Think of a magnetic field and how it aligns magnetic parts within it. Humans are like that too, tuned to the social field like iron filings. Coherent cultures, coherent groups, have strong social fields. The fields are palpable. They have a strong resonance that can be easily felt. You feel it in a ball game, the electricity in the crowd. You can feel it on the street.
The social fields we’re in right now have lost a great deal of resonance over the last few years. They’re much weaker and going in a weakening direction. But fields are a consciousness phenomenon. And consciousness is a mystery. Like a magician it has tricks up its sleeve. It contains all potential. It’s a trickster full of surprises.
Things are dicey but the field is greater than the sum of the parts. The field is not determinative. Anything can happen.
Although the social field’s effect is powerful and we’re always connected to it, we seldom notice that we’re in it. It’s usually unconscious. Partly this is because we’ve been in it since we were conceived. It’s what we swim in. We move in the field below consciousness. Whether we notice it or not, when the field is strong and coherent, people move toward in the direction of unity and common mind.
They feel a part of something. And they are.
When the social field loses some of its coherence and resonance, people feel less connected and safe. They feel more isolated and afraid, unwilling to risk – on guard. They lose some of the sense of safety and commonality they felt. They feel less a part of something . . . even though they are.
Instead of having common understanding with people, people feel isolated. They try to overcome the isolation by having different opinions in the hope that others will agree.
But very often others don’t listen and don’t agree.
Absent deep connection, opinion is a disconnected data point, an isolated ego’s two cents worth. Their opinion lacks the support of the field. Absent deep connection or collective intelligence others aren’t listening and we have little to say. With deep connection, our thoughts and feelings become a contribution to the common good. It’s naturally given in that spirit and is welcomed as such. It strengthens the whole field.
We want more resonance in the field but it’s not simple. We’re not used to dealing with challenges or disruptions in the social field. We don’t have a language for it. So the uncertainties and anxiety about speaking our mind go round and round.
When I was a young guy I had a powerful experience of breakdown and resolution in the social field. It included a touch of the mysterious hidden hand of consciousness.
It was touted as at the first international new age conference and perhaps it was - The World Symposium on Humanity. 1971. This august event was supposed to happen simultaneously in three cities, Toronto, Los Angeles and London, and connected by audio and video. This had never happened before. I was in Toronto, one of hundreds gathered to hear famous speakers up on stage.
A few days before showtime though, the organizer realized that the show could not go on - the technology just wasn’t there. He notified the presenters but had no time to notify the people. This was long before email had been dreamed of. So there we were on Saturday, we the people, in a circular auditorium at the University of Toronto with just a fraction of the event, all local, on stage. We were disappointed – and angry. (Those New Agers!!) The tension in the air was intense as the organizer tried to make it all OK.
I think it was on Day 2, Sunday. A pissed-off woman high up on the other side of the room sailed a rubber boot into the centre of the room. Shock! The energy in the place turned in a heartbeat. Suddenly we were in charge, not just the organizer and the smattering on stage. With the consent of the hapless people in front of the room on stage, a microphone was set up in the middle of the floor and the attendees took turns speaking to it.
We became the show.
And what do you think happened?
Opinions happened.
For hour and hours, everyone uttered their opinions. How to bring peace, what their guru or teacher said about a situation like this, what others should do. People stepped up and gave their answer. It went on. And after that it went on some more. It was hard for us to see that our opinion didn’t help the collective field (a term that hadn’t been invented yet). We failed completely to help the plight we were in. We were digging ourselves in deeper but we kept on digging anyway. Everyone wanted to be heard even though no one was listening.
But the energy in the room was electric with a meaning no one could articulate.
Slowly, slowly an awareness started to resonate in the common space, the social field, that our individual solutions weren’t doing the trick. Something new had come into the room, a very palpable shift with an entirely different quality. It included the sense that it was up to us, not to gurus and teachers to do it for us.
The World Symposium on Humanity achieved it’s greatest success by falling flat on its face.
Sound familiar? That’s how most of my big successes have come about too. I think it’s a clue. It’s good to try difficult things and do them badly. It’s OK to fail. It’s even better to fail BIG.
For all it’s distortion and angry birth, the shared experience of telling our story birthed a collective resonance, even a taste of collective intelligence, though that phrase had not been thought of yet. For a little before we forgot again, we knew that we ourselves, together, were going to figure out what to do now.
The question remains: What are we going to do now? The show we were hoping for isn’t turning out the way we were imagining it.
Or maybe it is.
Maybe this, disastrous schmozzle, this multi-pronged prickly pickle we’re in is just where we’re supposed to be, waiting on a miracle.
Bruce Lipton says it well when he says "When you break up the individuals from a community into individual units, they become disempowered because it's the collective consciousness and the collective energy of the group from which power comes.” That’s exactly right. The social field is above our individual efforts. We together are the conductors of it. A fine occupation for a person at this time is to help build resonance and collective intelligence into the social field.
There’s no instruction for this. There’s no one on stage to tell us.
There is however, a collective intelligence, a Presence that does know. This is a consciousness phenomenon. Consciousness isn’t worried.
There’s a million doorways to this, mostly involving courage and despair and a welcome for the other. Among the metaphors for it, my friend Ulf calls this connected place a campfire – a metaphor I also like.
A campfire is a place where your voice – and you – are welcome. In the wider social field, many of us are out in the cold now, outside of the fire’s warmth and forgetful that such places even exist.
Colder weather may be coming as the resonance in the social field holds us less strongly. But there are pockets of people who can come together and create a higher resonance in simple small groups. Much depends on them and their work in the campfires they create.
This is a wonderful post. The space that engulfed you while writing it shines through.
Andrew this is fabulous. One of your best! Keep up the great work, my friend!