Holding Space

~ by Kevin Kaiser, a consultant who helps individuals and organizations harness the power of the perennial wisdom and a co-founder of the Kaiser Institute

There are these extraordinary, serendipitous moments when a grand dream for your life intersects with the grand dream of another person for their own. Samir's dream for Faith House is one of these moments for me.

In the more ordinary ways of knowing a thing, I know very little about Faith House. I don't know their vision and mission statement or even if they have one. I don't know if there is or will be a physical building in New York, that is literally the Faith House.

But in the more extraordinary ways of knowing a thing, I feel deeply connected to Faith House, and did the first moment Samir spoke the name. There is something so beautiful trying to happen through Faith House that any attempt to explain it, reduces it. And in simply connecting to the sense of what Faith House is trying to become, nothing more needs to be said.

This is holding space!

HOLDING IMAGINAL SPACE

When we hold space for each other, we hold pure possibility. It is a gift of consciousness that recognizes something really beautiful is trying to emerge through another human being. And like the nature of the expression itself, this emergence sits at a level of truth that does not want to be reduced, or arranged, or understood.

When we ask somebody to hold space for us, we are invoking pure possibility through their gift of consciousness. What we feel trying to move through us is not speakable, but has a power we can not turn away from. And we have a recognition that we need cooperation from the universe to birth it.

It is this dance with possibility that makes holding space a most precious gift.

HOLDING ORGANIZATIONAL SPACE

Organizations, like people, need rich imaginal spaces for their becomingness. And as good as our strategic vision is, there is also an exquisite possibility wanting to emerge that cannot be planned for, that cannot be seen. We can only hold space for its emergence.

But once it emerges, we recognize it was really there all the time. Already in fullness. Simply waiting for us to hold enough space to come into relationship with it.

Holding space for people, holding space for Faith House is simply holding space for boundless, abundant creation. And through this act of radical creation, a return to our relationship with everything that already is a return to wholeness.

HOLDING SPACE FOR FAITH HOUSE

We can all learn from each other how to hold space more powerfully. Here are ways we can all help hold space for Faith House.

1. Dance with mystery! When you sense something really big wanting to happen, you don't have to know right away exactly what it is, only that it needs a rich space to emerge. In big mystery is big possibility. If you reduce Faith House to something fully explainable, something you can completely get your hands around, you have limited its possibility.

2. Enlist a broad community of Space Holders. You enlist other people in the most exquisite possibilities for Faith House when you hold the sense of what Faith House is trying to become. You don't need to know what form it's going to take to get there. What does it feel like? What are its emotional qualities? Are there remarkable moments in your own life that remind you of Faith House? The broader the community of Space Holders, the richer the imaginal space.

3. Help people create when they react. A few people will react in fear to Faith House, because they will view it as a challenge to the one true path—be that a specific religious path or philosophical path. When people move into fear, don't debate. Listen deeply. You will eventually discover there is a becomingness in their own life that is very reminiscent of the becomingness you sense in Faith House. When you connect one to the other, you invite people to step out of fear and in to love.

4. Harness the Law of Attraction. Like attracts like. When the space we hold for Faith House is abundant, we attract abundance for Faith House. When the space we hold for Faith House is playful, we attract people who are child-like. When the space we hold for Faith House feels miraculous, we attract miracles.

5. Act. Intention is most powerful when we act. Even if we aren't sure exactly what to do! It is an iterative, organic support that pairs our best sense of what to do in the moment with our best sense of what is trying to happen and one helps illuminate the other.

So, how much space can you hold for Faith House? And what can you do?

Comments

[christine]

Kevin Kaiser-I have read and re-read your "Holding Space" entry. It has identified with something unseen in my core. Too often we have not embraced the importance of "holding space" for another individual. It's enough to just hold possibility. Isn't that what a prayer is? These words have led me to do a series of paintings.