The Art of Spaciousness

A reflective journey
through the phenomenon of political power
(version 1.5)

Eduardo Rombauer van den Bosch

A dissertation submitted to the London Metropolitan University

in the requirement for the Masters degree of Reflective Social Practice
Supervisor: Allan Kaplan

July 2015

Abstract

In this dissertation, I explore the possible effects of combining a reflective development

practice (the Art of the Invisible) with political activism (the Art of the Impossible). My own
journey in bridging these two fields is described to illustrate how, when a practical wisdom is
built from this encounter, a broader understanding of political life may emerge and become
embodied one which reverses a common sense in which there is no empty space in
politics.
Drawing on the legacy of Vaclav Havel and in dialogue with other reflective practitioners from
both fields, I argue that politics can be faced as an open and fertile space for citizens to create
their own ways to participate in the destinies of humankind, and to assume true responsibility
and thus to nurture a deeper notion of belonging in the world. How is it possible to build
another level of awareness, collectively, in the realm of political action?
My own participation in a new-born political party and a community of political practice are
brought forth to demonstrate how this understanding can be held with a phenomenological
quality of thinking, from which another way of seeing the world and ourselves, in practice is to
be found: from a deeper encounter with our experiences, political practitioners may embody
the virtues and attitudes of a radically different political practice.
One combination of the two fields of practice is suggested in the holding of formative spaces,
in which political practitioners may gain abilities that enables them to embrace the paradoxical
aspects of the political realm, and thus to collapse the seemingly unavoidable split between
theory and practice that diminishes their authenticity and conviction.
When a delicate kind of power is found, an ever-renewed sense of spaciousness emerges,
from which a radically open, horizontal and meaningful way of participating in the broader
destiny of humankind takes place.

Resumo

Nesta dissertao, eu exploro os possveis efeitos da combinao de uma prtica reflexiva de

desenvolvimento social (a "Arte do Invisvel") com o ativismo poltico (a "Arte do Impossvel").
Minha prpria jornada para integrar esses dois campos descrita para ilustrar como, quando uma
sabedoria prtica construda a partir deste encontro, uma compreenso ampliada da vida poltica
pode surgir e inverter o senso comum de que "em poltica no h espao vazio".
A partir do legado de Vaclav Havel e em dilogo com outros profissionais e ativistas de ambos os
campos, especialmente com a lder Marina Silva, defendo que a poltica pode ser percebida como
um espao aberto e frtil para que os cidados criem as suas prprias formas de exercer a sua
responsabilidade, cultivando assim uma noo mais profunda de pertencimento ao mundo. Como
que possvel construir um outro nvel de conscincia, coletivamente, no mbito da ao
poltica?
Minha prpria experincia no processo que d origem a um partido poltico (Rede
Sustentabilidade) e na criao de uma comunidade de prticas polticas transformadoras
espelhada, para demonstrar como outra maneira de ver o mundo e a ns mesmos, na prtica,
pode se desenvolver a partir de uma abordagem fenomenolgica de pensamento. a partir do
encontro mais profundo com as experincias que os praticantes polticos podem encarnar as
virtudes e atitudes de uma prtica poltica radicalmente diferente.
Uma combinao dos dois campos de atuao sugerida por meio de espaos de formao, em
que os praticantes polticos podem desenvolver habilidades que lhes permitam abraar os
aspectos paradoxais da vida poltica e, assim, superar a separao aparentemente inevitvel entre
teoria e prtica. Quando um tipo de poder delicado encontrado, um sentido renovado de
espacialidade (spaciousness) emerge, dando margem a abordagens radicalmente abertas,
horizontais e significativas de participao nos destinos da humanidade.

Acknowledgments
It is quite amazing to realize how much this dissertation is the outcome of joint efforts. There are
countless names of peers and friends who supported me all the way here: from small gestures of
tolerance with my delays, absences and forgetfulness up to various kinds of direct collaborations,
this dissertation would not be possible without each one who has supported me.
Of course, I could not go without mention some of them:
First of all, I owe my deepest gratitude to my tutors: Alan Kaplan, for his never-ending disposition to
bring me further, and Sue Davidoff, for such a dedicated support in preparing me to dive in the
reflective practice. Additionally, I express my profound gratitude to David Harding, always
supportive of my demanding curiosity. With this amazing team, our group has no doubt about the
uniqueness of this journey, held with the greatest love and dedication.
I also want to express my gratitude to all my colleagues, who have become friends for life. Our
great moments together provided for much learning and many good memories.
My special thanks to my two life-long partners: Clvis Henrique, who brought me strength to see
the value of this work; and Henrique Santana, who always shows me the world beyond the visible. I
consider this dissertation another step of a great walk with both of you.
My eternal gratitude to Marina Oliveira, who has set the milestones to this path. May this work
honour your generosity. My gratitude is extended to all her partners from Fonte Institute, which has
prepared the ground for development practice, and this master programme, in Brazil.
My warmest gratitude to my peers and friends, who walked hand-in-hands so closely in the field
practice, and who never hesitated to hold me firmer when I needed: Alexandra Reschke, Larissa
Barros, Marcos Woortmann, Rafael Poubel, Rangel Mohedano. With each of you this journey felt
more true and worthwhile.
I am extremely thankful to my friends in the Czech Republic, Ditta Dolejsiova and Petr Lebeda, and
especially to the incredible team of the Vaclav Havel Library, in the person of Marta Smolikova.
Your kind receptivity and support was determinant for this whole work.
I would like to thank all those who inspired and supported my reflective work: Amanda Gambale,
Antonio Brennand, Antonio Lino, Aron Belinki, Alan Dubner, Beatriz Pedreira, Caio Tendolini,
Cndido Azeredo, Carol Ramalhete, Cassio Martinho, Daniel Cara, Denise Castro, Drica Guzzi,
Erich Baptista, Fernando Sapelli, Fbio Brotto and Denise Jayme, Gil Scatena, Gisela and Mariana
Moreau, Igor Oliveira, Jos Moroni, Liliana Salvo, Marcel Taminato, Marina and David Feffer,
Maristela Bernardo, Michelle Prazeres, Neca Setubal, Oliver Henman, Oscar Motomura, Ricardo
Leal, Rogerio Godinho, Talita Montiel. This dissertation would not be the same without the support
of each of you.
I would also like to express my huge appreciation to all my fellows in Rede: Alessandra Monteiro,
Andr Lima, Bazileu Margarido, Eduardo Reiner, Gabriela Batista, Joo Francisco, Leonardo
Secchi, Lucas Brando, Marcela Moraes, Marina Silva, Muriel Saragoussi, Pedro Ivo, Pedro
Piccolo, Rafael Poo, Shalon Souza, Toinho Alves, Z Gustavo - and so many others who
remained firm in the battle field. Thank you all for keeping up courage, strength and wisdom.

