Ronen has the answers because he thought about that when making his proposal, but not the group. Additionally, Ronen said that he did not write it as he wished, thinking that that would work better for the crew. What if he writes it as he wished?

I am delighted (and a bit surprised) because of the outcomes of this second cycle. As I told you, I am not used to beginning a crew with Spiritual and Hedonist momentum. The closest experience to me was the generation of the record/art label, which was Hedonistic -> Spiritual -> Transactional. I consider that we strengthen the spiritual dimension, introduced beautifully the hedonistic dimension, and talked about the lack of urge for the transactional one. I was exposed to new authors/voices (which are helping to fight my demons in this Covid19 times, including the music), I reflected a lot on how to make operational the idea of generating generative processes (and I think that I had a couple of good insights), and also was really inspired by Josh explanation of the generative process behind his Mandala, and wonder how that can be done collectively. This is something that I am going to explore more for sure in the following months.

Regarding the future, and if Josh is right and we are bouncing back to a more individualistic/competitive cycle, I am thinking of it as we competing in a "marketplace" of offers for the next cycle (as Ronen's idea that "The space has a “menu” of activities which you can join. Browse that menu to see if anything attracts you"). Alex and Josh already made offers on silence and breathing. What if the ending of the cycle is to make available a rich menu of offers and learn which ones of them are perceived as valuable for us at this moment? Our selection of activities and the reflection on them could be the next cycle. Once one activity has been chosen, we could even invite nominally other people to participate if that is good for the activity and the crew.

Anyway, curious to find out what's next.