Dear Robyn (and all),
I want to make it clear, once again, from a natural inclusional understanding, that I would not expect anyone to have exactly the same view as anyone else - indeed I would regard that as impossible.
But what I am suggesting is that it could be helpful for us, via diverse paths, to come to work with the same underlying natural (as distinct from abstract) logic, which recognises how we can all simultaneously be 'in common' and 'diverse'.
Correspondingly, I would venture to suggest that your 'magic moment' arose from somewhere far deeper than (whilst including) 'alongsidedness', and that understanding (as distinct from theorising) this would indeed be extraordinarily helpful.
I think this understanding only becomes possible when we avoid or escape the mutually reinforcing logic and language of axiomatic self- or group-definition, and thereby unblock the way for agape.
In other words, it only becomes possible when we human beings unwittingly or wittingly 'open the whole', thereby allowing our 'self- and group-identity' to include and be included in receptive spatial context, within, without and most importantly throughout. Otherwise we get stuck in narcissistic self-reference, contradiction and endless cycles of reciprocal dialectical denial of self- and/or other-identity, which is a breeding ground for misunderstanding and conflict.
Warmest
Alan
----- Original Message -----
From: Robyn Pound
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2010 8:40 AM
Subject: Re: Is what I am doing a good idea?
Joan, Sara, Alan and Alan,
I am relating to so much of this conversation that I don't know which part to respond to to remain coherrent. Such a shame language does not allow full access to thought processes. Only a fraction survives the process of putting it into words.
My immediate response to 'magic', which I experience and name quite often when I am working well, was recall of a truely magic moment some years ago. I arrived at a house to visit a newborn first baby of an older couple who I had helped get rehoused in preparation for the birth. The door was opened by the dishevelled giant of a man dressed all in black (by aesthetic chance not fashion I guess). In the crook of his arm was the tiny pristine new baby. I didn't stop my immediate impulse and said, 'Oh look at you standing there with that little baby. I wish I had my camera!' He grunted a syllable or two and as I followed him into the front room noticed him shuffling amongst the debris on a table, 'Where's the camera Jeannie?'
I took the photo but don't actually need to see it to recall the buzz in my chest and the joy I felt. Jack would probably call it a 'life affirming energy' and then say something about 'the future of humanity'. I believe it was a special moment for them too, one of several that cemented our relationship. We were in a moment of sharing that had warmth, connection and we were each willing to try our best for each other - not just me for them. Six years on we are easy with each other as we work on the next round of the complex family stuff they live with. The tasks are not always easy and sometimes I need to stand as professional. We trust each other. That is alongsideness for me, 'being' together as genuinely as happens when you feel close to others.
I actually don't really want to theorise it any more (would it be helpful for readers anyway?) but I do enjoy recalling and sharing magic moments. I don't like using the word love in research because it has such different meanings for people, but I have to say that on a day like that love may just be the best way to explain it.
I don't know Bache's transpersonal psychology but it sounds as if it would sit comfortably with Alfred Adler who continues to be influential for me. His core is the social nature, the interconnectedness of human beings. Adler, probably influenced by Jung in their vienna discussions, expanded his thinking to include the cosmos. An important Adlerian premise that comes to me frequently while reading this list and explains for me the different perspectives we all have on fundamentally similar values at least is the idea that we each generate our our particular personal view of the world and how we belong in it. He called it a unique 'story of life' or lifestyle but this word has different meanings these days. He suggested we create or our unique view through our early years and it persists then unless challenged:
'the most important fact that not heredity and not environment are determining factors.-- Both are giving only the frame and the influences which are answered by the individual in regard to his styled creative power'.
Then looking behind to understand how each of us builds our individual motivations and interpretation of the world:
'There are no ‘chance memories’. Out of the incalculable number of impressions which meet an individual, he chooses to remember only those which he feels, however darkly, to have a bearing on his situation. Thus, his memories represent his ‘story of life’, a story he repeats to himself to warn him or comfort him, by means of past experiences, to meet the future with an already tested plan of action.
