The Approach
PhenomenologyPHENOMENOLOGY:
The heart of ICA’s approach to developing and trusting one’s own inner wisdom
Presuppositions
We find the reality of life in the palpable, observable, sensory world.
Authentic feelings and emotions derive from this empirical experience…….
The internal data from feelings, emotions and associations is just as real as the externally
observable data, and must be considered seriously in making decisions.
Meaning is created out of the mundane encounters in the midst of life. …..
Meaning is something that we all have to work at constantly, through processing the actual
life we have on our hands. Processing insight about life involves projecting that insight out into
the future. As we decide future implications for action, our reflection connects us to the world in
ways that are real.
Getting to Bottom of Top. Foundations of the Methodologies of the Technology
Of participation. Wayne and Jo Nelson, iUniverse, 2017, p 5
Major Aspects
Self-conscious reflection
Certain events remain in our consciousness, like burrs and thistles that stick to the socks of a bush walker. When they prickle, they demand attention. When we allow reflection, those experiences can become signposts in our lives.
……..A four phase process. Each of the four phases intensifies the previous one, so that maximum intensity is reached by phase 4.
Phase 1 acknowledges an external event happening in our lives.
Phase 2 recognizes that the event evokes an internal response. We acknowledge the depth impact or the “Wham” of the event…….on our bodies, emotions and memories.
Phase 3 unpacks the event and our internal response to it, in order to explore the meanings, learnings, insights, and implications for our lives….. A hesitation or pause is often needed before phase 4 can occur.
Phase 4 integrates the event into our lives, along with the meaning we have gleaned from it.
The Courage to Lead- transform self , transform society. Second edition.
R. Brian Stanfield, iUniverse, Inc. 2012. P 207-208.
Demythologizing
……theologian Rudolph Bultmann worked with sacred literature in an effort to enable
people to find real meaning in texts that were written in mythological language based
on the worldviews of bygone eras. For people in the 21st century, things like a three-story
universe, a snake talking to a woman, fruit that illuminates the knowledge of good and evil…..
do not compute in a contemporary direct experience of the world….. Does it make sense to us in the 21st century that the Sumerian god, Enki or EA, a fish that sometimes walks on land in human form, created the first human out of mud? Bultmann was very clear that mythologies of all faiths can have relevance and meaning in our moment in history, but that the mythological metaphors often prevent us from seeing that truth in ways we can take seriously.
Getting to Bottom of Top. Foundations of the Methodologies of theTechnology
Of participation. Wayne and Jo Nelson, iUniverse, 2017, p16-17
Imaginal Education
It is the propensity of humans to order chaos. We superimpose lines of latitude and longitude upon the oceans and turn great plains into checkerboard fields. We name the inner workings of the mind and use mathematical formulas to describe the mystery of the galaxies. We build a picture of the universe and base our daily decisions on that picture.
This picture or “image” as Kenneth Boulding calls it, is made up of many smaller images out of which we operate from day to day, and which constantly change as we make decisions in relationship to our situation. These images fill the gap between the idea we have about something and the actual situation. While we may have rational clarity about our ideas, we are seldom self-conscious of the images out of which we are operating. The task of imaginal education is to work with these basic operating images rather than merely with ideas or information.
Imaginal Education: basic wisdom articulated by the movement in the last ten years concerning imaginal education grounded in the pre-school. 1975