Paradox and polarity

Development happens in paradox – in the seemingly absurd, in the apparently contradictory, in polarity. And in the inherent relationship which binds them in belonging.

Development happens in paradox. The CDRA Biennial Practice Conference, a developmental process itself, was full of paradox. During the conference we, participants and facilitators alike, moved between the interior and exterior world, between process and content, between freedom and belonging, between discipline and improvisation.  The notion of polarity is useful in understanding divergence, but it immediately makes us think of the associated impulse of ‘finding balance’. Upheld as the thing to do to sort out one’s life, finding balance can also warp into the compulsion to ‘get-it-right’. As if there was a perfect midpoint, a perfect balance we could achieve, if only.....

In reflecting on our evaluation of the conference, CDRA has come to see how development happens, not at the poles, nor at some mythical mid-point,  but in the in-between spaces; in the tension, in the mix, in the place where contrasting impulses act on each other. Here balance is something messy and dynamic, rather than static – and finding balance, a means, rather than a goal. When we recognise the almost automatic choosing between poles and choose instead to engage in the vibrant tension between them, their relationship no longer seems competitive or linear. No longer a case of either or. Instead, like the waxing and waning of the moon, we are better able to see polarity as different phases of the same cycle.

There are five polarities we encountered at the Biennial:

At the conference we were invited to choose an art medium through which to explore the concepts and questions we had gathered to grapple with. But more than just a medium to explore our experience of the exterior world, Eurythmy teacher and Biennial facilitator Liz Smith found that “the artistic processes were a major contributing factor to experiencing ourselves as rational and non-rational, physical, emotional and spiritual beings." (see full report) The creative process served as a way into the self, not as a pre-occupation, self centeredness or self-indulgence, but as a necessary precursor to bringing oneself more fully – into community, and into service with others.

The impulse to focus on the interior world of thoughts, feelings and will, is known as introversion. Extroversion is the contrasting impulse to focus on the exterior world in which we live and work.  At the Biennial we were asked to traverse both. Why was this a tension? Because while we know about these two states of being, these two worlds called interior and exterior - we experienced them and their juxtaposition acutely at the Biennial. We shifted focus between them, again and again, and the movement was often jolting. Sandra remembers her irritation at being asked to stop playing with the thick and colourful paints, to stop mid-way through a portrait and concentrate instead on developing a time line for the development sector. Also, there was the feeling of fragmentation on leaving an intense group discussion on an aspect of developmental practice for another painting session; and then trying to pick up the conversation and make sense of it when the same practice group reconvened later that day.

According to psychiatrist and anthroposophist Bernard Lievegoed (1979) extroversion expresses itself in creativity, which manifests in “art, science or scholarship or in creative social deeds.” The contrasting impulse of introversion expresses itself in insight or wisdom. “Diametrically opposed to creativity we find wisdom. Wisdom does not come from outward directed activity, but from being able to wait and see, from restraint, from active peace of mind.” Poet and theologian Thomas Moore describes waiting, doubting, retreating, not knowing and being absorbed in oneself as the necessary counter force to action, ambition, goals, ideals, vision and altruism which prevents them from becoming destructive.

That jolting feeling Sandra, and many others, had shifting from a self centred exercise, to one focused on the exterior world and vice versa, echoed the very contradictions we face in trying to exist in both worlds – and more so, in trying to negotiate the transitions between them.

Rather than its contradiction, discipline is a necessary foundation for successful improvisation. This was the message to CDRA during our preparation phase from the team of artists who co-facilitated the creative sessions at the Biennial.

While grounded in a strong discipline of facilitating group processes, the Biennial is a place of improvisation and experimentation. On reflection we found that our absorption in innovation and in the new led us to disregard some basic tenets of the discipline of group facilitation.

One part of this discipline involves moving from the specific to the general, from the known to the unknown. In working with this simple premise, we improvised by conflating specific and known with “individual” and general and unknown with the “collective” – and in so doing missed vital steps in the sense making process.

For example, in the case story groups, individuals told a story from their practice and the collective was tasked with generating conclusions (“What do all these stories say about practice?”) Time was not given for individuals or even small groups to crystallise and work with individual conclusions before moving back into the collective. This jump from individual, specific experience (and insight) to conclusions that were generalised to the sector was simply too great. The conversations became abstract and academic, leaving many participants feeling frustrated.

Another part of the basic discipline of facilitating group processes is that as facilitator you can only take people where you have been before. As facilitator you have the responsibility to have thought things through further, to have taken yourself, fully, through the process that you are intending to take others through. While it does not follow that groups will come to the same conclusions that facilitators have reached, we are able to grasp and facilitate process to the extent that we have experienced what that process can generate.

CDRA has been exploring the links between art and development, between the creative process and the development process in their own personal and organisational learning. This blending of the creative with the social was the area we were best prepared for, had thought through the most, and had prepared most with as a Biennial facilitation team. In the pre-occupation of preparing this angle on things, and in creating the team that would carry the Biennial, the content questions – of the sector’s role, place and value – were under-explored and, in retrospect, less prepared for than they should have been.

