A group of people who practice being present is extremely helpful because an energy field is generated all over the planet. Go to the group to generate more presence, and then your responsibility is to live it in your everyday life.
— Eckhart Tolle
One can have an impact
Participating in forward-thinking conversations is a fascinating and powerful way for one person to impact the world and simultaneously advance the quality of their thinking, work, and life.
For the past 11 years, I have initiated and participated in an untold number of forward-thinking conversations and gatherings where there was a shared intent to make things better for everyone.
For example, the intention and opening question in the Exploring Forward Thinking Workplace interviews is:
How can we create workplaces where every voice matters, everyone thrives and finds meaning, and change and innovation happen naturally.
My direct experience from engaging in these conversations (that otherwise wouldn’t have happened) has been an unexpected and cascading positive impact on the quality of my life, work, and influence in the world to bring about change.
While this experience has been very real to me, it’s not easy to share its true depth and breadth.
This is especially true when its dimensions are beyond what most of us experience in the day-to-day world, which leads me to the quote by Eckhart Tolle featured in this article.
While listening to a podcast by Oprah Winfrey with Eckhart Tolle this week, my attention was captured when Tolle was asked this question, “What role do you see joining with others in the flowering of human consciousness?”
Eckhart Tolle responded by saying, “A group of people who practice being present is extremely helpful because an energy field is generated all over the planet. Go to the group to generate more presence, and then your responsibility is to live it in your everyday life.”
What Tolle refers to and what I experience by engaging in forward-thinking conversations goes well beyond the conversation itself. Changes are set in motion that impact many other aspects of our work and life too.
I think this is so important to grasp and understand. We really don’t have the language to convey the nature of this experience and can only point to it by sharing our experiences with it.
In the words of David Bohm, “There is a difficulty with only one person changing” “People call that person a great saint or a great mystic or a great leader, and they say, ‘Well, he’s different from me—I could never do it.’ What’s wrong with most people is that they have this block—they feel they could never make a difference, and therefore, they never face the possibility because it is too disturbing, too frightening.”
Tolle’s response has given me new insight and understanding of something I have been experiencing for almost a dozen years now.
It has also given me new energy to facilitate more forward-thinking conversations because it enables more people to be the change right where they are and have an impact.
No one’s permission or authority is needed. We become the change we want to see in the world. It happens naturally and effortlessly.
Breaking down the blocks between us
New possibilities open up when people join together and go beyond their habitual ways of being together and interacting as a group. This has been my experience repeatedly.
Our mind has powers that allow us to go beyond our routine or habitual way of thinking and being and beyond what we think is possible.
In Synchronicity, we learn from Joseph Jaworski and David Bohm that people create blocks or barriers between each other by the way we habitually think.
Most of the time, we are operating separately in our own world of thought. We think we know what is right and true and come prepared to defend our point of view.
However, when we learn how to come together in new ways, those barriers can break down, and the notion of one mind comes into existence.
What is one mind?
One mind allows us to operate as one unit, but each person still has their own individual awareness.
We see examples of groups operating as one mind when we see championship sports teams performing flawlessly in perfect coordination with each other.
In a past newsletter, I shared a personal experience of how the crew on a nuclear submarine came together as one unit to get us out of a bad situation.
But here’s the fascinating thing that happens when we learn how to come together and achieve a state of one mind, that one mind will still exist even when people separate to go about their ordinary everyday life and work!
I’ve experienced this repeatedly. When I’m more active in groups that are coming together with a shared intention to make things better for everyone, there is an uncanny impact on everything else in my life.
How does it get any better than this?
David Bohm describes one mind as follows:
“A single intelligence that works with people who are moving in relationship with one another. Cues that pass from one to the other are being picked up with the same awareness, just as we pick up cues in riding bicycles or skiing. Therefore, these people are really all one.”
Imagine the impact if more people pulled together and worked together in this way.
It would be remarkable.
Moving forward
As many of you know, I’ve experimented with various ways to bring more people together more frequently to interact with greater awareness.
I believe there is sufficient interest to establish such groups. I simply haven’t come up with the best approach.
My intention this week is to send out a survey to see if there is interest in establishing a monthly online session that would occur on a regular basis.
And of course, if there’s interest in anything more regular than a monthly session.
As always, I welcome and look forward to your feedback. Please reply to this email or email me directly at bill@billfox.co.
To your forward-thinking life & success!
— Bill
Bill Fox, Author, and Founder at Space Beyond Boundaries and Forward Thinking Workplaces.
The more spaciousness you create, the more effective your thinking will be when you start thinking again because thinking can then link into this creative intelligence that is the unconditioned intelligence in you.
— Eckhart Tolle