Pragmatism was a philosophy that emerged directly out of The Enlightenment that initiated the “modern revolution” and it helps when thinking about Pragmatism to think about it in relationship to The Enlightenment and the new ways of thinking that emerged from it.

Prior to The Enlightenment human beings lived in a largely inexplicable world. Things happened and there was not yet any understanding of why. Explanations were developed to explain why things happened, but to our modern ears these explanations seem magical, mystical and unscientific.

Hosts of gods were imagined to control all of nature – lightening, rain, sunshine, plant growth, etc. And everything – including human beings – were thought to be possessed of an inner essence, spirit or soul that was the initiator and controller of action.

With the scientific revolution came the beginings of an objective, experimental and scientific understanding of how things work. The world became a machine of mechanical workings that could be understood and controlled. Weather was no longer controlled by a god – it was the result of the mixture of air pressure, humidity, wind velocity, etc. There was no longer the need to imagine some supernatural intelligence at work behind and above it all.

In the human being the same thing began to occur. The functioning of the body and the brain was increasingly recognized as the real cause of human action. And the newly discovered tool of human reason was proving itself capable of understanding – given sufficient time – everything. Human beings began to lose their need of gods – or even a single God – to explain the way things are.

The Enlightenment brought with it the advent of ways of thinking that turned many against religious notions because they seemed superstitious and unsupported by empirical evidence. The Traditional world of religious belief was becoming the Modern secular world.

The pragmatists- although to differing degrees – believed that philosophy – especially that of the French and German idealists (Rousseau, Voltaire, Kant, Hegel, etc.) – had retained too much of the superstitions habits of earlier thinking. These thinkers were certainly challenging the traditional ideas of The Church, at the same time they still retained ideas of a priori understanding, and absolute realities that somehow existed beyond and outside of the mind – this was too reminiscent of God for some.

The Pragmatists were following in the path of the English Empiricists by insisting that knowledge had to be directly connectable to that which was within experience. No supernatural essences were allowed (again the degree to which the different pragmatists held to this view varied considerably – James strongly, Peirce and Dewey much less.)

This is why the conception of “the self” came under scrutiny. It still smacked of a superstitious belief in “spiritual” essence or soul. Instead people like William James wanted to explain the existence of a “sense of self” by appealing to our actual experience and not to a supernatural “beingness.”

Pragmatism along with other modern philosophies were criticized with the advent of post-modern thinking for throwing out the baby with the bath water and for adopting a purely (or nearly so) materialistic relationship to reality. (In truth the early Pragmatists Peirce, James and Dewey were all trying to guard against this, but perhaps it was unavoidable for the pendulum to swing beyond center once it had started its arc.)

I believe there is a wisdom to the view – that while “self-concept” is real a “self” is not – that offers a rich vein of exploration still. In evolutionary terms we as human beings have tens of thousands of years of habitual experience of assuming supernatural essences to exist within physical things – so it may take some time before we stop unconsciously attributing an essence to things – especially ourselves.

www.evolutionaryphilosophy.com

I have often heard and have at times gotten into arguments about whether the process of evolution has directionality.  And this argument has seen lots of air time in the media recently. I realized the other day that there is a fictional dialog that lives in my head about this topic that misleads me about the actual source of disagreement.

If you picture the argument in your own mind's eye you are likely to see that on one side there is a strong-Darwinian materialist claiming that the universe is like a blind clockmaker who stumbled upon this world through a process driven by nothing but chance. On the other side is a romantic fundamentalist claiming that monkeys cannot write Shakespeare and therefore there must be some intelligence guiding the evolutionary process.

What I realized was that no one actually denies (as far as I can tell) that there is an apparent directionality behind the universe's unfolding. Evolution clearly happens in a particular direction. For instance you can't imagine animals evolving on a barren planet before any plants appeared. Plants needed to come first - that is directionality.

What people do argue about is the mechanism of directionality. Darwin's hugely significant discovery was a theory that satisfactorily explained the apparent directionality of the evolution of species. That theory he called "Natural Selection by Chance Variation." Essentially it states that the individuals of any given species are born with variations in characteristics. Some of these variations have survival advantages and are passed on genetically to offsprings. Over time successive generations will become more uniformly adapted to the environment. And at times one species transforms into a new one through this same mechanism.