My appreciation is equally extended to all my fellows in the community of transformative political

practices, in the persons of Patricia Shaw, Ricardo Young, Izabella Ceccato and Juliana Schneider:
your presences enabled this reflective journey to move further.
My gratitude to the fine contribution of my proof-readers: Bete Torii and Lou Gold. With your
precious help my own thinking has gotten much sharper and clearer.
To my family: my father Carlos, mother Patricia and sister Cristina, who gave me unconditional
support, my warmest love and gratitude.
This dissertation is dedicated to my wife, Elisa Marie, my greatest teacher in all my practices.

Table of Contents

1. The walls in our worlds .................................................................................................. 8

2. Flowing through the cracks. ........................................................................................ 13
3. Meeting the Impossible ............................................................................................... 19
4. Seeing the Invisible ..................................................................................................... 25
5. Holding Emptiness ...................................................................................................... 31
6. The Art of Spaciousness ............................................................................................. 37
Reference List ................................................................................................................. 44

So long as the notion of power is itself corrupted

by a romantic opposition with love, soul, goodness and beauty,
power will indeed corrupt, as the saying goes.
The corruption begins not in power,
but in the ignorance about it

James Hillman

1. The walls in our worlds

Wouldnt it be much more fascinating

to participate of the destiny of our common garden?
Rubem Alves

What can a person who is truly concerned with the future of his or her place, city, country and world
do, when she realizes that there is no way other than engaging, somehow, with the political sphere
of life?
A common citizen who chooses to act politically on behalf of a cause, an idea, a deep call of the
Soul, a life commitment for common good, will inevitably face a complex, difficult and often
exhausting journey. Political systems, even democratic ones, create wide and thick walls
separating rulers from citizens, the so-called powerful from the powerless. By avoiding that
people may become aware of what really happens on the other side and learn how to influence the
core of decisions about their own future, political systems become swallowed by their own internal
dynamics, and thus deny the very life that these are supposed to serve. Vaclav Havel (1975)
named this destructive pattern of political systems as entropy1, and has dedicated a great amount
of his life energy to explore how to overcome this destructive path:
An ordinary human being, with a personal conscience, personally answering for something to
somebody and personally and directly taking responsibility, seems to be receding farther and
farther from the realm of politics. (1992a)
Meanwhile, beyond the walls:
Politicians seem to turn into puppets that only look human and move in a giant, rather
inhuman theatre; they appear to be merely cogs in a huge machine, objects of a major
civilizational automatism which has gotten out of control and for which nobody is responsible.
(1992a)
We can imagine how a movement of energy happens invisibly through the gears of governmental
institutions, political parties, and interest groups controlled by all sorts of interests that go against
the common needs of life. Even though we know that the basic fuel of this operating system is a
greedy combination of hidden interests, lies and the maintenance of peoples ignorance and
alienation, we find ourselves powerless towards the appropriation of our common goods. Yet we
know that a romantic answer is not effective to transform political realms - we cant avoid the fact,
as once said Berthold Brecht, that it is from our non political participation that comes the
abandoned child, the robber, and most of all, corrupt officials, the lackeys of exploitative
corporations.

1 In a person's life, as we know, there is a moment when the complexity of structure begins suddenly to decline and his
path turns in the direction of entropy. This is the moment when he, too, succumbs to the general law of the universe: the
moment of death. Somewhere at the bottom of every political authority which has chosen the path to entropy (and would
like to treat the individual as a computer into which any program can be fed with the assurance that he will carry it out),
there lies hidden the death principle., says Vaclav Havel (1975)

The few who, with the authentic desire to serve the common good, are determined and strong
enough to succeed in occupying some chunks of space in formal politics, can sometimes reverse or
diminish some of these destructive threads. Hopefully, their actions will create fields that grow in
time, and their leadership capacity will allow them to open spaces for active citizens to engage in
behalf of the living impulses in society. However, while these actors learn how to occupy these
spaces, other forces also learn how to handle them on behalf of their particular interests. And this is
how, even when leaders are not corrupted, they are usually constrained, contained, controlled, so
that they do not threaten the hegemonic forces.
This situation becomes critical when we realize that the whole planet is going in a destructive
direction, already at critical speed, and the political responses are far from enough. The increasing
use of dirty energy and avoidance of clean solutions, the deepening of social inequality, all sorts of
intolerance and destruction of ancient cultures, the privatization of water, the irresponsible
production and consumption of food, and the whole chemical industry profiting from the diseases
produced by its effects, the forests being destroyed, wars being sponsored by weapon industries,
hypocrisy maintaining the narcotic industry, slave and semi-slave work dumping economies
worldwide, climate changes all this brings an exponential increase to this scenario.
The perverse concentration of wealth and power increases the capacity of these hidden forces to
transform political systems into machines that produce decisions and allocate common resources
for their own benefit. And these ruling forces become able to do good deeds that a few succeed to
implement to be used as a kind of cover excuse to legitimize their bad deeds. What has been said
here has been denounced over and over in many different ways, ever since Thomas Hobbes wrote
(1651) his Leviathan: an ever-increasing control of our destinies in the hands of a few who operate,
through the state, the economy and our cultural lives.
However, important studies indicate that the emergence of the so-called network society has
pushed humankind to the edge or into a transition state that may affect structurally this whole
scenario. The revolution of communication technologies and the common threats that impel
humankind to realize itself as a community (such as climate change), combined, are pushing forth a
globalized world that influences all spheres of human life. In that which Manuel Castells (2009)
has named spaces of flow new forms of spatial arrangements that allow distant, synchronous,
real-time interactions an unimaginable range of opportunities for citizenship participation has
been launched towards our future, and the old structures of governance do not seem capable of
absorbing what is being suggested in this new context.
Moises Nam (2013, p. 243) argues that a sweeping wave of innovations is building, one that
promises to change the world as much as the technological revolutions of the last two decades did.
It will not be top-down, orderly, or quick, the product of summits or meetings, but messy, sprawling,
and in fits and starts. Yet it is inevitable. Driven by the transformation in the acquisition, use, and
retention of power, humanity must, and will, find new ways of governing itself. Precisely, the end of
the efficacy of old structures of power is caused by the inability of the centres to cope with the
profusion of actors who became able to influence their decisions.
From the borders of the society (Silva, 2013), a wide range of new modes of action emerges,
organized around different themes and causes such as transparency, the raising of ecological
and organic economy, horizontal and cooperative movements and organizations, open source
technologies the examples are endless. People are finding other kinds of activism as expressions
of other developmental perspectives. New ways of influencing the public sphere are being invented
everyday, now less biased by ideological utopias, but perhaps driven by the desire to generate real
solutions that may inform different pathways for the whole paradigm to be changed.
In the network society, a new, highly interactive and horizontal culture enables the rapid formation
of the so-called democratic cells (Box 1824, 2015), spaces in which bridges between peripheries
and centres are built with innovative approaches that reinvent our ways of participating in the

