- Email: [email protected]
Ways of Enspiriting: Transformative Practices for the Twenty-first Century
lurures. Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 109-200, 1996 Pubhshcd by Elscvier Science Ltd. Printed in Great Britain UOl6-3287/96 $15.ClO + 0.00
BOOK REVlEW
Re-humanizing
the future
Richard Slaughter Path to Gang Zhi Katsuhiko Yazaki Kyoto, Future Generations Alliance Foundation, 124 pages, free Ways of Enspiriting: Transformative Practices for the Twenty-first Century Warren Ziegler Denver, FIA International, 1995, ix + 277 pages, US$14.95 Edge of the Sacred: Transformation in Australia David Tacey Melbourne, HarperCollins, 1995, xv + 224 pages, A$1 9.95
A familiar polarity within the futures field is that between those who see the future in external, instrumental terms and those who see it in deeper human terms. Of course, in the end these two perspectives can be productively fused into a richer overall view. Still, the dynamic of technical change shows no sign of slowing, so it is heartening to see that a broadly humanistic perspective remains vibrant and strong. Although the three examples considered here are very different (coming, as they do, from three different regions), they all help to further ground and elaborate a view that the future can and must be subject to higher-order human influence.
Richard Slaughter is Consulting Editor to Futures and may be contacted at the Futures Study Centre, 117 Church Street, Hawthorn 3122, Victoria, Australia (Tel: +613 9 818 7574; fax: +613 e-mail: [email protected]).
9 819
0876;
Katsuhiko Yazaki is a successful Japanese business entrepreneur, whose life was changed by a ‘breakthrough insight’ during Zen meditation. The result was that he passed responsibility for the business over to a relative and created the Future Generations Alliance Foundation, which exists to promote the future generations’ cause. To this end, the foundation hosts meetings (such as the Kyoto Forum) and publishes a series of books, of which this is one. Most of the books are anthologies of work by international scholars, but The Path to Liang Zhi tells the story of Yazaki’s own awakening and the development of his philosophy. Topics covered include: realizing life as ‘connection’; how to conquer egoism; getting beyond economics, science and nationalism; turning lack of a resource into a resource; and the search for an eternal philosophy. The book is short (barely 120 pages), but it is beautifully produced and crystal clear. It is a fascinating example of how a personal transformation can lead to a whole new world of options for an individual-and then for all those touched by him or her. Here, then, is part of the solution to looming global dilemmas: individuals are, or can be, very powerful if they are willing to move beyond the ego to pursue wisdom and spiritual insight. These themes are also present in IDavid Tacey’s impressive book Edge of the Sacred. While it IS written from an Australian perspective, it is universal in outlook. Few works lay bare the dilemmas of contemporary Australian society with the clarity achieved here. While politicians, economists, educators, social theorists and many others pursue rationalistic solutions, Tacey takes us to the mythopoeic level as revealed by lungian psychology and the insights of artists and
199
Book review
writers. However, in Tacey’s hands, this exploration is not merely ‘literary’. He has provided the clearest diagnosis I have yet seen of the spiritual vacuum underlying Australian culture and experience. By extension, this applies to the whole Western world. However, what makes this book so outstanding is that he has also seen where the deep solutions lie: in the emergence of an authentic spirituality. At the outset, Tacey takes the view that ‘despite the fact that Australia appears to be one of the most secular and godless societies in the modern world, there is good reason to suppose that an authentic rediscovery of the sacred is already in preparation here’. He suggests that an ‘unconscious compulsion toward sacrifice’ exists in the Australian psyche, and explores this through the works of Joan Lindsay, D H Lawrence and Patrick White. Here the landscape is a key player: ‘no matter how we attempt to package or construct it, the land will always break out of whatever fancy dress we foist upon it’. The only way