Proceedings of The Working Group Year 2000

Sweet Briar College, Lynchburg, Virginia – June 19 June 25, 2000

Facilitators: Anthony Blake and Karen Stefano of Duversity

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The Daily Cycle

The daily cycle of the seminar is built on seven distinct, but interweaving sessions of different types. Each of these derives from a specific source or pioneer and addresses a particular aspect of the human process.

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Experienting

Introduction by Anthony Blake

The word experienting is a neologism connecting experiment and experience. It is intended to mean experimenting with the stuff of experience. The neologism is used primarily to distinguish the practice from the general and largely vague way of meditation. The latter word is in its origins an English equivalent of the Sanskrit dhyana which can be variously understood as concentration or sustained thought , as opposed to dispersal and fluctuation. However, meditation has become a generic term for sitting with closed eyes and following some guided visualizations or recitation of a mantra.

The present practice of experienting has emerged from work with techniques inherited from John Bennett. These were then called morning exercises and derived in their turn from indications from G. I. Gurdjieff with inputs from various other sources such as Taoist and Sufi methods. Gurdjieff s own indications, as far as we know them, were based on two main ingredients: (a) the distinction and fusion of I and am , (b) the distinction and blending of sensation, feeling and thought. These exercises were active on the part of the subject and they did not rely on images but on some more direct sense of quality of energy.

Following in this tradition, we have begun to explore what is essential in this active method. To do so, we have had to depart from accepted practice in one important respect: in the past, practitioners either did a set exercise in silence or were guided through by an instructor. Indeed, being guided through by someone who had previously established the exercise in him was and is considered to be the right way of being initiated into the exercise. With Mr. Bennett, we had groups doing an exercise who met at other times and were able to report on their experiences and ask questions. Our main departure from this tradition has been to allow and even encourage comments to be made by any participant during the exercise or experienting. Though one person directs the session, he or she is open to what is proceeding in the rest of the people.

This means that (a) the exercise itself is exploratory and is not a member of a set canon, and (b) any statements made by participants feeds back into the process through the guiding person. In an idealistic sense, the guide could be seen as the voice of the people , bringing to expression what is emergent in them as it happens.

The generic form of experienting first looks into containment in various ways, such as presence , location , body , perception , etc. – and then looks into what differentiations can be made in the stuff of experience within the container. The kind of differentiation made depends on background understanding of the human composition. Still, for the most part, we follow the guidelines of a threefold distinction, crudely understood in terms of thought , feeling and sensation.

What an experienting is about cannot be defined apart from those who are actively engaged in it. We feel it is important to follow the indications of Rumi, for example, whose phrase fihi ma fihi ( in it what is in it ) sums up the hermeneutic approach we follow. It is very important indeed for all those involved to seek out and continue to seek out the essential meaning of what they do and not rely on the person in the authority role to define meaning for them.

It came to me that here was something integral to what the ‘exercise’ IS. I now believe that having, for example as may happen, a diversity of descriptions is a great benefit. The whole idea that ‘we’ did the ‘same thing’ needs to be held in question (though not dismissed out of hand).

I will just say that my guiding initiative or the main influence upon me at the time this was designed came from meeting an old friend, another student of Bennett, who was giving a series of lectures on mysticism according to the four main levels of ‘mental energy’. I was constantly occupied with the question of moving between different levels without being fixated on what these were, i.e. it was not coming from a mental model. There is some general kind of pattern concerning the state of the facilitator and that of the participants.

We are just at the beginning of something that I do not think has been addressed very much before.

Experiences

The hypothesis of experienting is that the “stuff” of experience thought, sensation, feeling can be objectified, spoken of, and thereby shaped. It is similar to what was formerly known as Morning Exercise or Sitting, except that this year an important distinction was made between operating from a mental model and participating in an action. It was therefore an experiment in participation where members of the group, using the practice of self-observation, actually tried to describe what was happening for them in the moment.

For me writing these words on the page like this deprives it of its essence, sucking the life out of it. It becomes intellectual, a mental model, and sounds like every other “meditation” that is described prescriptively or retrospectively. What we need for this is a virtual reality module into which each reader could enter, participate, and change the shape of the whole.

