Intentional Society: Dojo Nature + Practice Curriculum
What's so different and special about the Intentional Society practice space announced last week? In short: Intentional transmission of transformative experience.
The "dojo" metaphor helps transmit the nature of this practice space: it is a programmatic facilitated space of immersive experiential learning and transformative growth. From the Japanese (traceable to Sanskrit), it translates literally as "place of the way" with a lineage of rich meaning and many applicable connotations. (The closest western-flavored metaphors of "dance studio" and "gymnasium" don't quite line up so well.)
The "way" to be practiced in this dojo-like space is the way of transformation, of awakening, of edification, of development. Last week I called it "relational practices for post-conventional personal development." Today I'll try "growing beyond conventional adulthood." The phrase "becoming the people we want to be" is at the core of our current mission statement, and this too points at the same way, the same path.
Transmission of this way of growth is every bit as tricky as teaching mastery of a martial art, or wisdom transmission in a spiritual path. It's not wrong to say that the last three years of Intentional Society have been in pursuit of the cultivation of this art of post-conventional personal development. It, like other arts, does not come primarily through intellect — it is an experiential (practic-al!) perspective-shifting process of transformation.
I believe we see it and have it well enough to transmit it, and I consider this practice space, coupled with this practice curriculum, to be the first piece of Intentional Society to emerge from "R&D mode" as an offering toward the world. The curriculum is a progression of practices that we've evolved across many seasons of emergent exploration. It's friendly to beginning practitioners and deep enough for experienced voyagers, progresses smoothly through related skills, and seems deeply resonant with other wisdom sources and patterns of life experience.
I'll go ahead and share the draft curriculum as it stands today, about a week away from our January 7th start date. The practices it contains are more important than the specific skill labels or the section labels.
Draft Curriculum:
- Communicating:
- Empathy Circling - reflective listening
- Parts Work (IFS) - listening to self
- Interpersonal Gap - perspectival hygiene
- Interrelating:
- T-Group - naming feelings
- Circling - welcoming everything
- Inquiry Spiraling - perspective weaving
- Perspective-coaching:
- 9 Whys - connecting to desire
- Clean questions, Case Work - coaching
- Edge Case - integrative support
Even if you're familiar with most of these practices, the list above is unlikely to communicate the fullness of what it's like to progress through these as a journey. Such is the nature of non-propositional knowledge and sazen. Next week I'll write more about how this works with our short how-to mantra of Awareness Acceptance Integrity, how this relates to Adult Development, and for whom exactly this curriculum is really beneficial. (And how to get the call link for the 7th!)
Cheers,
James