Positive Visioning?

[Katrien Vander Straeten]

I was wondering, who at their Transition meetings do the positive visioning exercise? 

We in Transition Wayland never do, and I think we should start.

I just wrote up a profound realization I had at the positive visioning at the T4T we had here a couple of weeks ago (http://blog.bolandbol.com/2011/06/10/medicine-making/).

I've done the exercise only twice: the first time at my first T4T, and then this last one. The first time it was hard to be positive, and I felt unprepared. Strange, how I had never thought about the future in such a detailed, personal and hopeful way.

The second time I was prepared, not in the sense of "I had prepared", but in the sense of ready. I didn't know it, but months of mostly subconscious thinking - allowed, freed by that first exercise - suddenly came tumbling out.

I was surprised by my vision. It was detailed, alive. Thus, possible.

So tell me, do you do the exercise?

I think we all should.

[David Eggleton]

Vision is important, especially when given maps prove inadequate.  When you are ready, please say more about the practice you recommend.  Every meeting?  Quarterly?  Annually?  As needed (how to recognize the need)?

Invoking any/many of the six values proclaimed on this site's banner would be great!

[David Eggleton]

"[W]hen a group of people have the audacity to claim that they might have a positive vision for the future, the response is to insist that they solve everyone's problems immediately, if they can't, their vision is considered to be phony, and the group is labeled as evil for having dared to hold forth a sense of hope in a depressed world.

Unless we have a sense that a positive future is possible, we will never be able to imagine one sufficiently to come up with the answers we need.  There must be idealism and vision."

- David Spangler in Reimagination of the World (1991)

[Tom Mazur]

your blog post that you linked to was terrific Katrien, I felt like I was the one there listening to you (well, I was, wasnt I, one HERE listening to you -- blogging can act in this same way sometimes,) As I was reading, I saw again something Im coming to  understand better as I learn life, that even disease need not be a "negative"-- of course, the body is being threatened, of course-- and of course, instinct will do its proper work, and will allow efforts to be made to help the body heal, if its time to do so-- or suffer minimally, if that is what is in store... but the whole of it, need not be understood as "negative" -- death can be spoken of in public-- death can be understood without fear, and THAT is what is positive

 

Ive sat in many circles, and looked with others at things like healing and death and life and other things-- Ive not done one of these double circles as you described, and now find myself trying to finagle a plan to find/get/hold one myself-- anyone want to collaborate on one in the central or western part of the state? that would be a great thing!

 

cheers

 

[Katrien Vander Straeten]

Thank you, David and Tom. David, that quote really speaks to me. I just responded to Tom's response in the old *Why do you do it?* thread, about the *other* side: the "negative" outcome. I think what I'm trying to say is, for me the acceptance of a hard landing freed my positive vision.

I wrote in that old thread that if we go out, I want to go out in a blaze of friendship. That's the two -  community and "going out" - joyfully and peacefully together, right there. Now, it depends on who you are whether you call this community "hope". I would call it that. Even if it all ends, if there is community, my hope will have been fulfilled.

I am so glad to be exploring this with you, here. The mind sings.

Kaat