Salem Witch Trials
Spirit Journeying and the Future of Systems ThinkingPresented at
the Annual Pegasus Systems Thinking in Action Conference: Because
Sustainable Success Doesnt Just Happen.Sam Watson-Alvn Jenelle
Strine
www.transformandrenew.org
The Dawning of Conscious Evolution
1
Systems Thinking represents one of the cutting edges of human
reason and of the epistemology of western culture. And that is part
of the problem . . .
2
We need a way of relating and connecting with the world that is
not tied to western ways of knowing. Beyond complexity, the
complications of many of our systems are leading us to
unsustainability.
3
Over the years and through more than a dozen Pegasus Conferences
we have observed the struggles of the field trying to break through
its own glass ceiling of language and consciousness, inching up
slowly and somewhat feeble towards concerns that have more to do
with right being than with right doing.
4
Success has been ambiguous and tension is felt almost as if we
were trying to make a break with the intellect to explore the
noetic and spiritual realmsbut how to do that from where we
stand?
5
How far are we willing to take our thinking skills before we
accept the future demands a different set of sensing faculties for
knowing the world that is not limited by the five sense and
reason?
6
There is nothing that our minds can tells us about why the life
of this baby matters enough to mobilize the health care system on
its behalf. We simply sense that is the casewe just know.
7
In this picture of a Native American sweat lodge, most of us
western-minded intellectuals see a wigwam made of branches and
covered with canvas and a camp fire ablaze. But the multi-sensory,
cosmic consciousness of the medicine man knows this as a complex
model of the universe, an engine set in motion in order to perform
miracles outside of space and time.
8
We cannot grasp the fullness of systems like the sweat lodge or
like this forest with the mind. They can only be understood with
the heart-centered faculties that allow for a full awakening of the
part [us] as whole.
9
Indeed, the complexity of the universe cannot be known
externally through objectification or thought. But it can be sensed
by bridging the divide between subject and object, through the open
heartwith great love.
10
There are no limits to the possibilities but we must first
become absolutely concerned in the way suggested by Tolle in this
slide.
11
The battle is truly between two polar opposites seldom
understood as such: on the one hand, love, and on the other,
reason. For hatred and indifference are not the opposites of love
but reason is what stands between us and our greatest
potential.
12
These hands know something important. We can sense that but
thought cannot explain it. In fact, thought has nothing to do with
it or with anything that is important to a sustainable future.
13
Sustainable success is another term for evolution, and no it
doesnt just happen. It means conscious, intentional ascension to
higher realms of being than those limited by reason and the five
senses that support its logic.
14
None of this is new. Ancient peoples have known this for
millennia. Their elders and holy men and women have been trying to
teach us, to help us remember for centuries, through rites of
passage, dreams and visions.
15
The journey of conscious evolution is a matter of the heart, not
of the head. It requires surrender into magic rather than effort
and invention. It requires sensing, feeling, intuition and being;
rather than doing, thinking and trying.
16
This is a spiritual matter. The longest journey in life is only
18 inches long, from intellect to affect. More about sensing than
thinking. More about feeling than inquiry. More about truth than
reason.
Coming together means we take up our positions in the heart.
There is nothing reasonable about the consciousness of love or the
peace it can induce. The truth that defies all understanding, how
long can it go missing from our discourse?
For Systems Thinking to become a rallying cry at this time of
great turning, the field must concern itself with the largest
possible context. Creation itself is the matter and what is at
stake here. Can we be up to the task for its stewardship?
Spirit Journeying and the Future of Systems Thinking
Sam Watson-Alvn Jenelle Strine
www.transformandrenew.org
The Dawning of Conscious Evolution
20
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