Links to the monthly themes we are offering for the Circle Sharing Process.
Image: Bryn Parish, Unsplash
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REARVIEW MIRROR, CLEARVIEW FORWARD? Part 2
As we let you know last month we are taking the feedback responses from October and November into our group gathering at the Wangapeka Study and Retreat Centre on December 4th. In this light we would ask you all to do your best to have your responses in by December 3rd at the latest. Inconveniently NZ operates between a half day and a full day ahead of those of you who live elsewhere and in order for us to have a full slate the 3rd will be the last possible day for inclusion of your feedback in the group gathering. |
Once we have concluded our gathering we will provide you all with the feedback from it that you will be able to take into a final circle. This December feedback will conclude our exploration for 2020.
Here are the questions we would like you to consider:
Here are the questions we would like you to consider:
- What is your understanding of, and relationship to, spiritual community?
- Reflect on the learnings of the Community Sharing Circle process. Where will you go from here?
Image: Louis Reed, Unsplash
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REARVIEW MIRROR, CLEARVIEW FORWARD?
Greetings to all hard-working anchors, and diligent Community Sharing Circle participants, When we imagined this year of exploration, we had no idea at all what to expect. This was completely new territory, and we hope you share some of our amazement about how much has changed since we began in January, both internally and externally. |
We are so grateful to you all for your willingness to participate. Receiving detailed feedback each month from some of you has been a heart-warming experience that re-affirms our conviction that Buddhanature will sparkle through in surprising ways if we give it the opportunity. It is also exciting to feel the power of the communities that have grown through working with the CSC approach. We knew this could happen from our own years of experimentation, but we were really not certain how it would work without an experiential introduction and trained anchoring.
Some of you have taken this in directions that made sense for your local situation, and we have learned from what we know of your innovations. We have also learned a great deal from the challenge Covid-19 posed, where online circles were the only possibility. There have been groups that have not been able to continue due to the stresses of the situation but we are happy to celebrate the immeasurable, unexpected blessing that the diversity of the remaining 16 groups in 7 countries has been.
This month we have no resource material for you to view and consider, but we invite you to begin the crucial review, evaluation and crystal-ball-gazing period of the Clear Vision project.
October is an opportunity to look backwards, over the range of material you have engaged with in the past nine months. You’ll find it all posted on the website, month by month.
When you meet together, we invite you to consider these questions:
We realise these questions will give you lots to think about. We hope you plan to move around the circle two or three times. Our experience is that our responses become more and more spontaneous, and therefore more profound, when we give ourselves the opportunity to share deeply and personally this way. It is the visceral, feeling responses that lend authenticity to the process as we move away from just thinking about things.
Your feedback, this month and next, will be part of the raw material for a retreat in early December at Wangapeka Study and Retreat Centre in New Zealand. When this project began, we believed that quite a few people from other countries would definitely be here for the retreat! Little did we know that travel restrictions and border quarantines would be the new normal by now. Therefore, we ask that your feedback be rich with detail and nuance as you feed your experience into our wide-spread international collective.
Our aspiration for the retreat is to capture the synthesis from our “in person” collective and share it back to all the Community Sharing Circles to enjoy as the basis for your December gatherings. We hope those groups who meet early in the month will be able to reschedule, or agree to a circle in early January, to make this ompletion of the feedback loop possible.
We’re here to help, if you have questions or need help troubleshooting potential problems. This is new territory for us all, and we look forward to the learning that will arise as we explore together, at a distance.
Some of you have taken this in directions that made sense for your local situation, and we have learned from what we know of your innovations. We have also learned a great deal from the challenge Covid-19 posed, where online circles were the only possibility. There have been groups that have not been able to continue due to the stresses of the situation but we are happy to celebrate the immeasurable, unexpected blessing that the diversity of the remaining 16 groups in 7 countries has been.
This month we have no resource material for you to view and consider, but we invite you to begin the crucial review, evaluation and crystal-ball-gazing period of the Clear Vision project.
October is an opportunity to look backwards, over the range of material you have engaged with in the past nine months. You’ll find it all posted on the website, month by month.
When you meet together, we invite you to consider these questions:
- How is the Clear Vision experience changing you?
- Which of the issues facing us is impacting you the most and how?
- If you were to choose one change you would like to make as a human and dharma practitioner, what would that be?
We realise these questions will give you lots to think about. We hope you plan to move around the circle two or three times. Our experience is that our responses become more and more spontaneous, and therefore more profound, when we give ourselves the opportunity to share deeply and personally this way. It is the visceral, feeling responses that lend authenticity to the process as we move away from just thinking about things.