society. Meanwhile, the old structures of governance and the values that sustain them seem to be
in check. Is this the end of the forms of power that we have known? Possibly yes, because the
increasing complexity of the scenario seems too dynamic to be controlled by the same old
centralized structures of governance and the emergence of New Powers (Heimans, 2014)
proves irreversible. Yes, we can foresee a major structural shift coming but, as both Nam and
Castells emphasise, this shift is not necessarily for the good.
Regardless of which kind of political system and governance models are to come, we can have at
least one certainty: No citizenship, no Democracy, said Havel (no date, p. 6). Active citizenship is
the only way to reverse the entropy of a political system2. If democratic cells remain marginal,
distant from what most people are experiencing in their realities, active citizens will never really
influence major decisions. The problem here is, as Castells demonstrates, that emerging
movements tend to split easily, due to an individualistic and atomized trait of their organisational
cultures.
A broader vision of citizenship is needed in order to bond the emerging but also scattering forces
into an actual capability. This means that a deep and wide shift in the very understanding of political
practice by all of us, citizens, must happen. In our day-to-day, despite all the new possibilities of
action, we are still conditioned by a kind of thinking that undermines our capacity to act more
broadly and effectively. When words such as power, politician, and political are used with a
pejorative connotation, a negative image of politics is formed in our imagination, and voil! - the
wall is formed. A deep change is necessary in our whole way of thinking about political life. There is
a nobility to be rooted in our very understanding of politics, rescuing its real meaning of Service
from our deep sense of reality.
Power is to be understood not as common sense induces us to understand the capacity to
make other people do what we want. This common sense, in this perspective, is power over,
based on manipulation and control; it is not true politics, but politicking. Power is inherent in the
very existence of political communities says Hannah Arendt (1972, p. 151), and it springs up
whenever people get together and act in concert, but it derives its legitimacy from the initial getting
together rather than from any action that then may follow. So it has nothing to do with violence,
force, nor property. In this sense, it is the capacity of people to act together for the common good; it
is power with. In this vision, at the heart of politics is the action of conversation; the encounters
between different human beings with their individual worldviews, interests, social backgrounds, etc.
but who articulate new acts to speak their intentions and who become responsible for keeping
commitments together. When citizens find their inherent power, the world is affected in
unpredictable ways.
Modernity by opening an abyss between thought and action (Arendt, 2005, cited in Hayek 2014,
- 69) combined with traces of other authoritarian cultures that still live in us3, has eroded human
solidarity and all spontaneous forms of living together, and pushes us towards corruption of this
nobility of politics. Additionally, because the nature of politics requires us to count on other, an other
who we cannot choose, who is different from us, and with whom we dont know how to relate
properly. The wall just like the world is not just out there: it is between I and the other who
belongs to other ideologies, other movements, other organisations, and other narratives of life.

The ways in which citizens attitudes influence the public sphere has been widely discussed inside political science,
under the theme of Civic Culture (Renno, 1998, pp 85), which recognizes how a democratic political culture requires a
structural shift on the day-by-day life of citizens. However, as Renno indicates (1998, pp. 86-89) the traditional science
recognizes its limitation in regards to cope with the immense complexity of variables that informs this relationship.
3
In his classical work of Brazilian historiography, Srgio de Holanda (1995) demonstrates the origins of one of the most
authoritarian political cultural traces of Brazil: the cordiality. The fear of loneliness, he argues, is the ground for a mask in
which no real feelings are brought forth when these may be somehow confronting the other. This pattern engenders a
kind of superficiality in which even the most tyrannical attitudes can be convened as noble gestures.

10

In the face of this wall, then we can easily get to the conclusion that it is better to come back to
small things, to our own lives, to our own work, in the safe space where we meet those who are
more like us or even better, our loneliness. And this is truly a valid choice as well, because small
is beautiful indeed, and there will never be major changes if we dont bring them to our own smallscale practices: we will not bring happiness to the world without happiness in our own lives. But this
choice has a deep implication: this attitude is precisely what the entropic forces most expect from
us, and we know (even if unconsciously) that we are responsible for our acquiescence.
There must be another way! one may choose to think instead. Our initial question impels us to act
precisely when we no longer can avoid facing our responsibility. Well then, how are we to assume
our real power as citizens, not succumbing into hopelessness in the face of the wall? What kind of
practice can emancipate us from this machine-like paradigm? How can the gap between this
deeper understanding and the limiting realities of practice be fulfilled? This dissertation is about the
search for a practical wisdom or phronesis - 4 which combines political activism with a reflective
journey of a becoming development practitioner.

Phronesis, in Aristotles terms, is an intellectual virtue that is reasoned, and capable of action with regard to things that
are good or bad for man, according to Flyvbjerg, (2003), it concerns values and goes beyond analytical, scientific
knowledge (episteme) and technical knowledge or know how (techne) and it involves judgements and decisions made in
the manner of a virtuoso social actor.

