Thomas Steininger and Elizabeth Debold‍

In this new Series, Elizabeth Debold and Thomas Steininger, the founders of Emergent Interbeing practice, discuss important aspects of this work.

From the perspective of the individual, Emergent Interbeing brings us to a new point in human development that begins to re-integrate the individual in the wholeness of Life. This is Transindividuation, where the individual begins to be able to access the shared intelligence of the field that lives between and beyond us. You can call this a practice of collective mindfulness in which we discover the thrill and potential of collective mind. The trajectory of the last at least 4000 years that brought us the self-aware, self-responsible individual in modernity and particularly in our postmodern era seems to have come to a turning point. Not only are we becoming aware of the shadow sides of hyper-individuation, narcissism, and competition, but there is a new longing for connection, for new relationship practices, for co-creation, and for new forms of “we space.”

There is a new need to acknowledge our embeddedness in relationship with each other and the world around us. But this cannot be simply a regression to pre-individuated group awareness or conforming groupthink. Just as pre-rationality and trans-rationality are very different structures in consciousness and cultures, pre-individuality and transindividuality create very different worlds.

In this new series on Radio evolve, Elizabeth Debold and Thomas Steininger talk about the potentials and paradoxes of transindividuation and emergent interbeing.

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