Setting a field for potential to manifest through being differently
reGeneration Rising (Episode 7) — Pamela Mang in conversation with Daniel Wahl
I recorded this conversation with Pamela Mang on January 22nd, 2020. In these times of profound transformation, I feel we need to listen to and read texts with awareness of whether they were recorded or written pre or post March 11th, 2020 — the day the World Health Organization declared the pandemic that has now already transformed what we do, but has the potential of transforming how we be and who we are.
May we all — citizens, politicians, business leaders alike — take this time of ‘physical distancing and (virtual) social connecting’ to listen deeply, to questions what served and what did not serve before, and how we might want to be and do differently when we come out of this quarantine (more).
Below are some of the highlights from my conversation with Pamela Mang, who I regard as one of the most insightful wisdom carriers of regenerative practice and who I continue to learn from every time I connect with her and the amazing work she is sharing with the world (the link to a recording of our conversation is at the end):
Pamela Mang: “How ephemeral the kind of functional things we do and the successes we see really are, and how exterior they are to what and who we really need to be.” …
We explored her own story and how she connected with the work of Charlie Krone and became friends with Carol Sanford, and dialogues on the lineage of regenerative practice. In that context Pamela quoted Gurdjieff’s saying “Man cannot do.” … and explained how that insight first deeply landed in her own life.
Pamela Mang: “… I cannot do, but I can be and become something that can make a difference.”
… “right being, right action, right knowledge” …
Pamela Mang: Charlie Krone’s “role was right knowledge and that really was appropriate … continually weaving together multiple lineages — some very ancient, some more recent, David Bohn to the Sufis, Gurdjieff and John Bennett’s ‘Systematics’ was a very big part of if. But it was ‘right knowledge’ in sense of knowing not a thing know, but the process of knowing.
I think that is a really critical distinction to make. It is one of the reasons why this work feels more resonant to indigenous people. The understanding of knowing as a process that is contiuously ongoing is very much more akin than the Western sense of knowledge as ‘a thing known’.”
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Pamela Mang: “I really have come to appreciate ‘understanding something’ which is different from knowing, before I try to build on something and try to evolve it or extend it in some way. In many ways what is at the core of ‘evolving’ and ‘regeneration’ is that if we don’t understand what is a the core essence of something, and we try to improve it, we try to impose a pattern that we are bringing in from somewhere else.
We see this has happened over and over again in Western colonial times, in science, in business, in the way we plan cities. With the best of intentions we try to improve, but we don’t really understand what is at the core/heart of what makes something who and what it is. That is at the very heart of what we are working with in this particular cosmology, ontology and technology that we are working with and what we are doing.”
Daniel Wahl: “I find this fascinating — to me personally — on two levels, because on the one hand it is about really working with the potential and not the problem, really being place sourced and working with the knowledge that whatever you do in any place no matter how small or how large (like working bioregionally) it is actually co-present with the whole world. Local work is also global work.
At the same time … it so strongly resonates with two other lineages that have informed my own thinking. … and they have a lineage connection because Henri Bortoft and his wonderful book on ‘The Wholeness of Nature: A Goethean Way of Science’ and this almost phenomenological approach that Goethe brought in which reminds us to stay present with how we bring the world into being. How our organising ideas and the way we think shape the world. We think it is all just out there, but it is not. We also co-created in in the way we are in relationship with it. That was really influential on me when I as at Schumacher College in 2001/2002 and worked with Henri directly. … and in 2007 I met Tony Hodgson who later invited me into the International Futures Forum (IFF). Tony was at J.G. Bennett’s research lab where he worked with Henri Bortoft (who did his PhD with David Bohm) … the world systems map, the three horizons pathways practice, the work with the IFF … that is why I am so excited to explore how these lineages can meet.”
Pamela Mang: “They do. Phenomenology is another core to this work. … The term we use often when we talk about storying place and try to really understand what is the essence and what are the core patterns of a place, is to step in and walk around and be conscious of how that place is processing us. We are literally being processed all the time by the places.”
“Now that takes consciousness of what goes on inside of us. … that is one of the things I would actually like to talk about. There are a lot of exciting and wonderful things being written now, shared and disseminated around regenerative agriculture, regenerative economies and so on. It is a really optimistic, powerful and hopeful time in all of that happening. This is great!
