By Pamela Boyce Simms “That’s good enough to try,” “It’s good enough for experimentation,” are phrases often heard in organizations that use sociocratic governance and decision-making. “Good enough” [after much …
Sociocracy, Living Systems, & Emergent Organizational Design
Community-of-Practice Democratizes “Esoteric” Quaker Mysticism
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Quaker Friends speak of a state of “unity.” Mystics worldwide describe resting in and obtaining guidance from undifferentiated consciousness as the ultimate state of bliss.
The Quaker Pathways Forward community-of-practice takes the mystery [but not the awe] out of “mystical.” We usher the mystical experience out of the esoteric closets of the few by participating together in practices which democratize the opportunity for ALL interested Friends to co-create with spirit. The community-of-practice cultivates Friends’direct, frequent, and sustained experience of the light —the undifferentiated field.
A “Mystical experience” is where deep contemplative practice melds with reality as a probability distribution as explained by quantum science, digital physics, and neurobiology.
In community, Friends foster and hone ongoing, conscious alignment with universal intelligence lived daily, for their evolution, and that of society.
The Fire of Fox in You
By Marisol Cortez
Cross-posted from Deceleration
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We had gotten wind of this talk at a meeting on climate organizing in San Antonio, where we had picked up a flyer describing Boyce Simms as “an engaged Eco-Buddhist” who “works to transform anger and despair into compassion toward neighbors, communities, and the environment.” Given Deceleration‘s concern not just with questions of climate justice but with the affective (or inner/emotional) work required to sustain effective action in the face of mounting climate and social crises, we were intrigued.
Ancestor, What Did YOU Do at the Time of the Great Transition?
By Pamela Boyce Simms
Cross Posted from Resilience.org @ The Postcarbon Institute
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Once upon a time, as climate change accelerated in the 21st century, the recognition that everyone was in the same boat with a hole at the bottom jolted some of your ancestors awake. Quaker, Buddhist, and Unitarian Universalist environmental activists quietly and methodically gathered an eclectic group of allies into an intentional circle that embraced marginalized populations, and scores of grassroots organizations throughout the African Diaspora.
Quaker Pathways Forward Ministry
By Pamela Boyce Simms
Quaker Pathways Forward
Seminal, Henry Cadbury
FELLOWSHIP PAPER
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Friends it’s time to shed the vestiges of outworn caterpillar thinking. Our planet faces an existential crisis. Climate change, resource depletion, and income disparity are now hastened by an unhinged political landscape, and we are racing toward the edge of a cliff!
Throughout history Quakers have repeatedly held and activated the equivalent of transformational “imaginal cells” which have triggered metamorphoses in American social norms and behavior.