Vizualizing the Unfettered Mind network (Part III)
This blog post builds on some earlier contributions:
-- some previous blog posts presenting information drawn from Google Analytics statistics, the member database and other sources on how this social networking site is used. (I have access to these as a site administrator)
-- a blog from 2009 reporting on the experience of hosting visitors from CPSquare's Foundations of Communities of Practice workshop on a tour of the constellation of websites associated with Unfettered Mind.
To set the scene for an update on the use of this site, here some material material from the Unfettered Mind Wiki: on the intention behind Unfettered Mind and offers a model of the UM structure:
1. [Unfettered Mind] is an open, fluid and responsive network of relationships between participants.
2. Its operating model is precisely the same Buddhist principles and qualities that arise out of practice. 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.
On the same page in the Wiki, a diagram or model is used to describe how the structure of the Unfettered Mind network is envisioned:
Unfettered Mind can be pictured as three concentric circles:
And on the same page, a mission statement is formulated:
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
This material describes the intention or aspiration behind Unfettered Mind, and the questions that arise as I look at patterns of activity on the site, at the Google Analytics and at the member database are whether and how this site is serving the aspiration. In succeeding posts my aim will be to look at the information from Google Analytics etc from this perspective.
-- some previous blog posts presenting information drawn from Google Analytics statistics, the member database and other sources on how this social networking site is used. (I have access to these as a site administrator)
-- a blog from 2009 reporting on the experience of hosting visitors from CPSquare's Foundations of Communities of Practice workshop on a tour of the constellation of websites associated with Unfettered Mind.
To set the scene for an update on the use of this site, here some material material from the Unfettered Mind Wiki: on the intention behind Unfettered Mind and offers a model of the UM structure:
1. [Unfettered Mind] is an open, fluid and responsive network of relationships between participants.
2. Its operating model is precisely the same Buddhist principles and qualities that arise out of practice. 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.
On the same page in the Wiki, a diagram or model is used to describe how the structure of the Unfettered Mind network is envisioned:
Unfettered Mind can be pictured as three concentric circles:
And on the same page, a mission statement is formulated:
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
This material describes the intention or aspiration behind Unfettered Mind, and the questions that arise as I look at patterns of activity on the site, at the Google Analytics and at the member database are whether and how this site is serving the aspiration. In succeeding posts my aim will be to look at the information from Google Analytics etc from this perspective.
Tags: unfettered mind
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Comment by Ann Braun on August 16, 2009 at 9:10pm -
For those of you who are technically minded, here's a screenshot of the Google Analytics "dashboard" looks like:
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