Growing Personal and Collective Sovereignty
Contemplation in the Morning
It’s 4:30 AM and it’s becoming my normal time to let the dreams of the night slip away and the time to welcome the world between worlds. They are the world of the subconscious mind, centered on me, where I spent most of the last hours of darkness, and the world of awakening to the reality of the new day, where my life is interwoven with all who I care about. All my beloveds: my family and circle of friends, the regenerative DAO communities, my clients, the ginkgo tree, the baby eucalyptus and the fruit trees in our garden, and what is happening on this beautiful and suffering planet…
I don’t choose the focusing question of my contemplative meditation at dawn; it chooses me. Like this: it’s a new day with a new opportunity for making omni-positive choices about using it wisely, but do I have enough sovereignty to do that?
What Is Sovereignty
Question begets questions and I notice that I enjoy challenging myself with this one: What could be my best course of action, which would have positive outcomes for those touched by it? It’s about my response-ability; am I able “to be present to the world and to respond to the world — rather than to be overwhelmed or merely reactive” which is Jordan Hall’s definition of sovereignty, of being a conscious agent.
To test my ability, I envision a series of public actions centered on that sense of sovereignty. The first will be a panel conversation with a group of Integral practitioners (in the domains of education, coaching, organizational leadership, business, and well-being & healthcare) in the audience. The second will be a workshop at a very special gathering of activists in various regenerative social movements and Digital Autonomous Organizations (DAOs).
Do I have what it takes to discover and pursue that course of action? Can I show up in the workshop in a genuine learning mood, not as a teacher but as a co-explorer? What experience design could spark the participants’ desire for a more sovereign life and contribute to their capacity for collective sovereignty?
To answer that question, I check in with myself, using Daniel Schmachtenberger’s 3-vector theory that defines sovereignty as the product of sentience, intelligence, and agency. But first, I need to clarify for myself, why do we need collective sovereignty?
Why We Need Collective Sovereignty
A wise old friend of mine, the late Larry Victor wrote once: “Individual persons are significantly limited in their accurate perception and comprehension of all that may be relevant to their lives and future well-being, from their available stimuli without… helped by others.”
I experience the truth in Larry’s insight, every day. For example, on a walking meditation in a forest, when I look down, I sense what is in front of my feet. When I direct my attention inside, while not losing my path, I can sense my breath, thoughts and feelings. But when I want to sense the broader picture of what on Earth is happening, let alone responding to it from my response-ability I’m clueless if I am left to my own devices.
Noticing that, reminds me of Jordan Hall asking, “Are we taking full responsibility? Are we being careful to grow our sovereignty in alignment with our power? Are we able to take complete responsibility for what we find ourselves capable of doing? … No one is going to come close to being able to do this on their own.”
Sovereignty Panel at the Integral Practitioners Convergence, 8-May-2022
Meridian University, the organizer of the Integral Practitioners Convergence, became one of my fave institutions of new-spirit higher education since I co-taught there a graduate course, shaped as a learning expedition on Transformative Communities of Practice, had a chance to connect with the passion of their (adult) students and faculty working for a more beautiful world.
When I received an invitation from them to moderate an online panel conversation at the Integral Practitioners Convergence 2022, I’ve chosen “Growing Personal & Collective Sovereignty” as its focus and invited some leading lights of their respective fields to be the panelists. 7 of them accepted my invitation.
The virtual doors of the panel will open in 1/2 hour. I know from experience that the quality of my presence at a public event always depends, more than anything else, on how I spend the last 1/2 hour before it. I also know that I don’t want to orchestrate a “talking heads” exercise, rather engage in something fun, fresh, and soul-stirring for all involved.
In my pre-panel messaging, I already shared with my panelist friends that “my ‘sovereignty’ concept builds on but is not limited to what Jordan Hall introduced in this video and what Daniel Schmachtenberger wrote about here. We’re going to explore the implication of expanding “sovereignty” to its collective dimension, and I envision this panel as an ad-hoc action research into the collective sentience, intelligence, and agency of the panel itself.”
I’m using my time before the panel starts to let go of that preconceived idea about an ideal panel process and get ready to be fully present to whatever wants to happen. My other intention is to keep in the back of my mind how we can ignite the interest of the audience (95 people, who signed up) in the subject, while connecting the perspectives of the panel’s 7 public intellectuals and inspiring cross-pollination. 10 minutes left. I fall into meditation.
The screens of the Zoom room started filling in with new and familiar faces as the audience is streaming in. I introduce the panelists, then Geoff Fitch starts off the conversation by referring to the personal and collective sovereignty in the title, telling us that there can be an “amazing dance happening in some place that’s neither the personal nor the collective. And my experience of that, when that happens is that there’s a fulfillment that happens at the individual level and in the collective level simultaneously.
Anneloes Smitsman is reinforcing that perspective by saying “I cannot make a definite boundary between, this is individual and that is collective; the collective lives within us, as much as the individual also lives within the collective. They are nested within one another.” Pavel Luksha confirms that by talking about “the confluence of the personal and collective.”
