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