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COMPASSION RESPONSE NETWORK CIRCULAR No 9
By David Keane, 14/June/2002
PO Box 582, Gosnells WA 6110, Australia
Email address: keane@nw.com.au
Healing site address: http://www.nw.com.au/~keane/healing/
Designing the Process
In CRN Circular No 8, we shared how our Inner Planning Circle had agreed upon the Vision, Mission Statement and immediate Main Aim for the Compassion Response Network.
The procedure of developing Vision, Mission Statement and Main Aim, comes from the methodology of Sociocracy, which has scientifically and in fine detail explored the pathway for manifesting objectives and purposes for associations and group ventures. Once we have clearly defined our Main Aim, the question arises where do we as a group proceed from here? Sociocracy again provides the pathway, through "designing a process" for manifesting the Aim.
In CRN Circular No 8, we shared how we had already established our group Main Aim;
To facilitate treatment and testing and publication of
results with comparative assessment for about half a dozen affordable, safe
and reputably effective alternative treatments for AIDS over a six month period,
involving regular PCR, immunity and other blood tests as required.
This Aim is to be reviewed in 6 months, to include discussion
for an Aim for Future Development.
John is very experienced in sociocracy methods, and guided those of us in the Inner Planning Circle for whom these procedures were new.
He explained that a process has three parts: input, transformation, output. He proposed that the process for our Main Aim of treatment, testing, publication and comparative assessment with respect to AIDS, might be presented as follows;
This is the first "level" of the design process. Each of the three parts of a process in turn has an input, transformation, and output (the second level) - and these in turn have an input, transformation, output (the third level, etc). Thus we see that the design process has a "fractal" nature, or a hierarchy of levels. As a general rule, it is useful to develop the process to two levels, but not further at this stage. John presented how his 9-step 2-level design might appear;
2. Transformation = conducting the treatment and tests
3. Output = publication of the results
A Difficult Choice
This past month of our deliberations in the Inner Planning Circle was difficult and brought to the surface a point of tension and divergence of point of view. It took some time to resolve this issue, which in retrospect seems to be a moment of critical decision and spiritual significance for our work in Compassion Response Network. The issue of disputation was not of a physical nature, but spiritual in its essence, and it seems fitting that we should have been struggling with this issue at the spiritual "high" period for the year, the Western (Christian) time of Easter and the Eastern (Buddhist) time of Wesak. The comment was made by more than one member that this may have been the most critical decision or point of tension for our entire group work.
The difference in viewpoint arose from the quite different background of the four members in our Inner Planning Circle. John and Marielle are both experienced and fully trained sociocracy facilitators. They each have considerable experience in developing businesses and social organisations using sociocracy methodology. It was from this perspective that John had been leading us and presenting the way that sociocracy would normally suggest the pathway to developing and actualising our Main aim of comparative treatment and testing projects for AIDS.
John's proposal for how we might proceed has been discussed in the above section "Designing the Process". He proposed a 9-step process that reflected his experience in sociocracy and advising businesses, and provided clear guidelines of a practical facilitation nature. This approach is very effective in efficiently organising and implementing objective matters. Sociocracy has developed this objective aspect of the work far better than theorists or esotericists, and in this they undoubtedly have a most important contribution, as the overall objective of our work is to manifest our dreams onto the physical level.
David and Albert have an extended experience within East West Network, which developed its aims from subjective levels. We would share about the need within a goodwill network. We would simply lay the facts and the needs at the crossroads for any to accept if they passed by. Then we would build along subjective lines, visualising the inflow of positive energies of goodwill, unity and compassion. There were many times when we had clearly defined our next step for growth of the work, but we would have too few finances or few co-workers or there were physical hindrances to the work. So we would enter into group meditation and infuse the group project with spiritual energies. And wonderfully each time the work did expand.
We did not have the experience of developing the work from such a practical and objective perspective as John was showing to us. Sociocracy was truly opening up new doorways for our group work.
The concern was expressed however that traditional sociocracy builds on the level of facilitating from available physical resources. It was suggested that the higher purpose for the Compassion Response Network was to start building, not by correct organisation of forms and structures, and allocation of physical duties, but by building from the subjective or esoteric. Our higher purpose was not to mobilise finances or physical resources, but to mobilise and direct the energies of goodwill and compassion.
