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Still trying to catch an Orientation? Next call this Saturday May 21st, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Daylight Time (4pm Eastern, 8pm UTC)

Goodhart’s law has become a fairly well-known label for the entanglement of incentives with measurements:

“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to become a good measure.”

I’ve even heard that effect name verbified as Goodharting — that measures can be Goodharted by focusing pressure upon them, and that some measures are more susceptible or resistant than others to being corrupted thusly. Goodharting is the pressure that creates the incentive to game a system, by linking measurement to reward.

Please indulge me, if you’re reading along here, as I fumble with words today. I wish to locate, coalesce, and attempt to describe an… evolutionary expansion in how I perceive of and relate to Intentional Society.

As a meta preface: The reality of IS, when I can feel the truth of it in my bones, is something I’m uncovering more than creating. It’s already there waiting for us, like dinosaur bones to paleontologists — a configuration of relations within the possibility space of reality. It’s (by definition of purpose) the living system of human awareness and agency, organizing and embodying the attractors constantly bridging from current society to the next. IS is what is possible if we attend to our deepest values and integrate across the whole of our lives.

Now, about that shift in perception. I’ll try saying, “from club to collective” and see if that points at it well enough. It’s a developmental shift, which means going from a “is-a” identity relationship to a “has-a” containment relationship — the ‘ol “transcend and include” move. By using club I mean to connote the tight-knit active social interaction that defines its boundary: the neighborhood tree-house meetup, the after-school drama club. IS has thus far been a club of active explorers, meeting weekly with each other to practice relating to ourselves and each other in awareness-building ways.

IS is that but, now I’m seeing that it is not just that, that it has that and also more than that. In using the word collective I mean to connote a wider variety of self-organized expressions, bounded by an alignment in purpose, goals, perspective, desires. As the “fuzzy cloud” of people around, coming through, and in orbit of Intentional Society (club definition) has increased steadily over the past year, the potential for an expanded collective definition of IS has kept rising.

Newcomers, our next Orientation call is this Saturday May 7th, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Daylight Time (4pm Eastern, 8pm UTC)

We were over 20 people together last Sunday, and while attendance has been gradually increasing (and fluctuates week to week), the last three weeks or so (going back to the final week of last season) has felt to me like traveling over a threshold in terms of facilitation and group-size-feel. To use a human-body analogy, it’s less like “growing pains” in one’s shins/femurs, and more like “oh look how tall you are now, you can reach that cupboard yourself.” Some shifts I’m noticing or doing:

• “Large group” check-ins still require breakout rooms, can’t do full-group check-ins and hear everyone’s voice. (We tend to alternate smaller-or-larger check-in groups)
• No longer practical for me to review random breakout assignments while facilitating. This was minimal (ensuring new folks aren’t clustered alone, occasionally gender balance) and I don’t feel a need to react to regain it now, but would need a role split to a 2nd person to do so.
• I’ve tried keeping the breakout groups steady throughout a session, rather than randomly mixing each time. This forgoes “I have a sense of knowing everyone” in favor of supporting at least some closer connections developing.
• Noticing/Meta time might be changing in feel? I mean, everything always changes, but the question is still open here re how much the dynamic has shifted/is shifting with more of a stage/wall-of-faces presence reducing the intimacy of one’s potentially-vulnerable sharing of awareness.

That “Noticing time” is our last significant full-group open-mic practice, aside from some practice-debrief sharing spots. I do want to keep it that way until scale markedly changes the experience, because that felt sense of “we-space shared consciousness” and group attunement seems quite important to our overall vibe of connectedness. Even that could be split, but we’ll see how to do that whenever it ends up being the next logical step.

It’s not too late (it never is) to join the new season! Orientation call this Saturday April 30th, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Daylight Time (4pm Eastern, 8pm UTC)

The polarity of “being and doing” has danced in my head quite persistently — I was writing about it two years ago, as well as two months ago here. These two different energies, priorities, leans, seem so pivotal in the developmental transition from conventional to post-conventional logics/stages.

But, have you ever repeated a word often enough that it seems to lose all meaning for a minute? I feel a bit like that this week, looking at this relationship so intently that the terms themselves seem to dissolve. Swirling around integrative thoughts like “we’re never not being” and “even choosing to be is a doing” have me questioning what exactly I’ve been meaning with those word-pointers.

Being-ness is stillness, presence, feeling, attuning. Doing-ness is movement, acting, deciding, building. What about other nearby polarities?