Darwin had this insight and then sat on it for 20 years before publishing his findings in the book, "On the Origin of Species" and only then because another scientist published a paper explaining a dangerously similar theory. One of the reasons that Darwin's theory was and is so controversial is that he explained the evolution of species, which meant the development of man, without needing to appeal to any form of intelligence or God. He could explain man's development through purely mechanical means.

Darwin could see that evolution had directionality and he could explain that directionality through a process resting on chance variation and survival. There are good arguments against Natural Selection being the only mechanism through which evolution occurs and many find it necessary either for logical or sentimental reasons to theorize that some form of intelligence must be behind the process. But they are not arguing for or against directionality - they are arguing for or against telos.

Telos is a Greek word meaning purpose. And this is where the problems start. Darwin found a mechanism for evolution that was devoid of purpose. If there is no intelligence behind evolution then there is no ultimate purpose, no final destination or goal that we and the universe are heading for. This leaves many of us with an uneasy feeling because it goes against our deeply felt conviction that there is a purpose to life, that there is meaning to existence. So this is the actual point that the argument pivots on, not if there is directionality to evolution - for surely there is that - but if there is purpose. OK, let the argument continue.

American Philosophy since Ralph Waldo Emerson has had a strong connection to Eastern Enlightenment traditions. Emerson was reading the Bagavad Gita, the Tao Te Ching, and Zoroastrian texts as they were being translated in the west for the very first time in the early 19^th century. He passed these on to his disciples and Henry David Thoreau for instance read Eastern teachings voraciously. 

In the first decade of the 20^th century, William James's ideas of Radical Empiricism, which see a world of pure experience in which each moment expands reality into the next moment, so impressed the Japanese Zen Master D.T. Susuki that he sent James's papers back to his teacher in Japan to read.

In the middle part of the 20^th century Thomas Merton and Jack Kerouac picked up the baton of Eastern thought. Merton, the beloved American Catholic monk, became very close with D.T. Susuki as well as the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. Merton spent a great deal of time in the last years of his short life in the East famously meeting His Holiness the Dali Lama and Chatral Rinpoche another Tibetan Buddhist Master.

Kerouac whose novels were written in a "stream of consciousness" style that harkens back to William James's Radical Empiricism, embraced Buddhism with other famous members of the Beat Generation. He wrote his novel Dharma Bums intending it to be in part a serious work of Buddhism, but was disheartened when the novel was not taken seriously by the Western Buddhist community of the time.

This progression of American philosophy set the stage for the explosion of the East meets West spiritual movement that erupted in the1960's and 1970's. Out of that influx of Eastern Enlightenment teachings into the post-modern west emerged Andrew Cohen's teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment of which I have been a practitioner and later a teacher for the past 16 years.

Besides writing this blog I host a weekly webcast in which I discuss the philosophy of Evolutionary Enlightenment and other contemporary spiritual ideas. On a recent webcast I, along with my co-host Carter Phipps the managing editor of EnlightenNext magazine, tackled the subject of Karma.

I used as the basis for that discussion some ideas that I found online in articles written by an American Buddhist teacher named Ken McLeod. In those articles McLeod describes how he feels that the term karma has been popularly misinterpreted in the West to mean "the law of cause and effect." KcLeod goes on to describe how a more accurate translation of the term Karma from the Tibetan would be "growth." I found McLeod's articles profound and the idea of karma as growth very aligned with Radical Empiricism. Incidentally, McLeod calls his particular work "Pragmatic Buddhism."

For those who want to read Ken McLeod's articles on Karma there are three links here that will take you to them.

Karma

Karma and Growth

Karma Doesn't Explain Anything

Read More of my thoughts on American Philosophy at: http://evolutionaryphilosophy.com/

I am heading over to Hollow Bones Zen Center today with Andrew Cohen to visit with Junpo Roshi there. I will let you all know what its like and what happens later.

I have noticed since President Obama's inauguration, that newspapers, magazines, blog posts, as well as newscasters and political analysts refer to him as a Pragmatist. Whenever I read or hear this reference it makes me wonder how the word Pragmatist is being used. Is it only in the more common, small "p", sense or is it being used in its more profound philosophical sense? I am thrilled at the possibility that our new president might be bringing an opportunity to reintroduce the idea of Pragmatism, in its capitol "P" sense, into the American vernacular.

 In the small "p" sense a pragmatist is usually thought of as a person who is more interested in "getting the job done right" than in "getting it done their way."  If that is all that is meant when the president is called a pragmatist, then his early days in the White House seem to confirm his tendency in this direction.