However, with this limited tool I can at least try to describe my experience. The first awareness is that of “waiting.” Waiting because this is not something that one does, per se. It is an experience that comes, that surrounds, that becomes a container. This container is, at first, the body, sheathed in skin, coursing blood, held by bones and muscles. We can experience this physical containment, experiment with it. The quality of attention becomes important here. Deliberate random movements, at first external then internal, keep one from passing over into dreaming. These movements first pass unnoticed, then are noticed, then deliberately made, and are accepted into a larger container.

And there is the world “outside” sights, smells, sounds, the feeling of the air across the body. And that becomes the container, accepted into the container, finally used to fuel the container because, after all, they are here now as well.

And then you see that it is, after all, only like remembering and forgetting it really is nothing new. It is something you have known all along, but forgotten. You slip back into the remembering, and when you forget you remember you have forgotten and are remembering again.

From here any number of journeys can be taken, shaped, and described. For me the speaking was very difficult. I wanted to try it because it was an interesting experiment, intellectually. But I was afraid of diminishing my own experience and, even more important, that of the others. But the few times I tried it, speaking felt similar to opening my eyes, which was also very difficult. Both seem to ground the experience in everyday reality, making it more possible to, later and in reverse, bring the “knowing” into the ordinary experiences of one s life.

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I was in a semi-meditative state during these early morning sessions. The “stuff” of experience I experimented with was the containment of my developmental quest, which till Sweet Briar was insanely synoptic but lacked depth of intelligence, in other words, considered thought and emotional commitment. The medallion design of the room’s oriental rug became a container. It was colorful, seemingly chaotic, but ordered. It had horizontal and vertical symmetry flowing artistically out of a tetradic center. The border was escalloped providing openings permeable to the outside world. There were many small blossoms within the medallion suggesting molecules of meaning for me. The molecules were related to each other through different patterns.

As the week unfolded, I realized my medallion or mandala was a horizontal plane. It lacked a deep foundation of meaning and thus showed-up in my life as helter-skelter. As a result of Sweet Briar, my quest has taken on new form. Stop filling-in the tapestry of ideas and concentrate on awakening intelligence and making meaning.

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The experience of “sitting”, “meditating”, of stilling the body, and the mind, and “relaxing” into receptivity (an infinite set of nestling Russian dolls), has come to be for me, a state of “multiple states of awareness”, “attention”, “tense-less intensity, “non-dimensional extensive-ness”, “consciousness without an object”, Self-Remembering”, being in my/group “common presence”– Presence. To describe the sustaining of this state implies for me the use of contradictions, and yet, the tension of contradictions is not this experience.

In our “experienting” sessions, I found myself mostly in a quandary, in regard to speaking from and about the state. I felt split between time/space which language seems to belong to for me, and the non-time/space, which seems to have silence/stillness as its physical expression. I became fascinated by the possibilities, which the practice of this exercise — experienting — presents.

A metaphor: One is juggling 3 balls, and over time increases the number of balls one is juggling. The attention is never on one or another ball, rather on the juggling. Conceivably, one can juggle, after a while, 3 or a dozen balls. This is “sitting” — Presence. But if one has to eat a meal while juggling, or carry on a conversation, then a new level of juggling is required. This would be “experienting”.

I found myself, on the occasional times that I was able to find my voice, “dropping the balls” so to speak. To speak of the “State” while in it was for me, not unlike the experience of trying to do the Movements. For me, these exercises have lead to deeper flexibility in Working in ordinary life. In other words, more and more, it is less and less about going from one thing to another. Ordinary life itself is becoming for me, something of what Experienting and the Movements have been. I am seeing how it is precisely what I was attempting to do in the experienting sessions, that is what I want to do in my day in day out living — move, speak, act, respond, do in and from Presence.

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I am a minimalist with words when trying to communicate the sacred. This was a time for me to link cellular awareness with mind and intention to work containing the contents of life. This time we spent experimenting together was one important component in the architecture of the group.

