Opportunities to participate in the discovery and development of the many potential activities of Unfettered Mind is what the Core Participants Group is all about. MISSION STATEMENT Anyone who participates in Unfettered Mind is collaborating in a radical experiment that sets in motion a new way of providing a means to wake up. Since its inception, UM has been a conventionally structured, one-person outfit, based upon the traditional teacher-student relationship and organized essentially as a private practice. But when Ken realized that it was no longer working he abruptly killed it off. Following a year-long period of reflection and contemplation, Ken is now shaping Unfettered Mind into a radically non-traditional collaboration between participants that includes these defining qualities:
In other words, UM is an experimental model of Buddhist perspectives and methods in action. In essence, Unfettered Mind is envisioned as a network of people who live and practice to be awake. All of its activities will function to facilitate this. And anybody who participates will be creating the conditions for themselves and for others to wake up. It is a network of relationships – both face-to-face and virtual – that embodies and expresses the qualities of awakened mind, and it generates this in the participants. This key function – interactively helping each other to wake up – gives rise to UM’s third defining quality: 3. As participants mature in experience, they will continue to learn and study (as students) while they undertake teaching and guiding roles (as teachers). The quality of presence is in all awakened activity. In keeping with this, UM is about the ability to directly recognize what’s needed and respond to it. Practitioners must therefore take on the responsibility of recognizing what they need in their practice and then create groups (Environments of Awareness) in which to get these needs met. Setting up meetings with teachers, forming practice and study groups, and organizing workshops and retreats are all examples of EoA’s. In turn, the core participants must be able to recognize what the participants at large need and provide the expertise, services and infrastructure to help them help themselves. All roles are, of course, transient. They may last for a day, a month, a year or more. Thus all participants must be willing to die at any time. i.e. They must be able to recognize when needs have been met, and the activities and services have outlived their usefulness, and then let go of them. Participants must allow their Environments of Awareness to disband when their purposes are fulfilled. Core participants must be willing to relinquish whatever role they’ve assumed when it no longer serves a need – or when they themselves are no longer serving the role. Ultimately, UM will be an ever-changing collection of eclectic groups created to facilitate waking up. Each will form to fulfill a need, function for a while, and then dissolve – just as experience arises, develops, and dissipates. Next: Practical Applications |
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