The Co-operative inquiry group revisited

This is the third post on the Autumn/Winter inquiry cycle of the Sentient River group, turning to reflect on the significance of the inquiry group itself – both human and more-than-human. We have explored some of these issues in an earlier post, and yet maybe it is easy to overlook this importance of group practice. ‘Never do alone what two can do’.[i]

As we closed our last session on the Autumn cycle of inquiry, drawing together the themes reported in the last two posts, our attention turned to the co-operative inquiry group itself. Ezekiel was the first to remind us of its significance:

… there's something about doing this exploration in a group. I feel it's almost like I have this enlarged organ of perception that lives in the field that we create together.

It would be so different, Ezekiel continued, if we were each doing this on our own, without the sense of community. Kathleen picked up the thread: we know nothing beforehand of what experiences will be brought to each cycle, and yet:

… it’s always just amazing to see all the synchronicities; there’s something intangible, maybe we’ll never be able to explain what that is. But there’s definitely some alchemy that’s happening because of this community.

And as Dave pointed out

We are all different in the way we express ourselves. I love it and am learning so much. It's just delicious. Whatever it is, it's wonderful. We are creating something.

The nature of the attention that we bring to bear on the world… changes what we find… in some absolutely non-trivial sense

We can say quite a lot about what has helped develop this sense of community.

• We have a sense of shared purpose in exploring sentient relations with River and with the wider community of life.

• This sense of purpose has strengthened as we have discovered and developed practices for invoking the more-than-human world as living presence; and as the world has responded to our overtures.

• We have deepened our relationships as we have told each other of our experiences, our joys and our griefs.

• The disciplines of the co-operative inquiry, the cycles of action and reflection, provide a container for the work. We have established a pattern of meeting for six-week inquiry cycles that provides a contained intensity.

• Meeting over several years – for this is one of the longest ever co-operative inquiries – we have progressed gently through stages of group development. Long past are the anxieties of joining a new group and the tensions of mutual influence – not that these were ever salient. We have established a shared pattern of mutual influence, complementarity, and intimacy which allows us to understand and respect each other’s different contributions.[ii]

• There is a continual freshness of our inquiry. We remain continually surprised by our experiences. While we have developed patterns of inquiry, there is little that is formulaic and ‘ritualistic’ about our inquiry practice. We take this as an indication of the verisimilitude of our work: however strange all this may appear to the Western point of view, Rivers do speak.

• We learned, to borrow from Iain McGilchrist, that ‘The nature of the attention that we bring to bear on the world, and the values which we bring to the encounter, change what we find; and in some absolutely non-trivial sense, change what it is. At the same time, the encounter… changes who we are.’[iii]

• Through our shared experience we have come to feel more deeply what we previously espoused intellectually, that at heart of the world is sacred and that our inquiry can be seen as sacrament.

• The Sentient River inquiry group is located in a wider community of inquiry which includes the Living Waters inquiry workshops and a network of people around the world – animists, panpsychists, Gaians – working to locate the human community within a living and sentient planet.

River Clun, Shropshire. Photo: Peter Reason

We can say all that of the human group, but what about River? What about Avon, Severn, Glen, Plessure, Manzanares, Tah-la-loo, Tah-kee-os-tee or French Broad, and all the small creeks and waterways that have been part of this inquiry. Our intention always was to include River as co-inquirers. But is this possible in any meaningful sense? This is how I responded when asked this question by reviewers for Action Research Journal:

There is, of course, a question whether Rivers, or any non-human being, can be a co-researcher within a co-operative inquiry. One might argue that there is no way a River can (or indeed would want to) partake in the design of the inquiry, the process of sensemaking, the ‘writing up’ of outcomes. And yet, from the perspective of living cosmos panpsychism, the world and its beings actively seek to communicate with humans (and other selves) as part of the process of self-realization. So we can make the assumption that if we approach River respectfully and invite their participation as co-researcher, we can together cautiously establish some level of collaboration. Further, while in the full model of co-operative inquiry, all involved participate in the design, practice, and sense making, this doesn’t mean that everyone does the same thing. All can play an equal part while contributing according to their diverse aptitudes, skills, and interests. As in any group process, different people lead in and contribute to different aspects of the process. So can River be a co-inquirer? There seems to be no reason in principle why not. And it would be absurd to conduct inquiry into ontopoetic relationship with River without regarding them as co-researchers. How this can evolve in practice remains, as with everything, open to inquiry. ^[iv]

That, however, is a rather rational response to the question. For much of the time we feel ourselves in relationship with ‘our’ river as a sentient presence. They have become part of our lives; we see them as friends and teachers; we feel called to visit, particularly if there has been a gap. Before speaking at the funeral of a dear colleague, Dave visited his spot on the Fowey to ask for blessing and guidance. As Andrea, in an earlier inquiry cycle, explained how she was in a relationship with Tah-la-loo:

I feel like I am a part of this space.  I belong.  Not an observer or voyeur even, not just a welcome guest, but part of this space when I am here. I feel gratitude for the welcome I feel in that place. And I can’t just drop of abandon this relationship, I wouldn't want to be reckless with that. And I feel a real sense of responsibility.

Sitting with River as teacher in itself leaves traces in the fabric of the world

Learning to converse with the more-than-human world through co-operative enquiry is a process interweaving several strands. First, there is the systematic cycling between action and reflection: experiential knowing that opens wider forms of inner and outer attention; presentational knowing that explores expressive, poetic and artful dimensions of communication and expression; propositional knowing that articulates and critiques this knowing in explicit conceptual form; and practical knowing that develops new capacities and protocols for engagement with the more-than-human-world, and feeds back into experiential knowing to continue the inquiry cycle (see here and here for articulations of this extended epistemology). Second, the emerging mutual influence and intimacy of the human inquiry group within a wider community of inquiry. Third, we may tentatively suggest that sitting in communication with River or Mountain as mentor and teacher in itself leaves traces in the fabric of the world; that there may also be an awakening of the wider more than human world to a different kind of attention.[v]

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[i] Shepard, H. A. (1975). Rules of Thumb for Change Agents. OD Practitioner, 7(3, November 75), 1-5. Available here.

[ii] The stages of group development are often described, as forming, norming, storming and performing following Tuckman. I much prefer the Srivastva’s account of patterns of intimacy and influence in group development. Tuckman, B. (1965). Development Sequences in Small Groups. Psychological Bulletin, 63, 419-427; Srivastva, S., Obert, S. L., & Neilson, E. (1977). Organizational Analysis Through Group Processes: A theoretical perspective. In C. L. Cooper (Ed.), Organizational Development in the UK and USA (pp. 83-111). London: Macmillan.

[iii] McGilchrist, I. (2021). The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World. Epilogue p.1330-31 London: Perspectiva.

[iv] Reason, P. (2023). Extending Co-operative Inquiry Beyond the Human: Ontopoetic inquiry with Rivers. Action Research. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/14767503231179562

[v] As suggested in personal conversation by Andreas Weber, November 2023