29 November 2010

a 2009 revised paper of John Heron

This is a discussion document circulated prior to the workshop on this topic scheduled for 20-21 January 2009 at the South Pacific Centre for Human Inquiry, Auckland, New Zealand. It was first sent round in December 2008 to a few CCI teachers in the USA, UK, Europe and New Zealand. I have incorporated their feedback plus some further reflections of my own in this revision. I am now (6 Jan) sending it to everyone enrolled in the 20-21 Jan 09 event.

In 1996 I published two documents within CCI that were relatively independent of each other, based on working with different co-counselling constituencies. The first, "A Definition of CCI", was, and still is, published on several CCI web sites. It was a conservative update of the original guidelines for CCI published in the first CCI newsletter in 1975.

The second was "A Little Book of Co-creating", which was a much more radical reconstruction of co-counselling. It replaced the terms 'client' and 'counsellor' with 'creator ' and 'co-creator' and presented co-creating within a worldview embracing human spirituality and a vision of planetary transformation in terms of a self-generating culture. It emerged from an inquiry including fifteen CCI teachers from UK, USA and Holland in Tuscany in 1996. The full text is online at www.human-inquiry.com/cocreate.htm .

The most recent 2008 update of co-creating is found online in three maps: MAP 1, MAP2, MAP3 . This update was field-tested by eleven co-inquirers at this Centre between June and December 2008. The whole group met every fortnight to review and discuss together the one-to-one two-way sessions we had had in the two weeks between meetings. In this way, we were able to refine and clarify our use of the co-creating model and experientially test its efficacy.

I sense that the time has now come to blend the 1996 CCI definition with the updated co-creating model into a pragmatic hybrid of conservative and radical elements. What is offered below, as a basis for discussion, is a draft redefinition of CCI in a form appropriate both to prevailing CCI structures and usage, and to currently emerging shifts in human consciousness. It is preceded by a note summarizing the main changes, and for purposes of comparison followed by the 1996 version.

John Heron, January 2009

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