Finding Your Own Answers
Part of life is encountering situations where we don’t easily see what the best response might be. When this happens, and a quick inner inventory doesn’t bring forth any solutions, we often turn to others.
The old joke has it that an expert is anyone who is 100 miles from home and knows more than you do. Experts, advisers and consultants offer valuable services and indeed, calling one in may be the best choice in certain circumstances. The thing is that even the best of experts cannot give you the answers that you and your organization need – the most they can do is guide and support you to find your own.
Whether you are looking for answers in your own life or looking at organization-wide issues the process of discovery is much the same. The advantage with organizational work is found in the gift of collective wisdom, where, in terms of wisdom, the sum is greater than the parts.
Discovery begins with trust. Where there is trust in collective wisdom, there is space for the wisdom to arise and be spoken. To create trust the organization, or a key group of individuals within the organization, must be willing to ‘become present’.
In this context being present means taking the time to sit with the question or the situation. It means observing, withholding judgment and suspending the desire to move quickly to possible solutions. A truly helpful attitude here is one of curiosity: what is this question calling for and how is it tied to your future.
Finding an Answer
The Findhorn Foundation in Northern Scotland was faced with a key organizational question. From its inception in 1962 the Foundation, as it’s called locally, was both an educational trust and a growing intentional community. Decision making and visioning for the future had always been the sole province of Foundation members through selection to a Core Group.
By 1992 the number of residents in the wider community was equal to that of Foundation members and they were actively asking for representation in the decision making process. Foundation members considered themselves the insiders – keepers of the vision; they wondered what their role would be if the membrane between Foundation and community were opened up.
The Foundation called a meeting of all members to discuss and decide on this issue. Members sat in a circle around the room and the question was placed before them. Emotions and positions were both very evident.
A small number of senior members were in favour of opening out to the wider community, seeing it as the next step in an ever expanding organization/organism. The majority in the room spoke against change, seeing only what would be lost. The discussion produced little willingness to move.
Finally everyone had spoken and the discussion was brought to an end. The members settled themselves comfortably to begin a 20 minute meditation on the question to be followed by a simple yes or no response.
When the meditation ended the first person to speak said, “yes,” and another “yes,” and another, all around the circle – a unanimous decision to open outward and create community positions on the Core Group; a complete turnaround.
Every person in the circle said that when the discussion ended and they went into meditation then the rightness of including the whole community in their future became apparent. Individual minds and egos with all their fears would reject change for the apparent safety of familiarity. Collective wisdom, engaging hearts and souls, spoke for the greatest good.
Finding Your Own Answers is an organizational/community engagement founded on my experience and faith in our ability to discover, within ourselves, all the wisdom we require to make the best possible decisions. Each engagement is created around the needs of the community/organization and may include elements of dialogue, café-style conversations, art, drama and music.
I bring a grounded spiritual practice as well as 25-years experience leading teams and projects, facilitating large groups and living and working in community.