out is not to ignore the landscape by huddling into cities on its fringes, but to ‘enter more into the psychic field of nature; to “shamanize” ourselves in the image of nature’. Here the taboo subjects of Aboriginal degradation and spirituality emerge and are treated with great economy and skill. As one who grew up in Alice Springs, Tacey’s account bears the stamp of lived experience. The process of ‘re-sacralizing’ our experience emerges as ‘a social and political necessity’. According to Tacey, ‘the ecological crisis is at bottom a psychological and spiritual crisis. These deeper roots to the problem will have to be explored if there is to be any lasting change’. Hence, this is an outstanding book that goes right to the core of our major concerns: meaninglessness, avoidance, violence. ‘Society becomes a demonic parody of sacred reality when society no longer recognizes the divine sources from which its own life springs’. The more people who will read this book and reflect on it deeply, the better. There are few richer and more reward-
200
ing starting points. Whereas Tacey sketches in the territory of myth and spirituality, Warren Ziegler provides a kind of step-by-step practical guide to the recovery of a personal spiritual vision. Ziegler is well known in the futures field for the workshops on ‘imaging the future’ developed by himself and Elise Boulding over many years. As a result of this work, he steadily accumulated a wealth of understanding and knowledge about group dynamics and personal change strategies. In particular, there was a shift from fairly superficial ‘techniques’ to a deeper understanding of the central role of spirituality in coming to grips with the dilemmas of self and the world. The book is a compendium of such ‘transformative practices’. Topics covered include: deep listening, deep questioning, deep learning and deep imaging. These are followed by what Ziegler calls the meta-disciplines; that is, intentioning, discerning, dialogue and the centrality of deep learning. I find it impossible to summarize the contents of these chapters because they are essentially experimental and need to be taken as such. The life of the work is not in the text but in the many ways the text can be applied. Ziegler not only speaks of ‘the sociability of spirit’, the book exudes it. Anyone who is interested in tools for exploring the path of spiritual awakening will find this book a treasure trove of insight and applied understanding. It can be used as a handbook for a personal journey. However, its best use is as a guide to the practice of enspiriting, which is essentially a group activity. I imagine, therefore, that it will be invaluable to all those groups who are already working in this direction, or would like to do so. It is an impressive and deeply facilitative achievement. I have often suggested that the solutions to the global predicament are all within reach and are prefigured somewhere within the broad futures literature. In their own way, each of these fascinating and productive books helps to substantiate that view.
BOOK REVlEW
Re-humanizing
the future
Richard Slaughter Path to Gang Zhi Katsuhiko Yazaki Kyoto, Future Generations Alliance Foundation, 124 pages, free Ways of Enspiriting: Transformative Practices for the Twenty-first Century Warren Ziegler Denver, FIA International, 1995, ix + 277 pages, US$14.95 Edge of the Sacred: Transformation in Australia David Tacey Melbourne, HarperCollins, 1995, xv + 224 pages, A$1 9.95
A familiar polarity within the futures field is that between those who see the future in external, instrumental terms and those who see it in deeper human terms. Of course, in the end these two perspectives can be productively fused into a richer overall view. Still, the dynamic of technical change shows no sign of slowing, so it is heartening to see that a broadly humanistic perspective remains vibrant and strong. Although the three examples considered here are very different (coming, as they do, from three different regions), they all help to further ground and elaborate a view that the future can and must be subject to higher-order human influence.
Richard Slaughter is Consulting Editor to Futures and may be contacted at the Futures Study Centre, 117 Church Street, Hawthorn 3122, Victoria, Australia (Tel: +613 9 818 7574; fax: +613 e-mail: [email protected]).
