Keiko
22-01-2008, 03:12 PM
Did David Grove's Deep Unconscious Leave Us a Message About His Death?
One of the qualities that made David Grove such an innovative therapist was his ability to hear the alternative meanings within the sounds or syllables of a word or phrase. He called these “nonsequiturs” and his ability to discern them “mis-hearing.” During the Columbia Intensive in 2007, David caught me “unawares” at a moment when, fascinated by the images created by a new network thesaurus program, I exclaimed, “Oh, a helix up and a helix down.” David, with that knowing gleam in his eye said, “he looks up and he looks down” and we were off on an emergent iterations journey that transformed the “up” and “down” split in my awareness into a circle of complete awareness.
When David came, synchronicity came with him. In July 2007 we held what was slated to be a brainstorm meeting on the development of the new Clean Worlds website that David and I were creating together. Instead, David showed up with a folder of notes from early meetings with his mentor, the sociologist Bill Rawlin. We discovered that Bill Rawlin had directly transmitted his knowledge of the philosophical foundation for David's work in the form of personal epistemology diagrams drawn specifically for David. A second equally synchronistic event occurred through David's request that I invite my long-time friend, Kent Palmer, Ph.D. to the brainstorm. Kent Palmer's breadth of philosophical knowledge served as the Rosetta stone, the key to unlock the mystery of the diagrams. We discovered that in philosophical language, David's ability to discern and utilize our non-sequiturs to catalyze our personal transformations, is called the anagogic swerve.
In a second brainstorm meeting in December 2007, David utilized the anagogic swerve to engage the group in an emergent process exploring Bill Rawlin's work and Kent Palmer's work on the Meta-Levels of Being in relation to his new emergent iterations, tri-fold symmetry, Fibonacci intervention, and the Theater of the Mind. David said that a mentor's death is like the death of a giant redwood that sends out burls from which the next generation of redwoods grows. He named me the “aggregator” and asked
that through the Clean Worlds website, I bring together the innovations of his life's work and reach out to include and encompass the new trees in the forest.
On the last day of his life, David was ecstatic. He and Michael, the website programmer at my office, had completed adding the ability to do Podcasts on the website. David wanted to embrace the people around the world developing his work by interviewing them about their new applications in therapy, coaching, business, education, and the arts. He said he wanted Clean Worlds to encompass the whole of his life's work and support its growth through those who would carry it forward.
After David's death on January 8, 2008, his mother, sister, and long-time friend John Mote came from New Zealand to our house for an afternoon of sharing about David's life and death as the beginning of the ritual of taking David home to New Zealand to his Maori roots and the ancestors. After this day of deep sharing, I heard David's voice in my mind saying, “remember the download.” The memory flashed through my mind. David found a flight and arrived in Kansas City on New Year Day to continue the emergent process begun at the brainstorm meeting. That evening, David downloaded his ideas and plans as we talked and I typed.
I found the paper printout of David's download and began to read. What I saw filled me with awe. The paragraph was clearly labeled – Kansas Jan 08 Goals: The first goal that David dictated read:
− To complete a new full edited video segment that will go straight up on the web and be a card-i-act confabulation.
I couldn't help but smile at the synchronicity that the automatic word wrap placed David's “card-i-act confabulation” goal on its own separate line. I imagined David smiling as I found the message that his deep unconscious had left for me to discover.
And to make it even clearer, David's introduction of this new goal was itself a complete non-sequitur. The goal that we had previously discussed was to complete the Karen K session on the website with her comments and his meta-comments. When I asked David what he meant by this new goal, he laughed and said that it was to create “cards” with the emergent iteration questions that would “act” to replace the “i” of the therapist. “Then the cards would hold the clean language questions and I will no longer
need to be present.” I asked, but what about the anagogic swerve? And he replied, “It's there in the confabulation, where it all comes together without me.”
On a conscious level David’s heart attack was totally unexpected. There were no symptoms or warning signs. David had been progressively recovering from his long bout with chronic fatigue. He had recovered his energy and was in the best health I had seen him. He had been doing Rolfing in California and was standing tall. And he was at his creative best, developing one new innovation after another, while he was also working on the new Clean Worlds website.
Seven days later David experienced the completion of his Jan 08 Goal; his “card-i-act confabulation”. He completed the “full edited video segment” (of his life) and went “straight up on the web” of the interconnection of life and the space from whence we came. And he left each of us the assignment to reach out and support one another in our emergence because now we are the emergent network and its
growth is in our hands.