11

It is possible to imagine thousands of tiny, inconspicuous,

everyday decisions whose common denominator is precisely the spirit and
ethos of a politics that is aware of the global threat to the human race,
and which does not support general consumer resignation
but rather seeks to awaken a deeper interest in the state of the world
and rally the will to confront the threats hanging over it.
Above all, however, it is possible to imagine that through the agency
of thousands of properly chosen, carefully combined, and well-timed
public actions, the positive local climate in a country - that is, a climate of
solidarity, creativity, cooperation, tolerance and deepening civic responsibility
is slowly, inconspicuously, but steadily strengthened.
What is at issue here is not a set of dogmas, postulates and ideological
theses, but a political style, a political atmosphere, the inner spirit of politics.

Vaclav Havel
Wroclaw University - 1992

12

2. Flowing through the cracks.

The river does not want to achieve,

but stay wide and deep.
Guimares Rosa

In the year 1998, in the deep Amazon, a political group was elected in the state of Acre, breaking
decades of a series of corrupt and violent governments. Disciples of the Amazonian martyr Chico
Mendes brought forth what I found a revolutionary idea of Florestania, which might be translated
into English as Forestship a mixing of Forest and Citizenship. The Florestania concept
embraced the community of the land and forest including settlers, indigenous peoples and the
multiple other-than-human members of the states ecosystem, not only as beneficiaries, but also as
active participants of their whole development.
Driven by this very idea and by my admiration for one of the representatives of this group, the
Senator (and then Minister) Marina Silva, I arrived in Acre after their first re-election, as a member
of their strategic planning team. Throughout the various meetings I was facilitating, it amazed me
how one voice would influence some of their most relevant choices through the cracks of the formal
structure: it was Toinho Alves, regarded as a mentor of this political group from its beginning, and
creator of the concept of Florestania. Toinho had become critical of the contradictions of that very
government, and chose to keep active outside, in the borderland. The message of his speeches
and writings, illustrated with wisdom stories of the people and other forms of life in the forest,
staked a claim for their governments coherence; standing for the same horizontal, ecological and
open approach to power that made me admire Marina Silvas political style.
Years later I would learn from Toinho a story that illustrated their kind of political practice, which
valued the citizens participation from the borders: in the indigenous cultures the Cacique (the Chief)
holds social responsibilities at the centre of the tribe, while the Paj (the healer, or shaman) has
another political role: he perceives the subtle dynamics of the spiritual world, and keeps constantly
attentive to the life deep in the forest, so he is able to translate to the Cacique what is happening
beyond the reach of his sight. In the practical wisdom of those small traditional societies, the centre
is aware of its tendency to overlook important things, and remains awake to the breath of life
coming from the peripheries (Alves, 2014).
I consider this ancestral wisdom a guidance to understand the vital importance of the dynamics
between the centres and borders as a pivot point for our quest. In modern civilization, centres of
power are formed as cohering, gravitational loci of hegemonic control. As such, they become
resistant to influences coming from the border regions, filled with what seems strange, chaotic and
less reliable ideas originated outside of that cosy world created by the centre. So hegemonic forces
will tolerate their existence, and even use them on their own behalf when possible, as long as they
do not reach a threatening level of political influence.
Vaclav Havel (1991, 2007) has, throughout his journey, indicated a similar vision how it can be
possible to reverse a political systems entropy from the borders and how transformative a power
centre can become when it holds an open attitude toward the borders. As a charismatic young
dramatist and activist living under a totalitarian regime, and even though he was part of a very small
group, Havel engaged to reverse citizens passivity by communicating directly with the centre of
that authoritarian regime, with such a persuasive ability that it became impossible to ignore him. He
himself became a centre of new power - from a dissenting group to jail, then to presidency, and to

13

an international political superstar status, Havel kept an unfailing sensitivity to what was
happening at the borders, clearly standing for the most advanced issues of his time, in a constant
effort to reverse the machine-like political culture of modernity.
When one has the chance to come from the borders into a political system, one finds a very
complex web of many centres, which have their own borders, formed by other centres which are
also borders of other centres, and so on. Beyond appearances and formalities, the political fields do
not correspond strictly to static forms: a group that has little power can become suddenly a key
actor for a relevant choice; a political instance that now is powerful may soon not even exist; a
leader who is today is an attractor of hope can become tomorrow a symbol of the past. It is in the
nature of politics to be unstable and uncertain, like a swamp. Borders and centres are formed in the
midst of this web of uncertainty, in a fundamentally relational process in which a centre cannot
effectively act without carrying along its borders since the interaction with borders is what
constitutes every centre. (Kaplan, 1997)
Of course, this complex and dynamic understanding contrasts with the hegemonic mentality that
prevails in the political arena. In politics, there is no empty space - this is the only law of politics
this is the covenanted truth that justifies the kind of practice of those who see no way other than
doing business as usual. But this belief is, perhaps, what the new infinite new spaces of flow are
potentially putting on check.
***********
Ive been experiencing this paradigmatic contrast since my early days of promoting youth activism.
As I organized various forums, networks and courses that intentionally mixed NGOs and political
parties for the co-creation of public policies, I learned how party groups manipulated those
conversations - by defining who would be the last one to speak, grabbing someone elses ideas as
if they were their own, hiding relevant information, etc. Young politicians were taught how to control
their environment, and how to manipulate those around them to legitimate their position in the
centre.
From the moment I began realizing how authoritarianism is built in practice as a political culture, I
began an activism aiming to reverse this intergenerational thread. I believed in the shared exercise
of power as a solution for political changes, and searched for all possible means to discover how to
transform political practices. I sought guidance from a group of elders, internationally engaged in
nurturing civil society networks, and the facilitation practice was presented to me as a professional
path that could allow me to engage in attempting to generate new forms of political culture while
moving inside and outside different action fields.
This beginning of a professional journey happened while a political force was emerging in Brazil,
the first one to reach power with a strong social basis. A series of innovations and participatory
instances were being introduced in governmental processes, which increasingly demanded
professionals capable of holding space for new forms of conversation and dialogue with citizens. A
new and wide field of possibilities was just ahead of me, inside, outside and on the borders of
governments from municipal to national levels, in a joint effort to Democratize Democracy5 (Santos,
2007). My way of collaborating was to offer facilitation as a means to support the attitudinal

Democratize Democracy has been one of the main mottoes to frame the impulse of participatory public policies in Brazil,
from a left political perspective. Boaventura Souza Santos (2007) frames this idea under the concept of two
democracies, which proposes that a citizen-oriented and cultural perspective is a necessary response to a hegemonic
and utilitarian vision of democracy as a mere mechanism of governance. Participatory budgeting (Oramento
Participativo) and National Conferences would be the practical milestones of this political vision.