New folks need an orientation call before attending general sessions. To catch the start of season 6, join us on Saturday April 2nd, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Daylight Time (4pm Eastern, 8pm UTC)

I’m feeling excited, supported, and just-the-right-amount of “how will it work out?” nervous to begin our 6^th quarterly season of Intentional Society. Today I’ve reached confidence that this is the right time to begin a big shift in our meta landscape — from “James leads all the stuff” to “this is a capable community effort.” Well, possibly the right time was even earlier, who truly knows, but I’m feeling it in the maturing call structure, the strong core group, the cultural foundation, and the momentum of group size. Now, it would be a big mistake if we didn’t start reducing the bottleneck of my leadership and perspective being so dominant. Instead of the-James-show, we can unleash the ready creativity and capability of other members to contribute their leadership, starting with the facilitation of some sections of our general sessions. Simple, yet very visible.

There are moving parts and fiddly bits to navigate along the way: minimum-viable roles and responsibilities, skill-matching and feedback, coordination, scheduling, nominating-and/or-volunteering, etc. But I’m feeling pretty sanguine towards all that, with a feeling of lightness in my bodymind contemplating the imminence of entering a phase shift that no longer smells like “letting go” (with the connotation of things falling down or given up) but like trusting and grateful interdependence and mutual support. And (reminder to myself of previous learning) I don’t need to shrink myself or my leadership to do it. It’s not a zero-sum game. Maybe “you own this too” should be a mantra for me as we walk this direction. 😆

So that evolution excites me at the meta level. Perhaps integration, of being-and-doing or other polarities, might guide us in our content-level explorations for a bit, as I touched on last week, even while we continue deepening our foundational strengths. I’m stoked, as the kinds probably no-longer even ironically say these days. I will say it sincerely, then, post-ironic sincerity. Let’s go!

This is our quarterly rest week — an in-between time of change and strategy and potential, when I put on my system design hat towards our next season. I was glad to share that hat with other community members in yesterday’s Meta Meeting, and am brimming now with connections between ideas, proposals, and collected wisdom.

The way/dao of Intentional Society is a way of being, the essence of being how-we want-to-be, inhabiting our highest values in self-awareness, spacious presence, and coherent intention…

…as. we. live. Life, everywhere and all the time, not just when we’re together. The pull/call/desire I’m describing is toward integration across outside (of General Sessions) and inside parts. Opening up to more doing-energy, while retaining our priority on being-ness. Opening up to more exterior action, to complement our interior action.

Bringing in more space for increased scope, that allows room for more complete, integrated learning loops to occur in our personal journeys: The inner game (inside ourselves, and inside our community) connects and flows outward to the outer game, which brings new feedback to fuel the inner game, and so forth.

Last orientation call of the season, this Saturday April 9^th, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Daylight Time (4pm Eastern, 8pm UTC) — come if you’d like to get involved next season beginning April 24^th

This Sunday will be our seasonal big-picture retrospective-cross-envisioning. Sensing, not just from what’s there, but also from what’s not there. Thinking about this possibility space right here right now by myself, the thing I’d like to confront is the question of whether/how I am holding Intentional Society back.

This is a good question to ask oneself regularly even if nothing at all feels held back, but something “in there” is already calling me to diagnosis. This wouldn’t be the first time: I’ve held IS back in the past by being tentative about my leadership, uncomfortable with the power embodied in my founding role. For better or worse, I currently do and drive a lot of what IS is structurally, and so any limitations of our evolution are probably tangled up in my own shadows or rigidity of direction.

The thing that’s calling to me from outside of the current IS boundary is some kind of “deep yes” resonance, a “know it when I see it” state of systemic rightness, a fitness-to-purpose that’s tangible when a whole system starts humming with the self-reinforcing energy of tipping into a new gravity well/attractor basin. I’ve tasted the potential of truly high-performing teams, and I’ve seen when a plan comes together in a complex domain, when awareness and intentionality and values and purpose all combine to produce a new mode of being-and-doing far beyond conventional capabilities.

Our orientation calls for newcomers continue this Saturday April 2nd, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Daylight Time (4pm Eastern, 8pm UTC)

“What can I un-know?”

That was the prompt and subject this week in our group practice. I’d been approaching this subject for a couple weeks before we tried the experiment last Sunday, to mixed reviews.

On the structure/container dimension, I tried to leave it minimal and loose, using “abiding in silence and holding divergence” (h/t Lisa Norton) as the main guidance. Full group, not even a talking piece, see what emerges. However, I notice that “using a prompt” itself had a stronger impact than I anticipated, and am taking a note to the effect of “the smaller the amount of structure is, the more concentrated its usage will be.”

