2012.01.29 19:00 - 'Twas Bloggish and the Slithy Toves...

The Guardian for this meeting was Calvino Rabeni. The comments are by Calvino Rabeni.

Jasteen Resident: Hello Calvine :) Nice to see you :)
Tess Aristocrat: Hello Calvino
Calvino Rabeni: Hello Jasteen and Tess
Calvino Rabeni: How is it going tonight?
Tess Aristocrat: I met Jasteen and brought her here tonight
Calvino Rabeni: Welcome, Jasteen
Tess Aristocrat: we have been out shopping around
Jasteen Resident: Yes, she take me to shopping tour :) Wonderful :)
Jasteen Resident: ty :)
Calvino Rabeni: Did you tell Jasteen about the group, and about the session recorder?
Tess Aristocrat: No, we just arrived before you
Calvino Rabeni: OK ... this is a meeting for a group called PlayAsBeing.
Calvino Rabeni: We meet here 4 times a day, at 1 and 7 am and pm
Calvino Rabeni: with different people and a meeting host
Jasteen Resident: :) great
Calvino Rabeni: The group has a wiki at http://wiki.playasbeing.org/
Calvino Rabeni: during the meeting times, our chat is recorded and then later posted on the wiki
Calvino Rabeni: so it's pretty open, what we say here does not have confidentiality
Jasteen Resident: oh, that's interesting :)
Calvino Rabeni: we ask visitors to keep that in mind, and make sure they know and are comfortable with it
Calvino Rabeni: it gives people who can't meet, a way to keep up on what happens
Calvino Rabeni: you could read the session logs too, to find out what kind of chats happen here
Calvino Rabeni: which vary a lot ... sometimes fun, somtimes more serious
Calvino Rabeni: There's also a suggested practice of pausing for 90 seconds every 15 minutes
Calvino Rabeni: to take a short reflective break, for awareness, to check in with oneself ...
Calvino Rabeni: like a brief meditation or maybe just a breather
Calvino Rabeni: :)
Calvino Rabeni: so there's a "bell" message that rings on the quarter hours, people usually pause during that 90 seconds
Calvino Rabeni: anyway that's the idea, sometimes people don't notice or go on .. especially if excited about something :)
Calvino Rabeni: Over on your left is a box thing, if you click on it you get a notecard about the group
Tess Aristocrat: I gave her one
Calvino Rabeni: ah thanks Tess
Jasteen Resident: yea, tess gave me it :)
Jasteen Resident: but really sorry, I have to go soon :(
Tess Aristocrat: Jasteen is in Japan :)
Calvino Rabeni: :)
Tess Aristocrat: no worries, it was so nice to meet you
Calvino Rabeni: Thank you for stopping in, yes, good to meet you
Jasteen Resident: can i join here later or next day?
Calvino Rabeni: Yes any time :)
Jasteen Resident: thank you :)
Tess Aristocrat: yes, please come back :)
Calvino Rabeni: 1am, 7am, 1pm , 7pm every day :)
Calvino Rabeni: in SL time that is
Jasteen Resident: and Tess, thanks for your big help for me :)
Jasteen Resident: see you :D
Tess Aristocrat: my pleasure
Tess Aristocrat: bye :)

--BELL--
Tess Aristocrat: She was very sweet. I remember when I was new here and someone helped me.
Calvino Rabeni: It's nice, a helping ethic here
Tess Aristocrat: yes
Calvino Rabeni: people remember
Calvino Rabeni: and pass it on
Tess Aristocrat: that's exactly right
Calvino Rabeni: May I ask, what interests you most about PaB, so far?
Tess Aristocrat: There are likeminded people here
Calvino Rabeni: nods
Tess Aristocrat: Among the many things one can do in SL this is what I enjoy doing most. Just chatting with people.
Calvino Rabeni: yes, I like that also .. the topics can be pretty free ranging
Tess Aristocrat: yes :)
Tess Aristocrat: and thought provoking
Calvino Rabeni: It's more the Way of it, than the What of it, at least as I experience it here
Calvino Rabeni: I'd like to be more flexible, though there are certain topics I don't seem to be able to "do"
Calvino Rabeni: like I suppose, politics, as usually done
Tess Aristocrat: I became caught up in a chat of politics and government last night.
Calvino Rabeni: but I'm open to someone coming along with an open way of talking about those topics
Calvino Rabeni: Oh, how did that go?
Tess Aristocrat: After a bit, I just sat there. A bit after that, I left.
Calvino Rabeni: I tend to get benumbed by it ... maybe something like that happened
Tess Aristocrat: I'm just not that interested in the ramblings or projections, I guess.
Calvino Rabeni: I have a close friend who really likes it .. that makes it more tolerable for me
Calvino Rabeni: but I tend to lose interest too
Tess Aristocrat: haha
Calvino Rabeni: I get this "I've heard that before 1,000,000 times" feeling
Tess Aristocrat: I'm more a human interest person. and yes! lol
Tess Aristocrat: In my opinion, a corporation will never be a person.