So what is our role and the role of our work in this expanding ecosystem. Where can we uniquely add value. It is an ongoing discussing with us. One thing is the topic that you referred to and have written about under the term ‘personal development’. I think people, when they hear those words, they hear them through the filter of the way we normally think about personal development. …
We — as humans — exist in essentially two worlds. We have an intrinsic world and an extrinsic world and they are always both at the same time. The intrinsic world is an inner world, the mental processing that goes on in that — if we are aware of it — signals to us who we want to be, what is going on, how we want to behave in a certain situation and so on. Most of the time we are not even aware of that mental processing. Most of our thinking is about the extrinsic, which is what to do about the world out there, what we should be doing in relationship to it.
The issue is that if we are unconscious of the intrinsic mental processing and we only look at the outside, we tend to become reactive beings and that’s what lead to this emphasis on doing. [Our work] is a developmental process but we are always working on actualisation and realisation, working on being able to manifest new affectiveness and capability while realising greater potential, and never separating those two. That is at the core of that gyre (of learning) you were talking about.
The challenge is: How do we become conscious — in the moment — of how we are processing our world and processing our thinking in ourselves?”
Daniel Wahl: “Wouldn’t you say that that is at the core of personal development. Even in the conventional understanding is leading up to that point where you can feel a reaction rising and then you can reflect on how your own filters and your own triggers produce that reaction before you the respond to the situation?”
Pamela Mang: “I think it is at the core when personal development is really and truly self-actualising, but most of the practices of doing that are about going off to a retreat, or meditation — and all of those are really valuable and important processes, they all have a role at different times and places. What we work on is: How do you actually use life, moment by moment, as a school for working on that and oneself? It requires more will and discipline to work in that way, but if we really want to evolve who we are being, we have to do it while we are working.
A lot of the practices and frameworks we use, and the kind of working-together to support each other ‘to be friends in the work’ is about bringing that into a meeting at work, a presentation to a client … How can I bring that consciousness of the inner processes and how it is affecting the outer and bring them into harmony while I am striving to actually do something significant? … ultimately that’s where it has to be brought to bare if we are really going to make the shift from doing to being, from human doings to human beings.”
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We go on to talk about:
Rite of passage work … mirroring …
The three lines of work: Pamela Mang: “First to fully realise one’s potential. What am I now and what would I be if I fully realised my purpose, which means my contribution to something larger? … At second line work, I am taking on stewardship for supporting those I am working with to also be on that path, but always in relationship to a collective aim of contributing to something larger in the world. …”
The Triad: the activating force, the restraining/receiving force, the reconciling force …
Pamela Mang: “On the one hand we have and extinction crises or an existential crisis that is getting more imminent and real, on the other hand we are also in the middle of an ontological crisis: Who do we need to be as humans on planet Earth, and what do we need to be working on brining into being?
If we solve one without the other, if we take that moment to just be, be in love, be in fields of caring and support, and we don’t work on the other one than we might not be around long enough to figure out what our role is supposed to be. So we really need to hold them both.
What that requires is a different way. That’s why it is important to work on our own state as we work out in the world is so fundamentally critical — learning how to do that.” …
We explored working glocally — working at both levels. … nodal interventions … working with nested wholeness … scale-linking work … not “collapsing into the urgency of now” …
… “our being attracts our life and we only get what we are able to manage” …
… indigenous ways of working …
Pamela Mang: “My sense is, it’s going to shift in ways that we have no idea.” (said on January 22, 2020)
… we also talked about our relationship to death and how the notion of death and rebirth is at the heart of regeneration.
… the unleashing of potential that lies in breakdown and collapse.
… We talked more about the work of David Bohm … the implicate order, the explicate order, and the super-implicate order …
“Living the questions together.” … manifesting the potential that lies in life’s continuous exploration of novelty.
… paying attention to ‘ontological design’ … and how design goes on designing for a long time.
Enjoy!
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Daniel Christian Wahl — Catalyzing transformative innovation in the face of converging crises, advising on regenerative whole systems design, regenerative leadership, and education for regenerative development and bioregional regeneration.
Author of the internationally acclaimed book Designing Regenerative Cultures
