Launching the Dojo

I’ve been working with grassroots community development for a while (like 25+ years). While it’s been a life-passion, it has also been my greatest challenge. One of the hardest things is navigating the first group transition (called Commitment on The Journey Map): Will we move from talking about the reality we want to actually creating it? There a number of reasons why this transition is so hard which I won’t get into here (ask in the comments if you want), but I’ve been working on breakthrough strategies in this area for a while.

For the first time, I feel like I’m in a community that has crossed this transition: Awakened Village. Over the past few months we’ve really committed together to the mission and it has resulted in the launching of a new collaborative learning center for families with school-aged children and a ton of energy among our members for transforming ourselves and the world around us.

When a group crosses this transition, they move from [3] Revelation Rhythm, where they were discovering meaning together, into [4] In/Out Growth where they make connections inwardly and outwardly that cause them to coalesce¹ into the reality implied by their meaning. They also transition from the first phase of community “Belong” to the second phase “Become” (see [3] Belong-Become-Believe).

The Systematics shape for [4] In/Out Growth is [4] The Quad — a shape for outlining growth in living systems (or any that has evolutionary potential). This shape helps to think through the stages of growth and what needs to happen in each stage so that growth can flourish.

Flourish is a good word for what we want to do at Awakened Village. Several of us have committed to creating a space for this new growth so that we can support and inspire it in our broader community and families. We gathered in a living room, processed deeply what growth means, and started to dream about what this will look like. We decided we need a space to learn skills, correct dysfunctions, heal wounds, and design missions. We call this new space The Dojo. It’s a “school” of the Way, where the emphasis is on practice inspired by real spiritual growth. We mean this metaphorically, but there has already been a little bit of martial arts. After a few meetings, its clear that this is already leading to growth. And that is really exciting!

I’ll post recaps and other notes to forum under the “av-dojo” tag and they’ll show up here in this list:

1. Coalesce, from Latin: literally “grow together.” At this point a group transitions from being a public/community focused on aggregate personal interest into a coalition/community focused on growing into embodiment of the mission necessary to sublimate individual interests to the common good.