--BELL--
Calvino Rabeni: nods, it seems obvious, a corporation is not a person
Calvino Rabeni: and also that corporations would like to take over the "rights" accorded to a person and use them to have power no person can have
Calvino Rabeni: but it is still puzzling why a segment of the body politic who are NOT corporations would support the idea
Tess Aristocrat: One person at this particular fireside chat had the opinion that the only way to 'help' the world was to 'control the breeding'! He said he was very staunch about that belief...lol
Tess Aristocrat: I said, "Well, you're here, aren't you?"
Calvino Rabeni: sounds like a young person
Calvino Rabeni: hehe
Calvino Rabeni: that's an interesting response :)
Tess Aristocrat: gosh!
Tess Aristocrat: haha..well if you want to state something like that..where would you start?
Calvino Rabeni: It's a challenge ...as in ... who controlled your breeding, did they do the right thing, and what makes it right?
Calvino Rabeni: Wonder what they would say?
Tess Aristocrat: yes, control the breeding, everyone 'after me'!
Tess Aristocrat: loll
Calvino Rabeni: That is one possiblity .. yes, starting after me
Calvino Rabeni: Another is, there might be some us vs. them idea behind it
Calvino Rabeni: control it for those others
Tess Aristocrat: nods..
Tess Aristocrat: It's all us though
Calvino Rabeni: Or maybe another response is, oh, that's an interesting idea, how is it better than other approaches and what are its limits?
Tess Aristocrat: and that's when I had to leave.. :P
Calvino Rabeni: ahem yes
Tess Aristocrat: I watched a little documentary today with children's viewpoint on the world
Calvino Rabeni: Sometimes those ideas aren't held based on having thought things out, or even from "buying in" to a belief system
Calvino Rabeni: Oh that sounds interesting
Calvino Rabeni: what was it like?
Tess Aristocrat: It was so lovely..so fascinating
Tess Aristocrat: so real
Calvino Rabeni: was it created with a particular idea in mind?
Tess Aristocrat: They all shared their viewpoint on the 911 incident. Some had parents involved in that they lost them
Calvino Rabeni: That's a heavy event to interview children about
Tess Aristocrat: Fore others, it was that their parent went to kuwait or off somewhere in service
Tess Aristocrat: Fore the children it wasn't as heavy as if it were an adult
Tess Aristocrat: They don't take things as hard as we do
Tess Aristocrat: or rather in quite the same way
Calvino Rabeni: Or maybe they don't know how they're affected
Calvino Rabeni: but I suppose there would be a variety of different ways they make sense of it

--BELL--
Tess Aristocrat: nods
Tess Aristocrat: Well, I am off for the evening. It has been nice chatting with you Cal :)
Calvino Rabeni: Yes likewise Tess
Tess Aristocrat: Take good care :)
Calvino Rabeni: Have a great evening :)
Calvino Rabeni: Bye for now!
Calvino Rabeni:  (addressing no one in particular)

No one's here, so I think I'll go into "blog mode" and talk to myself.  Let's see what's going on in my own behind-the-avatar world.  Here are some texts from other windows on my monitor, what in earlier times might be called the "radar" of my attention:

Wu wei is an important concept of Taoism (Daoism), that involves knowing when to act and when not to act. Another perspective to this is that "Wu Wei" means natural action - as planets revolve around the sun, they "do" this revolving, but without "doing" it; or as trees grow, they "do", but without "doing". Thus knowing when (and how) to act is not knowledge in the sense that one would think "now" is the right time to do "this", but rather just doing it, doing the natural thing.
From Wikipedia

Then, we can skip "levels" and consider the following, which touches on "sangha" theme from previous sessions.  It also characterizes some of the feeling / practice at PlayAsBeing as well as at the group this quote comes from:

