Deeper into the 4th dimension – persistent learning and the collective conscious
This article follows on from my previous articles on how people learn and how we build capabilities inside organisations. The 3-dimensional learning to build capabilities is the core learning tool for capability building.
The 4th dimension is a bonus extra that is an accelerator for transmission of ideas and states of being that help with mindset adoption and internal (vertical growth).
Exploring different elements of the 4th dimension of the model (shown as a tesseract) provides a much deeper insight into how knowledge and experience is absorbed, learnt, and then used by participants.
In this article, I am going to explore two corresponding threads of learning through the energetic plane (4th dimension of the model). These are
· the course energetic field and
· the program collective consciousness across courses.
Both are powerful sources of learning and utilising both effectively can greatly enhance the experience of learners and organisations.
The course energetic field
Just like any other event, when people get together, it creates an energetic field, that can be felt by those present. We might feel such energetic fields as emotions, like calmness, peaceful, tense, or energetic. Our ability to tune into the emotional or energetic field in a room, is related to our overall awareness, emotional intelligence, as well as our current presence or state of mind.
You may have experienced being in a training room over a few days and as the group gets to know each other, the energy changes. This can go either way, from nervous and unsure, to safety and connection, or to annoyance and frustration. The way it goes depends a lot on the teacher, but also on the participants, and to some degree the course material and the environment.
Setting up the course energetic field
According to Christopher M. Bache, author of The Living Classroom and Professor at Youngstown University, the course energetic field begins to form at the point of intent to take the first registrations for new learners. The field gets stronger as students make the decision to attend the course and continues to grow in strength with further interactions and intent.
At AWA, we create a group Slack channel both to enable communication and a symbol of connection that exists outside of the formal workshops and training times. The field is further nurtured by our intent and display through marketing of the purpose of the course and the outcomes we hope participants will achieve.
The formation of the course is held by course leaders and the shape of the energy attracts those people who will benefit most.
As more learners register or choose to attend, the course energetic field starts to grow.
Nurturing the field
In all the courses we run, co-trainers not only plan and work together before the course to decide who will lead which parts, but we also meet just before the session to set our intentions for the course and participants. This deliberate meeting aligns and makes the other leaders aware of the direction we are taking and starts the process of what I used to call ‘holding the space’, but now prefer ‘nurturing the field’.
At the beginning of each course, each coaching session, or major engagement, we conduct a ‘ways of working alliance’ exercise. This practice originates in the professional coaching and therapy world of creating a coaching contract with the client, that sets the intention, behaviours, and expected outcomes for the sessions.
The adaptation of this has resulted in the ‘Ways of Working alliance’ (WOW), sometimes called a ‘Designed Team Alliance’ (DTA), that creates a container of safety that explicitly defines how the group will operate together to achieve their outcomes.
Without talking about energetic fields, we effectively make explicit the edges of our course field together. The participants themselves create their own alliance and nurture their own field with the help of the skilled leader.
This alliance will change over the duration of the course as the participants and leaders learn more about the field of awareness, each other, and what it takes to meet their desired outcomes. It is a powerful reminder that we are working together as a group, and as such, have responsibilities to each other, and are held accountable for our progress and behaviours as we reach the outcomes.
This field is further enriched when each day, the participants ‘check in’ in the morning and ‘check out’ as they leave the course field and alliance. This process gives learners a chance to be heard and express how they are feeling at that given moment. It is a sense of safe vulnerability and courageous communication that deepens connection to each other and to some degree more importantly to the group energetic field.
As with all exercises, this could be a shallow endeavour or a deep and meaningful experience. This is why the power of a good leader and receptive learners is so important and needs to be nurtured for the best experience.
The power of ritual
If you are noticing that the container, we are creating has a cadence, and that we repeat elements of connection to something larger than ourselves (the group alliance and energetic field), then you are right. Rituals have formed part of human life for thousands of years and are a powerful way to bring connection, safety, and awareness.
Visualising the day ahead together, setting our course intentions, and expressing our feelings, distractions, and excitements, are a powerful way of nurturing the field and accelerating the safety needed to work together to achieve our outcomes.
In addition to course rituals, as a course leader, I also meditate each morning. This ritual creates a separation of my daily attachments and my inner self that is an expression of the divine or universal consciousness. This calmness and higher perspective sets my own outlook for the day and allows me to set aside my own desires and focus on hearing what others need and providing the space for them to get it.
