Thank you, Peter, for holding these questions.

It was the ‘mother’ in your meshworks question that triggered me. As synchronicity would have it, a conversation in another, connected space - as we prepare for the 5th iteration of Women Moving the Edge, with Ria, Judy and Lisette - sparked off an inquiry about the role in all this of HOLDING THE SPACE for the HIGHEST FUTURE POTENTIAL. It is dawning on me now that there should be no significant action without intentional observers who are there to witness what unfolds as they hold the space for the highest future potential of whatever context we are in. Then, whatever unfolds in that space will be different - more conscious, certainly - than what would have transpired if that role were not present. Of course, it goes without saying that having an integrally-informed observer present can serve in other ways as well. Can you imagine meetings ending with a feedback round with questions and comments from the space-holder?! I think this new social role might make the mother of all differences. It connects up to the sacred space in our hearts, and how we make that explicit wherever we go and whoever we’re with.

Being very busy with “inner dynamics” these days, and especially the role of feeling therein I was touched by what Helen says about the holding of space. I would venture that first of all the Mother Meshwork is already there seeking and finding manifestation in such structures as Women Moving The Edge.
If we were to go the next step we would co-create circles within a circle of “Mothers” capable of holding such a particular local space. This would mesh the rather ethereal Holding that is by the Mothers of the Mothers in all Eternity with the physical presence of Women that actively Holding the Space. They would be, in a very tangible way the womb in which emergence can gestate and at the same time co-create Sacred Space.

And I feel like restating the first part of the question to sound something like this “What circumstances can be co-created that help the designers, engineers and implementers of the Mother of All Meshworks realize their mission? What economic, we-full ecology do we need - and what are the next steps in bringing it about?”

Ho, while we’re talking about holding space, sass this, fresh from the keyboard of women-moving-the-edge co-mother Judy Wallace: Holding space - claiming the feminine. In particular, this:

“Holding space is really what we women do; we are the womb.  We take
in the seed (a question), and we hold the possiblity of potential for
the new life to emerge.  When we hold space we do what we do as the
womb - hold, support, nurture, protect, listen, love - in quiet
strength we hold ambiguity, we hold the sacredness of life, the sacred
space connecting to and nurturing the possible.

And when this fragile new being wants to emerge, we release it,
sometimes thrust it, almost violently, into the world, into life, into
Being.  Emergence from the silence and safety, through the chaos and
messiness (almost like a burning ground) of the birth canal into the
vast open space of freedom, of Life, and into the next level of the
Unknown.”

Peter, how was your Engage! retreat? Did you get some answers to either of your beautiful, interdependent questions?

See also “A mighty movement of a kind never before enacted…”  in the Jump Time Players blog.

Ho Duri, it’s so good to have you back among us!

I have something to say about both your points, Duri.

Firstly, with the whole question of designing or not designing the mother of all meshworks and where human consciousness and intentionality fits in (I’m thinking of John Stewart’s evolutionary manifesto here) I am seeing some trends that give me hope.

I agree with Mushin, that the mother meshwork is there, busy emerging. I sense that our job (and by ‘our’ I mean the community of folks having this conversation - by ‘this conversation’ I mean people all over the world inquiring into this question together) is to sense the fractal patterns that are unfolding in human collaboration and human/ecosphere collaboration.

One pattern I’m seeing is a layered trend in ‘bootstrap’ learning. Wherever I turn, in this Western post-modern world where I live, I meet people who are offering workshops and consultancy in order to create their own next level of learning. And for every one of them, there are 5-50 individuals who are being helped to initiate or continue their own developmental spurt, on the way to becoming self-directed learners. In particular, I see this happening in layers - I see the Orange ‘you can achieve whatever you want’ school, the Green ‘you can discover who you really are’ school - they’re wherever you look. And I keep meeting people who are in the ‘how can we leverage large-scale integral change?’ inquiry, with plans to set up institutes and businesses based on networks of trainers and consultants to help comanies and communities and organisations to get healthy and fit to perform their function in the world.

These impulses seem to be coming to more and more people, so the pattern that I see is one of ‘spontaneous movement into development’ - many folk, individually and collectively climbing on the conveyor belt, so to speak. I trust that that conveyor belt will be feeding people through unfolding awareness into a space where they can ‘hold space for the highest future potential’ and act as catalysts in the world.

The second point is about the holding space. You mentioned how women are good at holding space, Duri. And you mentioned Mushin. Well Mushin has been embarked on a fantastic inner inquiry into his own feeling life for the past month or so, which he has been sharing over on his blog. His inquiry has developed into a practice which I imagine could easily be replicated. What I think it does - and it’s a great practice for men - is to bring you in touch with the inner life of the feelings in a much more nuanced way, making it much more possible to hold space, and use the body as an exquisite sensory organ for detecting the subtleties of the field, rather than a concrete bunker in which only the crudest and strongest of emotions (fuck it or kill it - as Ken would say) can make themselves heard. Of course, like all good practice, it requires courage and perseverence, but it has the advantage of using as its raw material the very stuff of our cowardice and resistance…

In my experience, this subtle inner sensing is a crucial skill for holding the field for major shifts to take place in living social systems. There is so much going on under the surface in the lower-left quadrant in teams, organisations, families, communities, that effective intervention really does call for intentional holding and sensing that is better done collectively than as a lone spaceholder. Certainly, in the work we are doing in the EU Commission, we are paying great attention to that aspect - without it, I’m not sure we could succeed.

I would, from the unfolding perspective here, conclude that the Mother-Meshwork (Momesh)  is the one that is holding space for all.
Not much differentiation there, but this would come from the manifold meshworks unfolding and interacting within the Momesh anyways. So the Holding of Space as the art of fine-grained perception of the mental, emotional and spiritual goings-on and at the same time the enormous patience and compassion for all the unfolding going on… and maybe a superb sense of timing!

Timing in this sense would re-integrate the agentive into the space-holding by discerning the acupuncture-points of an unfolding dynamic to, with a word, a gesture, a ‘powerful unspoken intention’ etc. and thereby selectively nourishing those aspects within the held space that will most likely lead to healthy emergence.
I couldn’t even call myself an apprentice of that art as I’m basically just beginning to discover that possibility, calling it ‘timing’ - thereby somehow acknowleding good old A. Einstein’s ideo of a space-time continuum.