14

changes required to the development of a more horizontal and collaborative political culture
(Rombauer, 2003).
During more than ten years my main work was to facilitate major dialogues: at the ministry of
Culture integrating a diverse range of actors into supporting a radically new concept of public
policies; with an environmental conference involving hundreds of thousands of children who would
choose priorities for actions, starting in their schools up to a charter to be presented to the Brazilian
President; conversations between judges, policemen and prisoners to define common principles for
the justice system; inter-ministerial meetings negotiating highly complex matters. I was in a
privileged position to experience what this shared power really means and what happens when
the political system is receptive to influence from its borders: collective challenges were being
resolved integrating the long and short term perspectives, and participants enhanced their capacity
to influence each other positively. As these dialogical fields of action expanded, it was as if our
societys vital needs and creative impulses gained life and breathed new vitality through the
structure of governance.
Along the way, I designed an innovation that would take these participatory spaces a step further in
which citizens could engage more directly from their own spaces, either localities or thematic fields,
by creating their own free conference (Rombauer, 2009). Now people at homes or schools or
even prisons could bring these discussions into their lives and bring their lives into the discussions.
The range of participants was diversified; the cost per person was dramatically reduced; and the
quality of the proposals increased (Derivi, 2011). So I started to articulate the idea to be taken to
another level: every free conference could dialogue with conferences in other areas, and thus to
become a multi-thematic reflective and propositional space. This was a solution for another
problem I was working with inside the Strategic Planning Department: new horizontal (inter-agency
and interdisciplinary) programmes were failing due to internal competition and entrenched
bureaucracy in the governmental structure.
However, even though much interest was declared for this innovation, a deeper in-action
elaboration could not be presented to the responsible department. Over the few years that followed,
I witnessed the powerful inertia of the old ways of doing politics: ministerial positions were being
"horse-traded"; negotiations included forms of corruption; a retrograde developmental agenda full of
giant public works contracts became stronger; innovative cultural, educational, energy, and social
policies were being bypassed; all in favour of the same old politics that meant maintaining the
dominance of established interests. I concluded that truly participatory spaces were becoming mere
factoids without real capacities of influence. As policies and practices drifted in increasingly
conservative and less innovative directions, I searched for another stance that required a new
concept of development and participation, and, indeed, a new concept of politics.
Some years later I would find myself in a leadership role of an independent, horizontal and open
citizens movement. The MovMarina6 was based on the idea of a new way of doing politics: a
pioneering, spontaneous, internet-organized and with hundreds of autonomous local and thematic
groups; and all its strategies were co-created and grounded on initiatives coming from those
multiple spaces. This movement became a centrepiece of a 2010 presidential campaign, and
because the leadership style of our candidate, Marina Silva, was also deeply open and nonhierarchical, it was natural for a strong bond to form; a field of trust-based action and exchange was
established, in which information and creative ideas could move from the borders to the centre, and
from the centre back to the borders, with relative ease.

MovMarina stands for Movimento Marina Silva, created in 2007 by an independent group of citizens (Machado,
2007) which believed that the symbolic role of Marina Silva could have a pedagogical effect into the political scenario if
brought forth as a candidate.

15

My role was basically to monitor and maintain a vital openness at that centre of power, so that
actors in the borders could perceive themselves as, and truly be, co-creators in our movement.
Indeed, a surprising stream of creative actions emerged from those cooperative forms and actually
influenced the core strategy of the campaign. (I was glad when Toinho appeared from the
borderlands, as if our Paj, bringing powerful insights from the field.).
The 2010 presidential campaign carried us into a great contradiction. The outstanding result 7
caused Marina Silva to be perceived as a serious political player and attracted many new forces to
her cause. But, from my perspective and my understanding of our movements new way of doing
politics, we faced an internal defeat. The differing operating styles of some of the key actors who
gathered around our candidate clashed with ours. There was not enough trust, and a whole series
of undermining internal conflicts reduced the capability of our campaign as a whole.
This fragmentation increased after the election, when a new nonpartisan movement (the new
politics) was created aiming to expand and consolidate the field of political energy that had
emerged from the presidential campaign (Borges, 2011). Although the vision of creating a new
politics remained as a central idea (IDS, 2011), the leading approach was not open-centred, and
many of us from the earlier Movmarina stage did not know how to relate with this new structure of
power. For us, although the vision being carried on was clearly an evolution of our discussions, its
practice did not exemplify what we understood as the new politics nor did it show any interest in
grounding the new phase in the lessons of our accumulated experience (DAngelo, 2012). So I
stood in the border of the border, where I could find the openness and authenticity, and more
meaningful ways of acting.
Along the years, as the new politics movement faced an identity crisis (how to be effective without
any real space to act inside the political system?), it also seemed that, in the group around Marina,
our differences were being slowly integrated, and we seem to gain maturity. It was becoming
clearer that the new politics should not ignore the old structures, and the new and the old were
complementary. So then, at the beginning of 2013, a decision was taken of setting up a new
political institution based on the idea of a radical openness to peoples protagonism, through
horizontal and shared ways of power. Rede Sustentabilidade (Rede) was being conceived to
become a non-party party standing for new and independent citizenship powers, and for the
development of a qualified and participatory platform for sustainable development.
After our party failed to be sanctioned in time for the following elections, Rede kept active
informally, and joined a forming alliance of parties for the electoral campaign. Marina Silva became
the vice-presidential candidate together with the presidential candidate Eduardo Campos, an
extremely skilled leader belonging to the traditional politics, who thus was embracing the main
vision and proposals of Rede. His tragic death8 forced the return of Marina Silva to the centre of
presidential elections. The sudden increase of vote intentions she attracted provoked a jeopardizing
response: the campaign of the president running for re-election intensively defamed her, her family
and main allies with an overwhelming campaign of lies. A wave of confusion and anger was
created, and corroborated to push our population even farther away from politics.9
With all means of propaganda used to damage her image before the population, Marina Silva
became perceived as an unprepared and reactionary leader. And, in such a dramatic situation, our

Marina Silva gathered 20 million votes far beyond the predictions of pollsters.
Eduardo Campos has died on a tragic airplane crash, nearly a month after the beginning of the electoral campaign.
9 As a result, the most conservative congress ever in our history was elected, and a long-term series of retrocessions,
including some harming basic human rights articles of our Constitution, is now at stage; and waves of street protests and
the lowest popularity of a president in the history of Brazilian democracy are indications of a natural response against this
practice.
8

16

campaign was (again) not able to integrate itself internally, neither to resist externally the
destructive campaign machine of the ruling forces. What practical wisdom may we discover here?

