The basic problem with the new species of global institutions is that they have not yet become aware of themselves as living. Once they do, they can become a place for the presencing of the whole as it might be, not just as it has been.

We’ve come to believe that the core capacity needed for accessing the field of the future is presence. We first thought of presence as being fully conscious and aware in the present moment. Then we began to appreciate presence as deep listening, of being open beyond one’s preconceptions and historical ways of making sense. We came to see the importance of letting go of old identities and the need to control and, as Salk said, making choices to serve the evolution of life. Ultimately, we came to see all these aspects of presence as leading to a state of “letting come,”of consciously participating in a larger field for change. When this happens, the field shifts, and the forces shaping a situation can shift from re-creating the past to manifesting or realizing an emerging future.

Many visions are doomed from the outset becausee those who articulate them, whether consciously or not, are coming from a place of powerlessness. If we believe that someone else has created our present reality, what is the basis for believing that we can create a different reality in the future? In terms of the theory of the U, the problem with most attempts to formulate visions is that they occur "too far up the left side of the U". When this happens, people formulate visions that are disconnected from a shared understanding of present reality and a sense of shared responsibility for that reality. If people are still externalising their problems, they create, in a sense, "externalised visions", which amount to a kind of change strategy for fixing problems which they have not yet seen their part in creating. Onlly when people begin to see from within the forces that shape their reality and to see their part in how those forces might evolve does vision become powerful. Everything else is just a vague hope.

It’s common to say that trees come from seeds. But how could a tiny seed create a huge tree? Seeds do not contain the resources needed to grow a tree. These must come from the medium or environment within which the tree grows. But the seed does provide something that is crucial:a place where the whole of the tree starts to form. As resources such as water and nutrients are drawn in, the seed organizes the process that generates growth. In a sense, the seed is a gateway through which the future possibility of the living tree emerges.

The U theory suggests that the central integrating thought ... will emerge from building three integrated capacities: a new capacity for observing that no longer fragments the observer from what's observed; a new capacity for stillness that no longer fragments who we really are from what's emerging; and a new capacity for creating alternative realities that no longer fragments the wisdom of the head, heart and hand.

If science is an unfinished project, the next stage will be about reconnecting and integrating the rigor of scientific method with the richness of direct experience to produce a science that will serve to connect us to one another, ourselves and the world.

What's emerging is a new synthesis of science, spirituality and leadership as different facets of a single way of being.

What we're calling 'presencing' is possible because of this womb, where the absolute and the manifest interact. I think a buddhist would say that presencing can arise to the extent that we develop the capacity, individually and collectively, to extend our conscious awareness in both domains.

When your practice has led you to experiences that you can't understand, you need a better theory. Otherwise, if you try to understand these transcendent experiences with 'profane' or, we might say, 'materialistic' ways of thinking, your cultivation will be set back.

Serving the emerging whole means paying attention to what's right here within my awareness, what's completely local, and surrendering to what's being asked of me now.