The outcome of these lapses in discipline are clearly reflected in the outcomes of the process, in the feedback we have received, in our own considered view of things and in the work of the process inquiry group: As a whole, the Biennial manifested and experienced the vital same-ness of the creative and development processes; as individuals, we derived personal learning and even made more sense of our place in this vast sector. But as a whole, we cannot claim that the Biennial transcended fragmented understanding of the sector.

Seduced perhaps by the pressure to produce….to prove relevant, to contribute, to make a difference to the world, we found ourselves equating ‘content’ with product. We found ourselves teetering on the brink of measuring the value of the conference, or at least the value of what was said in the conference, by its productive potential – by what we could capture and turn into a commodity. Although an early warning did sound during preparations for the Biennial, we held product and process in polarity. Both were seen as important, yet unhinged from one another, each of these impulses was compromised.

At times the drive for product seemed to threaten process. For example the detailed input on the potential Biennial product during the second day of the conference left participants perplexed, wondering why the packaging of findings was more important than the process of reaching those findings and the findings themselves. The product proposal alienated rather than drew people in. It felt like a hiatus interrupting the flow of the day.

This motif reappeared several times to a greater and lesser extent, perhaps most obviously each time groups were called to present their conclusions to the collective (plenary). Presentations were given in colour, or drawing, in story form, in movement or in dance, while others were given in the more conventional propositional form – statements, findings, conclusions written and verbal. Many participants found they were caught up in thinking about ‘how’ they would present rather than ‘what’ they would present. This was intensified by the ambitious programme and lack of time dedicated to such important processes. The rush to synthesis led to abstraction and lack of depth. Had we provided the process, the content emerging through collective thinking would have been enhanced by, for example, asking each participant to sit in silence journaling what struck them as significant after each plenary session and by asking a commentator to pull the threads of each presentation together into a piece on what she/he had heard and seen. In this way we could have given greater honour to what each person takes away with them, into their world.

When we stopped to reflect on our own experience as facilitators of the Biennial and again when we sat to consider the process inquiry group’s report on the Biennial – we were struck by its imperfection, by the many, many mistakes, mishaps, oversights, assumptions, omissions and commissions – and more importantly we were struck by the seemingly absurd or contradictory relationship between ‘imperfect process’ and its value. On the one hand the failings – on the other the overarching sense of success, based on intuition and feedback from participants. Despite all the glitches…….all is well, all is well.

What we saw as process failings because they generated discomfort, irritation and frustration, seem also to have contributed to people shifting into another ‘space’. It is often in places of discomfort and disquiet that we are most likely to hear the question in the nagging at the back of our mind, most motivated to change, most likely to wake up. In his book Awareness, Christian mystic Anthony de Mello describes most people as asleep, and listening as a way to waking up. To him, listening is not a synonym for agreeing, nor a tool for confirming what we already think – but a readiness to reappraise, to challenge our whole belief system, openness to insecurity and the desire to discover something new. But this kind of listening, this waking up, de Mello says, is uncomfortable, even irritating.  It seems there is some kind of converse relationship between that which unsettles and disturbs us and that which we can learn (or perhaps unlearn) from. And we are encouraged by the wisdom that there is only perfection in death, that imperfection is essential to all living things.

Belonging is the staple of freedom. One of the Biennial’s intentions was to ‘build community’. Why? Because a deep sense of belonging is the cradle of innovative thinking and action and provides security which enables us to follow our aspirations and visions. In the words of David Whyte, (pp 21) …“the human ability to innovate and follow an individual vision depends on a sure foundation of continuity and community.” Why? Because as social beings we desire community, we enact it and believe in it. Why? Because together we can do/see/be more than we can in isolation.

And in the Biennial, we see the unity of freedom and belonging was both retained, and enhanced. This was no smooth accomplishment. We risked, at points, a reduction of these qualities, into the more base “individual vs collective.” We see in the earlier parts of this report how we risked using individual experience, for the sake of collective so-called learning. And how the drive to product (in service of a “greater” good, the redistributive ethic, learning for those who weren’t there) risked inhibiting the very creativity we were seeking.

But there was something else at work. The keen observation and engagement of participants, facilitators and support-staff alike. The part of each self that gave freely, of their best intentions, un-fragmented experience and, where required, their kindly-fierce defence of both individual freedom and the community to which we all belong. Where did these “criteria” for assessing the Biennial-in-motion come from? We did not brainstorm group objectives at the start. There were no “ground-rules” written up on a flip-chart that all could be held accountable to. How did we, as a community, know when it was time to shift emphasis, engage in seeking balance?

“In preserving my own integrity here, I am preserving the integrity of this community. They are one.” A deep intelligence, rooted in commonality yet expressed freely in a multitude of individual ways, held the process, maintained its striving to balance. This knowing is not something that any event creates. It is what we bring to it. But in consciously and carefully seeking its dimensions out, in striving to come to know and understand it more clearly, and more mutually, so we enhance the community to which we belong. And so we strengthen the freedom with which we act in, and out of, that belonging.

The Biennial of 2007 represents one small contribution to doing just that.

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