 Pragmatism in the more profound, capitol "P" sense is the name of the American Philosophy popularized by the great Harvard University philosopher, William James during the first decade of the 20^th Century.  The term was first used, however, decades before by another great American philosopher named Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce first discussed his conception of Pragmatism during informal meetings of an intellectual circle called The Metaphysical Club. In addition to Peirce, the meetings included James before becoming a Harvard professor and Oliver Wendell Homes jr. before becoming a United States Supreme Court justice. After James had popularized the term, another celebrated American philosopher, John Dewey , used this powerful way of thinking to alter some of our most fundamental conceptions of education and democracy. 

Pragmatism rests on a very simple but radical understanding about the nature of truth. That understanding is that truth is not an inherent property of an idea, but becomes an attribute of an idea only when that idea has proved itself in action.  Let's consider a simple example, the idea "I can fly." According to Pragmatism, it would only  be when I actually step off the edge of a building and float away that the idea "I can fly" would become true. (Although, as we all know, it is much more likely to prove false.) When considering an idea as simple and easily verifiable as this, Pragmatism looks like another word for common sense or even a little silly.

But, what happens when we apply this same, "its only true if it proves itself to be true," validation test to some bigger ideas? Ideas like: "Everyone is entitled to truth, justice and the pursuit of happiness." or "Representational democracy is the most just political system."  or "There is a God." When applied to these examples Pragmatism insists that none of them are true unless they prove themselves to be true when acted upon. Some will protest that Pragmatism is asking us to give up faith in our ideals. I would say, to the contrary, it is demanding more faith in them. If you already know that what you believe is true before you act on it, how much faith do you really need? You already have a guarantee.

A Pragmatist in the capitol "P" sense is someone who feels a profound sense of responsibility for what they believe because they know that even their most cherished ideas have to prove themselves in action. A Pragmatist can never afford to rest in the certainty that they know the truth already. They must actively engage in the constant process of examining their ideas and then acting wholeheartedly, without hesitation, but also without the benefit of a guarantee. They are always looking to see what the results of their actions are. And as soon as those prove to be less than expected, a Pragmatist is ready to reexamine his/her ideas and improve upon them or discard them entirely.

A Pragmatist believes so much in their ideas that they are willing to risk acting on them, but they are not fixed in their beliefs. They are fluid, adaptable and introspective. Perhaps one of the greatest Pragmatic statements was made by Mahatma Gandhi when he said "My commitment is to truth, not to consistency."

So is Barack Obama a Pragmatist (capitol "P")? I for one hope he is.

Here are some examples of references to Obama as a pragmatist:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/01/barack_obamas_soaring_pragmati.html

http://blog.oup.com/2009/01/pragmatism/

One of the dangers of working as closely as I do with my own spiritual teacher is that it is possible to take for granted that he is your teacher. Over the past fifteen years my relationship with Andrew Cohen has grown to include his being my boss, my colleague and a dear friend among other things. But yesterday I was reminded that he is first and foremost my spiritual mentor.

For sometime now and for the last few days in particular Andrew Cohen has been telling some of us who are his male students that he wasn’t feeling the sense of unity that he feels is critical to our development. In order to respond to his observation a number of us had planned to meet together last night, but then in the end cancelled the meeting. After hearing that we had decided not to meet Andrew reflected to us that our lack of urgency we were expressing seemed to prove that we were not seeing what he was talking about.

After hearing that we did meet together and what happened showed all of us beyond doubt that we were indeed missing the point that he was making. After a very short time of speaking together we were all once again swept up into the experience of “Consciousness, Culture, Cosmos” that I had described two blog posts ago. Submerged in the perception of this miraculous “we” space none of us who were meeting could relate to the fact that we hadn’t met together in so long. It was obvious in that space that exploring this collective consciousness is absolutely critical to what we are trying to together.

The consciousness that we were experiencing gives a truly integral view of evolution. It is not integral because you see how your individual development affects the development of the group. It is integral because you see that the consciousness that we share together transcends but includes our individual consciousness and that development of either IS development of the whole. It isn’t that individual consciousness is separate from the collective consciousness. It simply is seen as one aspect of it and individual evolution and collective evolution cannot be separated.

As this all became so clear in dialog together, it also became clear that the consciousness that we were sharing speaking together is not the consciousness that any of us had as an individual. All of us had wanted to postpone speaking together. Everyone had reasons that made sense at the time, but now that we were together seeing how critical it was that we were together none of the reasons that we had made sense. The consciousness held by the group had different values than that held by us as individuals. It was also clear that what was now clear to us had always been clear to Andrew which is why he started pushing for this in the first place.

