Teaching scaling

[webmaven]

I suggested "scaling" drawing and he tried it out on me and others. David had a scaling words/sentences/paragraphs/pages/book/child scene, and we looked at a number of forms of scaling thereafter. However, David said lots of drawing work happened in his work in the 80's, so maybe this was a re-working thereof. Scaling, by the way, is what he asked me not to teach, so it will stay off the forum in terms of process and content.


Steve,

From your advert about your upcoming retreat it looks like you are still teaching scaling ("I've a 7-day retreat covering Emergence, Scaling and developments thereof starting this Friday evening. The days are intense - 10 facilitation hours per day.").

I'm curious about it, but I respect David's asking you not to teach it and I respect your choice to keep it "off the forum."

However, I would like to know, Are you or aren't you still teaching scaling?

webmaven

[Steve Saunders]

I'm using scaling to facilitate people on retreats. By default its not taught.

With certain people who I judge to be ready to learn it I have taught it and will. I was most surprised to see a thread on it in this forum as <name> should have known better in June 07.
When the student is ready it is obvious; they can stay present while I facilitate the work. Mostly people disappear at the key times; showing their system is not ready.

Overall my process is as follows: people attend one or more retreats as a client. When they and I agree they are ready they start learning the tools and techniques. Its much easier this way than working to train people still loaded with issues. Typically the non-academic people get it fast - in a few days - and highly mental people might take forever. This work is not about so-called intellect; its common sense.

[phil]

Thanks for reminding us there's already a thread on scaling, Steve. I guess you missed the discussion at the time - you weren't paying as much attention to the forum in those days. It was in the Clean Language forum - I'm now moving it to Emergent Knowledge or EK Developments, neither of which existed then I think.

What would you (and others please) like to have happen in relation to a thread on scaling?*

Steve, you say
With certain people who I judge to be ready to learn it I have taught it and will.

If you're happy to share it, I think it would be interesting for us all to know what kind of criteria you use? What determines 'ready' and 'not-ready' in this context?

Phil

*I am creating a new thread in Feedback forum about the potential ethical and legal issues for the forum and for us all that arise from your post.

[Steve Saunders]

Let's start from the beginning. Why did David ask me to not teach it? He clearly taught others afterwards (Matthew). He also said don't teach pulling back and promptly taught it at our last workshop together, justifying it with "well its too useful'. Well, scaling is also too useful not to use. But it has serious dangers attending it:

1. Crossing cosmological boundaries, walking straight into recapitulating pathological states - potentially fatal. I'm not going to say too much but I will do at a private meeting of Psychotherapist Clean folk (Phil, Penny, James).

2. The scaling will take the client to the edge of their cosmology and over into the prior self that created the present one. If the F cannot "stay present" then the client will be left in a limbo and potentially psychologically damaged for months before they recover - because when they go back into the world the world starts re-projecting on them, slowing or halting the ongoing emergence generated in retreat.

3. If the F cannot stay present with the client at or through the cosmological boundary then the client is endangered. The F requires huge presence to hold such a space. Doing this for large numbers would be negligent IMO; I keep to 3 or 4 people at most per facilitator.

I only use scaling when I have 5 or more days available; I might use loading and some space around over 2 days, but really it needs retreat environments and resources to enable people to stay residential for longer if the scaling has not completed by end of day 5. It's huge stuff!

So, my criteria:

1) the student understands the process they have been through themselves
2) the student stays present while I'm facilitating the work with a client (as opposed to distracted - M.H.Erickson caused this effect in his modellers, and so did David; I missed what he did a few times before I could stay present)
3) they have learnt the other emergence processes and facilitate them competently
4) they can see what is going on in the scaling; and start to notice the patterns of the pieces that may come together
5) they accept me as I am (this is actually very important because I push every button to the extreme with F's: so they accept clients as they are - this where David and I disagreed - he treated everyone as clients - but if F's want to step up to master level then nothing is left unturned in addressing the self - me included)
6) both they and I know they are ready (yeah yeah, how?)

Scaling is a lot more than the spatial drawing form discussed on the other thread. There are other types that David and I explored (space-draw, text/letter/heiroglyphics, motion, sculptural, multi-modal forms, body, emotion) and then I moved further with three forms of pronoun scaling and linking in "truth work".

There are ethical and legal issues in how much is posted, the supervision and peervision of this work. I address this myself by having a psychotherapist present at most of my retreats (but not all) and by seeking outside advice when I feel out of my depth. The ethics are different anyway; unconventional to understand and work with the structures of selves.

Not ready fails on one of these criteria, ready means passed on all criteria.

[a few reasons for being less on the forum then: 1) before starting with David I had less to say although I could have posted on my clean/rapsi fusion, 2) David actually had an issue with sharing the emergence with people who were not paying, 3) after separating I left the clean world to David to give him his living space, 4) there was not really anyone else to share the work with. Now I feel released to rejoin and share as is my normal way.]

Steven

[Steve Saunders]

The only criteria that really matters:

Accepting me as I am. This is because only once a person has realised emotionally as well as intellectually that every single thing they see in other people is their own "stuff", then do they really understand projection. And as projection is the core, the key to understanding this work, no point teaching it until then!

Steven

[super_yacht@hotmail.com]

Having worked closely with David and Steve for sometime I eventually got to a level of ‘being present’ during scaling. It takes time and work and I don’t know anyone else that can see/sense what David was doing. Perhaps because we were developing it those that come later will achieve this level faster. But you don’t get there by doing a 7-day course or reading a book. We each have stuff to deal with first.
Phil, ‘ready’ for me is not determined by the teacher/facilitator, it will be ‘known’ by the student when they are ready. I know a few who think they have achieved this level and it’s probably not anyone’s place to question that. However they probably will not have the success when they are facilitating. The last session I had with David was about the wobble I was having with the major traumas clients were coming to me with. I remember him saying “if they are coming you can deal with them”.
Like the rest of emergence, scaling is not a process (facilitator driven) or just because you’ve done the work ‘will you get it’ (Ego driven) and this makes it a challenge to teach and practise.
Regards
John

[Corrie van Wijk]

Steve: "David had criteria; he told me who he did not want at future workshops."

Which criteria?

Steve: "The only criteria that really matters:

Accepting me as I am. This is because only once a person has realised emotionally as well as intellectually that every single thing they see in other people is their own "stuff", then do they really understand projection. And as projection is the core, the key to understanding this work, no point teaching it until then!"

Ah, here is the sextuple bind!