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Spending six early mornings with kindred souls was as close to a community experience as I felt it might EVER be. Especially so as the week evolved with our diverse opportunities to be together and share. The pristine setting of the room in the freshness of early morning became a very precious space, perhaps because it was only used for our quiet sittings. The architecture and furnishings – especially the wonderful colorings and design of the marvelous rug – contributed to the uniqueness of the setting. I felt a deep sense of awareness, of tranquility, or sharing deeply, of harmony, of bonding in a special way I had never known before.

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For me the “experienting” process begins the “deeper” communication for the day between the members of the group, other “worlds”, and ourselves. Some of these communications are expressed and shared during other events of the day, some carry over and some, also, illuminate our personal experiences. This process creates the basic structure of our week together.

It occurred to me recently that I use the meditation on what I’m experiencing in the moment frequently when I am too wound up to relax and go to sleep at night. I take my attention out of my intellectual center and focus on what I’m experiencing in my moving center and that allows my mind to quiet down. I sometimes employ imagination in that effort. It works for me.

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The “experienting for me was different yet familiar to other exercises I have done.

I have done exercises involving concentrating sensations to different parts of the body and meditation with eyes open and closed, but never just being there, in the present and being open to what happens, letting all “input” (noises, the air on your skin, thoughts, body sensations) flow through the awareness. After 20 minutes or so, vision would change in and out in a kind of dimming extra-peripheral vision. At these times I was aware of every flicker of movement of everyone without concentrating. This would fade in and out much the same way thoughts flowed in and away. With eyes closed there would be shapes with sometimes intense colors, which would again, fade in and out. I was hesitant about speaking during the period for fear of the enhanced state disappearing, although I think now that it is a way to further ground the experience, much in the way open eyes prevents the time with closed eyes from becoming a dream state. I think there were similarities between this and ILM and dialogue.

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Social Dreaming Matrix

Dreams as “Group Dreams”

That images and themes would be shared in the dreams of those participating in a group endeavor, as they were in our dreams, was for me not as remarkable as that the dreams themselves were reflecting something of the underlying dynamic (unconscious) of the Group. The presenter in the case of the “group dream” was no more than the person reading the dream. In reading “my” dream, it lost its “my-ness” and was as if in fact it had been “dreamt” by the Group. Whereas typically my own dreams have initially remained opaque to me, those of others often are easier to see into, making it possible to draw from them, meaningful insights. The dreams I read in the Group lent themselves to view without the opacity that faces me on initial approach to my own dreams. They carried for me the feel of the dream of an “other”, in this case the “Group”, and spoke to me of what was taking place in the Group at its unconscious level. A good example of that, was the dream that had felt more personal to me and because of that I did not plan to present it. But when I did read it on Karen s urging, that dream became for me, a Group dream.

In this way I became aware that there was in this Group a field of some Thing other than me or us. This was evident to me in the other sessions as well. There were, to my way of seeing, correspondences in our collages as well, and they also spoke to me of the Group Dynamic, and not just of my dynamic in the Group.

I saw the Group as a “container” and much more than that. It played the role of “mediator” and “generator” of an “energy” that “in-formed” and maybe even “created”. It was palpable in the “Experienting” sessions as well as in the Dialogue sessions. On a couple of occasions I saw the Group “work” in the Structural Communication sessions and in Movements.

The potential in the “entity” that is The Group, the Group born from us in which we participated, worked in, through, from, and with, seems to be enormous, and the dreams that the Group dreams can be real doors to discovering the possibilities inherent in the Group and which the Group gives to us.
Conti

Reflections on the Social Dreaming Matrix

Dreaming to me has always seemed to be a personal, individual, unconnected, solitary process. One is reluctant to share all of the intense feelings, emotions and strange inexplicable occurrences in dreams for the fear of what they may say about you personally. You may be unmasked by your revelations. In social dreaming there are no “personal” dreams, only the dreams of the group, interpretations are meant to apply to the group and there can be as many interpretations shared as there are people in the group. Each brings their own interpretation to the shared meaning of the dream and in so doing helps unite the group thought. The sharing of the dreams forms a connection between dreamers which individual/solitary dreaming cannot make, especially when the dreams involve intensely emotional and personal sequences.

In the actual practice of the Social Dreaming Matrix I was surprised at the often-common images and occurrences-death, funerals, futile activities, religious artifacts, secrets, forgotten anguish.