For me this helps explain why we cannot all see the world in the same way and how for Alan and Alan and Sara and Joan and me our views can never be exactly the same. We need to build our own understanding that fits our 'bearing on the situation'. This is not to say we cannot change our view but it is very likely that our view will always fit our 'story of life' unless we can change our understanding of our early experiences ...
I recognise some of the aspects of colonialism that Alan R speaks of but of course in 1950s New Zealand my influences were very different. It is the word servant that I cannot take on as my own because of my own personal 'story of life'. For me the impression I get about servant leadership is that it is doing what my good friend suggested we were doing in feminism in the 80s. She said, 'a few of us ill go too far so that a few will follow a little way'.
These are just a few of my thoughts written in short bursts at either end of the working day- may be messy thinking but so many more influences have arrived since i began to write.
To work,
Robyn
--- On Tue, 17/8/10, Joan Walton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Joan Walton <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Is what I am doing a good idea?
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Tuesday, 17 August, 2010, 0:55
Hi Sara
One of the reasons that I was attracted to Christopher Bache's work is that his perception of the world is informed by his own experience, and vice versa - although he does not talk about action research that is what, in my view, he is doing. In my thesis I was initially challenged in my viva on my 'limited' use of writers in my exploration of spirituality - to which my response was (which was accepted) - there are many people who write about their spiritual experiences; and many who either theorise about it or do 'surveys' or interview others in relation to their experiences - but very few who integrate their own understanding of what they mean by spirituality with their own exploration/experience of it - i.e. integrate theory and practice. Bache is one of those few people.
I cannot speak for either Alan or Robyn in relation to whether they would be happy to see (respectively) inclusionality or alongsideness as related to Bache's way of seeing and experiencing things, or even whether they would feel this to be necessary. Jack differentiated the other day between energy that has a cosmic rather than a social grounding - Bache is certainly talking about a cosmic grounding. I will include another quotation, though, which may show that the essence of both inclusionality and alongsideness (as I understand both of those) can probably be seen as integral to Bache's transpersonal psychology (although even in this one section there is the use of the word 'wholeness' which I think Alan is unhappy about):
"When one experiences life as it is - in its "suchness" as the Zen Buddhists say or as a "grace" as the Christians put it - one is inevitably struck by its wholeneess, by the fact that at this profound and utterly simple level, life is not divided into parts. The things that usually fascinate us, the countless objects dangling in store windows or catalogued in our encyclopedias, the people walking down the street each with their different story, all these cease to exist as isolated, separate phenomena. Underneath and within this rich diverstiy, life lives and breathes as One. Its inherent wholeness is not fragmented by its emergent diversity.
The essence of spirituality then, at least as I understand it and try to practise it, is to open this living Oneness or Totality that encompasses and subsumes all distinctions. Wholeness, therefore, is the essence of the art." (p.25)
You have used the words 'magic' and 'magical' more than once. So does Bache. When he sees unexplained things happening in his classroom, he states: "At home I started to call this mysterious interweaving of minds 'the magic'. When the magic happened, the walls of our separate minds seemed to come down temporarily ...When the magic happened, my students and I tapped into levels of creativity beyond our spearate capacities. On a good day the room was so filled with new ideas that after class I too copied down the blackboard. In these elevated conversations, I would sometimes catch glimpses of a deeper trajectory of ideas coming forward and working themselves out in our dialogue." (pp 22-23)
Who would allow you to conduct your doctoral research into this phenomenon? A year or two ago I would have said the Centre for Action Research at the University of Bath with Jack Whitehead as your supervisor! But as the centre no longer exists, that is not possible! However .......any university that allows PhD students to engage in an action research / living theory approach to research, that does not limit students to particular disciplines or have 'boundaries' as to what they see as acceptable ontological assumptions, would give you the space to explore any ideas you wished in relation to understanding and developing your experience in the classroom. You would have to make sure that not just the university, but the supervisor allowed that to happen also - many supervisors would not be comfortable with exploring such ideas. I would see Jack as relatively rare in that respect, certainly in education rather than transpersonal psychology faculties. And I think you, as for me, are motivated by wanting to enquire into the educational influences within our lives, without making assumptions as to where an exploration of those will actually take us.
Best wishes,
Joan
