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Evolutionary: Consciousness | Literacy | Competence | Praxis

Evolutionary Praxis

Be the change you whish to see in the world
— Mahatma Gandhi

“To live in an evolutionary spirit means to engage with full ambition and without any reserve in the structure of the present, and yet to let go and flow into a new structure when the right time has come.”
— Erich Jantsch

The fourth stage of evolutionary learning involves embodying the new consciousness through syntonious ways of living. Evolutionary praxis is the end of the beginning: the end of preparing ourselves to engage with the world as evolutionary systems designers, and the beginning of the ongoing challenge of walking the talk and participating in conscious evolution.

Evolutionary praxis involves…

… Learning to be a role model and a steward

• Translate our awareness, understanding, and abilities into evolutionary action.
  
• Act on the knowledge and understanding.
  
• Undertake ongoing design and action-research.
  
• Get people excited and intrigued about the way we live, learn, and work.
  
• Communicate to others our hope, passion, and commitment.

… Creating synergies

• Connect with others and create synergies with like-minded people.
  
• Collaborate on projects and activities aligned with the vision of a sustainable and evolutionary future.

Many organizations, communities, and individuals are contributing to the emergence of sustainable and evolutionary futures. Peace and social justice, educational transformation, human rights, environmental stewardship, community development, women empowerment... they are all compelling issues. We need to address them in an integrated way. We need to focus on creating alternatives rather than on solving problems. We need to ground our work in the emerging scientific worldview. In short, we need guidelines for how to live in simpler and more meaningful ways.

Please check Syntony Quest’s Synergy offering as one option to move in this direction.

You may be familiar the following sort of developmental progression:
—• Unconscious incompetence

—• Conscious incompetence

—• Conscious competence

—• Unconscious competence

—• Syntony sense

These stages have a parallel with the evolutionary learning process of Syntony Quest. At the beginning, on the first rung, we don’t even know that we don’t know how to manifest syntony. Unconscious incompetence comes before you engage in your own syntony quest, before you are aware of evolutionary challenges and opportunities and your role in them. Conscious incompetence can be dealt with by developing evolutionary consciousness and literacy. Conscious competence corresponds to the evolutionary competence stage in which the focus is on gaining mastery of the techniques, skills, competencies, attitudes, and abilities that empower evolutionary systems designers. On the fourth rung we are syntony. Unconscious competence is when the syntony quest becomes part of the way we live naturally. We don’t need to try anymore — it comes automatically and becomes an ongoing evolutionary praxis. Finally, development of a fully engaged syntony sense permits us to surf the patterns of our being and becoming and to guide them intentionally. The trick is to distinguish between unconscious competence and a consciously created syntony sense. In its highest form of human expression, syntony involves both. Presence of mind and a conscious desire to create syntony can allow us to draw on abilities that we have developed to the point of their being unconscious competencies, and in this way, can help us move from the fourth to the fifth rung of the mastery of syntony — that which is marked by the competence of mindful response-ability. Hence, the syntony sense involves a mindful competence, not an unconscious.

Please check the Resources section of EL Center for additional conceptual tools.

You want to learn more? Need some guidance and support? Contact us! We want to learn with you!

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