Cultivating Curiosity

When I set out to Amsterdam at the end of September last year, I had the bold plan of powering through winter. The grand idea was that if I managed to get my gym practice, meditation, healthy eating, etc. in place during the winter time, then I’d have no trouble whatsoever keeping it up during spring and summer.

What Happened

While I did in fact get my meditation practice on track, I accomplished practically none of the other items on my list. Part of it was due to external conditions—no gym nearby—and part of it due to my own laziness. But a huge chunk of it was the effects of winter.

Coming from Finland I’m fairly used to temperatures below -20 C and 4 hours of sunlight, but that didn’t really prepare me for the Dutch winter; 5 months of rain, wind, and darkness. Maybe I was spoiled by my year in Malaysia, but I really felt down due to the weather, and not very inspired to to power through anything.

Going with the Seasons

In retrospect, perhaps this was for the better. The intensive inward quest of meditation seemed to be a very natural thing to concentrate on during the winter and now spring is calling me to open up the doors again.

I needed to travel halfway across the world to learn how to use winter as my time to retreat and reflect.

For years now, Western countries have been condemning China and many other countries for censorship. And with good reason. Without access to information, the general public has no mechanism to oversee what their leadership is up to.

Now, however, many Western countries—with Germany and Australia in the lead—are quietly implementing censorship measures. This is an outrage and is unlikely to even address the alleged issue of curbing illegal activities such as child pornography. Let me explain.

What Went Wrong

The censorship is being implemented by means of blacklisted websites, i.e. a list of websites deemed illegal. Using the anecdotal sample of the leaked Australian blacklist, we find sites such as:

• Religious groups
• Political contrarians
• Pro-abortion sites
• A dentist
• The blacklist itself

It’s quite possibly that some of the sites have ended up on the list by accident, but it’s hard to conceive of a scenario where the sites presenting dissident opinions have been “accidentally” censored. In any case we’ve ended up with a policy of censorship with no transparency and a seemingly arbitrary process of selection.

I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she’s too young to have logged on yet. Here’s what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and say “Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?”

Mike Godwin, Electronic Frontier Foundation

Why It Wouldn’t Work Anyway

Okay, fine, so we give up a little bit of freedom in exchange for stopping the real criminals. That must be worth something, right? Actually, no.

The “real criminal” would simply contact a server in, say, Russia over a secured line, bypass your blacklist, and continue his work unimpeded. Or use Freenets. Or use any of the millions of computers taken over by trojan horses, maybe even yours. Or a VPN or a VNC. Well, you get the idea. Even the creepy, low-tech uncle from next door could easily use any of the freely available proxy servers on the web.

For anyone committed to doing so, circumventing the censorship is trivial. The only thing these censorship measures accomplish is to limit the freedom of the average, honest citizen.

What Should We Do Instead

At a bare minimum the criteria for the censorship must be made public and the process of blacklisting transparent. But that’s just adding polish to a rotting system. The real solution lies in international cooperation to cut to the core of the issue by rounding up the organized crime organizations and individuals committing atrocities.

Will you quietly accept these steps to an Orwellian future or will you speak up and ask our leaders to walk the talk? This is not a conspiracy theory. I wish it were. This is happening in our own backyards by our own politicians. Speak truth to power.

Otto Scharmer’s book “Theory U” is a veritable treasure trove. One gem I discovered today was a list of the metaprocesses that “create the world we live in from moment to moment”:

• Thinking (attending)
• Conversing (languaging)
• Organizing (structuring)
• Forming fields or collective global action (coordinating)

I see a clear correlation between the first two metaprocesses and my self-declared interests of meditation and Art of Hosting. Meditation helps me turn my attention inwards to the internal metaprocess of reality creation, while Art of Hosting is a pathway to do the same with conversation.

This leads me to think; what might similarly open up our “wisdom eye” for structuring and coordinating?

Margaret Wheatley came by The Hub Amsterdam on Wednesday to share her thoughts on social change and the times of transition. She’s definitely a thinker and author worth getting familiar with. And to share her ideas with the wider world, we decided to film her presentation:

As I try to figure out the chaos we find ourselves in, I also find myself tremendously excited about a number of things. I’m putting these thoughts out in the hopes of sharing my inspiration and connecting with others interested in similar things.

