Musings on a 'deeper knowing' in this 'season of goodwill'.

Here is a collaborative learning opportunity to a paradigm shift in 'knowing'.

Art lovers tell us that da Vinci’s ‘Mona Lisa’ with her enigmatic smile, holds a secret to Leonardo’s genius. Apparently she was a real woman, but in that painting of her mysterious smile, she initiated a dialogue with the viewer that had not previously existed. They suggest?it changed the very nature of the relationship between art and audience. “With that one smile, Leonardo da Vinci imbued his work of art with a conceptual stroke of genius.”

Let us hold the idea of the ‘smile’ and the ensuring ‘dialogue’. It seems to me it is all about creating relationship. And there’s another word that is offered in deep ecology - it’s called ‘encounter’. Encounter is a profound experience of exquisite attendance, or ‘being with’.

And ‘being with’ implies a deeper quality of ‘knowing’. There is knowing ‘about’ the world through sophisticated modelling of its qualities and processes, that’s science, and there’s knowing the world, as Daniel Christian Wahl puts it, through participation. That’s surely something else. It's a redefined quality of consciousness.

But is this important at this time? An article in this morning’s on-line edition of The Economist made a salutary statement. ?Pointing to the heated ‘freedom of speech’ issue US it claims; ‘America has no problem with speech. It has a problem with listening.’

Human relationships

So knowing ‘about’ the other person, having strong opinions, and 'knowing' the other person through engagement, is not the same thing. That takes 'being with'. ?

Paul McCartney of The Beatles sang poignantly about ‘knowing’ in the song, ‘The Fool on the Hill’. The lyrics go like this:

Day after day, alone on a hill

The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still

But nobody wants to know him, they can see that he's just a fool

And he never gives an answer

But the fool on the hill sees the sun going down

And the eyes in his head see the world spinning around

A deeper knowing

It seems to me that just like Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile, this ‘foolish grin’ also hides a deeper knowing.

In ‘The Road to Reality’ (2005) noted physicist, Roger Penrose emphasised that there are still mysterious issues about which science has very little comprehension. He wrote:

?“It is quite likely that the 21st?century will reveal even more wonderful insights than those that we have been blessed with in the 20th?century. But for this to happen, we shall need powerful new ideas, which will take in us directions significantly different from those currently being pursued. Perhaps what we might need is some subtle change in perspective - something we have all missed...”??

Where to now?

So where to from here in respect of that subtle change in perspective? And why powerful new ideas to take us in directions significantly different from those currently being pursued? This year noted complexity theorist, Edgar Morin made a chilling statement. Humankind, he said, once again stood on the edge of the abyss - the future was one of complete uncertainty.

'Why' and 'where to' brings us to another famous grin, that of the Cheshire Cat in Lewis Carol’s novel, ‘Alice in Wonderland’. ?

In her altered reality the conversation between the disoriented Alice and the mysterious Cheshire Cat goes like this:?"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"?"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

And where we want to get to brings us to the nub of knowing, and a paradigm shift in consciousness. Author?Irwin Lazlo put his finger on it in respect of our prevailing mechanistic and reductionistic knowing about the world.

?“...The mechanistic and reductionist paradigm of Logos is no longer capable of ordering the mushrooming complexity and increasing vulnerability of globally extended interdependent technological societies. Society is confronted with the challenge of another transition: beyond Logos, to a societal paradigm we can best describe with the term ‘Holos.’”

Cultivating Holistic Worldview and Practice

With Edgar Morin we recognise that we now experience unprecedented challenges as we face a seismic shift in human affairs. With Irwin Lazlo we explore that transition of the required societal paradigm from Logos to Holos. That is why Holos-Earth is offering an on-line training program to learn to navigate the edge of chaos with a more holistic worldview.

‘Cultivating Holistic Worldview and Practice' is a collaborative learning opportunity for?personal empowerment in a world in fundamental transition.’?the program is grounded in well-researched, albeit emergent, applied holistic science, complexity theory, and quantum neuroscience.??

Participation will help unlock innate capacity to take the quantum leap to the critical ‘process’ perspective - enabling better navigation of the super-wicked ‘edge of chaos' problems-spaces as we enter what is being regarded as the ‘Great Transition’.

Testimony:

“Before I came into the course I was struggling to reconcile certain things - after experiencing the course I am now better able to do so. This course has a way of keeping you in the process with everything around you. The degree to which I consciously participate in that process depends on my quality of attention. As I began to pay more attention to the moment I became enriched ... as a teacher my engagement with my students was highly enriched. I learned that the more ‘present’, the more ‘agile’, and the more agile, the better the engagement. The quality of presence we bring to the moment gives rise to the reality we experience - this, for me, is what the course was all about.”???

Kenneth Obiakor - Nigeria. 2022

This on-line training program is offered in sixteen two-hour on-line interactive sessions. The first session on Sunday 8th January @ 18h00 UK is free.?

For more information email: [email protected]