***********
We must bear in mind that some of the greatest political conquests of humankind, like the end of
slavery, universal suffrage and human rights, emerged from the margins and faced fierce
resistance. Small groups with a deep call, many times isolated, start at the border areas where it is
easier to hold a true intention together. Setbacks are part of any struggle, from which new learning
and resilience can be built. The capacity of influencing wider circles grows as marginal positions
gain expression and support, up to the point where there is a breakthrough into mainstream political
awareness. Here is where great political leaders make a difference: their personal charismatic
authority holds the vision, integrate differences, and motivate a wide range of actors to bring their
best to the cause.
Nowadays, many causes emerge from the borders trying to use the emergent networking
opportunities to spread their messages and sink deeper roots in society. A huge mosaic is being
drawn and only history will show its final form. But there do seem to be some foundational features:
widespread and inclusive Internet allowing large-scale participation to increase exponentially; the
so-called democratic cells building bridges of new relations between citizens and public
authorities; and a general receptiveness to innovation. The common keywords of the new politics
usually stress openness -- Open Government, Open Data, Open Democracy.
Rede Sustentabilidade (2015) is just a tiny part of this major mosaic, and yet it stands for a
historical shift that no other political party in the country is declaring: an integration of these living
democratic cells into a sustainable future, based on a more complex understanding of our reality,
which encompasses different levels of sustainability. It clearly does not aim to seize power in the
traditional hegemonic terms, but to allow a consistent body of ideas and people to find positions
inside the system, while at the same time holding strong cooperation flows through centres and
borders (Garcia, 2013), thus allowing their transformative energy to generate transformative
synergies throughout the political arena. Are we going to succeed? Will there be another more
efficient political group that can better serve their transformative potential? We dont know.
What I can highlight from this whole experience, following Arendts and Havels earlier diagnosis, is
that we are all immersed in a fragmented and divided world: the openness we strive for is not yet
embodied in attitudes, in relationships, in our political culture and without this deeper shift, all of
our activism falls into a black hole. Any honest reflection will bring us to the understanding that no
answers can emerge from this or that group, from outstanding leaders or from models or universal
solutions. Stronger forces than our fragmenting patterns are to be found.
This is where practical wisdom is to be discovered: in learning how to act, to think, to be in these
spaces of flux with a simultaneous capacity to transform our own culture that still induces so much
of our thinking and feeling and doing into a colonized, exploitative and utilitarian approach to life.
Bridging this gap from the visible level of action to the invisible level of our culture requires a kind of
knowledge rarely (if at all) found in books, in their languages that speak about our world. Practical
wisdom goes deeper, it speaks out of the way we live in the world; it is invisibly being woven by
many hands from inside the realm of action, responding to our need of understanding and narrating
our realities with ideas that speak directly to our selves in practice.
If there is a practical wisdom to be found, we must search through the confounding and obscure
realm of our political experiences, further into the invisible.

17

The more sensitive a person is to all the dangers

that threaten him, the better able he is to defend against them.
For that matter, I have always thought that feeling empty
and losing touch with the meaning of life are
in essence only a challenge to seek new things to fill one's life,
a new meaning for one's existence and one's work.
Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt
that gives birth to new certainties?
Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil
that nourished human hope;
perhaps one could never find sense in life
without first experiencing its absurdity.

Vaclav Havel
Salzburg Festival 1990

18

3. Meeting the Impossible

Politics is not an open field, where the sun enhances flowers and fruits.
It is a tangle over the swamp. With any misstep, the fall can be fatal.
() I have never feared being engrossed in this Cipoal10, having
my feet sink in the swamp, tearing my skin on the rocks which,
in the shadows, indicate the path to the future"
Frei Betto

When the entropy of a political system restrain activist citizens from influencing its centre, they
respond by taking action from the borders, finding ways to nurture their life through the cracks.
Open flows of action between centres and borders can inform new fields of political action, from
which other kinds of development can blossom. But what happens, in practice, when the borders
reach real spaces of decision where the machine and its cogs are inevitable? What results of the
meeting of differences in dialogue, when deep tensions between different values, purposes and
interests are encountered on the political stage?
Hannah Arendt (1952, p. 52) says:
To live together in the world means essentially that a world of things is between those who
have it in common, as a table is located between those who sit around it; the world, like every
in-between, relates and separates men at the same time. The public realm, as the common
world, gathers us together and yet prevents our falling over each other, so to speak. What
makes society so difficult to bear is not the number of people involved, or at least not
primarily, but the fact that the world between them has lost its power to gather them together,
to relate and to separate them.
If there can be a shared practical wisdom to sustain a transformative political practice, this wisdom
must bring us to a deeper realm of our relationships in the real world.
I learned from my experience with Marina Silva, to think of this meeting space, this common world
as Hannah Arendt would have it where political action becomes more dense and the friction
between differences intensify, as the cipoal: it seems impossible, there, to grasp the meaning,
direction and real intentionality of a massive amount of words and gestures. The cipoal is shadowy,
murky, and nothing seems to be linear: when we walk through it, we stumble upon strange traps,
which hook us inside the shadows of our own thinking and feeling and doing, in places our
awareness does not reach. Inside the cipoal one can easily miss what is happening in the fields
outside, and thus we ourselves become part of the entanglement, losing sight of the borders of our
own lives and thus beginning to live a centre that is dictated by circumstances.
Some people develop an outstanding capacity to move through the tangle of lianas; they master
the fine art of weaving convergences to generate synergies, cooperation, and compromises
amongst wide ranges of actors, flowing inside, outside and through their fields of action. The
practice of holding their own integrity - their own centre - allows them to maintain the vitality of the

10

A cipoal is a thicket of lianas. In the Brazilian colloquial sense, cipoal also means a place of confusion in which one can become
completely lost. There are many stories about people who, in the Amazon forest, spent hours lost inside a cipoal. Often, the only way out
is to have someone outside calling so the person inside can have a sense of direction.