For me, the telling of the dreams was a catharsis. When there were uneasy feelings or reservations about images or people in the dream, they disappeared when spoken. The dreams became material and were able to be shared by the group as opposed to remaining in imagination (very similar to using the MM s to make thoughts material in structural communications). There were also several times, when emotional response was strong, when I was able to watch myself read my own dream, as an observer. I see real value in the process in creating a connection from dreaming, a process which many dismiss as not real, or imaginary, which in our modern world, translates into “of no value”. I see a similarity between sharing of personal dreams/feelings and the sharing of responses to experienting during the process.
Craig

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The Movements

At the 2000 Sweet Briar Conference that was held the last full week of June, one of the activities that we pursued was “movements”.  The movements are a combination of body movements, and sometimes “inner work”, that are constructed in such a way so that we can’t “think about them as we are doing them”.  It is necessary to let the body do the work.  G.I. Gurdjieff brought these “movements” to the west at the beginning of the twentieth century.

For most of the time during the week we worked on “Number 2”.  It is part of the series of movements that Gurdjieff designed and Thomas De Hartman wrote the music for.  Number 2 is a long and advanced movement. It works not only with the body, but with the “inner man”, too.  I played the piano for the movements.  The group, though inexperienced, worked with depth and the right attitude.  The efforts made by the movements teacher, Tony Blake, in trying to give the participants a
“taste” of the movements before we began working on Number 2 helped a great deal.
Annasue

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Tissue Paper Collage

On first seeing the marvelous colors of the paper set out for use, it strikes me that nothing I can do could improve on that impact. However the seduction of the color combinations and the moods they can conjure up – restful; dramatic, unsettling, joyful, and so on and on  – becomes irresistible and the messing about begins.  Most of the time I was trying to get an effect intentionally.    

Those people who worked fast were working in the original spirit of the practice, which I understand to be material for use in psychoanalysis or psychotherapy, in a similar way to “doodles” or ink spots.   I find it very difficult not to have an image or vision or effect in mind that I try to work towards, which defeats that object.     Perhaps we should have given more time to reading  those who produced a good quantity of collages quite spontaneously and without considering, rather than the labored results of a few like mine; not being a trained psychoanalyst, or therapist, I would have found that very interesting.  

My efforts at home without Karen’s essential discipline, have drifted further and further into intentional “pictures” when someone asks for a specific subject.   These are enormous fun and sometimes quite pleasing  – best when I can stay between intent and spontaneity, just keeping the subject at the very back of my mind only.    I was asked for something suitable for a Healing Group’s meeting room.   I was quite surprised at what came out with no hint of a ‘subject’ in them. They were accepted as suitable, to my relief.   How can one make a painting or drawing of “healing” in a conventional manner that has any meaning.  Not me anyway!
Carol

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Median Group Dialogue

Source: Blake, A. G. E., Harvard Club and Sweet Briar Two Thousand/jw

Assumption: your own meaning-signal can be boosted by engaging in an environment of other meaning-signals no matter if at first these other signals (like the music in ILM) appear to have no relevance at all; your own meaning-signal can come into resonance with that of others if you allow the sequence of speaking to unfold without imposed controls

Method: people gather to speak according to what emerges for them to speak (and when to speak); there is no leader or theme; there are no rules of order

Operation: as far as possible, participants keep in touch with what is happening right here and now rather than in the usual habits of speech referring back to memories, expressing opinions or theories, laying down the law, solving problems, etc.; just let it flow

Result: we emphasize flow as a third important characteristic of meaning and dialogue can result in greater facility with flow which enhances rapid communication and constant updating into the present moment

The three principles of boosting, resonance and flow cover most of the phenomena of meaning-connectivity. They introduce you into the web of meaning, which always remains open, explorative and enabling creative fusion. Active information must act and cannot be collected in static (passive) repositories. Given adequate meaning bandwidth, you can utilize any medium to effect.

