If knowledge is the widest power of the consciousness and its function is to free and illumine, yet love is the deepest and most intense and its privilege is to be the key to the most profound and secret recesses of the Divine Mystery.

Sri Aurobindo.

In bringing awareness about my soul I find interesting to search into the distinctions of the heart -as the place where emotions, impulses, sensations develop- and the true invisible heart where the divine spark resides.

Howard Bloom says 'There is nothing, absolutely nothing individual about the universe ' and as he says so he evokes our social essence, the form in which we stretch from the individual to the collective. From the protons which in their desire for an electron formed a circle that produced something never imagined; the atom. We have 14 billion years of surprises, much has happened since the atom, living processes continued their journey, evolution continued to discover how to organize cooperative groups every time more complex. We can all recognize what it means to have the capacity for experience, sensing, environment stimulation, correspondence, attraction and repulsion which are essential qualities which contribute to the organization, to the cooperation in between simple unities (quarks and molecules) up to the most complex (human beings) that conform our universe. Its manifestation in society was our capacity to move from the clan to tribes to villages to nation-states and from there to the possibility of expansion in a global scale, or is it universal?

Read the whole article in english or spanish. There are some audio interviews in spanish with the world café founders from USA, Mexico, Brasil and Europe

Writer and consultant Tom Hurley describes how the polarities of individual versus collective, and inner versus outer are really different phases of one reality. Around the world we are experiencing a deep longing to heal this split, to create communities that reflect the integrated experience of oneness. This longing is itself an expression of the deep knowing that such integration is possible, that there is a different way to relate to one another, to the earth, and to our problems.

SEE THE VIDEO

Another powerful piece from Tom Hurley is the Collective Wisdom Archetypes  which is an incredible tool for facilitation and group process.  It is a full spectrum look into the archetypes that might a appear in a collective experience. Worth studying and practicing!

During the Global conversation week in my small conversation circle we decided to record a small podcast of our conversation where we talk about our own experience in being the change we want to see in the world. We know there is a big path to walk but  we also had enough discipline to be able to share some of our practices, experiences and thoughts in regards of personal development and collective intelligence.

We begin by sharing our individual practice and then part of our collective practices and potential.
Listen here

If you are interested in global collective intelligence here are some recommendations:


My first recommendation is develop a relationship with technology. Sound obvious eh? There are multiple levels to this. One is the actual machine, your machine. The other is the relation to the new. Tools that break the time/space bridge and expand the possibilities for collaboration. New Practices and processes that will enable you/us to develop further our own natural technology for sensing the other (the body/the magic in the middle) into a new edge.  Relationship to what is unique about this way of communication in cyberspace. Enter it fearless with fresh eyes, curiosity, expectation. Here are some examples of tools and practices.

TOOLS

 I highly recommend people to experience the power of tools like twitter. For those who don´t know this micromedia tool. Some people describe twitter as real-time expanding communal consciousness, microblogging, instant access and presence, propioperception, holoptical tool. In its form it is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? in 140 words. Some examples of its potential are Instant collaborations, dissemination of publication and materials, fostering professional development, collaboration during natural disasters, improve your social networks.

If you wish to try Follow me and I will follow you back. Possibilities are endless!" Read the collaboration stories.   or see a short film about it.

dream about being connected in twitter with GAIA people!!!

oo(OO)oo

The wikipedia is  one of the most amazing tools to create art objects through collective intelligence.  There are many ways of using wikis to expand the knowledge of a given group. Opening wikis for collaborative writting is a wonderful practice. From all the wikis I tried, Wetpaint is a very easy to use tool for this experiments since it has all that editors may need to keep their wiki cool and updated. Really worth trying. Almost no learning curve.

oo(OO)oo

PRACTICE

Tools for synchronous conversations  like skype and gyzmo may be used for group  meditation sessions, feeling the breath of the other across time/space has its own beauty. If you send me an email I will give you access to a virtual bell you can use for your practice or you can also use a normal bell. Be aware of distance. 

I have done meditations as long as 30mins but the less I do is 5mins. Its a wonderful practice for sharing with friends and working colleagues. I find it is great for exiting from one context and entering another.  After meditation you can then share your context from a space of silence.  Then talk, work, laugh or listen to music together. They are programs like Pretty May that allows to share music while being in skype. You can also do recordings from your sessions.