19

whole political system by opening relational spaces for the differences to meet and dialogue. A
conscious relationship with their own centre allows them to have porous and open borders, and
thus to operate with a certain freedom within the cipoal, playing a role in cleansing its spaces,
nurturing the system to breathe and recover its sense of genuine service.
But as long as this capacity is only held by a few, it is not possible to uplift the whole dynamics
between centres and borders towards the larger, systemic, and structural changes which a network
society invites us to make. So the quest we face is to learn how to master our way through the
cipoal, collectively. Without this shared practical wisdom, we citizens will remain projecting our
hopes onto a few illuminated creatures, while remaining ourselves distant from our mutual
responsibility.
Because visibility and publicity are vital in politics, we are constantly pushed to the outside of
ourselves. The greater the responsibility one bears, the stronger are the external demands, which
can become overwhelming. In certain situations, the pressure is so high that we are impelled to put
our own convictions, and even our own humanity, on hold. In Webberian terms, a political actor
risks finding himself in a situation where it is impossible to reconcile his responsibility with his
conviction, and avoid the point where the connection between these two poles would break apart:
an ethics of conviction and an ethics of responsibility are not absolute antitheses but are mutually
complementary, and only when taken together do they constitute the authentic human being who is
capable of having a vocation for politics. (Webber, 1994, p. 92).
This tension is surely present in Rede Sustentabilidade, which was conceived based on a radical
democratic perspective, as an attempt to break free from the monopoly of politics of the dominant
parties, through the affirmation of the autonomous and horizontal new ways of political action. It
aims to reverse some of the old and authoritarian ways, through restricting the amounts and kinds
of donation for campaigns, restraining re-election, standing for independent citizens candidacies. It
strives for a sophisticated programme that can overcome the traditional fragmentation of policies,
framing the interconnectedness of all relevant issues under a complex vision of sustainable
development.
Yet, Rede is much more than a mere political experiment or idealistic adventure. It is committed to
its own history and its potential. It carries the weight of a legacy of significant vote support, and a
wide range of stakeholders, plus the countless political actors who want to be allies once its status
as a political party has been formalized. This also attracts a tsunami of external demands, far
beyond its capacity of responding, because it is such a small group in fact. And most of these
demands are put upon the shoulders of our main leader, Marina Silva.
Holding this responsibility demands prudence. And prudence is always necessary in the cipoal,
where the differences put us in a constant need to care about what is said and done. It is a tricky
environment: in politics we cannot choose who our peers will be, thus we often bump against
attitudes we find really hard to swallow; yet we need to maintain some level of cooperation. At times
we cannot remain silent, but we also dont want to be jeopardized by someone who might feel
threatened by our words and gestures. We cannot fully trust everything that is said and everyone
who approaches, yet some level of shared trust is needed, otherwise we cannot move on.
But when we act with excessive prudence, our own convictions lose their ground. Those who are
observing us from the borders, when they cannot recognize our purpose being expressed in our
attitudes, tend to step away, leaving the centre weakened and more vulnerable to other influences.
As the pressure increases, it tends to become harder to maintain cooperation with all borders,
because centres tend to be occupied by individuals who are ready to do the hard work that many
others are not. Ive experienced this tension with a local deputy in my city of Brasilia, Joe Valle.
Once, reflecting together about this challenging dynamics, Joe asked me: How do I avoid
becoming myself contaminated by the environment of politics? (Valle, 2013)

20

A centre requires some level of control of what shall or shall not pass through its boundaries
otherwise it cannot maintain its integrity. In a way, the boundary of a centre generates or selects
what other centres will be in its borders. When the centre starts to operate in fear of what is
happening in its boundaries, this control becomes excessive, manipulative, and it undermines the
bonds of trust and cooperation. This is how the Crystal Cages (Matus, 2000, p. 9) begin to be
formed: the leader no longer can see what happens around, due to the filters that the controlling
techno-political bureau creates, even against the leaders will. This is the fundamental risk of any
political group: to lose track of its own borders.
In the early formation of Rede, I realized this tendency towards an enclosure when I felt being
pushed outside together with others who held a stance for horizontality, openness and innovation.
Our names were being cut off lists inexplicably; our proposals were not considered and unexpected
aggressive words were being addressed to us. I reacted by proposing informal spaces of horizontal
cooperation and open conversation however, the more I strived to reverse this tension, the more
strong were the resistances from the controlling centre.
After many attempts, I became paralyzed in my own incapacity to deal with this dispute, up to a
point where I found no more enthusiasm, no conviction in participating. When I stopped trying to do
something, I realized this inner split: part of me had lost the hopes in Rede, and another part simply
did not accept for myself to go farther away from the centre, again. Reflecting deeper, I could see
how the Webberian dilemma was here, in my own mind, dividing me inside. I took a break to reflect
deeper, until I realized that the situation was also being created by me, and therefore I needed to
respond to my own deeds in it. As I acknowledged how my attitudes were actually amplifying our
fragmenting disputes, the situation revealed itself as an opportunity for me to become the change I
want to see in the world.
But this reconciling did not reveal what was really hooking me why did I lose conviction? What
exactly was my contribution to that entropy? With the support of other development practitioners,
my closest political peers and the accompaniment of a therapist, I dived into my own shadows:
what am I unconscious about in this situation?11 Using concrete situations of practice as a mirror, I
explored how to become aware of my own reactions and patterns of behaviour. As this situation
was being disembroiled, the cipoal was revealed to be also inside myself - each liana of external
conflict and tensions and misunderstandings was feeding from an unconscious feeling, which
demanded a careful inner work towards emancipation.
At some point I realized why the split between theory and practice was also happening in my own
practice: I was not really saying what I had to say, as for example, that there was a hidden dispute
prevailing amongst us; and that the New Politics, which I felt responsible for, had become a mere
slogan for me and most of my peers, while our creative horizontal experience was being considered
irrelevant, and I couldnt bear that denial of our own existence. My conviction was screaming inside,
but by holding back my voice in anger, I was not taking a true stand for my own purpose. This was
mixed with some gestures of arrogance stemming from an illusory notion of superiority, rooted in a
lack of confidence in my own potential. Although I wanted to shift the undermining competition into
cooperation, unconsciously my attitudes were undermining the whole field: prudence was being
corrupted into cowardice.
Reaching this awareness allowed me to understand: I needed courage to look honestly to my self,
to assume my convictions and to express authentically my voice to the world; but also to access my
own vulnerability and to appreciate more what was valuable in others. So I engaged in an
intentional work of speaking more honestly to people, including those whom I had some difficulties
relating with; and of embracing their truth. By observing more carefully my own shadows of

11

This is one of the key self-awareness confronting questions suggested by James Hollis (2007, p. 209) when one is
projecting upon others his own shadows.

