Exploring the world and growing into ourselves we embody the great question: What is the purpose and meaning of life?  It naturally comes to mind and heart that this is an integrative and collective process.  We are not alone.  In fact, many wise, compassionate beings have worked out systems of understanding and action in practical, philosophical, psychological, physical and spiritual realms.  We honor the ancient sages and saints, yogis and mystics that have come before us.  We are heartened by the emerging culture of thinkers, teachers, healers, artists and scientists creatively brainstorming, doing the vanguard work of transforming contemporary awareness.  Together we move toward the conscious experience of evolution.  Together we participate in the evolution of consciousness. On this page you will find our recommendations for people, organizations and experiences that inspire the planet.  Please send us your suggestions and positive stories to share.

The 12 tenets of Global Collective Intelligence :

1. An emerging whole: each jazz band, sports team, working team has its own personality, a style, a spirit to which we refer as if they were an individuality. When we emphasize the success, the quality and the unity of a group, it is another way to express the fact that this Whole appears so obviously.
(Continued)

Notes from talk by professor/
author Richard Bach
at Fox Hollow Summer 2004:

An intentional field practiced before the class has even met, clearing, opening the fields, building energetic bridges, screening the fields, emergence of group mind.
Afterwords we recongeal as independent agents.
Bring the collective intelligence into the room
Teach students the desire to know
The teacher is drawn by the needs of the students
Out of a collective field, state of mind
Closure with a final exam-this is what we did.
The ego ruptures and the sinews of collective mind become apparent,
One becomes more sensitive, A dilation of consciousness
As a teacher I want my students to be free to know themselves deeply, to be happy
The group mind is a living lens focusing into individual experience
Interconnection is an emerging theme/mythology, archetype
Finding the antidote to the ego-the collective

Mind Fields
There is some evidence that our minds develop in relationship to other minds. Beyond that there is research suggesting that our minds are not limited to our brains, but are actually fields that constantly interact with one another to create larger social fields with tremendous influence on our behavior.

Economics and the Global Brain
Rinaldo Brutoco, president of the World Business Academy
Excerpted from Kosmosjournal.org 
There is only one question to ask. How can I serve? The balance is in knowing that the spiritual dimension is the force that runs through all of these items and it is that which gives us our balance. 

Civil Society a Rising Force
Civil society is rising at the end of an era of sovereign nation states where all power was descended from Deus Rex, the King, by God's will or some other hierarchical system (typically patriarchal). However denominated, that system became incorporated, developed into nation states, ran its course and is no longer effective. A new force called civil society is arising in the vacuum. Fortunately there is a powerful tool which society has created without realizing it; it transcends all the power blocks currently known on the planet by several magnitudes. That tool is the Internet. 
Because we are becoming independently viable it is giving us the opportunity to create, act, and function like a global brain. In the process we are developing the resources for civil society to achieve a level of effectiveness that would have been impossible in a sovereign nation state system and would have been highly unlikely without the interconnectivity the Internet provides. 
The metaphor of global brain is powerful (see Sidebar 1). If you take the impact on human society of radio, magazines, newspapers, televisions and motion pictures, combine them all, and multiply by 100, you still don't equal the emerging impact of the Internet. It is not just a means of communication or a means to spread ideology or stories or culture. It is actually thought itself. It is collective global intelligence. 

Global Brain Metaphor
Every person sitting at a single personal computer anywhere in the world is performing the function of a single synapse in the human brain. Which is to say that, every single synapse in the global brain is potentially firing to any or every other synapse. The fascinating thing about the way neuron science understands the pattern of the brain is that there is no physical place in your brain or mine where memory is stored, where logic occurs or solutions are found. They are apparently created in the space between -- the gaps between the synapses. Somehow magically one synapse fires in a myriad of directions to other synapses, which appear to be random but are actually highly ordered. Synapses work together through the space in between where memory, logic, thought and human intellect reside. To me that is exactly what has happened. Collective Intelligence is emerging because the Internet gave us the ability to connect the synapses. 
What does that mean for civil society? World public opinion begins to become more mature as a fetus becomes more mature with age (see Sidebar 2). It grows, learns, adapts and changes. So will world public opinion. Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come. That idea is that “we the people” are capable of taking back society. We will be doing it not just through institutions. Civil society will take direct responsibility for many aspects of global society. 

From further along in the article:
Why do I say business is the dominant player? First of all, statistics: Of the 100 largest economies in the world over half of them are businesses and that number is going up dramatically every day. So we are not far from a time when the 70 largest economies in the world will all be corporations. These corporations operate beyond any international law. They operate beyond political and environmental constraints. They are huge entities that stride across the globe with all the power of ancient Rome. They have the ability to retract from one area of the world and appear quickly in another as they choose, usually causing havoc in their wake. There are some companies, not many, that seem to be trying to learn how to exercise this extraordinary power in a benign way. Those companies need to be encouraged. 

Secondly, does anyone in the world today really believe that the political system in every advanced nation in the world isn't being funded and run by business? You couldn't have a better example than the United States. Basically four or five industries put up almost 100% of the money for George W. Bush's nomination and election. Who are those industries? Look how pharmaceuticals are 30 to 40% more expensive in the U.S. than in any foreign country even though they are made in the U.S. The military procurement industry? Look at what's happened to the military arms budget in the U.S. The Insurance Industry? Look what's happened to protect insurance companies from their own remarkable manipulations of financial markets and the public has been forced to pay. The number one donor was military arms, two, military procurement, three, pharmaceuticals, four, insurance. These are the big winners. Everyone else is losing because they put up $250 million dollars and are reaping tens of billions in return. They made a bet and won. 

