Replying to LO25239 --
Dear Winfried and Richard,
Richard you wrote in LO25239,
>In my work I sometimes encourage people to look for such simple causes
>and discover new insights into the complexity facing them.
You got me thinking.
Meg Wheatley recently wrote of a yearning among people she contacted with
for simplicity thinking and inferring under the auspices of Thomas
Aquinas, and it fills me with joy that Saints now get to educate the
'executive' of the 'listening' corporate world;-) I am no 'expert' of Meg
Wheatley's writings nor Thomas Aquinas' expressions but I am vaguely aware
that the latter found 'simplicity' only in God the Creator and
'complexity' in mankind in as much as simplicity is found within the face
of complexity, upclose;-), it may best be found in the slipping glimpses
of a more profoundly nesting 'simplicity' and a far more profound
'advance' and/or 'retreat' than that maybe envisaged by corporate
capitalism, or corporate socialism for that matter. Something akin to
Creative Collapses? But to 'collapse creatively' you have first to become
creative. Has this any sense in it At?
How many people are believing the world, 'Their' world;-) stops when they
are away from the 'office' so that learning is so short and fragmented for
fear of absenteeism from what they believe they support that it never
really happens at the deeper integrative symbolic levels required to
handle complexity, like the idea that it all supports them? Maybe even the
idea's too big an act of humility to 'give it all away' and truly find out
what the 'dance of change' is itself tuned into...?
Thomas Merton once wrote in respect of the gift of a small dark painting
by Reinhardt given by the artist, "- It is a most recollected small
painting. It thinks only that one thing is necessary & this is time. But
this one thing is by no means apparent to one who will not take the
trouble to look. It is a most religious, devout and latreutic small
painting." I see the image of entrapment;-) You know, so devoted was he to
this small image of man poised over the void that he kept it in the
kitchens as well as the cells ;-) where he worked, so that it's
commercial/banal value was diminished by the day. In his own images
(photographs) one can sense the stillness of complexity captured as it
spins for him alone...
John Z will like this, " Everything I think or do enters into the
construction of a mandala, it is the experience of balancing over the
void, not the censorship of experience. And no duality of experience --
void. Experience is full because it is inexhaustible void. It is not
mine. It is uninterrupted exchange....The self is merely a locus in which
the dance of the universe is aware of itself as complete from beginning to
end -- and returning to the void." (The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton,
1973)
Sounds pretentious? Well, try reading some of the stuff now being offered
in the face of growing awareness of the issues raised by 'holism' and
'whole', 'complexity' and 'new science'...here, absolutely for free a
simple way into harmony with complexity. Let 'chance' operate in your
life. Simple expression by way of a deeper enlightenment, medical
conditions allowing;-) flip a coin before every meal, 'heads' you eat,
'tails' you don't. Can't commit to that? Mmmm;-) So much for "less is
more".
John Cage once asked a pupil from India what she thought to be the correct
purpose of music? "To sober and quiet the mind, thus rendering it
susceptible to divine influences." Chance underlies much human creativity,
get 'it' into your 'self' and it starts to support your actions, for free.
Cage sought and played;-) like a child within the dissolution of a
'crystallised self' into the myriad components of his context. In the
three part composition 4' 33" in which the pianists never touches the
keys, Cage asked they (confounded and angry audiences;-) listen for what
"IS" and to let go of all 'preconceptions' of WHAT music "is" and to
ACTIVELY participate in the sounds of silence;-)
"Cultivating spiritual awakening in a land addicted to power and
materialism requires above all a radical receptivity, to art, to music, or
to books that may inspire formal practice. It requires minds that are
still and centred - which is subversive in our culture -- minds stripped
clean, light and white like an empty canvas."
Now Winfried, Richard...what could be simpler than a white canvas?...I
think Michael Lissack spoke and wrote about that blank canvas in a draft
chapter for his doctoral dissertation at Henley...Mmmm;-)
Love,
Andrew
--Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <Richard@Karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>
"Learning-org" and the format of our message identifiers (LO1234, etc.) are trademarks of Richard Karash.