Relational Presence in Higher Education: Practicing Peacemaking and

Relationship Building

Dr. Samuel MahaffyACMHE Conference Presentation

Intention, Method, and Evaluation October 10-12, 2014

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What is Relational Presence?Relational Presence is the inhabited space where relationships are valued above agendas allowing the sacred potential of relational being to emerge.

Relational Presence is experienced in a higher education context as a relatively unbounded learning community that moves beyond subject – object duality and beyond decentering the subject to wakened awareness of the universe-ity of unitive being.

In this context unknowing is valued, a quietly inviting learning atmosphere is created and all voices are heard.

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Twelve Aspects of Relational Presence

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Decision making as it is often practiced in institutions of higher education is killing our spirits. Personal agendas and contests to win tenure often leave faculty, schools and administration deeply divided and ineffective. Relational Presence finds a way to move beyond confrontation, division and duality. This methodology grows out of the author’s Ph.D. research at Tilburg University in the Netherlands through the Taos Institute on Relational Presence: The Spatiality of Decision Making through a Relational Constructionist Lens.

The approach allows the multi-voice perspective to emerge in the context of learning communities. It allows whole people to show up for faculty and department meetings. Relational Presence makes room not just for intellects, opinions and ideas, but also for the soul to show up.

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Instead of departments can we imagine universities as centers of MIMETIC MOVEMENT…

The notion of mimetic movement carries the sense of relationship as integral to the inquiry and learning process.

Stepping outside of the predominant construct of inquiry as cause and effect, subject and object, we reimagine learning as “playful interactions of relational positioning” (Urwin, 1984).

Instead of taking up subjective positions on objects of inquiry we are intrigued by co-occurences, playful interactions of relational positioning and the DANCE OF INQUIRY.

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Can we imagine meetings where the relationships are the agenda and action inquiry emerges as an aspect of emerging meaning?

While we may bring in great intellectual capacity, the highest order of logic and understanding comes from the heart.

More than active listening, we practice relational listening. We are listening together for the emergence of new meaning.

In this place we may be “restoring the relational flow” that leads to “transformative dialogue” bringing forward “potentials for multi-being.” (Gergen, 2009).

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The practice of peripheral vision dims the boundaries of disciplines and enhances awareness of others while deepening inquiry.

While we dance with one partner on the dance floor of inquiry, we hold in our peripheral vision awareness that there are other dancers, other dance partners and other dances.

Inquiry becomes a communal and spiritual practice in which we are aware that we are never alone.

There is space created for alternative discourses to the predominant discourse and seemingly contradictory discourses can co-exist in the multi-voice context of relational engagement (Anderson, 1997; Gergen, 1994; McNamee and Gergen, 1999).

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We value unknowing as much as knowingThis is where relational presence in higher education moves us into contemplative practice.Inquiry is a journey of discovery together into the unknown.

This is not simply a passive stance but an actively searching out the “image of the future” which opens up “alternative choices and possibilities…actively promoting certain choices and in effect puts them to work in determining the future.”(Polak, 1973).

This is the place of experiencing the world with “radical amazement” (Cannato, 2006).

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Relational Presence in Higher Education is found at the Intersection of

Placemaking and Peacemaking

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In higher education we can co-construct contemplative and collaborative learning communities

Inquiry as Competition of Ideas

Inquiry as Eating from a Common Dish

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Finding the Sacred in the ‘Ordinary’ Life of Higher Education

References

Anderson, H. (1997). Conversation, language and possibilities: A postmodern approach to therapy. New York: Basic Books.

Cannato, J. (2006) Radical amazement: Contemplative lessons from black holes, supernovas and other

wonders of the universe. Notre Dame, IN: Sorin Books.

Cloud of Unknowing. (1981). San Francisco: Harper.

Gergen, K.J. (1994). Realities and Relationships: Soundings in social construction. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Gergen, K.J. (2009). Relational being: Beyond self and community. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mahaffy, S. (2012). Relational presence: The spatiality of breakthrough decision making through a relational-constructionist lens. Dissertation. Taos Institute/Tilburg University.

McNamee, S. & Gergen, K. (1999). Relational responsibility: Resources for sustainable dialogue. Thousand Oaks: CA: Sage Publications.

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