Tips on Median Groups From Patrick de Mare and Blake

Enter into the experience that others are creating for you. Accept the being of a person, their integrity. Challenge for the sake of truth. Address questions in framework and intent of the speaker. Anything said must come from a place of feelings and intellect and have meaning for the speaker. Recognize different levels of intensity and quality. Facilitate higher levels of intensity by affirming, negating, mediating, enhancing, refining, and clarifying. Put yourself actively in the situation. Take a risk. Bear pain of contradiction. Do not accept any terminology or framework to be adequate. Do not fix roles in the group. Be natural, individual, immediate and concrete. Learn to be careful with your language, to use words correctly

It is a free floating group discussion. The group has no agenda and no leader. It does have a convener but not a facilitator.

Kinship has to do with blood relationships. Kith refers to neighbors, to social dimensions. Kinship has to be cultivated. It is not instinctual.

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Structural Communication and The Hexagonia Game

Source: Blake A. G. E. Harvard Club and Sweet Briar Two Thousand/ jw

Introduction to Structural Communication

Assumption: you are able to grasp a whole complex of meanings in an implicate way, that can be made explicate by a structured communication

Method: the complex field of meanings is articulated as an array of distinct molecules of meaning , which are then used to design answers or interpretations in response to questions, which responses can be tested for critical combinations of inclusion and exclusion.

Operation: the student responds to questions and his or her responses elicit further information; the feedback keeps the student in suspension (does not tell him or her that they are right or wrong about any one factor) allowing him or her to enlarge bandwidth in the act of coming to understand what the author sees

Result: the field of meaning is seen in depth by the structured process of participation, such that the bandwidth of meaning is increased

Going into depth from the surface field of meaning expands bandwidth and is experienced as understanding. The surface field is that of basic semantics knowing what the words mean. Understanding is reflected in being able to handle the meaning of items in combination, in relation to different contexts.

The Hexagonia Game: A Visual Tool for Structured Communication

Basic Ideas

Molecules of Meaning, MMs, can be mapped out to display a combined meaning that expresses an idea or argument. The way we map reveals our worldview, how we make sense of things and what is real for us.

Ideas can be broken down into subsidiary thoughts. Relationships between thoughts can take five forms:
Focus: showing the core or pivotal thought by placing in a central position.
Contrast: showing oppositions between thoughts by linking with a solid line.
Facets: showing complementary aspects similar to the above–by linking with a double arrow.
Movements: showing direction of argument —this leading to that by using single arrows.
Rotation: showing lateral thoughts by writing the thoughts at right angles to each other.

Visual technology enables us to project our thoughts into a common space. It is visual because the most effective way of doing this is to make something that can be seen and read. If a group of people project their thoughts this way, then each of them can see what the others think. The shared space enables the group to talk about what their thoughts mean. This includes how they are related and what they imply in terms of action that can be taken. Thinking, then, is an active reflection – on the thoughts we are aware of.

The ability to move the thought objects about allows the group to see new and different kinds of connections. The use of magnetic media in hexagon form aids the mobility of thought and the discovery of new relationships, which leads to further questions. Thinking is a movement and not a static state.

The greatest power of visual technology is in enabling a group of people to engage with each other s thinking.

Method

Step 1: Create individual Molecules of Meaning MMs using consistent phrasing. Make the meaning as clear as possible. Write each MM on a magnetic hexagon tile.
Step 2: Create a knowledge soup by placing all hexagons on the magnetic board in random order.
Step 3: Develop patterns of meaning by linking and finding relationships between the posted MMs.

• Look for focus, contrast, facets, movements and rotation.
• Ask questions of the assemblage that can be answered by a subset of the array
• In grouping the MMs be prepared to explain what was included and what was excluded.
• As the process proceeds, refine the MMs and add new ones as needed.
• Study the blank spots and think what might be missing. Add
• For each pattern of relationships, develop an overview statement or headline that captures your conclusion.
• Record your results on paper. Then recombine the MMs in the search for new meaning. Repeat the process until the potential combinations and interpretations are exhausted

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Blake-Based Molecules of Meaning

(Potential product or service offerings from JW notes during Structured Communication Sessions)