If you’d like to experience Intentional Society, start with an orientation call Saturday March 26th, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Daylight Time (4pm Eastern, 8pm UTC)

Looking back at cases

Last Sunday we finished (for now, I think) our multi-week focus on case practices. Case work? Maybe I should say “case presencing,” verbifying “presence” to point at the act of bringing one’s presence deliberately in service of another person and their world. (Tip of the hat to the Presencing Institute for that move and for bringing Case Clinic into our usage.)

Presence could be said to be made up of our attention, our focus, our engagement, and maybe even our attitude. To give it to another person, as we do in our case practices, is a gift. The experience of receiving that gift was called “decadent” and “luxurious” by our case-sharers.

We’ve entered US Daylight Saving time - our orientation call this Saturday March 19th is at 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Daylight Time, which is now 8pm UTC.

Last year I was in the habit of regularly giving, in our Sunday sessions, a weekly reminder that “I don’t know what I’m doing and we’re making this all up as we go along.” I realized recently that I had fallen out of that habit of repeating that saying, and at the lower/practical level of “doing what we do together in a general session” I do think that is correct. We have more now in the way of the rhythms and routines of practicing what we practice together.

But at a higher level, this is and needs to remain true and salient in my awareness. I am reminded of Lisa Norton’s uncertainment practice, framing this as a “negative capability” of abiding in uncertainty. Maybe I could say “inverted” to highlight the complementarity — like digging a hole versus building a tower, something like making space for better foundations.

What will Intentional Society become, where will it lead us, what will we grow into with it? I don’t know. And it’s hard to maintain that openness when my mind wants to make assumptions, wants to plan and control and know, all the good effectiveness practices of systematicity that themselves need to be object-ed and transcended to re-integrate with the complexity of reality that doesn’t fit inside those systems that are small enough to fit inside our brains.

Yes we’re having an orientation call this Saturday, March 12th at 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Standard Time (4pm Eastern, 9pm UTC).

Pesky clock-management note: March 12th is the last day before Daylight Savings Time hits the USA, so orientation folks can ignore. Sunday folks, remember on the 13th to A) shift your clocks forward one hour if you are inside it, or else B) move the start time of Intentional Society one hour earlier in your time zone to compensate. (Europeans, the transitory off-by-one will last for 2 weeks this year.)

With a swell of newer folks and absent some older folks lately (last week especially, but it’s a trend over 3-4 weeks), the average tenure in the room felt noticeably lower last Sunday. I found myself explaining structural aspects of the Sunday session almost as if it were the start of a new season. The “tenure effect” can swing the opposite direction as well, but I don’t think I’ve bumped into the “too insular” feeling of high tenure yet in IS the last 14 months.

Tenure/experience seems like a organizational dimension with a sweet spot and homeostatic feedback — at least, that’s what my corporate-trained OD part says. Focus on retention, or focus on recruitment, to bring the system back into balance. An organization trying to perpetuate itself kind of looks like an infinite game playing-to-keep-playing mode of self-balancing behavior. But there’s something outside that trying to get my attention today, with a “but what if we didn’t?” provocation. If “dimension” is often just another word for a polarity, what integrations are possible if we don’t just automatically swing the other direction when feeling tilted?

Our next (large!) orientation call is this Saturday, March 5th at 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Standard Time (4pm Eastern, 9pm UTC).

Welcome to all the new subscribers of this little list! About 30 people attended Monday’s Stoa session live, with about 500 subsequent views on YouTube. Here is that recording, which contains a 20 minute presentation plus 35 minutes of Q&A.

With the interest/awareness triggered by the Stoa session, we might have a noticeable jump in our attendance this week. Last Sunday in our meta time, we considered how to respond to a possible surge, with “sure, let a big cohort in!” being favored over “make a waitlist and trickle people in.” So if that’s you, don’t hang back!

Last week I was talking about relational cases, so here’s a brief update. We did take the “What I really want to say” setup and pair that with Circling (more-or-less) as a sort of “relational case” or “case circling” mash-up. (When I say “case,” that concept/word is sourced from Theory U’s Case Clinic practice.) We’re not necessarily done with it, but here are a few observations:

There will be an IS orientation call this Saturday, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Standard Time (4pm Eastern, 9pm UTC)

Stoa session on Monday!