This is not to suggest that sociocracy lacks spiritual sensitivity and vision. We all regard Gerard Endenburg, the founder of sociocracy, as a man of great wisdom and vision, and a true leader. His vision was so broad that it can embrace the esoteric or subjective. The work of sociocracy is more objective than the esoteric work in its field of practical service focus, while also allowing for development of the esoteric or meditative work in parallel. We could, using the standard sociocratic approach, develop an organisation with a mission of a compassionate response to AIDS and an Aim of a comparative treatment and testing project of a comparative treatment and testing project. We would develop along the traditional sociocratic pattern which in itself would be excellent thing to do.
Being True to our Mission Statement
Let us recall the Mission statement for the Compassion Response Network.
To facilitate the emergence of a goodwill network in which the hands of men and women of goodwill are strengthened so that they become enabled to directly provide a meaningful compassionate response to the most urgent needs of humanity.
This provides a far loftier mission than just a "compassion response to the AIDS pandemic." We are asked to construct a goodwill network in which men and women of goodwill are empowered to "directly provide a meaningful compassionate response to the most urgent needs of humanity."
Who can truly discern the "most urgent needs of humanity"? We can with sincere and loving meditation approach an understanding of these things, but a perfect understanding is known only in the Mind of God. Therefore not with our own understanding will we fulfill our Mission statement, but by offering ourselves unconditionally as instruments in God's service, to serve constantly with compassion in love for humanity.
Our task then is not merely to be sensitive to the subjective or esoteric, but to build from the esoteric (by developing true contact with the divine) and also to accept group responsibility for that creative work, which, "with its intelligent and practical purposes and its ability when rightly functioning to unite the exoteric and the esoteric workers in one spiritual undertaking, originates in reality in Shamballa (the centre where the Will of God is known)". (Rays and Initiations by Alice Bailey, p 275)
The spiritual issue before us is not simply to allow parallel development of the subjective or esoteric (which traditional sociocracy allows for). Rather it was proposed that the creative work upon the outer field must begin with the esoteric work. Thus our great challenge and responsibility is to integrate the esoteric and exoteric.
To put it another way, our higher purpose within the Compassion Response Network is to build the "Rainbow Bridge" connecting God's Will with practical action to respond to humanity in need. In developing "Vision, Mission, Aim", we have constructed the upper portion of the Rainbow Bridge. We now need to develop a Programme, which is still fairly subjective work compared to facilitating, but until it is done and done well we will have difficulty in proceeding to facilitate.
There is an enormous reservoir of goodwill out there, and our task is to scientifically and constructively tap into it. In this task fine planning and subjective action are so vital. We must therefore find a way to integrate this subjective aspect of our work into the designing of process.
What our Mission statement calls us to in the years to come, is not just to develop a compassionate response to the AIDS pandemic, but to facilitate free basic medical care to all the poor on Earth, to build compassion response centres in Africa, to initiate a people's participation movement on national popular levels, to finance spiritually essential teachings to those who are presently denied access to such teachings and to anchor the New World Religion on Earth. All this is truly challenging work. It has never been attempted in this way before, and we need to lay the foundations well. It involves blazing that pathway by which our dreams are transformed to reality, laying down the foundations for the Science of Manifestation. This is indeed truly pioneering work.
In response to this awesome challenge. Marielle shared the following comment,
"I am rather bedazzled myself at the outcome of our journey so far. We are navigating in uncharted waters. We are transgressing our earthly boundaries in group-formation to anchor the Kingdom of God on Earth. We are coming to a blueprint of an organisation that is unique in the world in its scientific link with the Divine. Sociocracy has never risen to these levels before and yet it is the most logical step ahead, for sociocracy as well as for the Compassion Response Network."
Practical Considerations
In sociocracy, whenever a debate or divergence of opinion becomes too theoretical or abstract, the way forward is to always focus upon the practical and then proceed with small practical applications. It has turned out that practical matters provided for us some of the greatest challenges, and eventually convinced us of the need to try something new and begin from the subjective. Let us consider some of these practical issues.
Soul Commitment to Specific Projects
In East West Network, before undertaking any projects in a practical sense, we always would start by identifying with the envisaged projects and entering into deep soul commitment for these projects. Similarly with Compassion Response Network, we must select which specific projects we wish to support in facilitating provision of free treatment and blood testing for advanced AIDS patients. There would seem to be many problems that cannot resolve themselves on a practical level unless we first enter into such soul commitment as a group. This is subjective work.
