Relatefulness as a construct-aware practice 🪟

Relatefulness is a “construct-aware” practice in recognizing the inseparable unity of meaning and happening. Rather than assuming “reality” exists "out there"—independent of observation in a physical world that we apprehend through our senses, or "in here"—as if we live in some sort of solipsistic simulation or dream, we hold both as true but partial. Experience is an interactive co-arising of the seer, the seeing, and the seen. Happening is one indivisible whole, and even our ‘separations’ via meaning and language are part of this inseparable oneness.

One result of this is that the practice has an incredibly high tolerance for difference. We do not require everyone to share the same beliefs, definition of what relatefulness is, or even be practicing for the same reasons. This trains an incredible capacity to be with life as it is, without needing others to change. It’s deeply empowering, generates a palpable earnest compassion, and helps us see our projections. Here’s what this looks like in a Flow Session: Five people come out of the session with five wildly different interpretations of what happened. We simply don’t need to get shared reality, because we philosophically don’t assume such a thing must exist. Like the parable of the blind men with the elephant, each of their experiences is absolutely true—and partial.

This means that there are always three levers to change your experience in the moment: Who, how, and what. While many other ecosystems focus on changing the "what" or external reality, relatefulness offers options to claim more creative authority on experience in the "who" and "how". By using different sense-making methods, practitioners can enact different world-experiences/experience-worlds, and test for themselves these claims that our construct-choices can re-divide infinite is-ness in every moment. This approach aligns with Suzanne Cook-Greuter's understanding of construct-awareness, the foundational Integral principle of enactment, and can lead to higher developmental stages.

With love, Jordan