In any group of individuals, be it as small as a couple or as large as a nation, there exists what we could call a relational field. This field consists of the conscious and unconscious shared agreements held by the members of that group and a common language used to communicate together. These agreements and the language they exist within dictate what ways of being are possible and allowable in that space. To an extent much greater than we realize the relational field that we exist within governs the ways we think, feel and act as individuals.
Many of us have made the heroic effort to transform ourselves as individuals only to find that there is only so much room for growth within the relational spaces that we occupy. We can only become so different before the relational space and those that we share it pushes back on us.
In this space a new way of evolving together is being explored that could be called Improvisational Transformative Poetics. It is improvisational because the growth that occurs is not managed according to any preconceived plan of development. There is no specific teaching and no exclusive authority held by any individual. There are certainly areas of expertise held by different members of the group, but there is a free-floating respect for authority, as the work of the group requires the perspective of different individuals with different areas of expertise. In this way the form of the work is built collectively through authentic responses to the needs and demands of each moment in the same way that a jazz band or a theater group will improvise a performance by building it one response after the next.
The nature of this work is poetic in that it is always aimed at that which lies beyond what can be known exactly. This group in its unique way is leaning toward the next stage of human consciousness – a stage that is yet to be realized and cannot be fully known or captured in any existing language. For this reason we give ourselves poetic license to explore and create ways to communicate and practice what we discover together.
From Evolutionary Collective

--BELL--

Calvino Rabeni:  (Gathers thoughts, during the pause):

The "relational field" is a metaphor that comes from the excitement people had with the science of physics and mathematics of a century ago. Mathematics worked so well to model the physical world, that it seemed possible to apply the same power to understand society and individual psychology. George Herbert Mead couched his sociology in terms of a "social field", while Kurt Lewin pursued the idea of "topological psychology".
These are metaphors (or lenses) for looking at the complexities of individual and collective mind and intelligence. Although they appear to have the sophistication of mathematics, they don't have the specificity, modeling power, and predictive ability that mathematics has for the physical world. There are not the same type of "theory" but are rather metaphors suggesting that a particular "way of knowing" would be useful, a kind of myth or sense-making story. Their message is appealing, both true and false, indicating that there is - in principle - some unity between the stuff of physics, of mind, and of society.
Older eras of humanity had other myths and metaphors. To say that humans are children of Father Sun and Mother Earth, is no less true, when understood as a symbolic statement, than the more abstract, impersonal metaphors of modernist science.

A traditional native American sweat lodge ritual was described, by its leader / teacher, "the first Church of humanity, performed this same way for 60,000 years." This practice uses prayer and contemplation as ways of knowing. They start with invoking a large scale, integrative vision of reality, in which all entities are intelligent, in different ways, of course, and all are related. The recognition of this web of relationships is expressed by the oft- repeated ritual phrase - "All my Relations". After taking one's place in relationship to this whole, individuals have the opportunity to express their personal perspectives and experiences.

We have in language a marvelous tool for remembering that there are many ways of knowing and relating. A myth or metaphor brings attention to some of these ways and in doing so conceals others. Words such as awareness, acknowledgement, engagement, recognition, contact, connection, and others in your huge and rich vocabulary ring and resonate differently when organized by these metaphoric frameworks.
We might ask, what way-of-knowing words does this framework illuminate and activate?  Or we could turn things around and ask, given these words, what metaphoric world would they make sense in?
From Calvino Rabeni

--BELL--
Aphrodite Macbain: Hiya
Aphrodite Macbain: What are you doing here on yr lonesome?
Calvino Rabeni: Just chatblogging :)
Aphrodite Macbain: A catching up
Aphrodite Macbain: I have to do that for the 1pm session
Calvino Rabeni: I saw your invitation for an earlier session, to discuss Wu Wei ... I thought that was a great idea to post it ahead of time
Aphrodite Macbain: we tyalked about wu wei in a wu wei kindo of way
Calvino Rabeni: did you get some "action"?
Calvino Rabeni: hehe
Aphrodite Macbain: yes- a great discussion. Really interesting. Everyone had an opinion
Aphrodite Macbain: I just asked questions
Calvino Rabeni: nods, I bet that helped things along
Aphrodite Macbain: and tried to let things "go with the flow" in a wu wei kind of way
Calvino Rabeni: Yes
Aphrodite Macbain: Then wabi sabi came up and we tackled that
Aphrodite Macbain: lol
Aphrodite Macbain: lots of"w"s
Calvino Rabeni: If a huge rock suddenly appeared blocking the flow of a river, it would change ... flow around it without any break in wu way
Aphrodite Macbain: Too bad you coulnd't have made it. I would have been interested to hear what you had to say
Calvino Rabeni: Wabi Sabi .. is that horseradish to put on sushi?
Aphrodite Macbain: lol
Aphrodite Macbain: I liked this "

The Sage is occupied with the unspoken and acts without effort. Teaching without verbosity, producing without possessing, creating without regard to result, claiming nothing, the Sage has nothing to lose.