Intentional Society is making an appearance on The Stoa! The Stoa is a “digital campfire” in the sensemaking space, appreciated by many IS members for providing access to many interesting and influential thinkers. This session will consist of a 15-20 minute talk, followed by Q&A, then some (non-recorded) relational practices. I’ll be sharing what we’ve learned from our first year of practice, and you are invited to come hear, show support, contribute questions, and play the taster games. Register here for the interactive session on Monday February 28th at 3pm Pacific (6pm Eastern, 11pm UTC).

Last week: Safety and freedom

There will be an orientation call this Saturday, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Standard Time (4pm Eastern, 9pm UTC)

Intentional Society is making an appearance on The Stoa on the 28^th! Register here for the (3pm Pacific, 6pm Eastern, 11pm UTC) interactive session.

If I feel a little nervous and averse to writing about something, that’s probably a good signal for me to lean into it, right? Especially if that makes the case in point recursively, because the thing itself is about holding back.

The moment itself was Sunday, while Circling near the end of our latest IS session. The topic of privilege arose within the group, and I could feel myself constrict as my nervous system perked up to the possible dangers. Privilege intersects with very real and personal differences among us — of skin color, of socioeconomic status, and gosh wokeness & DEI is just about the hottest front of the current culture wars. Was it safe to talk about this, in this space, for all present participants? Would diving in push unwanted emotional labor onto non-white participants, maybe further reify the identity-label-based frames that can themselves be charged? Were there “rules” of expression we weren’t conscious of?

This Saturday, Feb 12: Orientation call 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Standard Time (4pm Eastern, 9pm UTC)
This Sunday’s community gathering features: present-moment-expression practice

I have a wondering for you: What balance do you personally hold between “seeking” growth and “letting” growth happen?

In a “seeking” state, you might be trying, practicing, rehearsing, doing certain activities. Going to the gym to exercise your muscles. Practicing your scales to improve your piano playing. Concentration meditation to train your focus. This is the “doing” mode.

In a “letting” state, you might be observing, listening, being with yourself. Listening to the sensations that are alive in your body. Facing and feeling a fear without resisting it. Opening awareness meditation being with but not involved in arising thoughts. This is the “being” mode.

Click here to sign up for our next orientation video call on Saturday, February 5th at 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Standard Time (4pm Eastern, 9pm UTC)

<turns on microphone> *tap tap* ahem:

“Intentional Society is a community of people who want to grow — to develop into be the people we want to be. We create space for growth by communing with each other in relational practices, practicing being and becoming.”

…at least once a week, I’m explaining to someone what Intentional Society is. Wordings condense and smooth out slowly over time, like water wearing down rock. But there are tipping points, too, where the erosion uncovers a new path for a section of the river.

To join us on this path, register for this orientation call Saturday January 29^th, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Standard Time (4pm Eastern, 9pm UTC)

After the party, we faced a rather open agenda. Where should we head next in our practices? I’m going to use this space here to continue refining the design that we worked up on Monday: Core relational practices plus individual development themes.

This feels like a loop around an evolving spiral, the spiral being something like the essence of Intentional Society. The practices that now feel “core” do so by virtue of their impact on us, the sense of meaning we come away with, which also correlates with our enjoyment. Here’s a new phrase for describing the core: “perceiving, expressing, and sensemaking.” Oh, and I notice that also almost maps to the I/we/world relating scopes — relating to “others, ourselves, and systems.”

The design innovation that’s most alive for me right now is the “theming” frame of bringing a developmental lens to our experience of these practices. We’ve done some explicitly developmental work, and some “pure” practices, but few solid combinations. I’m excited about further integration in a way that helps us give ourselves space to grow. By “space” I mean not pushing or driving ourselves to achieve what we “should,” but instead listening to the pull and call of the contexts that challenge us and stretch us towards greater capacity.

Want to join the party? Get involved first! Saturday orientation call January 22^nd, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Standard Time (4pm Eastern, 9pm UTC)

We’re having a… party? Intriguingly, I notice a sense of “uh-oh” when I use that word. There’s a part of me, age 16 or so, that isn’t cool, and knows that “party” parties are held by and for cool people, so obviously it would be a disaster to go fake being cool. Oh, plus there’s usually “bad stuff” happening at parties, right (I had a quite a culturally religious upbringing), so that would make me a bad person to be supportive of that stuff…

Feeling the cringe sensation, hah. Anyone else with that kind of word association? I’ve generally relaxed the fear-of-others parts of me in many contexts, but it’s interesting to notice the almost word-specific trigger here. It’s not even a required word — we could call this a celebration. But that’s such a generic word. More specifically, we’re commemorating one year of weekly General Session meetings of Intentional Society. But that feels a little too solemn. We commemorate fallen soldiers, for example. There needs to be some levity, some fun in the word.

