Notes from Sensemaking 101
NOTES / An 8-week course hosted by Rebel Wisdom

Basic info:

  • Hosts: Alexander Beiner, David Fuller, Ivo Mensch ivo@rebelwisdom.co.uk

Key concepts:

  • Sovereignty
  • Shadow
  • Wisdom

Raw notes:

June 18, 2020 

  • Key concept of sovereignty: it’s not about delegating sense-making to anyone else, including people here, but about developing our own center that allows us to develop and refine our own sense, through feedback loops with others.
  • Ivo Mensch put together the course. Goes from inner to outer in terms of sense-making.
  • Course summary: 
  • Week 1: Introduction. 
  • Week 2: Presence, led by Alexander. Meditation, centering, inquiry. Inquiry is a talking meditation without trying to find an answer to it. Diamond Approach? 
  • Week 3: Shadow, by Doshin Roshi. 
  • Week 4: Wisdom, by John Vervaeke.
  • Week 5: Practice session, led by Diane Hamilton. How our neurobiology gets triggered, and how to stay centered.
  • Week 6: Reading week, integration week. Shifts from inside to outside.
  • Week 7: Sensemaking, by Daniel Schmachtenberger
  • Week 8: Sensemaking 2, by David Fuller
  • Week 9: Next Steps
  • Psychotechnologies:
  • Sovereignty meditation. 
  • Centering meditation. 
  • Breath, Wim Hoff, pranayama breathing, it’s the link between our conscious and subconscious. A way of interacting with our subconscious. 
  • Inquiry: using language as a talking meditation to move from fixed certainty to getting in touch with your experience of the conversation through the body. Dialogos.
  • All of our growth happens at the edge of our comfort zone. 
  • One problem with sensemaking is that we try to do it too quickly. 
  • Being in the flow state 
  • Pods
  • 4 people who will be a small group who meet weekly during the course

July 9th, 2020: John Vervaeke

  • We are general problem solvers
  • Relevance realization
  • You don’t make insight, you have to set up a self-organizing process
  • Insight is the realization that you’ve misframed something
  • Salience landscape = what is getting attention right now
  • Wisdom = ameliorate self-deception/foolishness, enhancements meaning in life, agency, flourishing
  • Presence vs autopilot vs flow (a form of autopilot)
  • “Trying not to try”
  • Curiosity = from having mode
  • Wonder = from being mode
  • Propositional knowledge: I don’t know very much
  • Perspectival: 
  • Participatory: 
  • Memetic mediation and who or where are the wisdom communities of development that you see as having the most hopeful evolution towards the wise cultivation of enlightenment. An encouraging and welcoming worldview = gray tribe which gets attacked. Internalizing the sage. The virtual engine that destroys communities that are too welcoming. 
  • Breakout group: How can I work with other people to have deeper insights?
  • Are there any historical examples of wisdom communities of development that were able to maintain an encouraging and welcoming worldview in the face of strong criticism and attacks from the outside groups? How has your thinking on religion without a religion evolved since the end of the series?
  • Free will determinization
  • Thoughts caused by what is true
  • Perceptions caused by what is beautiful
  • Actions caused by what is good
  • is that true, beautiful, and good?
  • becomes the self-determinism of love
  • “Attention Not Self” by Ganeri