Sensing from our collective selves? : Reflections from Wednesdays with YA
Contributor: Shashank
Last Wednesday, the 29th of April, we had a fascinating call with community members to make sense of our collective common reality of today, the corona crises. To do that, the invitation was to access our collective selves..what does that mean? The blog attempts to communicate the idea and an approach to access our collective self.
What was the call really about?
Two major intentions from our side, behind the conversation:
The ancient new way of seeing that came up
Like I shared on the call, there has been different ways, this has been said to us. In brief, Each of us are not individual selves, separate from the whole and each other. Each of us are whole parts of the whole. Therefore like we access our sense making capabilities at the individual level (through feelings, thoughts, intuitions, body sensations, dreams, aura, quality of sleep, digestion etc), we can access our sense-making from the collective selves too. Inviting you to take a moment and let it land to you.
Some Resources
Here are some resources that got invoked in the conversation:
1. Rumi in the 16th century told us - “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.”
2. Ishaupanishads a couple of thousand years ago told us - पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदं पूर्णात पूर्णमुदच्यते| पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिश्यते|
That is whole. This is whole. From (that) wholeness comes (this) wholeness. When (this) wholeness is taken away from (that) wholeness, what remains is wholeness.
3. One of the major ways that we have come to make sense of the world in current times is through counting and numbers. This approach rooting from a worldview that saw man and nature separate, spirit and matter separate and got worsened with the industrial mindset since the 16th century. This article is an insightful - fresh yet ancient way - of using counting. The author calls it Deep Counting and invites us to inquire into the concepts of 0 and 'infinity' both that got developed in the east - dancing between mathematics and philosophy. The Monk, the butcher and incredible origins of Deep Counting.
4. Lastly, Integral Theory - I went through its technical idea for the first time on wikipedia. For me, its the same idea expressed in green above. In the western, science driven world - this is slowly gathering traction to make sense of reality.
These are dense things and challenge our centuries of conditioning and colonial education. We have been exploring this last few years and making our own understanding, please write back if you would like to be part of these inquiries.
Would love to hear back if the blog invokes anything for you..or if you would want to be part of these inquiries.
Deeply grateful for you to showed up yesterday and engaging with all this.
You can write to me at shashank@youthallianceofindia.org or to us at youthallianceofindia@gmail.com. Know more about Hope Through the cracks - our response to covid-19 here.
What was the call really about?
Two major intentions from our side, behind the conversation:
- To sense from our collective selves and make an understanding of the collective reality (coronavirus crises) - Yesterday's sheet summarises some of the (conspiracy) theories the group had heard :D
- To notice our limited ways of knowing to understand collective reality
- Limited to tools of social media, media, data, researches, hear-say/gossip, numbers, statistics etc.
- Role of beliefs in receiving perspectives
- Leaving us with a question, what other ways of knowing can we build to make sense of the collective reality?
The ancient new way of seeing that came up
Like I shared on the call, there has been different ways, this has been said to us. In brief, Each of us are not individual selves, separate from the whole and each other. Each of us are whole parts of the whole. Therefore like we access our sense making capabilities at the individual level (through feelings, thoughts, intuitions, body sensations, dreams, aura, quality of sleep, digestion etc), we can access our sense-making from the collective selves too. Inviting you to take a moment and let it land to you.
 |
| We are whole parts of the whole? |
Some Resources
Here are some resources that got invoked in the conversation:
1. Rumi in the 16th century told us - “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.”
2. Ishaupanishads a couple of thousand years ago told us - पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदं पूर्णात पूर्णमुदच्यते| पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिश्यते|
That is whole. This is whole. From (that) wholeness comes (this) wholeness. When (this) wholeness is taken away from (that) wholeness, what remains is wholeness.
3. One of the major ways that we have come to make sense of the world in current times is through counting and numbers. This approach rooting from a worldview that saw man and nature separate, spirit and matter separate and got worsened with the industrial mindset since the 16th century. This article is an insightful - fresh yet ancient way - of using counting. The author calls it Deep Counting and invites us to inquire into the concepts of 0 and 'infinity' both that got developed in the east - dancing between mathematics and philosophy. The Monk, the butcher and incredible origins of Deep Counting.
4. Lastly, Integral Theory - I went through its technical idea for the first time on wikipedia. For me, its the same idea expressed in green above. In the western, science driven world - this is slowly gathering traction to make sense of reality.
These are dense things and challenge our centuries of conditioning and colonial education. We have been exploring this last few years and making our own understanding, please write back if you would like to be part of these inquiries.
Would love to hear back if the blog invokes anything for you..or if you would want to be part of these inquiries.
Deeply grateful for you to showed up yesterday and engaging with all this.
You can write to me at shashank@youthallianceofindia.org or to us at youthallianceofindia@gmail.com. Know more about Hope Through the cracks - our response to covid-19 here.
Comments
Post a Comment