This is how a seed 'loses' itself to become a mighty oak. Simple but quite profound. I felt in need of simplicity. Perhaps you do too.
At a conference on education, Satish Kumar said : We should not see ourselves as individual, wrapped up in ourselves and all our emotions.
The acorn lets go of itself, its ego, its separate individuality. It can only manifest its ‘oak-ness’ by letting go of itself and by being buried in the ground.
Just as we can only find ourselves if we let go of our separateness. The acorn contains the oak.
Friday, July 14, 2006
Simplicity itself
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6 comments:
I understand the physicist David Bohm has some interesting things to say on this topic.
He speaks about an underlying 'implicate order' (which sounds a bit in our terms like the Unmanifest Absolute) from which things 'unfold'. In his terms, the acorn or seed is the 'aperture' for the unfolding of the oak.
Then, when the oak dies, the reverse happens, as it folds up again into the implicate order.
Oddly enough, William Isaacs' Dialogue method (see several previous posts) originated with a group set up by Bohm to explore his ideas with him. This is a website about him: http://www.david-bohm.net/
I've had a look at the website and this struck me from David Bohm's Unfolding Meaning:
"...awakening...the process of dialogue itself as a free flow of meaning among all the participants. In the beginning, people were expressing fixed positions, which they were tending to defend, but later it became clear that to maintain the feeling of friendship in the group was much more important than to hold any position. Such friendship has an impersonal quality in the sense that its establishment does not depend on a close personal relationship between participants. A new kind of mind thus comes into being which is based on the development of a common meaning that is constantly transforming in the process of the dialogue. People are no longer primarily in opposition, nor can they be said to be interacting, rather they are participating in this pool of common meaning which is capable of constant development and change. In this development the group has no pre-established purpose, though at each moment a purpose that is free to change may reveal itself. The group thus begins to engage in a new dynamic relationship in which no speaker is excluded, and in which no particular content is excluded. Thus far we have only begun to explore the possibilities of dialogue in the sense indicated here, but going further along these lines would open up the possibility of transforming not only the relationship between people, but even more, the very nature of consciousness in which these relationships arise."
Ally this to William Isaac's 'Suspending Certainty' (in his Dialogue book)in a bid to ask questions rather than solve problems, and we begin to see how an 'open' organisation might address
itself.
The beauty of it is that this 'unfolding' is a natural process (as with the acorn and the oak) and might well be acceptable to all, including those within a 'closed' organisation.
Thanks for the beautiful excerpt Laura. It is recognisable when there is a meeting like this. Things seem to flow in a way that is above being controlled or directed.
This has reminded me of an excerpt from one of the most wonderful things I have ever read. Please permit me to share:
"He saw before his eyes, revealed with pitiless clarity, the ridiculous pretentiousness of human claims to order the life of the world, to impose on the world the dogmas, the standards, the conventions of man...
So many things which once had distressed or revolted him - the speeches and pronouncements of the learned, their assertions and their prohibitions, their refusal to allow the universe to move - all seemed to him now merely ridiculous, non-existent, compared with the majestic reality, the flood of energy, which now revealed itself to him: omnipresent, unalterable in its truth, relentless in its development, untouchable in its serenity, maternal and unfailing in its protectiveness."
Teilhard de Chardin
I'd like to thank Laura for digging that one out, too. For anyone who is interested, there is an event in Hove on 29th August on this form of Dialogue, presented by some of the people who have been using it at Lucca.
The Teilhard de Chardin quotation is very interesting - where does it come from?
V - do give details of 29 August event.
The Teilhard de Chardin quote comes from a collection of short pieces called "Hymn of the Universe". The specific excerpt is from a piece entitled "The Spiritual Power of Matter". It set me on fire when I first read it in a way that not many writings do:
"Blessed be you, perilous matter, violent sea, untameable passion: you who unless we fetter you will devour us.
Blessed be you, mighty matter, irrestistible march of evolution, reality ever new-born; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth."
I have no desire to 'convert' anybody, just to speak from that which moves me.
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