Meditation

Meditation for me has over the past years gone  from an esoteric practice to a useful way to develop myself to a practical path to realization. And it is the practicality of meditation that most excites me.

In my rather brief practice history of maybe 200 hours, I’ve noticed an increasing ability to stay present and remain equanimous. I’ve also had enough experiences with my own mind to be fairly convinced that there’s something to the talk about a path of realization.

Art of Hosting

In many ways Art of Hosting, together with ideas such as Theory U, is to the interpersonal realm what meditation is to the intrapersonal. It is a leadership practice of inviting in all contributions and weaving a rich tapestry of meaning. And is that not exactly what the world needs right now?

I have already started dabbling with tools in the Art of Hosting toolbox; World Café, Circle, Open Space, etc. Next weekend I’ll be attending a course on Art of Hosting and will continue to bring in the tools and philosophies to my daily work.

The Hub

The Hub is a business center, incubator, networking club, and innovation center for social innovators. It is beautifully straddled between the old world of business while boldly stepping into what’s yet to emerge.

I recently joined as a member at The Hub Amsterdam and will definitely take every opportunity to get to know the people that make up the community.

Financial Crisis

Aside from the fact that the prospect of a total economic collapse is scary, I find the crisis exhilarating. As old institutions are failing, they can free space for new, nimbler, and more human players to take their place.

What does this mean in practice? Honestly, I have no clue. But here’s a partial list of places to look in:

• Kufunda Learning Village
• Transition towns
• Global Oneness Project
• Pioneers of Change
• The Obama administration

There’s so much electricity in the air that I’m almost starting to believe there’s something to the 2012 predictions running rampant.

I lie awake, thinking. What does the world need from us? Our current trajectory is a self-perpetuating suicide, yet what should we do instead?

Incremental Improvement

Simply getting better at what we’re doing is not enough. It seems very unlikely that for example the automotive industry in its current form will ever recover from the economic crisis, let alone be in a shape to help us avert the climate catastrophe. The same goes for banking, energy, and practically every single other sector of industry.

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.

—W.E. Deming

Leaping Ahead

But surely next generation energy technologies will generate millions of jobs and drop the emissions to an all time low? I certainly hope so. Even then we are not out of the bushes yet as we face crisis after crisis; water, food, resources, cultural clashes.

And technological progress, the very tool that seemingly saved us will bring us ever new challenges. Our best intentions are accelerating the speed of change and increasing the volatility of our already unpredictable world.

How will we respond to the ethical challenges and existential risks created by biotech and Artificial Intelligence? What will be the limits of human greed fueled by ubiquitous nanotechnology? These questions await us just beyond the horizon.

Our Capacity to Adapt

I believe that our only chance for survival hinges on cultivating the capacity to change, to adapt to new life conditions, to answer ever new questions. Fortunately we have a role model right at our doorstep.

Life itself has evolved over millions of years, survived natural catastrophies, and produced a staggering variety of thriving life forms. Life does not resist change, it adapts, not fearing to abandon what did not work.

Life celebrates diversity and embraces functional fit over competitive analysis. Life self-organizes on all levels; cells, organs, food chains, and ecosystems, all in partnership. Life adapts, survives, and flourishes.

This is what I mean by a more natural way of being. This is why I think it’s so important.

Different authors might call it different names—true calling, vision, or even career ambition—but practically everyone agrees that your purpose in life is important. Find it and follow it. Except… How will you know you’ve found it?

As You Evolve, So Does Your Purpose

My claim is that purpose is not something that you can find and be done with. Rather, it is an ongoing process of uncovering deeper and deeper dimensions of yourself. Over the years, you grow and change, why should not your purpose?

Here’s how I’ve described my life purpose over the years:

• “Get a job and build a life” (as the society expects me to)
• “Bring about a revolution in education” (influenced by AIESEC and Anthony Robbins)
• “Evolution of human consciousness” (after getting into Ken Wilber and Spiral Dynamics)
• “Uncovering a more natural way of being” (re-reading Presence was a key turning point)

What Can We Do?

If our life purpose is this elusive and constantly evolving, what are we to do? Most of us have at least a vague guess of what we feel called to do, even it’s something as mundane as our favorite hobby. My advice is to take your best guess and follow it with all your heart, but hold it lightly. Never stop expressing your heart’s call. Never stop looking within.

