Organizing retrospective 51

This is a post in my series on organizing ”between and beyond.” Other posts are here. This is a retrospective of what has happened during the week. The purpose is to reflect on the work itself. Here is my previous retrospective. Here is my next retrospective.

What has happened? What needs to be done?
I’ve been reading Eugene Gendlin’s book Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning: A Philosophical and Psychological Approach to the Subjective this week. It’s a most interesting book.

I can see how experiencing, as defined by Gendlin, is directly related to the deeper generative order for organizing which I’m so interested in. Gendlin provides, furthermore, a language to describe this. I also see parallels between David Bohm and Eugene Gendlin:

• Bohm talks about the implicate and explicate, while Gendlin talks about the implicit and explicit.¹
• Bohm explores the nature of consciousness, with particular attention to thought. Gendlin explores experiencing, with an emphasis on the ability to think with the intricacy of the situation.²
  • What matters most for Gendlin is the way in which the next step follows (continues, carries forward, makes sense) from what preceded it.³
  • Instead of relating mostly in roles, we need to relate from our own intricacy.⁴
  • Our next step of thought comes from our experiencing.⁵
• Bohm proposes that there is order in all aspects of life.⁷ So does Gendlin, who describes nature as a responsive order, which always gives more exact results than could have been constructed or deduced.⁸
  • Experiencing is non-numerical, but it’s never just anything-you-please. It’s, on the contrary, a more precise order which is not limited to any set of patterns.⁹
  • The content of experience is generated by the process of experiencing itself.¹⁰

David Bohm would probably have agreed with Eugene Gendlin that we can think everything more truly if we think it with attention to how we think.¹¹

I will come back to all this in my review of Gendlin’s book!

What was good? What can be improved?
Skye Hirst and I had our 40th conversation this week. I’m amazed at how new ‘gold nuggets’ always turn up in our conversations. Again, Skye cracked me open with her questions and suggestions. It all boils down to trusting your own organism(ic) self. By getting in touch with your own organism(ic) life force you can navigate the world. Self-trust gives you access to an entirely new repertoire of behaviors. The deeper generative order for organizing is to be found within the organism itself.

Notes:
¹ Eugene Gendlin, Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning: A Philosophical and Psychological Approach to the Subjective (Northwestern University Press, 1997, first published 1962), p.xiii.
² Ibid., p.xii.
³ Ibid., p.xiii.
⁴ Ibid., p.xiv.
⁶ Ibid., p.xvii.
⁷ David Bohm and F. David Peat, Science, Order, and Creativity (Routledge, 2010-09-01, first published 1987-10-01), p.146.
⁸ Eugene Gendlin, Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning: A Philosophical and Psychological Approach to the Subjective (Northwestern University Press, 1997, first published 1962), p.xix.
⁹ Ibid..
¹⁰ Ibid., p.xx.
¹¹ Ibid., p.xxi.

Related posts:
Organizing in between and beyond posts