Study and Research

Common Reading Model

Context: Our mission of enabling the emergence of a new earth, a new human and a new society by caring for those who care requires us to dialogue with current edge thinking in each of these areas. It also requires us to take this dialogue further with a conversation with our community’s historical wisdom. We know the guided dialogue using the charting method will allow a group to a degree of collective insight that is beyond any single individual. We have chosen three books, one in each of the three areas, to practice the charting and collective dialogue. We will post on the web page some of our classic papers on the charting method. We will welcome additional comments or improvements on the method. Eventually we hope to generate a single paper that will be used to teach people in the charting method and to train people in the pedagogical process of leading insightful dialogues with books and articles.

Over the next four months (end of July) we want to have people choose one of the three books to participate in the common reading experiment. The leader of the group will be responsible for the initial overall chart of the book, but participants will be responsible for the development of charts of chapters and even sections if the group decides that a particular section needs depth coverage. The final product will be the presentation of a study guide for the book complete with charts and key questions and insights to sections of the book that are key to the understanding on the new web site. Groups are to be self managed and will proceed at a pace that all are comfortable with.

The three books chosen for this first experiment are:

For the area of the consciousness on the care for the earth - the book “World as Lover, World as Self” by Joanna Macy. Leader is Jack Gilles.

For the area of the consciousness of care for the self - the book “The New Earth” by Eckhart Tolle. Participants are urged to be a part of Oprah Winfrey’s worldwide discussion of the book. Leader is David Rebstock.

For the area of the consciousness of care for the social process - the book “Riding the Waves of Culture” by Charles Hampden-Turner and Fons Trompenaars. Leader is John Epps.

Research Model

There is a need for finding how to make our historical wisdom available to the world. We will create areas of corporate research on our website. Springboard members are encouraged to suggest areas to launch a research effort beginning from the next Springboard venture meeting. This will include finding money through grants and donations for the work. One area suggested by Jack Gilles is to work on our models of The New Religious Mode, The Other World, Profound Humanness and Dark Night-Long March. He is suggesting a research gathering in Mexico at the new Mindfulness Centre sometime in October. All of the work on our collective work in JWM’s files and our Archives are fertile ground for proposals for donations and grants.

A second research area is work on new areas that have emerged since our collective work in any of the three focus areas. Multi culture, Environmental Consciousness, Social Process, Spirit are a few areas we might work on. We could also do further work on current global contradictions that we identified at the last Springboard gathering in Junaluska. Springboard members can suggest areas and create a site on our website where others might join in the research effort. Again, we would be looking for areas that after our next meeting we could write up for research grants and donations.