Steven L. Briggs
One of the qualities that made David Grove such an innovative therapist was his ability to hear the alternative meanings within the sounds or syllables of a word or phrase. He called these “nonsequiturs” and his ability to discern them “mis-hearing.” During the Columbia Intensive in 2007, David caught me “unawares” at a moment when, fascinated by the images created by a new network thesaurus program, I exclaimed, “Oh, a helix up and a helix down.” David, with that knowing gleam in his eye said, “he looks up and he looks down” and we were off on an emergent iterations journey that transformed the “up” and “down” split in my awareness into a circle of complete awareness.
When David came, synchronicity came with him. In July 2007 we held what was slated to be a brainstorm meeting on the development of the new Clean Worlds website that David and I were creating together. Instead, David showed up with a folder of notes from early meetings with his mentor, the sociologist Bill Rawlin. We discovered that Bill Rawlin had directly transmitted his knowledge of the philosophical foundation for David's work in the form of personal epistemology diagrams drawn specifically for David. A second equally synchronistic event occurred through David's request that I invite my long-time friend, Kent Palmer, Ph.D. to the brainstorm. Kent Palmer's breadth of philosophical knowledge served as the Rosetta stone, the key to unlock the mystery of the diagrams. We discovered that in philosophical language, David's ability to discern and utilize our non-sequiturs to catalyze our personal transformations, is called the anagogic swerve.
In a second brainstorm meeting in December 2007, David utilized the anagogic swerve to engage the group in an emergent process exploring Bill Rawlin's work and Kent Palmer's work on the Meta-Levels of Being in relation to his new emergent iterations, tri-fold symmetry, Fibonacci intervention, and the Theater of the Mind. David said that a mentor's death is like the death of a giant redwood that sends out burls from which the next generation of redwoods grows. He named me the “aggregator” and asked
that through the Clean Worlds website, I bring together the innovations of his life's work and reach out to include and encompass the new trees in the forest.
On the last day of his life, David was ecstatic. He and Michael, the website programmer at my office, had completed adding the ability to do Podcasts on the website. David wanted to embrace the people around the world developing his work by interviewing them about their new applications in therapy, coaching, business, education, and the arts. He said he wanted Clean Worlds to encompass the whole of his life's work and support its growth through those who would carry it forward.
After David's death on January 8, 2008, his mother, sister, and long-time friend John Mote came from New Zealand to our house for an afternoon of sharing about David's life and death as the beginning of the ritual of taking David home to New Zealand to his Maori roots and the ancestors. After this day of deep sharing, I heard David's voice in my mind saying, “remember the download.” The memory flashed through my mind. David found a flight and arrived in Kansas City on New Year Day to continue the emergent process begun at the brainstorm meeting. That evening, David downloaded his ideas and plans as we talked and I typed.
I found the paper printout of David's download and began to read. What I saw filled me with awe. The paragraph was clearly labeled – Kansas Jan 08 Goals: The first goal that David dictated read:
− To complete a new full edited video segment that will go straight up on the web and be a card-i-act confabulation.
I couldn't help but smile at the synchronicity that the automatic word wrap placed David's “card-i-act confabulation” goal on its own separate line. I imagined David smiling as I found the message that his deep unconscious had left for me to discover.
And to make it even clearer, David's introduction of this new goal was itself a complete non-sequitur. The goal that we had previously discussed was to complete the Karen K session on the website with her comments and his meta-comments. When I asked David what he meant by this new goal, he laughed and said that it was to create “cards” with the emergent iteration questions that would “act” to replace the “i” of the therapist. “Then the cards would hold the clean language questions and I will no longer
need to be present.” I asked, but what about the anagogic swerve? And he replied, “It's there in the confabulation, where it all comes together without me.”
On a conscious level David’s heart attack was totally unexpected. There were no symptoms or warning signs. David had been progressively recovering from his long bout with chronic fatigue. He had recovered his energy and was in the best health I had seen him. He had been doing Rolfing in California and was standing tall. And he was at his creative best, developing one new innovation after another, while he was also working on the new Clean Worlds website.
Seven days later David experienced the completion of his Jan 08 Goal; his “card-i-act confabulation”. He completed the “full edited video segment” (of his life) and went “straight up on the web” of the interconnection of life and the space from whence we came. And he left each of us the assignment to reach out and support one another in our emergence because now we are the emergent network and its
growth is in our hands.
Steven L. Briggs