What do I want out of this party? I want to delight in the presence of friends. I want to hear what Intentional Society is or means to different people. I want to hear encouraging words from outside allies. I want to hear appreciations of various people flying around. I want to get a little silly, and laugh multiple times.

Don’t know what Intentional Society really is? Join the orientation call Saturday January 15th, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Standard Time (4pm Eastern, 9pm UTC)

Disclaimer: I could be off, of course. Don’t rate these thoughts more highly than anyone who has seriously (like, hundred+ hours, versus ten) studied and practiced IFS. But after prepping an intro last week, here are the key characteristics of IFS that I think explain why it helps people:

It requires outside perspective

If you’re experientially on the inside of a feeling, IFS would call that being “blended” with that part. By labeling it as a “part,” it becomes something un-blended — an object distinct from your self. That’s cognitive de-fusion, aka ADT’s subject-object shift, an “I have” relationship rather than “I am.”

Newcomers are invited to an orientation call Saturday January 8th, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Standard Time (4pm Eastern, 9pm UTC) as an onramp to connecting with the community.

Internal Family Systems (henceforth IFS) has come up more and more recently in my world, and the “parts” model seems to be “in the water” in developmental spaces. Several other Intentional Society participants have similar energy/interest, and in this Sunday’s session we will explore this model and play with how it might be useful to us.

The phrase “parts work” seems to have two pieces, to my eye. The first is just that we (our mind/personality/consciousness) are made up of distinguishable parts that can be in conflict with each other. There is something of this in common vernacular: we say “part of me wants X, but another part wants Y” easily and frequently. The second piece embeds a claim that we can mentally model these parts as coherent agents and interrogate them about their values, motivations, and reasoning.

(Hopefully my usage of neutral “pieces” vs mental “parts” there is clean? The originator of IFS, Dr. Richard Schwartz, says “we call them parts because it’s the most user-friendly word. It’s not the best word, in the sense of being descriptive…”)

Orientation call tomorrow for newcomers: Saturday January 1st, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Standard Time (4pm Eastern, 9pm UTC) RSVP here

Happy New Year as we enter 2022! This marks the start of our 5^th season and 2^nd year of Intentional Society — and this Sunday is less a “kickoff” or “launch” as much as an “easing in” or “(re)connecting”. Not cramming a lot of information into a packed session, but rather relaxing into the vibe of the people and culture of this community. We’ll be warming ourselves up in Zoom House Party style on Jan 2^nd, which uses OST Principles and self-service breakout rooms with names like “Living Room,” “Garage,” and “Broom Closet” to facilitate virtual self-organization.

We’ll resume our rhythm of relational and developmental practices starting Jan 9^th, and we’re also intrigued to begin a new support structure for crewing that’s a “both+and” along with the Sunday sessions. Both independent and integrated, is the thinking of the sub-group that met this week to sketch out that vision.

If you’re looking for a good opportunity to gently check out IS, this seems like a great time. If you’ve attended in the past and disconnected, you’re welcome to pick back up where you left off. (just reply to this email if you’re not on current invite lists) If you see interconnections or opportunities across the Liminal Web or other related webs and ventures, drop us a line. I can’t wait to see what this year will bring us, on the path that we are both discovering and creating.

Intentional Society is on its seasonal rest week - regular activity will begin again on January 1^st.

I wish to point to and share a deep, structural learning that keeps grooving itself deeper into my pattern recognition. The specific form I’ve used for years is, “If something useful hurts, do it more often until it stops hurting.” For example, in software development it’s difficult to “ship high quality software” and if one is having difficulty reaching shippable quality, their natural urge will be to ship less often. However, the much better move is instead to ship much more often, a philosophy called “continuous delivery,” and in doing so the quality-degrading problems must be found and fixed. Increasing that frequency of that friction leads to the dissolution of the sources of friction, with a new and much happier equilibrium on the other side.

There’s a different framing called ugh fields of what I think is the same structure. This shows up in most procrastination - the compounding effect where we spend weeks avoiding an aversive thing that ends up taking only a few minutes when we finally face it. The strategy of avoiding and running away from the hurt only magnifies it, until we turn and see that the way out is through. Sometimes we’re very conscious of this… and then watching out for the “ugh field” can help us spot when we’re hiding our own flinch response from ourselves.

