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Small Groups Can Change The World
A Conversation with Christine Doan – a pioneer in Queensland

How does the world look like in which we want to live? Maybe you are like so many of us who don’t want the present world, who are afraid of the development as it seems to lead us into a disastrous future and who demands that somebody should prevent the disaster, the government or the corporations, the economy or what not.
What about YOU? What are you desiring for the future and what are you doing to create it other than complaining about the present?
These are big question, not very popular in our times. We live in a victim culture, women – or better feminism – has brought us back into the victim narrative claiming that women and minorities need super special protection against who knows what? Against life, probably, so the activists play the over protecting mother role by keeping the victims in dependency.
Is it that, what we imagine as a “better future”? Our politicians should resolve everything, including climate change – and most of us are not willing to reduce their consumption, to be more careful about how we live and use i.e. energy. Do you really need your whole house to be heated so that you can be everywhere in a summer blouse? Isn’t one room enough, or maybe two and you wear a woolen pullover instead?
But that’s not really what I want to talk about here. I want to talk about how to make real our vision of a better world, our vision of a peaceful being together, and how to do business differently as well as human relations wherever we are.
Not an easy task and certainly no government or teacher is responsible for our lacking skills. We are. And we need to learn what is needed instead of enjoying our utopian phantasies. We need to start right where we are and connect with people who are willing to join us on the path.
During the Christmas holidays I talked with Christine Doan, an American woman who has been living in Queensland in Australia for most of her life. There she was remarkably active in the first environmental movements. When she came across Integral Theory and, as so many of us, she embraced it fully as the long desired means to understand the world better. A treasured way to get oriented in what best to do and to be, how to reach the betterment we are so much desiring. She understood that the first thing to do is digging deep into our own psychology. Understanding ourselves and becoming able to guide ourselves through the ups and downs of life is a permanent learning. We also develop new practices and skills which enable us to see the world in a different way and to more easily navigate it.
After decades Christine finally, in synchronicity, reached the point where she gathered people around her in a local mastermind group where they support each other in their startups or improvement of their existing businesses, in a different way. Group processes allow everybody to take off their mask and to become real. From there true conversation can come forth and true caring for each other. It is not about talking and trying to find solutions by the rational mind only. It is about showing up as a whole being and using the deeper states of consciousness and intuition to allow the solutions arise.
Small groups are the future. Here we can pioneer other ways of being together, deeper ways of understanding by embodying fully our humanity and our desire for truth and care. What we learn there, we then can transfer to bigger groups and, maybe, to the whole society. Hopefully our politicians and leaders in other important areas of society will learn these new ways, too, and then be able to have better decision processes and make better decisions!
Let us know about your experience and connect with us if you want to be part of the experiment. Locally in several parts of the world or online! Enjoy our recorded conversation and leave your comments below!


Hello Heidi – and also Christine,
You might find some answers to your questions in the process I have described in what I name Collective Presencing. See the website that holds many pieces of that framework: http://www.collectivepresencing.org
Recently I was interviewed by Daniel Thorson, of the podcast named Emerge, which might give you a look into the framework and my part of this work: https://anchor.fm/emerge/episodes/Ria-Baeck—Emergent-Collective-Practice-and-Applied-Presence-e2qppp
Just look at the title he gave it: Emergent Collective Practice and Applied Presence!
With love, all the way from Belgium!
Ria Baeck
Hi Ria. Thanks for your comment and the resources. Would you like to talk about that on video with me or in a live show with my co-host?