9 819
0876;
Katsuhiko Yazaki is a successful Japanese business entrepreneur, whose life was changed by a ‘breakthrough insight’ during Zen meditation. The result was that he passed responsibility for the business over to a relative and created the Future Generations Alliance Foundation, which exists to promote the future generations’ cause. To this end, the foundation hosts meetings (such as the Kyoto Forum) and publishes a series of books, of which this is one. Most of the books are anthologies of work by international scholars, but The Path to Liang Zhi tells the story of Yazaki’s own awakening and the development of his philosophy. Topics covered include: realizing life as ‘connection’; how to conquer egoism; getting beyond economics, science and nationalism; turning lack of a resource into a resource; and the search for an eternal philosophy. The book is short (barely 120 pages), but it is beautifully produced and crystal clear. It is a fascinating example of how a personal transformation can lead to a whole new world of options for an individual-and then for all those touched by him or her. Here, then, is part of the solution to looming global dilemmas: individuals are, or can be, very powerful if they are willing to move beyond the ego to pursue wisdom and spiritual insight. These themes are also present in IDavid Tacey’s impressive book Edge of the Sacred. While it IS written from an Australian perspective, it is universal in outlook. Few works lay bare the dilemmas of contemporary Australian society with the clarity achieved here. While politicians, economists, educators, social theorists and many others pursue rationalistic solutions, Tacey takes us to the mythopoeic level as revealed by lungian psychology and the insights of artists and
199
Book review
writers. However, in Tacey’s hands, this exploration is not merely ‘literary’. He has provided the clearest diagnosis I have yet seen of the spiritual vacuum underlying Australian culture and experience. By extension, this applies to the whole Western world. However, what makes this book so outstanding is that he has also seen where the deep solutions lie: in the emergence of an authentic spirituality. At the outset, Tacey takes the view that ‘despite the fact that Australia appears to be one of the most secular and godless societies in the modern world, there is good reason to suppose that an authentic rediscovery of the sacred is already in preparation here’. He suggests that an ‘unconscious compulsion toward sacrifice’ exists in the Australian psyche, and explores this through the works of Joan Lindsay, D H Lawrence and Patrick White. Here the landscape is a key player: ‘no matter how we attempt to package or construct it, the land will always break out of whatever fancy dress we foist upon it’. The only way out is not to ignore the landscape by huddling into cities on its fringes, but to ‘enter more into the psychic field of nature; to “shamanize” ourselves in the image of nature’. Here the taboo subjects of Aboriginal degradation and spirituality emerge and are treated with great economy and skill. As one who grew up in Alice Springs, Tacey’s account bears the stamp of lived experience. The process of ‘re-sacralizing’ our experience emerges as ‘a social and political necessity’. According to Tacey, ‘the ecological crisis is at bottom a psychological and spiritual crisis. These deeper roots to the problem will have to be explored if there is to be any lasting change’. Hence, this is an outstanding book that goes right to the core of our major concerns: meaninglessness, avoidance, violence. ‘Society becomes a demonic parody of sacred reality when society no longer recognizes the divine sources from which its own life springs’. The more people who will read this book and reflect on it deeply, the better. There are few richer and more reward-
200
ing starting points. Whereas Tacey sketches in the territory of myth and spirituality, Warren Ziegler provides a kind of step-by-step practical guide to the recovery of a personal spiritual vision. Ziegler is well known in the futures field for the workshops on ‘imaging the future’ developed by himself and Elise Boulding over many years. As a result of this work, he steadily accumulated a wealth of understanding and knowledge about group dynamics and personal change strategies. In particular, there was a shift from fairly superficial ‘techniques’ to a deeper understanding of the central role of spirituality in coming to grips with the dilemmas of self and the world. The book is a compendium of such ‘transformative practices’. Topics covered include: deep listening, deep questioning, deep learning and deep imaging. These are followed by what Ziegler calls the meta-disciplines; that is, intentioning, discerning, dialogue and the centrality of deep learning. I find it impossible to summarize the contents of these chapters because they are essentially experimental and need to be taken as such. The life of the work is not in the text but in the many ways the text can be applied. Ziegler not only speaks of ‘the sociability of spirit’, the book exudes it. Anyone who is interested in tools for exploring the path of spiritual awakening will find this book a treasure trove of insight and applied understanding. It can be used as a handbook for a personal journey. However, its best use is as a guide to the practice of enspiriting, which is essentially a group activity. I imagine, therefore, that it will be invaluable to all those groups who are already working in this direction, or would like to do so. It is an impressive and deeply facilitative achievement. I have often suggested that the solutions to the global predicament are all within reach and are prefigured somewhere within the broad futures literature. In their own way, each of these fascinating and productive books helps to substantiate that view.