Looking at the new year approaching Intentional Society this last week, I (in community) noticed something similar applied. The useful-but-hard thing I desire is “sharing one’s desires for the future” — and the flinch I could detect was away from doing so myself. My rationalization was equity! To make more space for other voices, I should turn mine down, right? But… then my example encourages a behavioral norm of holding back! And/or a lack of trust that people could hear my desire while still holding on to their desires. Oh my, what a tension to be hiding out underneath that flinch.

Looking through a numbers lens requires a perspectival preamble: What’s our relationship to numbers? Modernity says they are data, hard cold evidence leading us to the capital-T one truth of the way things really are, unclouded by our sentiment and bias. But too often, numbers in this relationship offer us too-simple stories of understanding and of success. A more holistic approach like Warm Data adds the qualitative richness of interrelationships and complexity to the understandings we might attach to numbers.

Quantified self, “hockey stick” graphs, OKRs, GDP growth… when we get attached to numbers as representative of whatever value or success we seek to maximize, then the urge to pump those numbers up means we get bitten by Goodhart’s Law. The number gets detached from the actual value/goal and starts moving independently - and deceptively, if we still believe in its straightforward representationality.

Even when we know the numbers are symbolic indexes pointing at deeper values… it can be hard to avoid transferring attachment. I attended a church long ago that regularly proclaimed “it’s not about the numbers” even while touting, and taking obvious pride in, their number of baptisms/conversions each year and the size of their crowds. It’s tricky because the correlation really can exist there, and we can’t pretend that it’s meaningless to us, even as we try to avoid Goodhart-ing.

Well this is lengthy for a preamble, isn’t it. Okay, the following numbers are tiny little reference points connected to a thick tapestry of life and lives and living. I’d like you to hold that awareness along with me, as we take a peek through this kind of lens. Bigger isn’t better — even if we wish to live in a world where the entirety of human society is radically transformed. There are interesting things to see here — but don’t be fooled into thinking the numbers let you understand them well.

The last orientation call of 2021 is this Saturday December 11th, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Standard Time (4pm Eastern, 9pm UTC). Can you believe we’ve done 33 this year?

Hi friends, we’ve just finished three weeks of Circling (link is a good explainer by Tasshin, check it out if you’re unfamiliar) and I’d like to share about our experience with this relational practice. Circling asks us to inhabit the space of “What’s it like to be this person, in their world?” – and the primacy of this curiosity is IMHO Circling’s primary distinction as compared to T-Group, another practice focused on present-moment-experience. For us, I could feel the compassion and empathy flowing through the tone of these curious questions, questions like “What’s that like? (to say or hear)” and “How do you feel now (having said that)?”

Without preplanning up front, we tried three different styles, in this order:

1. fixed focus (aka “birthday” circling) with one predetermined circlee for X minutes each
2. free-flowing focus (aka “organic”)
3. developmental circling (aka “topical” and in fixed mode)

Our orientation call series resumes this Saturday December 4th, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Standard Time (4pm Eastern, 9pm UTC)

Looking back at the history page of intentionalsociety.org, I see that it was December 5th of last year when I first published the call to gather like-minded folks under the banner of Intentional Society. That call/manifesto/document doesn’t seem too cringe yet – the problems haven’t changed, and awareness and intention are still great metasystemic skills. The solution description is a little abstruse overall, I’d say. Can I condense it more pithily a year later? I might say something like…

Relational practices with developmental intention to expand our perspectives and become our fullest selves, while building a culture+org that can spread itself.

Not bad… pretty punchy IMHO for a pretty complex strategy. Participants and allies, how would you express or emphasize the essence of IS any differently?

No orientation this week, but you can register for a December 4th call.

A few days ago I thought, “I don’t wanna do a thematic US Thanksgiving letter, no way.” Yet here in it, full of traditional food, family visitors just departed, and social feeds full of expressions of gratitude… it’s alive in this moment, and I’ve found myself with a wish to share today.

My wish for you is, inner freedom – and the contentedness that comes from making peace with the way things truly are while also not ceasing to care for what may yet be.

This is another spiral around the acceptance-and-desire polarity for me: Thanksgiving for the both-attached-and-non-attached. My childhood conception of Thanksgiving was “grateful for this list of good things we have.” The next level is “grateful for unpleasant things too, for the good mixed in with (or because of) the bad.” And the next is “grump, all that gratefulness just increases suffering - either attaching satisfaction to things that can be taken away, or a way to be in denial.”