Closing the field
When whatever program we are running is over, we partially close the field with a slightly longer check out, and if we have been in a physical room, we take down the posters and work from the walls, and clear away. For online programs, especially the cohorts, we have individual or group final calls, that examine the progress towards our outcomes, capabilities, and inner growth.
Closing the field is an important part of the program as it allows learners to move on an apply their work elsewhere. However, we always leave the field connected as learning happens continuously and forever. Having a thread of connection back to the course and to the people involved allows those who want to continue the relationships of learning under their own steam and volition.
We keep our Slack channels open and past participants can use these to communicate with course leaders and each other and every other person who has ever taken the course. Not everyone participates but the option is there for those who do.
The program collective consciousness across courses
I have found very few references to program leaders who are aware of the phenomenon of the collective consciousness that arises between courses, that guides participants and deepens their learning and overall experience.
The energetic field of one course feeds into a program collective consciousness that grows and supports future courses.
This seems to happen by itself. But when we are aware of it, we can strengthen this phenomenon.
In The Living Classroom, Bache discusses this same idea of the collective consciousness that is generated when a course is continuously run by the same leader regularly over time and how this collective continuous program field deepens and changes the learning experience over time.
I was happy to find Bache’s experience mirrored that of my own.
He notices that occasionally the field shifts almost as though the learning that has accumulated in the collective field and influences the individual course preliminaries and learners show up with a different starting place, often a lot more advanced than before.
Bache, and I, have ruled out some of the obvious reasons for this sudden elevation in learners starting place. Some obvious reasons are that there has been a general shift in cultural awareness resulting in less learning required to gain the concepts, that the course gets a reputation and therefore students are self-selecting to those interested in the deeper experience, or that the trainer has simply got better at teaching familiar materials.
These things do happen, but my experience of training thousands of students in organisational change theory and practice, has shown that these shifts are not completely related to these factors.
Rupert Sheldrake, a biochemist at Cambridge University, a Harvard scholar, and researcher at the Royal Society, posits a theory of morphic resonance that natural systems inherit a collective memory from all previous things of their kind. As you can imagine, mainstream science has less than embraced this theory, but it certainly seems to run true in the program collective consciousness I have observed.
Carl Jung’s theory of collective consciousness as well as the 100-monkey effect show that learning is not all coming from our own personal experience but from a collective experience. This certainly seems to be true in organisational change and if we are clever, we can leverage this power to huge effect in making it easier for learners to grasp new concepts.
With a wider view, we can also use this help change the culture of work across the globe, without having to teach everyone. We reach a tipping point and everyone seems to just know the material.
Interactions
The individual course field is always more tangible and present than the connecting field at the beginning, but as time goes by, the resonance of the course affects the connecting field and vice versa. They become the same field influencing each other until they are very closely aligned in most cases.
The vertical edge and where true growth happens
I will finish this article with another observation that I have noticed but also given by Bache in his book. The observation is that the course energetic field is strongest and the cross-course learning more prevalent when vertical or inner-landscape growth is more a part of the course material than horizontal or outer skill set learning.
I believe this is because when we invite real deep inner growth, we have to be aware of both our emotional body and our energetic body as part of the class experience.
For example, when teaching professional coaching, the learner has to notice how they are communicating and how they ‘feel’ like they want to provide answers rather than powerful questions. Stopping this impulse to solve the clients’ problems for them, requires a much deeper level of awareness and to examine why this impulse arises.
Seeing the underlying patterns of why we behave like we do, allows us to rewire our inner energetic landscapes to become different people. Doing this seems to build a much deeper awareness of each other (the class energetic field) and this creates a strong morphic resonance between courses and the program itself.
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_unconscious
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Living-Classroom-Collective-Consciousness-Transpersonal/dp/0791476464
Residential - Coming soon
I will be holding a residential at my house in Forest Row, UK, in the first quarter next year. For those who wish to explore this inner landscape and bring the realities of the energetic plane into their awareness.
I will notify about the retreat in the following order:
Paid subscribers,
Anyone who has been on the ICE-EC Cohort,
Unpaid subscribers,
LinkedIn.
There will be 8-10 spaces.
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In August 2023, I published my first book. It is called Change. It is a practical guide that helps you change not only organisations, but also yourself.
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