World Cafe 
The key to creating a successful World Café conversation is employing the seven guiding principles, which when used in combination fosters courageous conversations and collective intelligence.

The World Café process is particularly useful in the following situations:

• When you want to generate input, share knowledge, stimulate innovative thinking, and explore action possibilities around real life issues and questions
• To engage people--whether they are meeting for the first time, or are in established relationships--in authentic conversation
• To conduct in-depth exploration of key strategic challenges or opportunities
• To deepen relationships and mutual ownership of outcomes in an existing group
• To create meaningful interaction between a speaker and the audience
• To engage groups larger than 12 (we've had up to 1200) in an authentic dialogue process

The Café is less useful when:

• You are driving toward an already determined solution or answer
• You want to convey only one-way information
• You are making detailed implementation plans
• You have fewer than 12 people (better to use a more traditional dialogue circle, council or other approach for fostering authentic conversation)

Clarify The Context
There is an old saying that if you don't know where you are going any road will get you there. When you have a clear idea of the what and why of your Café then the how becomes much easier. Here are a few questions to ask yourself and those helping you plan:

• What is the topic or issue we want to address or explore? 
• Who needs to be invited to participate in this conversation? 
• Who represents both the conventional and the unconventional wisdom? 
• How long do we have for the inquiry? 
• What line(s) of inquiry do we want to pursue? What themes are most likely to be meaningful and stimulate creativity? 
• What is the best outcome we can envision? How might we design a path toward that outcome? 

Hospitable Space
Most meeting places are sterile, cold, and impersonal. Consider choosing warm, inviting environments with natural light and comfortable seating. Honor our long traditions of human hospitality by offering food and refreshments. Hospitable space also means "safe" space--where everyone feels free to offer their best thinking.

Hospitable space begins with the invitation to attend a Café. Include the theme or central question you'll be exploring in your Café in the invitation. State it as an open-ended exploration, not a problem-solving intervention. Use color, hand printing, graphics and other ways to make it stand out from the deluge of paper and e-messages we all receive.

When we ask people where they have had some of their most significant conversations, nearly everyone recalls sitting around a kitchen or dining room table. There is a easy intimacy when gathering at a small table, that most of us immediately recognize. When you walk into a room and see it filled with café tables you know that you are not in for your usual business meeting.

Creating a Café ambiance is easy and need not be expensive:

• Stagger the tables in a random fashion, don't set them up in straight rows 
• Use plastic red checked tablecloths 
• Cover these with two sheets of flip chart paper 
• Place a mug or wine glass filled with water based markers to encourage people to write and draw on the tablecloths 
• A small bud vase and a votive candle will complete the table set up 
• Have some soft music playing as people arrive 
• Be sure to have some food and beverages available 

Explore Questions That Matter
Knowledge emerges in response to compelling questions. Find questions that are relevant to the real-life concerns of the group. Powerful questions that "travel well" help attract collective energy, insight, and action as they move throughout a system. Depending on the timeframe available and your objectives, your Café may explore a single question or use a progressively deeper line of inquiry through several conversational rounds.

As we have worked with groups over the years we have asked hundreds of people what makes a powerful question. Several themes have emerged. A powerful question:

• Is simple and clear 
• Is thought provoking 
• Generates energy 
• Focuses inquiry 
• Surfaces assumptions 
• Opens new possibilities 
• Invites deeper reflection 
• Seeks what is useful 

A note about appreciative process... David Cooperrider has long championed something he calls "appreciative inquiry." The major premise here is that the questions we ask and the way we ask them will focus us in a particular manner and will greatly affect the outcome of our inquiry. If we ask: What is wrong and who is to blame? We set up a certain dynamic of problem-solving and blame assigning. While there may be instances where such an approach is desirable, when it comes to hosting a Café, we have found it much more effective to ask people questions that invite the exploration of possibilities and to connect them with why they care.

One potential pitfall is posing questions that ask about the nature of truth. Philospohers have spent thousands of years arguing the nature of truth and many of the wars in history have been fought over such questions. We are after "shared meaning", which does not mean that we all share the same perspective on what is true, but rather, that each participant has the opportunity to share what is true and meaningful for them. This in turn will allow us all to see our collective situation in a different light, hopefully enlarging our individual views of truth along the way. Our experience has been that questions which focus on "What is useful here?", are more effective at generating engagement on the part of participants and tend to provoke less defensive reactions than questions which focus on "What is true?"

Encourage Everyone's Contribution
People engage deeply when they feel they are contributing their thinking to questions that are important to them. Encourage all participants to contribute to the conversation. As Meg Wheatley says "Intelligence emerges as a system connects to itself in new and diverse ways." Each participant in the Café represents an aspect of the whole system's diversity and as each person has the chance to connect in conversation more of the intelligence inherent in the group becomes accessible.

We have found that on occasion it is helpful to have a "talking object" on the tables. Originally used by numerous indigenous peoples, a talking object can be a stick or stone, a marker or salt shaker, almost anything so long as it can be passed among the people at the table. There are two aspects to the talking object. Whomever holds the talking object is the only one empowered to speak. And whomever is not holding it is empowered to listen. For the speaker the responsibility is to focus on the topic and express as clearly as possible their thoughts about it. For the listeners, the responsibility is to listen to what the speaker is saying with the implicit assumption that they have something wise and important to say. Listen with a willingness to be influenced, listen for where this person is coming from and appreciate that their perspective, regardless of how divergent from your own, is equally valid and represents a part of the larger picture which none of us can see by ourselves.

It is not necessary to use a talking object all the time, but in cases where the topic being explores raises impassioned responses, it can be a very effective way to ensure eve.

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