Our next orientation call is Saturday November 20th, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Standard Time (4pm Eastern, 9pm UTC)

How free is our will? I like this question much more than the ol' chestnut, "Does free will exist?" Framing it as a binary creates apparent paradox because at the scale of experience the answer is obviously yes and at the scale of physics the answer is obviously no, but debating yes versus no just confuses the frames.

I say that our will is as free as our attention is wide. Here I'm using attention to mean "we are consciously focused on a thing in the present moment" as contrasted with awareness meaning "we have some sense of a thing being present, though our attention can be focused elsewhere." The former is a subset of the latter: We can't pay attention to anything we're not aware of, and we "pay" attention to many fewer things than we have ready-to-hand.

There's also another layer below that, of "there in our senses, but we're not even aware of it". When we pay attention to our awareness itself, we can notice those sensations that we would otherwise filter out or ignore, and bring them into awareness. Once in awareness, they become objects that are possible for us to put our attention on, to use as we choose.

Want to practice together being the selves, friends, and agents we want to be? RSVP for an orientation Saturday November 13th, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Standard Time (4pm Eastern, 9pm UTC)

“Enough talking about the thing, let’s actually do the thing!”

That’s an embellishment of a sentiment coming out of last Sunday and heading towards this week’s session. In this case the thing is something like “relating to each other” and the meta layer was talking about our conventions and norms for interpersonal outreach and connection outside of the general sessions.

There’s another “thing” though, one like “growing an organization and culture intentionally” – which sure looks and sounds very similar to the meta of the first thing! Does it land differently, framed as its own goal vs as the reflective layer atop another goal? Either way, both are necessary and one shouldn’t displace the other.

Just before our US clocks fall back from Daylight time, there's an orientation call this Saturday! November 6th, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Daylight Time (4pm Eastern, 8pm UTC) RSVP here

Is this the right time to journey together? RSVP for the orientation

There will be an orientation call again this week: Saturday October 23rd, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Daylight Time (4pm Eastern, 8pm UTC) RSVP here

If you’d like to connect to the community life of Intentional Society, register for the orientation call this Saturday

We began our season last Sunday! The door is still open, so by all means join the orientation call this Saturday at 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Daylight Time (4pm Eastern, 8pm UTC) to get connected.

I think this newsletter space is mostly keeping you informed, dear reader, but sometimes I wonder if I get even more from doing it! In sharing my learning the kickoff session on Sunday, yet another new opportunity emerged right onto this page.

Want to catch the start of this next season? Our orientation call this Saturday, October 2nd

Coming soon – Season 4 starts with an orientation call for newcomers on October 2nd

No orientation this week or next – our 4th season which will run Oct 3 through Dec 19, so you can look forward to an orientation call on October 2nd.

Relatedly, this Sunday will be for existing participants only (sorry, in-betweeners), as the last week of season 3. We’ll be checking in with what we want - as direction-sensing for Intentional Society and season 4, and for our own internal compasses. What do our hearts desire in our lives? What do we long for in belonging? What truths do we feel pulled toward embodying in the world?

There will be an orientation call this Saturday September 11th, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Daylight Time (4pm Eastern, 8pm UTC). These are a prerequisite to participation in our Sunday general sessions.

The past few weeks we’ve been looking at that we’ve experienced – sharing stories in small groups, listening with curiosity, responding in resonance. These are stories of growth and transformation, specifically the kind of shift where we gain a new outlook on life (or some significant part of our life).

Because the more of these I hold, the more people keep showing up: Orientation call this Saturday September 4th, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Daylight Time (4pm Eastern, 8pm UTC). Tell a friend!

Consistency

If you’ve been intending to make an Intentional Society orientation call, we’re having another this Saturday August 28th, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Daylight Time (4pm Eastern, 8pm UTC).

We’re entering the realm of stories. Sharing and exploring our own stories of the transformation and developmental/perspective shifts we’ve experienced. Integrating over what we’ve already learned from our own lives.

To get involved with Intentional Society, start with an orientation call! Join in this Saturday August 21st, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Daylight Time (4pm Eastern, 8pm UTC)

Having explored and for three weeks, last Sunday we tried zooming out - way out. We tried out a role-playing practice together, spending a few minutes trying on and speaking from several different (roughly as characterized by the ) via archetypical sentence stem prompts.

