The essence of systems

We are addressing our social and environmental in-balances with an essential shift. It is  underway and this change is putting us back together! Our experience, in the modern world, is to make sense of what we see but not include our own feelings and vulnerabilities in that sense-making.

In this video, Peter Senge and Otto Schramer take us on a journey greatly simplifying systems down to that essence, putting mind and body back together.

This draws from Peter’s teacher, Nan Huai-Chin. Peter says about teachers:

Part of their job is to give you a tough time. He (Nan Huai-Chin) would say Peter Senge, he always wants to save the world, because he knew all my life this social-environmental balance has been the gnawing reality.

On our social and environmental crises Nan said that’s all true. He acknowledged that we’re entering a very, very difficult time, he was very clear about that. But, the really deep issue is the re-integration of mind and matter. We need to go so far upstream to address this illusion, the illusion and our perception that there is something out there and it is separate from the something inside us. The illusion that there’s this mind thing over here, my awareness, and that’s completely separate from the imprints of out there that I am making in my awareness.

That is we are separate from our external reality.

This goes well beyond eastern beliefs and understanding. Peter says,

I don’t know any Western scientists who’ve done a better job of articulating this than Humberto Maturana who has said this illusion of a separate reality is where our problems all start.

He continues,

That’s hard for us of course because, as we embrace the pain and suffering of reality, there’s a natural tendency when we contact that intense emotion, that trauma to disassociate, to treat it as something outside and not part of me. An immense kind of developmental dynamic is to be able to hold that which is most painful, which emerges in our awareness as separate, as not separate, as really part of my own awareness.

This reintegration of mind in matter—which was the way it was expressed way back then—has really become a touchstone for us all. Listen and watch the video (it starts at Peter’s introduction about his teacher, Nan Huai-Chin.