If you have not experienced shared consciousness before this all might seem disconcerting, but in fact it is anything but. Coming into contact with an impersonal dimension of collective consciousness doesn’t feel like losing yourself, it feels like discovering your larger sense of self. 

During this past weekend I was on a retreat with Andrew Cohen and 80 of his closest students from around the world. Andrew stated right out front that the theme of the weekend was taking Evolutionary Enlightenment from theory to practice and the first thing that he wanted us all to look into the nature of the next developmental stage in human consciousness, or what is sometimes called Third Tier development.

Andrew first instructed us to read excerpts from his most recent dialog with Ken Wilber from the current issue of What Is Enlightenment? magazine which is all about envisioning this Third Tier stage of development. When we met together with him he asked different people to articulate their own understanding of this lofty goal and he responded to each answer he received.

As the weekend progressed we moved from meetings with Andrew to discussion groups with other students diving more and more deeply into the question; what is “third tier”? Andrew was stressing how important it was that this goal become real for everyone, because if the goal is not real you cannot possibly attain it.

In a series of discussion groups focused on an exploration of what third tier is a powerful experience of what I might call “third tier cognition” began to emerge between us. One of the most striking characteristics of this way of seeing was that the distinctions between my individual consciousness, the collective consciousness of the group of us in the room and the consciousness of the universe itself began to breakdown. It was as if Individual consciousness, cultural consciousness and the consciousness of the cosmos was collapsing into one unified experience of consciousness at all levels. There was a direct cognition of the fact that all of these levels of awareness are present in me all the time.

Because of the unity that we were experiencing in these three very different levels of awareness it became self-evident that as any individual’s consciousness expanded so to would the consciousness of the group and also of the universe itself.

It may sound far-fetched, but it does also perfectly describe what I have come to understand a kosmo-centric perspective to be – the recognition of non-separation of consciousness and the non-separation of the individual, the culture within which we exist and the universe itself.

Yesterday I conducted a conference call with people who had worked with me during seminars and evening programs held recently in New York, Copenhagen, and throughout Australia. Those events are all documented here on early blog posts and what I have been writing about is how each of the events that I have conducted seem to pick up where the last one left off even though they are with completely different people in a different city or even country. This  is the beginning of a very exciting adventure and a challenge to anyone who wants to take it up to become a part of a global inquiry -  a globally integrated conversation about the potential of human beings to be agents of evolution and cultural change.

The development of that global conversation is what I see as an ambitious but achievable goal over the next year. The teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment is the perfect container for such a conversation because it is based in a view of human existence that places us right at the edge of whatever is going to happen next and the purpose of the conversation is to outline what that next step will be and to facilitate it happening.

The participants in the call yesterday expressed to me in emails afterward what they experienced through the connection with people from around the world who were committed as they are to the creation of new future.

I have posted some of the comments that I received here so that you could get a sense of what was happening.

If you want to be a part of this global inquire all you need to do is sign on to EnlightenNext's Universe Project website. It is free to sign on and once you do you will receive regular updates about how this work is going.  

http://www.enlightennext.org/universe-project/

EVOLUTION!

Am totally new to E.E. and don't have the group's vocabulary.  I was 2 minutes late and as I understood what was going on, perspiration began to roll off me in profusion, so great was my wonderment. I had been led to this moment. What an intro! (From New York)

I was in Copenhagen and what I feel more and more, is a great sense of trust, confidence. I mean I trust, that going into the field, is a very secure place to be, even if I feel fear or anything else. Just as you said when you feel insecure, maybe unstable, then you know that you are on the right way! (from Copenhagen)

Some comments from call participants

When we link we see that we are already linked. We see that the technical connection which allows us to talk to each other is only a mimic of a transpersonal connection of understanding that already links us and only needs to be recognized. (From Sydney)

I had this strange experience of seeing how I've kept this project very 'local' and in that way 'small and manageable'...and today it just blew that up and I felt both MORE responsible and accountable because it is so huge...but also more insecure and the boundaries of even how I think about "me" and "others" seemed to be changing. (from New York)

I was phoning from home in Warwick, a town population of some 12,000,  in Queensland located two hours drive west of the State capital of Brisbane and about 1,000 kms north of Sydney. I joined the conference about fifteen minutes into it after figuring out all the button pressing!  - a very interesting experience, trying to visualise the various participants scattered around the globe.