Finance
In East West Network, even after accepting soul commitment for projects, we would nearly always find enormous problems of a physical nature; insufficient money, too few coworkers, communication difficulties or physical obstructions of various kinds. Our small group, often with no money to start with, had no way of achieving our goals from our initial scanty resources. We would need to somehow draw upon God's infinite abundance and the enormous amount of goodwill out there in the community. For it is written in the Bible,
"Whatsoever shall be asked in Christ's name and with faith will see it accomplished."
"Put ye first the Kingdom of Heaven, and all other things will be added unto ye."
Compassion Response Network is also starting out with hardly any resources to accomplish a vast task. It is proposed again that we start subjectively by invoking support from God's infinite supply.
Physical Communication
In projects of facilitating treatment and testing of AIDS in Africa, direct physical communication and courier delivery of goods is always so critical. Email and courier services, even when well planned can break down or go seriously wrong. And so besides making all the physical arrangements, we need also to support the work subjectively, with a strong prayer and meditation network of support. It is also so vital to establish a free flow of goodwill energy on subjective levels.
Group Reflection for Attuning to God's Purpose
If our group Mission is to "directly provide a meaningful compassionate response to the most urgent needs of humanity", then the only way we can accomplish this awesome task is by learning to attune to and respond to divine Purpose. We must do so before we begin any practical facilitating. Then we must visualise how the energy will flow around the network before we begin the task of facilitating in a practical sense. This is subjective or esoteric work.
Divine Protection
When undertaking such awesome challenges, even after we have facilitated all the physical arrangements and things seem to be going as planned, a single unexpected breakdown or problem can throw the whole project into confusion and destroy most of our work. We need therefore to invoke for our group, divine protection and special "arrangements" from on high.
Designing the Process for an Esoteric Stage
When John had developed his 9-step process (see Designing the Process section above), he did so according to traditional sociocracy procedures. These 9 steps related to the work of facilitating the group work on the objective or practical level. His proposal remains right and appropriate, because we need at some stage to start facilitating the work objectively. The Inner Planning Circle made a decision to work through two consecutive stages of processing. There would be an esoteric stage of processing and then an objective stage of processing, and each of these stages we would break down into 9 steps.
This idea of developing our process through two separate 9-step stages is quite new to sociocracy. It has never been tried before, and we are thereby pioneering and entering into the new. But it seemed the only way to proceed that could resolve all the theoretical and practical problems described earlier in this circular.
We had discovered the idea of "stages" from the book Discipleship in the New Age Volume II, by Alice Bailey, p361. In that book, the idea is presented that all manifestations in nature emerge from subjective realms. Originally they exist simply as a divine Plan within the Mind of God. Then they manifest through 5 distinct "stages" of sequential emergence, which are named on that page, the stages of Purpose, Planning, Programme, Pattern and Precipitation.
Stage 1 (Purpose) is when senior Members of the Hierarchy or spiritual Guardians access the divine Plan from the Mind of God.
Stage 2 (Planning) is when a portion of the Plan is impressed upon the minds of a group of disciples who are invocative of higher impression. Our Inner Planning Circle has already accessed a portion of the divine Plan when we decided the Vision, Mission and immediate Main Aim for the Compassion Response Network. This stage of the emergence with respect to our main Aim of work with AIDS, is now relatively complete, and we are ready to proceed to the next stage of emergence.
Stage 3 (Programme) involves the group taking up the Plan, directing energies and presenting the Plan in a form that will be clearly understood by men and women of goodwill. It is in this stage that the group of disciples visualise how their Aim will in future manifest in practice. It involves constructing bridges of love, goodwill, light and unity that will integrate the esoteric workers and exoteric workers into "one spiritual undertaking". It is this Programme stage which we have now broken down into 9-steps of processing, and which we are about to work through.
Stage 4 (Pattern) is the stage of implementing or facilitating the Plan or Aim in practice. It is the stage in which the Pattern of things to be is brought into the mass consciousness, in itself a very challenging task. It is this stage that sociocracy has developed as a science, and that compassion workers are so skilled in. It is the stage of bringing God's Plan down to Earth to respond to the very real needs of humanity. It is with respect to this stage that John has prepared his 9-step process.
