Practice

Interview with Bonnitta Roy on all things We Space/ Collective Intelligence

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Bonnie asked to interview me after reading my master’s thesis, and in preparation for a summit she’ll be hosting at Alderlore in November on Collective Presencing/ Insighting.

I enthusiastically said yes! I consider Bonnie a leader in what I call Evolutionary-Being-as-the-World-Together in my thesis, and she was definitely among the invisible arena of an audience that I felt I was writing to in my paper. I was excited to talk shop with her– the result is a great conversation about We Space that shoots off like fireworks in quite a few places.

Here’s the second part:

I have three (critical) thoughts after watching these again, along with a great amount of joy:

1) I wish that we had talked a little more about what motivation arises when personality based motivations are seen through– more about what I call Awakened We Spaces in my paper. We talk mostly about Causal We Space–which is awesome, and relevant, since that is where the largest edge of the work is. But in terms of motivation, it would have been pretty amazing to speak about what how and why a group awakening arises, and what that has to do with the developmental trajectory and differences between a dualistic and generative/creative mindset, which we do talk about.

2) The bit about judgment / discrimination isn’t as fleshed out as I’d like it to be– though it’s a very tough and nuanced point. Perhaps some more elucidation could have been helpful.

3) We didn’t really get to talking about our 2nd person space, except briefly– my question then is would it be worth it? What would happen if two (or more) practitioners got together and video taped it? Would it be worth watching other people We Space practice?

What is “We Space?”

/ andrewvenezia / 5 Comments

This post represents the heart of my thesis— after doing ten in-depth interviews with people skilled and experienced in facilitating We Space, I coded the interviews to come up with a list of themes that were present throughout the interviews. (A more in-depth methodology is presented in the thesis itself, starting on page 7).

This is what I came up with. The themes are presented here without elaboration– obviously there is a great deal of elaboration in the paper itself, and I will continue to be posting regularly about the contents of the thesis in the coming months.

Appendix H: List of Themes from In-Depth Interviews

1) We Space is a distinct and newly emergent intersubjective state with great potential for addressing our human crises at this moment in time.

2) We Spaces differ based on who is participating in a We Space, what the intent, goal, or object of the Space is, and the practices that bring a We Space about.

3) We Space entails a set of practices that operate on our subtle and psychological boundaries, making transparent our self-identifications and reality-locations.
3a) We Space has a great potential for healing and nourishing the individual psyche.
3b) We Space surfaces Shadow material and helps to integrate it.

4) We Space enacts an interpersonal field of awareness.
4a) The causal field is a space of love and compassion.
4b) We Space is a space of presence.
4c) Causal realization reveals the interpenetration and mutual emptiness of           foundational boundaries and the mental/interpretive categories that result, such as I/We, Inner/Outer, Doing/Being, etc.
4d) Causal We Space is transpersonal.
4e) We Space is a perspectival practice that is inherently post-metaphysical, and post-abstract.
4f) We Spaces rely on a fundamentally second-person orientation of respect for the other’s subjectivity where the other is not reduced to a third-person object, and can build upon this to present a new perspective from the relationship itself.

5) Out of the field of causal awareness an awake and ontologically unique interpersonal ‘shared mind’ can arise that is dependent upon each but not reducible to any of the participants.
5a) Awakened We Space is evolutionarily significant, and both fundamentally service- and future-oriented.
5b) Awakened We Space is a sacred experience.

6) The state of We Space points towards a possible acquired stage of cultural development.

7) There are many features and injunctions of and for We Space
7a) We Space relies on ‘container-setting,’ the establishment of an environment of earnestness, trust, sincerity, intimacy, and vulnerability between participants.
7b) Personal familiarity and affinity, a sense of community, helps the work ‘go deep.’
7c) We Space relies on the full participation and responsibility of each participant.
          7d) We Space involves following the energy and intensity in the relational space between individual participants.
          7e) We Space involves the practice of transparency and clear communication.
          7f) We Space is supported by commitment and agreements among practitioners.
          7g) We Space takes a great deal of effort from participants.
          7h) We Space is a practice of discernment.
          7i) We Space requires silence and deep listening, and is a practice of speaking from silence/the depths of oneself.
          7j) We Space is a practice of non-exclusion.
          7k) We Space is a practice of impersonality.
          7l) We Space is a practice of curiosity, which opens into a field of living inquiry.
          7m) We Space is a practice that both requires and strengthens our post-ego, integrated selves.
          7n) We Space is synergistic and catalytic.

8) We Space allows for a Meta-Sangha.

Finally! My Thesis/Final Project!

/ andrewvenezia / 5 Comments

After a long wait, here is the link to my Final Project for my Master’s Degree (Venezia-I-We-All), a paper on a research project that I conducted on We Space/ Intersubjective Awareness Practices. [Edit 10/14: See Below for a table of contents]

In the coming weeks, I plan on posting excerpts and unpacking my thesis here–so if you want the short and most important points, stay tuned.

The wait has been long because I’ve been waiting for my paper to be returned by my advisor–that still has not happened, and it’s been in the mail for over a month by this point. So, I am now taking a slightly different orientation: rather than pretend like this is some final and complete thing, I recognize that my work on explicating, advancing, and co-creating/co-exploring Intersubjective Practices will continue to iterate as long as I am in relationship, and so letting this out to be engaged with by a broader community will help further refine and hone my ability to do this.

Enjoy!

1: Quotes: some quotes to set the mood. 
2: Introduction: Overview of the paper, themes, reasons for writing, etc.
5: Methods. This introduces the methods that I used to generate data. Likely only interesting for theory-heads.
10: Second-Person Results: What is We Space? The meat of the paper. I suggest that if squeezed for time (or if you find the format repetitive) you scan through checking the italicized section titles, reading any sections that are interesting.
48: Discussion of Second-Person
51: First Person Results: Introduction and discussion of the psychometric data.
56: Results and Discussion: Intuitive Inquiry: This section contains a final set of ‘assumptions’ or ‘lenses’ through which I now (or at least, in June) understand We Space practice.
62: Third-Person Results and Discussion: a (very) short discussion of the survey I conducted.
64: Conclusion: A New Way of Being As The World Together: A summary of themes and learnings from the project.
68: Appendix A: Development, Post-Dialectics, and Post-Metaphysics: A roughshod explanation of some of the background/implicit psychological dynamics of development that I am drawing on, and how these effect our notions of what is real, and the resulting worlds we inhabit. Helpful to get a sense of what I mean by “metaphysical boundaries,” for one thing.
76: Appendix B: Practical examples of ‘boundary emptiness,’ along with write-ups of some experiences of interpersonal emptiness.
84: Appendix C: Subtle, Causal, Development, State, and Vantage Point: A discussion of the frameworks applied to the practice experiences.
87: Appendix D: Examples of We Space Practice: Helpful for one not familiar with “We Space.”
91: Appendix E: Original Intuitive Inquiry Lenses, used to compare with final lenses to track changes in my own understanding.
93: Appendix F: My Interviewees, and their associated groups. Helpful for those looking for practices and groups.
95: Appendix G: Interview Questions: The list of guiding questions that I used to guide the Second-Person In Depth Interviews.
96: Appendix H: List of Themes from In-Depth Interviews: The Bare-bones answer to “What are We Spaces,” as emerged in my coding of interviews, presented without explanation.