It was a great call! (From Sweden)

Thank you for gathering us globally for an inspiring call. (from Philadelphia)

As the call progressed I was very much aware of the field being generated by our commitment and interest in what was happening. As soon as attention is focused on the field I can feel the potential and the creativity that is its very nature. Yes we are becoming aware of the true nature of who we are and it is so much more than I had ever considered possible. (from Perth)

There were lots more...but you get the idea I think...

Over the past three weeks I have been traveling in Copenhagen and Australia. During that time I conducted a three-day training for students of Evolutionary Enlightenment who have now become teachers, two weekend seminars on the teaching and three talks – one at a university, one at a company and one at a chapter of the Theosophical Society. Call me a little slow on the up take, but it wasn’t until the final talk at a University in Australia’s capitol city of Canberra that I recognized that I was becoming a spiritual authority.

Of all of the events that I conducted this one had more people that had no experience with Andrew Cohen’s teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment. The audience was both attentive and respectful, at the same time I knew from the start that they were justifiably not going to take what I told them on faith. I gave a talk similar to what I had give on two other occasions.
The talk I was giving was an introduction to some of the foundational concepts and insights upon which Andrew Cohen has constructed Evolutionary Enlightenment. I first spoke of the nature of consciousness as a field explaining that although we commonly imagine that consciousness originates from somewhere within us, this teaching is based on the recognition that human beings exist within a field of consciousness. The second insight that I present is the recognition that the field of consciousness is not static – it changes and evolves over time which has been well observed by those that study the history and development of human culture. Finally I argue that at our moment in evolutionary history it is our recent discovery of the evolutionary process of which we are an inextricable part that must drive the further evolution of consciousness. These three insights create the foundation upon which I present the shift in awareness that lies at the heart of Evolutionary Enlightenment and a kosmocentric perspective as I understand it.

I realized from the first night that I spoke that I couldn’t present this as a theory or philosophy with which I was intimately acquainted. I had to express my own understanding of these things, backed up by my own experience and the reality of everything that I was doing to use these insights as the basis upon which to build a new human culture. I realized more deeply than I had ever before what Andrew has been trying to create with his closest students for over 20 years. He has referred to that possibility as “autonomy in a context of natural hierarchy.”

Andrew’s call with his students has never been exclusively to create a new generation of teachers with a similar realization to his own. He has always said that he needed partners in the creation of a new world. Being autonomous means that ones own talents, interests and efforts have to be the foundation of what one attempts to express to others. I can’t simply explain the teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment and expect people to listen to me. I have to speak about the teaching in the context of the fact that I am actively devoted to manifesting the goal of that teaching. In my own case I am directly engaged in helping people develop their understanding of Evolutionary Enlightenment by creating educational programs and by facilitating individual engagement with the teaching and with Andrew Cohen himself. People didn’t want to hear from me about Evolutionary Enlightenment only, they wanted to hear my experience of Evolutionary Enlightenment ad that experience includes everything that I have worked on, created and developed in this teaching.
In speaking to audiences I find that I am fueled by three sources of confidence. The first is the trust and recognition of my teacher, Andrew Cohen that has developed over the 15 years that I have worked closely with him. The second is my own experience and understanding of Evolutionary Enlightenment itself. The third is the confidence, conviction and most importantly success that I have experienced in my work to help create a new culture based on this teaching. What I was propelled by over these weeks was a deep confidence, not based in being somebody in particular, or having the highest realization, but on my own commitment to what I am doing. With that at my back I felt that I was able to face anyone and talk simply and clearly about Evolutionary Enlightenment because I was only talking about what I actually believed and what I was actually doing.

Getting back to that last talk that I gave and the powerful moment that illustrated all of this so clearly to me – I had just finished delivering my talk and asked for questions. The questions were more challenging than I had experienced in the two earlier talks – not unfairly so by any means, but challenging none-the-less. One question was asked of me by a woman who had been listening intently from the front row. She felt that in the way I was speaking I was separating humanity from the universe. She looked me right in the eyes and demanded to know why “I” was doing that. So there I was rightfully being asked to justify my position. I didn’t feel flustered; I simply looked straight at her and explained “my” experience. We talked it through and came to the realization that we weren’t really very far apart in our views after all.