Calvino Rabeni: I've always loved the Chuang Tzu story about the cook
Aphrodite Macbain: what is that?
Aphrodite Macbain: is that the story? :-)
Calvino Rabeni: I have a nice link to it, with the text
Calvino Rabeni: Cutting Up an Ox
Aphrodite Macbain: oh ok
Calvino Rabeni: The Way of Chuang Tzu, translated / commented by Thomas Merton
Calvino Rabeni: a very poetic translation, and I also like the typesetting (shown online).
Calvino Rabeni: it comes as a nice pocket edition
Aphrodite Macbain: Thomas Merton! I didn't know he translated
Calvino Rabeni: Yes, a student of Taoism
Aphrodite Macbain: Thank you! Wonder if I can find it in a book store.
Calvino Rabeni: sure, it's a perennial favorite, maybe Shambhala
Aphrodite Macbain: Thanks! :-)
Aphrodite Macbain: How was the session this evening?
Calvino Rabeni: Light .. I posted some ramblings after everyone left . care for a recap?
Aphrodite Macbain: Sure
Aphrodite Macbain: Did Paradise come?
Calvino Rabeni: No, not yet anyway
Aphrodite Macbain: k
Aphrodite Macbain: she's always good for insightful discussion
Calvino Rabeni: yes, always fluid
Aphrodite Macbain: and eloquent
Calvino Rabeni: true
Aphrodite Macbain: in a wu wei kinda way
Calvino Rabeni: here's a blob of text
Aphrodite Macbain: :-)
Aphrodite Macbain: insightful
Aphrodite Macbain: my spelling is worsening
Calvino Rabeni: (recaps text from earlier)
Aphrodite Macbain: That is the same text as I sent around. It's from Wikipedia
Aphrodite Macbain: the latter is original
Calvino Rabeni: yes, I was copying some interesting texts, and commenting

--BELL--
Aphrodite Macbain: topological psychology?
Aphrodite Macbain: Whose writing is this?
Aphrodite Macbain: Is this a summary of your discussion this evening?
Calvino Rabeni: It wasn't a discussion, just me playing with texts
Calvino Rabeni: Three sources actually (Wikipedia, a blog called Evolutionary Collective, and my  comments).
Aphrodite Macbain: fascinating
Aphrodite Macbain: You should raise this at a WOK meeting
Aphrodite Macbain: what metaphoric world would they make sense in...
Aphrodite Macbain: I have to read this carefully and quietly
Calvino Rabeni: the wu wei from wikipedia, the transformative poetics from an online spiritual collective, and the following texts were what those elicited for me
Aphrodite Macbain: Thank you Cal. It would be valuable if you published this somewhere
Aphrodite Macbain: Thoughtful playing...
Calvino Rabeni: I was out with a friend today, an experienced and prolific blogger... I always enjoy how he picks up some interesting quotes from his reading field and then does some riffs on it.
Aphrodite Macbain: Nods
Calvino Rabeni: And then, even better, I like to get some of the inside scoop :)
Aphrodite Macbain: what did you learn from him?
Calvino Rabeni: Hmm, what comes to mind, as a blogger he's considerate, and ethical, not averse to controversy, and in certain ways a bit, I'm not sure how to say it, shameless in a good way.
Aphrodite Macbain: Does he write slowly and carefully with lots of editing or does it just pour out of him?
Calvino Rabeni: He has been doing a long time ... I'm not sure, I think it pours out, then gets revised and polished.
Aphrodite Macbain: nods. You are a bit like that. It seems that you have the facts at your brain's fingertips
Aphrodite Macbain: I have to work at it
Aphrodite Macbain: or sound glib
Calvino Rabeni: With practice comes ease, I guess ... It might be a long path to having his facility with it, so it seems like hard work to me too.
Aphrodite Macbain: What does he write about?
Calvino Rabeni: He writes about integral and world spirituality, science and world events seen through that perspective, and often the human politics involved
Aphrodite Macbain: wow. I'd love to read his blogs
Aphrodite Macbain: can you give me his url?
Calvino Rabeni: sure! Awake, Alive and Aware:  http://joe-perez.com/blog/
Aphrodite Macbain: Thanks. Then I must go. Daunton Abbey-PBS
Calvino Rabeni: hehe that has a lot of buzz now
Aphrodite Macbain: Thanks!
Aphrodite Macbain: Nite nite
Aphrodite Macbain: CU tomorrow.. Hugs
Calvino Rabeni: Yes ... bye, take care :)