awareness

Posts Tagged ‘awareness’

Immunity to Change Revisited: Theoretical Foundations for Awareness Based Practices for Leadership Development

Jonathan Reams

This article presents an inquiry into how the understanding of Kegan and Lahey’s immunity to change process can be enhanced through examining it in relation to two other theoretical lenses, the work of David Bohm and the Arbinger Institute. This is taken as an exemplar of the conception of awareness based practices for leadership development which is introduced as the larger focus of the article. A brief review of literature in relevant fields is presented to situate the present work. A set of methodological considerations is described along with the process for the analysis of textual extracts from the three sources. This is followed by a description of ten themes emerging from this analysis. These themes are examined for interconnections and key insights. The discussion centers around two elements. First is the wisdom of self-transcendence in relation to the immunity to change process. Second is how the emerging view of awareness can contribute to understanding leadership development. Concluding reflections summarize the findings and identify limitations of the inquiry.

Tags: leadership development, virtuality of self, awareness, Immunity to Change, Reams

Daring to Step into the Open: Moving Beyond Perspectives in Education and Life

Kaisa Puhakka

Abstract: Evolution in all spheres—cosmos, culture, and consciousness—is explored as a dynamic, creative process of shifting and settling, where shifting breaks out of existing structures and conceptual moorings and settling solidifies the movement of evolution into structures. Both are seen as essential aspects of the evolutionary process, but a bias for settling is noted among living creatures. For humans in particular, shifting arouses anxiety whereas settling promises security. The correction of this bias in the educational process to help realign human consciousness and culture with the rest of nature and cosmos is explored. Such a realignment may be necessary for meeting the unprecedented challenges of our world today, and an open, perspective-free inquiry can serve as a vehicle for it. But this inquiry calls for a new way of relating to the inherent uncertainty of shifting and to the anxiety this arouses in teachers and students alike.

Tags: courage, inquiry, dialectical, perspective, heart, epistemology, pluralism, Education, settling, evolution, shifting, Creative, Shiva., Kaisa Puhakka, nature, Absolutism, consciousness, constructivism, cosmos, awareness

Creating Dynamic Development and Harmony in the Classroom

Nick Drummond and Joan Berland

Abstract: The article describes a childhood education program for developing the individual and collective “consciousness” of a class of children. The word consciousness is used to refer to the level of an inner awareness, and responsibility being held by an individual and or group of people. The authors view consciousness as being a fundamental part of our experience, and although not easily seen, it is something that can be pointed to, described and developed. Practically, this means learning how to give attention to the “interior” as well as exterior dimension of a classroom environment and discovering how these are intrinsically connected. A set of tools are presented that can enable teachers and students to learn about this inner dimension of our experience – how to bring value and focus to it – and the effect it has on our choices and behavior. When consciousness is recognized and given importance it becomes something that can be experienced by everyone at any moment. When it is intentionally focused on and developed, an atmosphere of dramatic possibility, true discovery and infinite potential can be created in any classroom. Whenever this happens, children and adults alike are able to experience, envision and become attracted to new and more mature possibilities in the way they learn, teach, communicate and relate to each other.

Tags: awareness, Nick Drummond, Joan Berland, childhood education, rubrics, values, vertical development, consciousness

Integral Politics: A Swiss Perspective

Elke Fein and Hans-Peter Studer

Abstract: This article tells the story of the Swiss NGO “Integrale Politik (ip)” founded by about 20 people in November 2007 with the aim of becoming a regular political party at a later stage (www.integrale-politik.ch). We wish to make ip’s concepts and approaches known to a wider public. Inspired by integral thinkers such as Jean Gebser and Ken Wilber, ip develops its own ideas and interpretations of integral in view of the concrete challenges of Swiss and European politics.

Integral political culture is understood, for example, as including practices addressing all senses, turning political commitment into an experience of meaningful activity and an expression of joy, ease and celebrating life. One of the most important challenges currently faced by the group is to perpetuate and further develop this working culture as the organization grows. Its success in doing this seems to be one of the main reasons for ip’s attractiveness to the Swiss cultural creative sector in general and the growing integrally-minded community in particular to whom it gives an increasingly visible face and a clear-cut voice. At the same time, the Swiss political system offers particularly favourable preconditions and thus, a fruitful ground for new political ideas and experiments such as this integral political one.

Tags: Elke Fein, integral politics, Hans-Peter Studer, creativity, holacracy, integral economy, Integral Consciousness, integral society, integral working culture, awareness, Switzerland, spirituality, democracy

Timely and Transforming Leadership Inquiry and Action: Toward Triple-loop Awareness

Anne Starr and Bill Torbert

Abstract: Drawing from situations in business, art, leadership education, and home life, this essay experiments with diverse ways to communicate the experience of triple-loop awareness. Contrasting it with single- and double-loop feedback in a person’s awareness, the triple-loop supposedly affords the capacity to be fully present and exercise re-visioning, frame-changing timely leadership. The essay presents an encompassing theory of time and of its relationship with our own capacity for awareness. The experiment concludes with the reminder to readers that a first reading is like walking around the base of a mountain. The authors invite readers to try out one of the uphill paths of being with these experiments with a different kind of attention.

Tags: timely action, theory of time, triple-loop, Anne Starr, transformation, Bill Torbert, leadership, action-logic, awareness, inquiry, learning, re-visioning

Integral Review

A Transdisciplinary and Transcultural Journal For New Thought, Research, and Praxis