Your feedback, this month and next, will be part of the raw material for a retreat in early December at Wangapeka Study and Retreat Centre in New Zealand. When this project began, we believed that quite a few people from other countries would definitely be here for the retreat! Little did we know that travel restrictions and border quarantines would be the new normal by now. Therefore, we ask that your feedback be rich with detail and nuance as you feed your experience into our wide-spread international collective.
Our aspiration for the retreat is to capture the synthesis from our “in person” collective and share it back to all the Community Sharing Circles to enjoy as the basis for your December gatherings. We hope those groups who meet early in the month will be able to reschedule, or agree to a circle in early January, to make this ompletion of the feedback loop possible.
We’re here to help, if you have questions or need help troubleshooting potential problems. This is new territory for us all, and we look forward to the learning that will arise as we explore together, at a distance.
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September’s theme builds on the understanding of how our conditioning guides our opinions that we investigated in August.
The pandemic has accelerated many of the trends that "lurk" underground in our increasingly virtually-connected lives. The "information" that we are bombarded with every day comes from multiple sources with their own spins and agendas. The ability of anybody online to have an opinion is feeding the feelings of anxiety and lack of power of millions. |
How can we judge what information is reliable and what is inflationary and, ultimately, damaging?
This months' exploration looks at 'sensemaking', communicating with conspiracy theorists, and follows up with a refreshing breath of interconnectedness, in case our brains and hearts get too stressed out!
This months' exploration looks at 'sensemaking', communicating with conspiracy theorists, and follows up with a refreshing breath of interconnectedness, in case our brains and hearts get too stressed out!
- VIDEO:
- ARTICLE:
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A Wild Love for the World by Joanna Macey
and the Work of Our Time Shambhala. Foreword by David Abram |
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There are more resources available around this theme on the website under All Resources: Challenges to our Ability to Engage / 4. Alternative Media. The first two articles under this sub-heading are relevant.
We’ve heard that some Sharing Circles are experiencing difficulties arising from interpersonal conflict. We invite you all to review the basic principles of this group process at your next gathering (see below). Some groups are doing this every time they meet. The first principle of this meditation on listening allows space for each person to speak their truth. This can be very difficult to do and to be with. If we can sit with strong feelings (our own, other people’s) in the sacred space of the circle we will strengthen our ability to remain receptive to the pain of the world. Listening with an open heart to multiple, conflicting views that demonstrate our separateness brings us together as human beings struggling to understand.
If you are unable to see a clear way through to resolution we are also available for consultation.
If you are unable to see a clear way through to resolution we are also available for consultation.
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20/20 A YEAR OF CLEAR VISION
COMMUNITY SHARING CIRCLE GUIDEBOOK AND FAQS |
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This month we move into the last quarter of our Clear Vision exploration. The final months’ themes invite a reflective questioning of our experience in this challenging world.
This month we explore factors that influence how we interpret and filter the information that shapes our experience of day-to-day living. |
Unlike fish, we must question the water we swim in. Lenses of culture, religion, nationality, race, gender, education, personality and so on limit or enhance our capacity to experience and think. This month’s resource material examines viewing through three of these many lenses.
First, an insightful personality inventory reveals underlying patterning; second, a passionate Black Lives Matter analysis shatters assumptions and un-examined biases; and finally, an interview with a physicist David Bohm challenges the very basis of our view of reality.
The whole movie (1:11:00) is very good and well worth it, if you have the time to watch. If not, then watch from 45:00 min onward (about 25 minutes). If that is still too much, then watch from 54:00 min onward (about 15 minutes).
First, an insightful personality inventory reveals underlying patterning; second, a passionate Black Lives Matter analysis shatters assumptions and un-examined biases; and finally, an interview with a physicist David Bohm challenges the very basis of our view of reality.
- PERSONALITY TEST
- BLACK LIVES MATTER
- DAVID BOHM
The whole movie (1:11:00) is very good and well worth it, if you have the time to watch. If not, then watch from 45:00 min onward (about 25 minutes). If that is still too much, then watch from 54:00 min onward (about 15 minutes).
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The team here in NZ wish you well in this time of disturbance and change. As the corona virus is roiling our societies and our conceptions of how things should be, we are simultaneously being challenged to face up to a wide range of inequities that shape the very basis of our modern, interconnected world.
From the outrage that the Black Lives Matter movement is stirring, to the huge levels of debt employed to neutralise the effects of the pandemic, we are in the process of gifting our children massive unknowns in terms of expectations and legacy effects. |
This month we offer the theme of asking, "How well are we meeting the needs and expectations of the next generation?"
They will have to deal with the results of choices we have made and continue to make. This is no different from previous generations coming into their power, but now there are immediate planetary consequences for all living beings tied to the decisions made.
Is it possible, in the tsunami of the myriad challenges we face, to express a message of kindness and inclusion that will inspire our future decision makers to make more wholesome choices for the world?