1. Eliciting Median Group Dialogue
2. Creating and Experiencing the Emergence a Group Culture
3. Structural Communication
4. Movements for Constipated Managements
5. Sytematics for Organizational Design
6. Awakening Creative Intelligence
7. Tuning-up the Aesthetic with Karen s Kollage
8. Creating Conditions for Emergence and Self Organization
9. Toponomics, the Study of Place
10. Baltimore Explorations
11. Event Design for Creative Emergence
12. Intelligent Enneagram
13. Experienting (meditation)
14. Awakening of Democracy

Note: Good documentation exists for most of these modules

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Immediate Learning Method

ILM (immediate learning method, or instant local meaning)

Assumption: you have in you a meaning-signal, which contains new and needed active information that, in your usual working context, is so, obscured by interference that you cannot read it (but perhaps feel it as a kind of background)

Method: you immerse yourself in an environment of music, or images, or many such things at the same time, as a source of meaning-signals that can combine with your own and enhance its strength

Operation: as your meaning-signal is enhanced and you begin to register it, it evolves to reach higher levels

Result: eventually, the process becomes one of creative instants which you can store as holographic forms that you can re-create at any future time by active imagination.

Comments on ILM (Instant Learning Method) Sweet Briar 2000

“The hillsss are alive… with the sound of muuussic…” This line from the popular musical, deserves special emphasis on the words, “are alive”, and reminds me of the brilliant picture of life made available through the ILM, and through the direct contact with meaning it affords us.

The hills, may be considered our usual ways of listening to music, but they are allowed to “come alive”, by perceiving music in this new way, and, there is definitely “gold in them there hills”! This method allows the music to speak of many possibilities and meanings that are not made aware by casual listening habits; however, I don’t think the composer of the Sound of Music would have ever gone for a chorus of: “The hills become aware… through the media of music…” It just doesn’t flow, ya know.

I tend to liken ILM to a kind of divination for gold anyway, the treasure being a certain kind of illumination buried in the hills of our awareness, which can be communicated through the sound structures of music. I walk over these hills, trying to divine insight into my personal inquiries. Now maybe I will try walking a different road toward discovery. A vast terrain is available for this divination, and, like the meaning hidden between the lines of the music that we engage with, the terrain is hiding it’s gold in the form of possible insights and answers.

It is much like investigating some unexplored territory when using ILM. The hills of awareness do indeed come alive when we put forth a Need to get a response to our inquiries, and by holding onto that need throughout the dialogue we develop with the creative media of sound. Our awareness is the divinator. The sound becomes the divining rod, and is the instrument used to magnetize itself toward the illumination of the object of our exploration. Illumination detected through the structure of the music. Using music in this way is the act of “panning”, and like water flowing through the sieve of a gold miner s pan, the sound leaves behind nuggets of information and meaning which may enter our perception by way of an unaccustomed portal that opens in the awareness. This act reminds me of how often our creative environment is speaking to our needs through the ever-present media that surrounds us, and also how often it is that I am not tuned in to that communication! That is why I say the “portal” is unaccustomed. Using a special language, meaning and information enter through this opening.

Sound turns to light, illuminating those questions and answers that we hold. There is the need to know, there is the music, and there is a questioning. The music sets these in motion. Even the room we are in, and the presence of the other divinators, join in this movement of dialogue, and in the center of this motion is a stillness, where the question unfolds into meaning.

From the perspective of this still center the portal opens. The whole environment is speaking something to me. The music concentrates this language, as I converse with something that is trying to shed light on the essence of my investigation. Through this opening comes a knowing of potentials and possibilities relating to my need. I now try to understand what it is I need to know.

You could see this in terms of a painting, where the music sets up a particular kind of sonic canvas, which is used to peek into the areas of our exploration. The opening of our perception during ILM allows the information we gather to brush onto our canvas, as we try to grasp the resultant painting. I want to behold the emergent meaning lying behind these brushstrokes.

On a certain practical level, our reality and life circumstances, can be seen as the combination of arrays consisting of myriad different possible realities, which when finally realized, produce various outcomes within our lives. With ILM, I can begin a unique exploration of these possibilities’ combinations and construction that may bring forth a new picture of reality relating to my inquiry that is Ideal for my current need. In my view, this can also aid toward forming a reconciliation, or a resolution, of these infinite possibilities. I need perspective in order to achieve this. From this perspective, I may observe, or even help shape by means of my perception, this new picture of reality consisting of these resolutions, a picture that also will hopefully result in a much deeper understanding of the meaning within life.