To become involved with Intentional Society, get started with an orientation call! Next call Saturday August 14th, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Daylight Time (4pm Eastern, 8pm UTC)

The first step of the practice sequence is the “case giving”: the giver shares the definition and context of their developmental edge/challenge, while having their words periodically reflected back to them. This has worked pretty well in our experience so far, but some of us have also felt the impulse to ask questions during that time – and case givers have been a bit unsure of where they’re going and when they’ve “arrived.”

Today I’ll introduce a new practice we’ve invented, or perhaps evolved by combining existing practices with new intent. The punny working title is “Edge Cases.” Edge in used in the sense of developmental edge - the edge of our capacity to handle and hold situations we face in our lives, where we experience tension and uncertainty and the pull to grow bigger and better able to meet our challenge. The word “case” comes from Presencing Institute‘s (a.k.a. Theory U) Case Clinic practice, which forms the structural shell of in service of a case . And of course the neologism already refers to boundary conditions that stress-test a system, which seems quite apropos here. This practice currently has about four parts:

I’ll write about our new developmental group practice next week but first, would you care to sit with me in paradox for a few moments?

Polarity is a noun, but I find the practice of “holding” polarities, similarly to koans, to be a useful stretching exercise. This is the ““-ing of tensions, the “” of conflicting positive concepts, transmuting “versus” into “and,” then seeing what emerges.

There’s one more orientation call this Saturday July 24th, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Daylight Time (4pm Eastern, 8pm UTC), which will be the last in one for July.

Some days, I just. don’t. know. Clarity fades out and nebulosity swirls in. Nowadays when I arrive at this place of unknowing, I can welcome it — though I still rarely travel there proactively. Unknowing is a place that expands my awareness to see the divergence between my mental models and reality. Maybe it’s even a practice, of taking perspective on my knowing and seeing that the concepts and labels are always riding on top of an incredible ocean of complex reality.

Miss last week’s orientation? Same time this Saturday July 17th, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Daylight Time (4pm Eastern, 8pm UTC)

Hello to the newest 20% of you reading this! I write here each week to share about what we’re doing and learning “on the inside” of Intentional Society. I’ll try to keep this as honest and unvarnished as I can manage - and generally keep the word count down.

Hello friends,

This weekend we begin what I’m calling our third season of Intentional Society - the span of a quarter (and rest week last Sunday) seems about right. The minute-to-minute particulars will vary based on how many new faces show up, but I’m quite looking forward to applying the lessons of the last six months in an integrated arc over the next three months!

If you’ve never been to an introductory call, those are now “orientation” calls and here’s the sign up link for July 10th, 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Daylight Time (4pm Eastern, 8pm UTC).

We’re spending our last couple Q2 general sessions reconnecting with one another and solidifying our current community rooted-ness before we dive into our next season on July 11th. This Sunday we tried a new-and-not-new practice called T-group: New to us as a practice, yet very much within the same space as other relational practices we’ve sampled.

I’m not sure how closely the T-group lineage I’ve learned in 2021 resembles the mid-1900 origins of the label, and the variety of historical uses which have used it. I’ve been practicing with the folks, where we “Articulate your experience of the present moment as clearly and as accurately as possible.” Experience refers to “within you, and between you and other participants, in the present moment.”

I have three intentions to share with you today.

First, that Q3 of Intentional Society will have a dynamic arc to it. We’ve built relational connection through shared practices (ala Q1). We’ve explored developmental edges in small group voyages (ala Q2). The evolution in Q3 will be to integrate both into a living, breathing cycle of growth and consolidation: inhale and exhale, converging and diverging, similarity and difference.

Second, the intent to expand from the call. Re-reading it… well, it still moves me! But Intentional Society is significantly more than a philosophical manifesto at this point. What we’ve discovered through being and doing together can now be shared more legibly via an updated website and handbook.

We wish to grow into our biggest selves of love and joy and peace and power. We wish to bring about a safe and thriving future for humanity. The place to begin either and both is neither.

Please accept the explanatory words which follow as my meager gift offering towards you today. Picture these ordered lists as arrows travelling around a triangle of I, us, and all.

There’s a way in which change starts in self-relationship and flows outward:

Click here to register for an informational video call Saturday June 5th, 11:00-11:55am Pacific Daylight Time (2pm Eastern, 6pm UTC)

Special note for this week: This upcoming Sunday will focus on a retrospective of our small group voyages and structure. If you have, , participated in the last two months of Intentional Society general sessions, you are warmly invited to join in and share your perspective on how you’ve related to the structure, the matchmaking, the boats, all of it. The outside perspectives are quite valuable to add to the insider perspectives.