ARTICLES
OR HERE IF NY TIMES WON’T OPEN FOR YOU
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5x617mzq2i53qlw/Opinion%20_%20Raising%20My%20Child%20in%20a%20Doomed%20World%20-%20The%20New%20York%20Times.pdf?dl=0
VIDEOS
They will have to deal with the results of choices we have made and continue to make. This is no different from previous generations coming into their power, but now there are immediate planetary consequences for all living beings tied to the decisions made.
Is it possible, in the tsunami of the myriad challenges we face, to express a message of kindness and inclusion that will inspire our future decision makers to make more wholesome choices for the world?
ARTICLES
- RAISING MY CHILD IN A DOOMED WORLD
OR HERE IF NY TIMES WON’T OPEN FOR YOU
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5x617mzq2i53qlw/Opinion%20_%20Raising%20My%20Child%20in%20a%20Doomed%20World%20-%20The%20New%20York%20Times.pdf?dl=0
- WHAT’S POSSIBLE BY EMBRACING MODELS THAT HELP THE PLANET RATHER THAN HINDERING IT
VIDEOS
- OSCARS QUEST
- SANDCASTLE
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This month we are offering a smorgasbord of resources that explore aspects of economic understanding.
At this time of challenge, as we in NZ move down the levels of restrictions towards more freedom, the question “what is Clear Vision?” arises strongly in the minds of the 2020 Team. |
Embedded as we are in our relationships…family, friends, society, culture, planet, we can lose sight of wholeness by making distinctions based on our preferred comfort levels, our experience of “us” versus “them”. Clear Vision expresses this dancing wholeness, arising from the unimpeded, empty nature of mind, primordially compassionate and wise.
COVID-19’s challenge has unified most of the world in learning how to protect its citizens. This collective willingness now presents the opportunity to consider “the normal” — how our societies have evolved, been modelled and manipulated. From turmoil comes the opportunity for change — do we really want things to “get back to normal?”
Do we want our new “normal” to value people and the environment? How are we to meet the challenges of climate change, wealth inequality, rising threats to ecological and human health without deeply questioning the structures and attitudes that brought us to this place. Is economic growth and monetary profit the best indicator of whether a society and the planet is doing well?
We are offering a number of resources that we consider to be interesting and engaging. Pick and choose according to interest and if you want to explore some of these ideas further go to the website under the “Social Challenges” sub-heading in the "All Resources” page: https://www.2020ayearofclearvision.com/all-resources.html
VIDEO
TEXT
COVID-19’s challenge has unified most of the world in learning how to protect its citizens. This collective willingness now presents the opportunity to consider “the normal” — how our societies have evolved, been modelled and manipulated. From turmoil comes the opportunity for change — do we really want things to “get back to normal?”
Do we want our new “normal” to value people and the environment? How are we to meet the challenges of climate change, wealth inequality, rising threats to ecological and human health without deeply questioning the structures and attitudes that brought us to this place. Is economic growth and monetary profit the best indicator of whether a society and the planet is doing well?
We are offering a number of resources that we consider to be interesting and engaging. Pick and choose according to interest and if you want to explore some of these ideas further go to the website under the “Social Challenges” sub-heading in the "All Resources” page: https://www.2020ayearofclearvision.com/all-resources.html
VIDEO
- Seven ways to transform 21st Century Economics -video and text combined
- Doughnut Economics
- How Should Global Wealth be Distributed
TEXT
- Humans are not Resources. The democratisation of work.
- 16 Teachings from Covid -19
- Nipun Mehta: Gift Ecology
- The Coronation - Exploring the possible longterm effects of the corona virus. Eisenstein
- Declaration of Interdependence
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The theme revolves around the question of ways to help rebalance our experience with the world. There are also many supporting articles around this theme on the website.
Video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e6_cY3-J3o& Photographs of our amazing world: https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2018/12/17/lose-yourself-in-our-planets-beauty-with-the-winners-of-wiki-loves-earth/ Two written articles about nature and how our language helps to shape how we experience that relationship. http://www.dailygood.org/more.php?n=8312 https://www.dumbofeather.com/articles/the-lost-words/ |
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Deep Adaptation
The Paper: http://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf The Video: https://youtu.be/DAZJtFZZYmM Translations of the paper in various languages may be found here: https://jembendell.com/2019/05/15/deep-adaptation-versions/ |
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The Work That Reconnects
http://www.karmatube.org/videos.php?id=8238 The Greatest Danger https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/climate-solutions/opinion/2008/02/02/the-greatest-danger/ The Six Rules of Listening www.dailygood.org/story/2449/erich-fromm-s-six-rules-of-listening-maria-popova/ |
