Creating a Personal Practice of “WE”: Step 1

My Friends,

My deepest thanks to Sarah, who read this passage to me last night as we climbed into bed. I thought it was so powerful that I asked her if I could share it with each of you. Thank you, Sarah.

It has inspired me to consider more deeply the taking on of a personal practice of “WE”, in as fully a way as I can. I invite you to join me in this consideration, as “WE” explore what it means to consider in all of our thoughts, feelings and actions, the greater good of all concerned.

Here’s the sharing from Sarah, from the book, "The Art of Possibility" by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander:

    More often than not history is a record of conflict between an Us and a Them. We see this pattern expressed across a broad spectrum: nation to nation, among political parties, between labor and management, and in the most intimate realms of our lives. What framework will transform us AND those whose claims on resources, territory, and the ‘truth’ are irreconcilable with ours? What can we invent that will take us from an entrenched posture of hostility to one of enthusiasm and deep regard?

    To begin the inquiry, we have distinguished a new entity that personifies the ‘togetherness’ of you and me and others. This entity, the WE, can be found among any two people, in any community or organization, and it can be thought of, in poetic terms, as a melody running through the people of the earth.

    It emerges in the way music emerges from individual notes when a phrase is played as one long line, in the way a landscape coalesces out of the multicolored strokes of an Impressionist painting when you get some distance, and in the way a ‘family’ comes into being when a first child is born. The WE appears when, for the moment, we set aside the story of fear, competition, and struggle, and tell ITS story.

    The WE story defines a human being in a specific way: It says we are our central selves seeking to contribute, naturally engaged, forever in a dance with each other. It points to relationship rather than to individuals, to communication patterns, gestures, and movement rather than to discrete objects and identities. It attests to the in-between.

    Like the particle-and-wave nature of light, the WE is both a living entity and a long line of development unfolding. This new being, the WE of us, comes into view as we look for it–the vital entity of our company, or community, or group of two. Then the protagonist of our story, the entity called WE, steps forward and takes on a life of its own.

    By telling the WE story, an individual becomes a conduit for this new inclusive entity, wearing its eyes and ears, feeling its heart, thinking its thoughts, inquiring into what is best for US. This practice pints the way to a kind of leadership based not on qualifications earned in the field of battle, but on the courage to speak on behalf of all people and for the long line of human possibility.

    The steps to the WE practice are these:

        1. Tell the WE story–the story of the unseen threads that connect us all, the story of possibility.

        2. Listen and look for the emerging entity.

        3. Ask: "What do WE want to have happen here?", "what’s best for US?" — all of each of us, and all of all of us.

                    "What’s OUR next step?"

Wonderful and powerful these thoughts are, as we pursue our GandhiGuy.com Story of WE.

Thanks for all you do in your life for peace, love and harmony!

Yours,

Don