Visual Intelligence: Using the Deep Patterns of Visual Language to Build Cognitive SkillsI have a cogent argument for the power of interactive visualizing as a way to build cognitive capability in the recent issue of Theory into Practice, a journal for educators from Ohio State University. It’s a special Issue – Volume 47, Issue 2, called Digital Literacies in the Age of Sight and Sound. It was guest edited by Susan Metros, University of Southern California, and Kristina Woolsey, my friend and colleague from the New Media Thinking Project (and former head of Apple’s SF multimedia center and its Advance Technology Labs).

My chapter outlines how, when one thinks about drawing and visualizing as a process rather than an artifact, that the underlying grammar and structure of the visualization archetypes become clear.

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Sttransformation - Back in the Flows of the I’m on the lip of change this week watching my energy shift from vision quest in the desert to the world of meetings. I’m leading a new finance team in a mid-sized company through an alignment process on Wednesday, then into a seminar called “Inventing the Future of Management” co-sponsored by the MLab (Gary Hamel’s new non-profit venture), McKinsey, and the London School of Business, Hamel’s long time base of operation. Gary’s invited a who’s who in management thinking to come to Half Moon Bay and ask why organizations can’t innovate, adapt, and engage more inventively. “We innovate with everything else – why not management?” he wonders. We’ve been helping get the agenda, templates, meeting infrastructure and everything else in place for several weeks now and it all comes to a head.

It’s been an interesting process re-engaging myself from sacred space back to day-to-day realities. It’s helped to begin each day in meditation, as I have since returning. That practice is deepening. And it’s been interesting to see with new eyes how fundamentally the world is not as it seems.

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Groveseeds1jpg - Seeds of LightCan I walk each day in a sacred way? Can I start each day in the clear light mind? Can I have my work and play circle around my spiritual practice rather than fitting my spiritual practice into my day? These are the questions that are front and center on returning from my Joshua Tree Vision Quest. The deep nourishment I received from my reflective time on the desert feels almost like waking up again from a long sleep. I want to stay awake. And I want to stay engaged! I feel like I am watering little seeds of light.

At Joshua Tree I connected deeply with what I consider to be my real work, which is to plant and nurture seeds of hope, and to awaken myself so that who I am and what I do supports others waking up.

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Joshua_tree_sign_2 - Returning from Joshua TreeI’m back at “work” from my “vision quest” in Joshua Tree National Monument. I promised to share some of the experience. This one was a big one for me, my seventh with a group, my sixth with Chayim Barton and Brian Winkler, two gifted group leaders. The experiences are cumulative, and now spiral into my life as a central orientation.

I went into the desert this time holding my intent as a question—“What am I to contribute to my communities these next years?” I sought a vision about how to respond to the many changes all of us are facing. I intended to ask for guidance about my own purpose and direction as I more fully embrace an elder role. These are not simple questions.

I have discovered it takes time to appreciate what happens in sacred time such as this, for it takes place at a deep, cellular level as well as in my thoughts and journals. This one is “working me” as we say in our Pathwalkers group (a deep dialogue circle of peer consultants that I have been with for six years.)

The format of the vision quest, however, IS quite simple.

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