A Shift in Worldview
tl;dr: The change we need requires more than new ideas or systems. It demands a shift in worldview. We can’t impose that shift; it emerges through living experiments.
Note that my friends and teachers at evolve World are launching their next course on Emergent Dialogue this October 8. It is work that makes possible the kind of shift in worldview that I’m talking about here.
A couple of weeks ago we talked about the fact that We Are Not Free. And shared some thoughts about what to do about it. I followed that up with an invitation to three Sensemaking Sessions in October. Then I invited you to become a paid subscriber and help me write a short e-book on what is Beyond Psychedelics.
Each of these topics and invitations are held together by the conviction that we need a shift in worldview.
My friend and colleague, Julian Norriss, reminds us that most so-called systems change initiatives fail because they don’t address worldview. You dismantle one system and it just grows back in a different form. He explains that worldview is an expression of how we belong to the world. And how we are in relationship with the world.
He stresses that worldview is more fundamental than mental models, cognitive frameworks, paradigms or even values and beliefs.
We can’t just change our minds and expect systems to follow.
Julian continues:
Worldview shift is clearly non-negotiable. But I’m wary of it. I’m wary when people try to engineer it for others – even if their aim is noble.
He explains how our isolated-self understands worldview from a place of deep separation. And from this place of hyper-individuated separation, worldview shift becomes something we must do to reality.
The ego approaches transformation as another project: “I need to change my thinking so I can fix the world, solve problems, and secure my position.
Change becomes violent and effortful…a kind of cognitive imperialism where one worldview must defeat and replace another even within ourselves.
Which means that for a shift in worldview to actually take root it cannot be an imposition. We approach it in the way of nature, as fully participatory, ever-unfolding, living experiments.
So what are we to do?
Maybe the right question is: so how are we to be? Julian reminds us that:
When we approach it from a place of interconnectedness, a worldview shift is something that happens through us rather than by us. It is developmental, relational and ecological.
From an ecocentric perspective, worldviews arise from the kind of relationship we have with the whole, and they shift as we remember our participation in the larger dreaming. The ‘work’ is less about changing our minds and more about letting our minds be changed by the world we were never actually separate from in the first place! It’s about allowing the earth to think and dream through us, the future to feel through us, the mystery to know itself through our willing participation.
We are learning & remembering how
Thankfully, there are thousands of experiments that are emerging across the planet. The good folks at the Wolf Willow Institute do things like identifying and focusing on leaders they refer to as Positive Deviants.
A Positive Deviant is an Outlier. A person or group that succeeds despite the odds. Positive Deviance reminds us to:
Seek patterns of emergence and possibility already alive within any system.
Look for people, processes, places that deviate positively from the norm.
Focus on what’s working rather than what’s missing or broken.
Recognize that possibilities for change emerge from within living systems.
Remain perpetually curious, respectful and humble.
Embrace genuine difference and diversity as vital community resources.
Entertain big questions and move with curiosity rather than certainty.
A positive deviant is a kind of time traveler. They come from the future—whether they realize it or not. They are one of the ways that potential futures live in the present. Their deviance is more mathematical than intentional. It is certainly not performative, rebellious or reactive. It is often the bright spot in an otherwise bleak set of outcomes. But they may be experienced by others as deviant. Why? Because even intolerable versions of the present can be resistant or allergic to potential versions of the future!
Tuesday and I are blessed to collaborate with the Wolf Willow Institute’s team on their Positive Deviants Fellowship. This year I have been blessed to serve as coach to each of these remarkable fellows.
And this is just one experiment. One effort to meet the moment by nurturing the conditions for a life changing shift in worldview. Julian often speaks of the tradition of the Wisdom Schools and the importance of finding and co-creating those spaces.
I feel like I am part of a Wisdom School through my current training with the good people at Planetary Dharma.
This same spirit, this same urge and longing is alive in the work I’m blessed to do. All of my programs, from the ecology of practices that we are currently supporting through BOOST Your Practice, to the Evolutionary Leadership Workshop and Community, to our upcoming Sensemaking Sessions, the Facilitator’s Coaching Cohort and my work on what is Beyond Psychedelics.
All of it is aimed in the same direction. All are part of the thousand efforts that are emergent from the ground up, aiming to nurture a shift in worldview.
Emergent Dialogue
One of the most powerful ways to make ourselves fully available to the possibility of a shift in worldview is through the practice of emergent dialogue. This has been a life defining practice for me.
Emergent Dialogue is a practice that enables groups to open the field of Interbeing.
Interbeing is a new collective human potential born out of the Wholeness that is our deeper nature.
Interbeing is just that: a being or living presence that comes alive between and in and through us. The cultivation of Interbeing gives rise to a co-conscious creativity that brings our diverse perspectives into synergy and deeper meaning.
Interbeing is emergent, meaning that it is something new and surprising that arises out of the not-already-known. And it depends on us, on human choice, to realize its potential.
Emergent Dialogue is the practice that allows us to cultivate the capacity to co-create with the intelligence of Interbeing. Through this collective practice we become agents of emergence. We discover how to synergize diversity from the ground of wholeness. And it is from here that we become a force for deep cultural change.
Lucky for us, the folks at evolve World are offering a course on Emergent Dialogue starting October 8. My experience is that the more folks I work with become familiar with this practice, the closer we get to that worldview shifting place that we are talking about.
Where do you see a shift in worldview?
I can’t think of more important work. It is work that we do ourselves. And it is work that must be done together. I have offered a number of examples of efforts devoted to nurturing the conditions for a shift in worldview.
I want to hear about others!
I am not talking about efforts that are focused on persuasion or indoctrination. I’m talking about efforts that breathe right at the edge of what we do not yet know.
What small or large experiments do you see that are quietly transforming our way of belonging?
Where do you glimpse the future as it is emergent here in the present?