In thinking about this afterward I thought very much about the “autonomy in a context of natural hierarchy” that Andrew has been asking for. I saw that students of this teaching have the opportunity to create a powerful kind of spiritual authority – one that is based not only on the direct experience of Truth but also on what one is doing to enact that Truth into a new future. Because I was training teachers, developing programs, exploring new mediums for global spiritual engagement and a variety of other things, I was able to speak with an authority that commanded respect even if I was still justifiably expected to prove myself. Because I was able to speak about the accomplishments of my own efforts people accepted the validity of the teaching and my relationship with Andrew as my teacher without challenging it. Why? Because it is working and I could speak about that.

What I have begun to see on this trip has broken down yet another unconscious source of division that I hadn’t even known I was holding. The separation between the teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment and the products of that teaching. The fruits of the teaching are the teaching, I had previously been focused on how to train people to teach Evolutionary Enlightenment. I now recognize that any way that one is working with that teaching can be used as a platform for teaching it. for teaching it. The editors of What Is Enlightenment? Magazine have long been giving talks about what they have learned from creating each issue. I wonder how powerful it would be to hear them talk not just about the content of the issues, but on the process of creating them. Their work on the magazine is Evolutionary Enlightenment. There are students of this work who are trying to transform business organization, public education, penal systems, even personal development. Their work is also the teaching.

I am beginning to see teaching Evolutionary Enlightenment outside of the context of what you are doing to bring that teaching to life as only the first step in learning to teach this perspective. The second and more powerful is to speak about your own experience of creating a new culture with these teachings. As architects of the future we can speak about our own experience of truth with a profound authority.

Jeff (During a brief layover in Dubai after a 10 plus hour flight from Perth)

My visit to Australia is coming to a close after giving talks in Perth, Sydney and Canberra and leading a weekend seminar in Sydney. On the flight from Canberra to Perth I had time to reflect more on everything that has happened over the past week before flying out tomorrow. As I have been writing about in recent blog posts each event that I conduct does seem to add something to the last. The event in New York was an exploration of the post-modern culture that we are all a part of. In Copenhagen we looked into the new values that might become a part of whatever post-post-modern culture we create together. Here in Australia what we explored was the characteristics of the field of consciousness and the new sense of identity that begins to form as we recognize ourselves to be not separate from the circumstances around us.

During the weekend in Sydney we had a particular moment when - for me at least - this sense of being non-separate from the field of consciousness was particularly heightened. I was explaining a metaphor that I have used many times before. I was describing how human beings thinking that the consciousness that they experience originates somehow within them is like a radio mistakenly thinking that the music coming out of its speakers is coming from inside itself. As I mentioned this is a metaphor that I have used many times, but this time it seemed to take on a life of its own. Soon I was using it to explain different aspects of Evolutionary Enlightenment that I had never seen before and I was imagining creating a children's show based on the metaphor. It was a very high energy, serious and fun discussion that swept us all up in its excitement.

Later during our lunch break I was thinking about the fact that it would be easy to think of that metaphor as having immerged from me. In fact, it was obvious that even though I had been the one who brought it up, it had immerged out of the energy and intention of all of us in the room. If all of the participants had not been so engaged with me in listening I would never have felt the inspiration or freedom to have that particular analogy "pop-out" with so much vitality and clarity. As I thought more it started to become self evident that whenever we speak what comes out of conversation is never a product of just one person in the conversation, but is the product of the whole conversation and everyone's participation in it. If I were sitting by myself in a room I would never have come up with that metaphor in the same way.

When we returned after lunch the first thing that someone commented on was the metaphor that "I had come up with." As I explained what I had been thinking about we did seem to elevate into a higher view of what was happening between us. As we spoke I could see very directly how each of us was contributing to the sum of what was happening in the room. Some were not speaking, but everyone seemed to be giving real attention and open interest to what was happening and that was also a contribution. In fact it became clear that there was no way to not contribute and I began to feel, and I think others did as well, the ecstatic and at the same time almost unbearable realization of true interconnectedness. It is the feeling that you already are fully here, that what you do already has an affect and there is nowhere that you could possibly go where you could be separate. In truth even if someone were to walk out the door...that would have an affect!

Sometimes in life we want to feel like we don't matter, like what we do doesn't count yet because we have not yet decided to participate. We might not feel ready or willing to be responsible for the affect we have on others. To the part of us that doesn't want to be responsible for being human the kind of interconnectedness we were exploring feels like too much.

This weekend in Sydney certainly did  seem to take the weekends in New York and Copenhagen one step further by rooting them in a direct experience of human interconnectedness - which I would say is a direct experience of human culture.