With practice you will learn to feel the others presence, emotions, attention.  Agreements normally used in face to face conversations can be applied online, like breathe, speak to the center and others that support our collective wisdom to emerge not limited to been in the same geographical space.

I invited the director of Biomimicry Europa to have a conversation around Economic structures and sustainability. Biomimicry is a wonderful new domain coming out of biology, where the
intent is to observe living systems in all its detail and inspire other
disciplines to use this knowledge in the design of new systems.  During
our conversation we talk about cooperation/competition, cero waste,
mutlispecies symbiotic relations, non human economies and more.  Hope you enjoy. We created it thinking about the GAIA comunity and other networks that weave us all :-)

Listen to this podcast

This process has been amazing to witness and participate in. Fifteen thousand people contributed with the selection of 10 questions that represent a fractal of the worlds biggest challenges.  The Conversations café prepared this week an incedible field of possibilities for consciousness. It is a tasty potential for global collective intelligence (GCI) to expand as more people tap into the conversation and use the power of technology to transcend distance and really really scale.

So many ways of relating to one another across time and distance. Just as it happens with collective meditations I imagine the energy field that forms from the consciousness of many people around the planet, placing energy and intention to one common goal of answering to the ten questions selected for the conversation week. Beautiful! This was happening offline as well as in cyberspace. I chose to participate in 3 ways:

1. In the Global-mindshift  online conversation where the question chosen was: What kind of economic structures can best support a shift to sustainable living? (A healthy economy)?

2. Hosting a small conversation at my place. The question was: How can you, as Gandhi said, be the change that you want to see in the world? (Being the change)

In the conversation week site there is all the materials one would think of to make a call, promote, facilitate, harvest and have fun by hosting a conversaiton. This one was very easy to set up.  The tools are fantastic, they thought of everything, the emails, the posters, the wall cards, the materials, the conversation agreements, the process. They are worth looking at by anyone willing to facilitate a conversation.

3. I felt called to ask Gauthier Chapelle, director of biomimicry Europa for a conversation on the question around economic structures and sustainability.  See 'what does sustainability mean to you'.

One more possibility for action:Tweeter

I finally realize one opportunity escaped me. And that was on the potential for the use of tweeter. For those who don´t know this micromedia tool. Some people describe twitter as real-time expanding communal consciousness, microblogging, instant access and presence, propioperception, holoptical tool. In its form it is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? in 140 words. 

It is fantastic really. I have seen powerful events happening there like Beth Kanter raising money for an NGO. Jeremiah Jowyang connecting socialmedia people in one day by the combined use of a blog, tweeter, facebook and an incredible reputation.  I dream of being connected through tweeter with the Gaia community. It certainly brings closeness as you follow peoples small bytes of information.

The potential I missed is that I didn`t tweet the questions, only tweeted about what I was doing around the conversation week. Duh! ...well...Next time.

This is one of the best videos I have found with Rumi poetry. The music, the voice and the images will take your breath away. And of course Rumi is the only Rumi.

What do you do when you want people to step into an experience and also get the right amount of content in a given domain or topic?

What I learnt for myself as facilitator is that when you have short time (1.5hours) and your content is too concept dense it works great to get people into experiences and deliver small chunks of concepts as you dance and flow with them. Empowering people in each intervention and delivering what needs to be said. I am going to try to go into this process now.

A first piece for this is arquitecture, which refers here as the social space where people meet and how they meet.  A quick look into this is moving from normal boring conference style (straight lines looking to the front) into a beautiful circle where people may sense eachother and have a shared center.  Doing this transforms the space and opens it for wider possibilties. Its a place for experiencing collective wisdom as opposed to a place where one person delivers content.

I have observed that when the circle goes into some sort of collective experience of 'dance' 'songs' or some dynamic to share the physical, emotional, vital planes of being a field emerges, the energy in the room raises, the spirits  light up in the joy of being seen, greatful and open for entering a contained space for sharing and for creating more freedom together.
In a conference this can be done with a very simple dynamic/tool that may be short like a shared song a small dance a game or activity that involves this planes. There are many possibilities for bringing in the power of non verbal communication.

After this moment of reconnection and communion what I see natural is to keep moving into the intention for the emergence of collective intelligence.  I strongly believe that we can aspire to the descent of collective wisdom with a masterful facilitation, arquitecture and will from the individuals to get there.  There are many art processes that play with arquitectures to take from, like worldcafe, openspace and others for small group dialogues that enhance this possibility but when you are also interested in delivering a particular piece of content  then there is a combination in between facilitation and perfomance that is required.