A couple of people have already asked me about how I set up my blog. I won’t go into details here but rather focus on some of the more exotic parts of the setup, such as the multi-channel publishing.

Hosting and Domain Name

I was lucky enough to land on the DreamHost signup page just in time to get their Obama Inauguration offer. They’re a good deal even without the offer, though. Not necessarily red carpet treatment but cheap and good enough. Hey, they’re even green! Use promo code “jointhetribe” for a $97 discount ($51 discount for the monthly payment offer).

“Dot what? Name? Where can I get one?” I bought my domain name from 1&1 since DreamHost’s free domain names didn’t cover .name domains.

The Blog

Thanks to DreamHost’s simple one-click installs, I was up and running with a WordPress blog in less than 5 minutes after signing up. After that I installed some essential plugins, hooked up FeedBurner for subscriber tracking and email subscriptions, and I was ready to go live.

Comments

I replaced the standard comment system with Disqus, because I liked the idea of enriching the comment experience a bit (threading, voting, etc.) and tying it to a larger discussion ecosystem.

Multi-Channel Conversations

The “My Recent Activity” widget in the sidebar is pulled from FriendFeed, which aggregates all my online activity from YouTube videos and GoodReads book reviews to Twitter updates and Delicious bookmarks. Much of this also gets posted onto FaceBook and, for example, my Disqus profile.

Why go through all this trouble, you might ask? Admittedly part of it is just to satisfy the techie propeller head in me, but the main reason is the ease with which I find myself drawn into interesting conversations this way. One click on “Favourite” in YouTube and suddenly my email box springs alive with comments from blog readers and my FaceBook wall becomes a coffee table conversation.

This was inspiration enough for me to really dive into blogging. I sincerely hope that you also decide to join the tribes.

A friend of mine recently brought up the question of how to communicate experiential practices to businesses. Pondering on this I came upon the thought that there seem to be three different levels to view the practice on.

1. Activity

On the superficial level each practice is simply the activity we do, be it corporate yoga classes or musical improvisation workshops. Viewed this way, many practices seemingly don’t develop any tangible business skills and appear mostly useful for their immediate effect of relaxation, energy, etc.

2. Metaphor

If we go one level deeper, we can see each activity as a metaphor of a business activity. We can then use the activity as a laboratory to test out various mental models, e.g. yoga might be used to explore questions such as “Which is better, a slow stretch or a fast, jumpy movements?” And music might help us look at thoughts such as “What is the importance of a common idea and tune?”

Note also that these metaphorical explorations can take the form of key learning points, an intuitive understanding, and anything in between.

3. Embodiment

Deeper still we find embodiment. Here we can observe the characteristics that the practice cultivates moving from physical attributes into ways we live our lives. Yoga, for example, might help us bring resilience into stressful work situations, and music can get us in tune in more ways than one while building our capacity of entering flow states.

Applying these three lenses can help us deepen our own practice and offers an interesting way of building workshops for other people. And for you Ken Wilber fans out there, the levels roughly coincide with body, mind, and spirit.

I was walking together with my brother at the foot of the Atomium, a giant structure of glistening steel spheres connected by tubes in the shape of an iron crystal. An awe-inspiring structure on its own right, what struck me about it was its history.

The Atomium was the centerpiece of the World Expo 1958. With the Second World War barely ten years past, there was still a looming threat of a nuclear war between the super powers that were the Soviet Union and the United States. Yet at the same time the expo was a symbol of hope, of our belief in peaceful coexistence, prosperity, and technological progress.

Co-Authors of a Common Story

Now a mere 50 years later we have seemingly reached the end of this chapter and the page is yet to turn. The next chapter calls all of us as co-authors of a new hope. And it is that call that I’m answering by starting this blog. I want to join the voices whispering the beginnings of a new way of thinking and being.

About Me

Like in all good discussions, I believe we will get to know each other gradually, but let me introduce myself briefly. I’m Janne Asmala and my passion lies in individual, organizational, and social transformation through the discovery of a more natural way of being. At the time of writing, I’m particularly interested in meditation and Art of Hosting.

It is my pleasure to meet you and I invite you to follow along and, better yet, join the discussion on this blog and elsewhere.