Finally comes Stage 5 (Precipitation) when the idea behind the Plan is accepted by the mass consciousness, and the work proceeds by its own momentum. This stage is of lesser concern to us as it happens automatically when the earlier work is done. Most of the creative work with which the Compassion Response Network will be concerned will happen in stages 2, 3 and 4.
It may be noted that the work of the Planning stage is wonderfully done by esotericists and World thinkers, who have presented to the World many thoughtforms of solution to humanity's many problems. Also the work of the Pattern stage is wonderfully performed through sociocracy and compassion workers. The Programme stage work is relatively new and few have as yet pioneered this level of emergence. But humanity must learn to effectively serve on this level if the dreams of the World thinkers are to be transformed into reality. It is the level of integration between the esoteric and the exoteric work. This is the challenge before us now.
A 9-Step Process for the Programme Stage
Our group has now agreed upon 9 steps for the Programme stage. The design for these 9 steps uses the same sociocracy rules as discussed earlier, but the steps are related to energy flow and visualisation, rather than with facilitation and physical emergence as happens in the Pattern stage.
Part of the Programme agenda will be discussing an extract from the book Discipleship in the New Age Volume II, by Alice Bailey, p361, in which the work involved in Programme is discussed. Our task will be to work out how these inspiring words apply to our practical work of actualising our Compassion Response Network Main Aim involving a compassion response to the AIDS pandemic. I provide that extract here for your interest. Its significance and meaning will be discussed in our next circular, when we discuss our work of developing the Programme stage. Here is the extract that we will need to consider;
"Next comes Programme, wherein the Plan is taken up by the particular ashram involved in its implementation and is then reduced to the formative stages of human impression and direction, the conditions necessary to bring about its emergence, and the two phases of this conditioning. These are usually in two parts; i.e., the destruction of all hindrances and the presentation of the Plan."
Here are the 9 steps that our Inner Planning Group has agreed to work through in the Programme stage over the next month or so.
9 STEPS FOR THE PROGRAMME STAGE
1. Input = Discerning resources, needs and spiritual points of tension.
2. Transformation = Visualising manifestation of projects, decisions of commitment
3. Output = Formulating programme of action
The Problem of Inertia
Over the next month or so, our Inner Planning Circle will be involved in working through the 9-steps for the Programme stage process. After we have completed the Programme stage, we will then work through the 9-steps for the Pattern (facilitation) stage process. It will be in the Pattern (facilitation) stage that we ground our work by actively mobilising men and women of goodwill.
The question has often been asked, why is it taking so long to mobilise the men and women of goodwill? Shortly after the publication of our healing website in October 2001, several people offered to help in various ways. That is now more than half a year ago. What is causing the delay?
We also are concerned at the time being taken to get established, and we had hoped to proceed quicker. But our greater priority is to proceed steadily and lay solid foundations for the future work.
Let me put this matter in a longer term perspective. East West Network first adopted a group project of sending healing devices to countries in Africa and other poorer nations, in early 1998. We then financed and constructed zapper and colloidal silver maker kits which in May 1999 were distributed free to about 30 service groups around the World. All that time we have been inviting people to link together to expand our work and in particular initiate that experimental work which will in time demonstrate that there is a cure for AIDS. Why, over these past three years have so few responded to our call, for the invitation has always been there from the start to participate in a voluntary group endeavour?
The answer I think lies in the problem of inertia, which is perhaps the main problem blocking the manifestation of the many thoughtforms of solution for humanity's problems. To break the cycle of inertia, it is not sufficient to inspire people to a new idea. People frequently need organising and assistance in so many ways that are not at all apparent when starting a group venture such as this.
So it is that if we were to rush in with half-baked plans and heaps of enthusiasm we might start with a big effort, but as soon as a really a big problem arose people would walk away disappointed, thinking our project didn't work after all. The essential cause of inertia lies in the subjective realms. So it is in the subjective levels, that we need to steadily build firm and solid foundations. We are creating a new type of organisational structure, and this takes a little time. We ask for your continued patience. When we do move onto the stage of Pattern (facilitation), we will then be glad for the careful preparatory work that has preceded over the many years.
David Keane