One way to do this is by asking powerful questions for people to answer and from them  weave  the content you want to deliver. It sounds simple but it is not because people love to take the floor without checking where they are at, where they are speaking from (emotions, mind, feelings) why what they are saying is relevant to others and if it is building up for the collective outcome versus an individual need. People love to tell stories.

So its important to set some agreements to being able to set right conditions for listening and expression, honor the person speaking and empower them as they speak, being aware of the scarce time which is a shared resource and to empower the facilitator/performer to being able to go from point A to point B by dancing with peoples answers. I have observed this done masterfully and its really inspiring to see people being in an experience and still receive a download of content. Masterful people speak about Art and performance as they stand in front of an audience.


 

I have been pretty inmersed and amazed about the potentials of social networking and the movements in the generation of technologies making possible that GAIA creates her GlobalBrain. Here are some of my favorite bytes this week, the first about facebook and the second my experiences in SecondLife:

Social media networks like facebook are becoming the first players because of their open structure and potentials for connections (human to humans, human to applications, human to content).  Demographics are like wow! 45million users a high percentage of 24 to 35 years old and moving.  The 100 most influential blogger are in there and I have found my professional network and all  friends there in a matter of  days.  I had  fun adding  applications and now I can share my delicious (social tagging), my flickrs pictures, my work profile, my sites and cool applications like the 6 degrees and others to communicate non verbally with others. I can ask questions to all my networks in one click. I wonder is Zaadz is thinking on opening its structure to developers so they can provide us with cool applications. It is a fast move that in my point of view is a must if they want to give its users more capacities and be competitive. In one year facebook has attracted 40,000 developers who have developed 3900 applications! And...growing...if you think on going curious add me to your friends.

Here is my profile:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=564335368

The other cool movement I want to talk about is Secondlife. I did an online seminar this week about GAIA and the GLOBAL BRAIN and while developing the content I stepped into some great stories. And as it happens with synchronicities this week I saw a posting on What is Enlightement Magazine on second life so I thought I will add my small contribution on this topic. A story and some findings and a video for you to look deeper into this virtual worlds:

My first story happened like 2 years ago when I was invited to participate in a Secondlife session about identity and virtual worlds. Being an web strategist this is one opportunity you can´t miss. So...there I was. A total newbie getting an avatar (your virtual humanoid), getting dressed and being totally stupid trying to walk, fly and not crash into everything!

The event was held at an island called Live2give (cool name eh?). This island was made by people who have the same syndrome that Stephen Hawkins has where your body doesn´t respond to you and your brain may be totally ok. Well, for this people second life is the opportunity for them to not be judged by their physical appearance and being able to walk, fly, swim, go to parties and relate like a 'normal' human being. Incredible place, full of poetry and images of them and secret places where they hide their treasures.

We met in a circle with water (look at picture) and had our cushions to seat. We talked for one hour and then went to fly and swim together. We went to an underwater cave where this adorable heroes shared their deepest gifts. And we stood up together in silence. We shared a space of resonance, respect and deep knowing that we were in something really really really big. It was a spiritual moment of greatness. 

My finding on how Secondlife have helped people are some cases like:

After suffering a devastating stroke four years ago, Susan Brown was left in a wheelchair with little hope of walking again. Today, the 57-year-old Richmond woman has regained use of her legs and has begun to reclaim her life, thanks in part to encouragement she says she gets from an online “virtual world” where she can walk, run and even dance.

 Roberto Salvatierra, long imprisoned in his home by his terror over going outdoors, has started venturing outside more after gaining confidence by first tentatively exploring the three-dimensional, interactive world on the Internet.

 John Dawley III, who has a form of autism that makes it hard to read social cues, learned how to talk with people more easily by using his computer-generated alter ego to practice with other cyber-personas.

 Brown, Salvatierra and Dawley are just a few examples of an increasing number of sick, disabled and troubled people who say virtual worlds are helping them fight their diseases, live with their disabilities and sometimes even begin to recover. Researchers say they are only starting to appreciate the impact of this phenomenon.

And of course when something new comes along,  it comes along for one purpose, and then evolution takes it and shapes it and finds six or seven other purposes for it. And as it does, it produces surprises.

I am interested in the different applications so... I also want to know what people are doing to augment their collective intelligence and work together in new ways. If you are curious...see what NASA is doing in the posted video.