That which speaks to one during this method, seems to use a unique language to shed its light on our investigation. Something in me knows this language. There is a mystery in just where the language comes from. Right now, I hear crickets chirping and some traffic noise outside the window. Shall I attempt to engage in a dialogue with it? Yes, it seems even with these sounds, there is something there, within the structure of them, which is speaking to me. The thing is, can I remember the language of that which speaks? Can I understand in fullness the meaning that is being communicated?
Anthony S

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Reflections on the Design of the Workshop (Saturday Night Dialogue)

1. We practiced containment by keeping to the times in the schedule. There was spontaneous interaction between the seven aspects of the daily cycle throughout the day and the week.
?William Isaacs defines a container for dialogue as a “vessel or setting in which the intensities of human interaction can safely emerge.”
2. I viewed the whole week as a much-needed onslaught on traditional, encrusted conceptual programming. It provides me with a pathway to depth and creative intelligence. It was a deconditioning experience.
3. Physicality (touch, heft, movement, placing, tearing, gluing) is an important ingredient in awakening creative intelligence. The physical movement of the Magnote hexagons stimulated the making of new connections. In contrast, once something is written on a flip chart it is fixed.
4. Bennett s Systematics, which was referred to on occasion, is not an ideological fix; it is set of structured tools for discovering patterns, relationships and insights, all of which leads to new meaning. The geometric forms, which represent terms from 1 (monad) though 4 (tetrad) to 9 (enneagram), are the mnemonics of earlier times. They help to stimulate the thought process.
Note that the structure of writing music occurred in the west.
5. In the awakening of intelligence in a group, participants individually acquire a vividness that enables a special contribution.
6. Logovisual technology operates at three levels:
Meaning Will
Visual Being
Technology – Function
7. Event Design. Using the enneagram form, one can array the seven steps of the daily cycle around the perimeter of the circle. And then in true enneagram-process fashion explore the pattern of interrelationships between steps.

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Reflections on Returning Home (Sunday Morning Dialogue)

1. We experienced the creating of a multi dimensional culture in a week s time. It takes structured time, cycles of diverse but reinforcing activity, and hard work. Duversity helps us make it up, to create our own identity and culture vs. be bogged down by traditional culture.
2. We now face a transition to a disparate reality. We should note how life appears different.
3. We enjoyed contributing to the practices and the future of Duversity. The facilitators stayed in their role throughout.
4. To assimilate this experience, to achieve closure and to reenergize self, each must take action and experiment with the learning. Find your own way of doing it. Do not follow Tony s rules.
5. Dialogue in the Median Group can seem elusive, but it is what people do and things move forward. Making present higher intelligence is the coalescence of the diversity between people. You cannot separate learning something from doing something.
6. Seasons of Awakening, every period has it s own quality. How might this apply to the Duversity year? Similarly can we design the Duversity year using a structure similar to the Working Group?
7. Fill-in the blanks
B ________
L earning
A wakening
K _________
E nergizing
K ollaging
A _________
R econciling
E _________
N _________

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Experiments with the Learning, Future Possibilities and Connections

1.The Egypt Trip with John Anthony West October 22 November 7, 2000
2. The next Working Group possibly scheduled for early December 2000.
3. A Working Group scheduled fro June 2000
4. Jim W s follow-up experimental activity:
Did movements, collage, and hexagonia with grandchildren. They loved it.
Still cleaning-up.
Tried median dialogue, hexagonia and collage with management group of a retirement community.
Dialogue was the most valued session. Used clusters of hexagons to summarize the session.
Used two pages of hexagon clusters to restate the conclusions of a 26 page consulting report. New insights popped out.
Tried to organize a session between Tony B. and JGB-oriented consultants.

Final Comment on Sweet Briar Event

It was a wonderful group of people, some old friends it was good to see again, some new friends that it was good to get to know and a good group to dialog with and share experiences with.  Toni’s ideas are always stimulating and Karen’s activities take me to a place I don’t visit often enough.  The campus is a wonderful environment and as a client of mine is fond of saying in reflection after an all day meeting, “lunch was good.”