Otto Scharmer is adding a new perspective that is closer to mine, “there are many great experiences that we all know of, where the boundary is collapsing but I’m particularly interested in where there is interference. Because I think it teaches us something about the territory.”
(Indeed, personal and collective sovereignty interfere and can also synergize with each other. Just how exactly that happens is the most exciting question for me, the question that keeps working on me…)
Otto is sharing a very personal experience of his, which brings us back to the here-and-now of our times, the political reality that touches the life of many of us. Mentioning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he adds:
“Attending to that, to the collective dimension of the experience, makes me feel powerless, depressed, and essentially, disconnected from my own agency. So that’s one end of the spectrum right being sucked into that collective pod in a way too much.”
“And then on the other side of the spectrum, of course, there’s, if I switch everything off, and just you know, being well, that’s solipsism, right? So how is that any better? … I find myself stretched and trying to hold a polarity that in some moments I can, which then is enhancing my agency in meaning-making, and so forth. And in other moments, maybe it’s just tearing me apart. And it’s very difficult.”
I feel very touched by his poignant words and the courage to share them. His inner experience and dilemma are not unlike what I wrote about in my article That Ukrainian grandfather…
The panel can’t bring healing to this pain. We end it in an inconclusive way in all subjects we touched on. Bringing a resolution to them was probably not in the cards, but we raised more questions than it answered. I appreciate that because it opens the possibility for various ways to follow up. As Indra Adnan mentioned after the panel, “We danced on the tip of the iceberg, and it would be good to dip below the surface when we have the chance.” Shall we take the chance?
Sovereignty Workshop at the Regens Unite Event, 20-May-2022
Here we are in the Citizen Corner of Brussels, transformed into a magnificent, temporary autonomous zone, by the enthused work of the Regens Unite gathering’s core team and its supporters.
I sense into the vibes of the gathering’s second day, trying to grok their meaning, the novelty they bring to the embryonic regenerative movement and let it inform what I’ll do in my workshop on Growing Personal & Collective Sovereignty: a condition of regenerative impact.
I announce my workshop with a 60-second teaser inviting to a shared experience of cultivating individual and collective sovereignty, without which, I say, regens would not become an evolutionary force capable of changing the system.
We go to one of the pods set up for the concurrent workshops. I give a brief intro to sovereignty, as a compound competence of sensing, meaning-making, and choice-enacting:
“We are continually receiving signals, both from the world around us and from inside us. We are processing them into some meaning that we can make choices about that inform our actions. How can we do that together in a collaborative undertaking? That’s the subject of my action research and in this workshop, today, I invite you to become co-researchers.”
Then we proceed to a simple sensing exercise:
“Sit comfortably with both feet on the ground… close your eyes… With your out-breath, relax any tension you may feel in your body… Direct your loving attention to any organ of your body… with gratitude for how long it has been faithfully serving you… Take your time to enjoy your relationship with it… … When you’re ready, let your eyes open, gently… and tell the group something about your experience.
Speaking haltingly, looking for words, participants describe how they felt to be in communication with their belly, their heart, and even their brain. I comment and give pointers to how our attention can become like a microscope with a laser-like focus on one’s inner experience.
I introduce a paired practice of meaning-making, processing sensory data to inform action.
“As I said at the beginning of the workshop, we’re going into these experiments with a researcher mindset, and curiosity of where they may lead us. Now, we’re going to explore how we make meaning from stories we hear.”
“Stand up and find a partner for this exercise… Decide who will be the first and who will be the second person… The first person is invited to tell about one action, or two, that she or he will take in the next 30 days, inspired by something learned or experienced in our Regens gathering… While listening to that, the second persons are invited to sense the energy in those plans and their own curiosity about whether they could support the first person in any way… Keep your story of the action that you envision to two minutes…”
“Switch roles… When finished, have a free-flowing exploration between the two of you, whether you can see any possible connections between each other’s plans.”
After listening to sharing the learnings from this exercise, I acknowledge the participants for their capacity to connect dots into an emergent meaning, using their intuition to that, and demonstrating how they may find meaningful connection with someone who may have been a stranger just minutes before.
With that, unfortunately, our time is up, and I don’t have a chance to introduce a whole-group exercise in omni-good choice-making, for which I envisioned a process of collaborative decision-making, building on our sensing and meaning-making capabilities.
The Regens Unite jamboree ends and we feel it just started. There are already plans springing up to hold Regens Unite gatherings in other parts of the world, too…
P.S. The May 8 and May 20 events were daring occurrences of shared learning-out-loud. “Daring” because for the exploration of the fertile field of “sovereignty,” a new discipline that that the thinking of Jordan Hall and Daniel Schmachtenberger is galvanizing, they would have been woefully inadequate. However, they provided some meaningful starting points for further research, the most fascinating for me is this: How is the dynamics in the multi-dimensional relationship between the individual and collective aspects of the three sovereignty vectors, and their compound faculties? But that’s another story… Stay tuned, engage, and grow your sovereignty!