21

arrogance and superiority, I slowly began to learn the value of bringing more honesty and meaning
to each word I would speak.
The truth is not in us, but amongst us, one of Marina Silvas most recurrent phrases, became a
guidance for me at this stage. I found the same message in Vaclav Havels basic imperative of
living in truth: the truth is not simply what you think it is; it is also the circumstances in which it is
said, and to whom, why, and how it is said. (2000, p. 67). As I gained courage to embody this
truthfulness, and started facing more honestly the consequences of my own attitudes, and
attempted to perceive and express my voice more clearly, I could also realize the subtle but
powerful consequence: the field responded to my openness by opening to me.
In this reciprocal opening, as resistances were being brought down, I could perceive how my
empathic limitations made it difficult for others to relate with me - You seem to feel misunderstood,
said one of my peers; I dont know how to deal with your discontinuities, said another one. But
also, moving outside my small crystal cage allowed me to understand how others even those who
were more actively involved in the centre of Rede - experienced situations very similar to mine: We
are not a group, if we were, we would have a space to speak honestly; "I feel that we make today
an effort to avoid entering into conflict; we pretend there are no conflicts among us; "We haven't
still been able to present this new politics to society because we don't reflect and we don't try to
practice it internally"; We are losing our radicalness; I havent been to one single meaningful
conversation the whole last year, There is a protection system set around us that seems
impossible to break (authors journal, 2013 - 2014).
A vital part of our thinking was revealed to be held in backstage conversation, and many times
enclosure inside us. As I was getting closer to peers whom I previously regarded as internal
opponents, and I saw them, just like me, incapable of pulling the strings just ahead, I started to see
that there was a field of attitudinal change to be worked through; my loss of meaning was our loss
of meaning, and it seemed to me the field was asking me to offer to others what I had offered to
myself. So, as I began to move differently, changes immediately began to unfold.

*****

I would learn later that in the forest life, it is the vital role of lianas to embrace trees so these do not
fall when the storms come. Their presence means diversity of trees around: the cipoal has an
important role in keeping the systems integrity and diversity especially in the most dry and
vulnerable areas. For this ability of generating shadows, embracing growth and nurturing diversity,
certain lianas are used as pioneer plants in the reforestation of devastated areas. Likewise, the
cipoal of politics holds in its darkness and confusion a valuable opportunity: it challenges us to
become more whole in our selves, attentive to our own borders and centres, aware of how mutually
interdependent we are, how there is a level of unity amongst us that simply cannot be overlooked.
Perhaps this is what Arendt means when she says the organised loneliness of our modern
condition is considerably more dangerous than the unorganized impotence of all those who are
ruled by the tyrannical will (Arendt, 1951, cited in LaFay, 2014, p. 143). As a response, Arendt
suggests that we may discover a kind of happiness, or eudaimonia, which is regarded as the
ultimate goal or ideal of the type of politics that is not an end separated from the means to reach it.
When man takes part in public life he opens for himself a dimension of human experience that
otherwise remains closed to him and that in some way constitutes a part of complete happiness
(Arendt, 1972, cited in LaFay, 2014, p. 143).

22

By enlarging our perspective on reality we can recognize that there is a continuity of the changes
outside and inside ourselves: we are built as we build the world, like centres and borders are
relationally and iteratively constituted. The shadows are the environment where the subtlest beams
of our light can be found: where our fears are unconsciously holding us back, they may be offering
the key with which to transform the circumstances and us. By simply becoming more aware of how
we create the world as it is at every moment, with every gesture and every relationship, we can be
surprised by an already changing world. How is it possible to build this other level of awareness,
collectively, in the realm of political action?

23

 we may know immeasurably more about the universe than our

ancestors did, and yet, it increasingly seems they knew something more
essential about it than we do, something that escapes us.
The same thing is true of nature and of ourselves. The more thoroughly
all our organs and their functions, their internal structure and the
biochemical reactions that take place within them are described, the more
we seem to fail to grasp the spirit, purpose and meaning of the system
that they create together and that we experience as our unique self.
And thus today we find ourselves in a paradoxical situation.
We enjoy all the achievements of modern civilization that have made
our physical existence on this earth easier in so many important ways.
Yet we do not know exactly what to do with ourselves, where to turn.
The world of our experiences seems chaotic, disconnected, confusing.
There appear to be no integrating forces, no unified meaning,
no true inner understanding of phenomena
in our experience of the world.
Experts can explain anything in the objective world to us,
yet we understand our own lives less and less.

Vaclav Havel
The Philadelphia Liberty Medal - 1994

24

4. Seeing the Invisible

The hardest thing to see

is what is in front of your eyes
Johann W. von Goethe

The openness we are searching for in political life is nurtured by a wider kind of openness which
emerges from an ongoing and iterative journey with the world, as we transform ourselves in
relationships with others and allow other kinds of doing to inform other ways of being. "Politics will
remain the effect of heart defects and madness of reason says Frei Betto (2006, p. 280), as long
as human beings remain unable to reinvent themselves". Here we meet the Gandhian axiom Be
the change you want to see in the word: transformation goes simultaneously inward and outward;
it is one continuous thread.
Vaclav Havel (1990) invited us to understand that politics can be not simply the art of the possible,
especially if this means the art of speculation, calculation, intrigue, secret deals and pragmatic
manoeuvring, but that it can also be the art of the impossible, that is, the art of improving ourselves
and the world." This capacity seems beyond reach, except for the outstanding leaders on whom we
project our hopes. The gap we find between discourse and practice is not just a matter of
hypocrisy: our very fragmented way of being hooks us back. We know that our contradictions
undermine our capacity to act differently, but we still are not prepared to unleash our true power
from our inner hooks. We seek the horizon from the edge of a cliff, and just ahead of us a bridge
remains invisible, until we refine our ability to see this subtle reality. How can we learn to see the
hidden forces we must work with?
Like magnetic fields, the invisible realms of social life cannot be seen from any abstraction of
reality. The invisible is revealed through a careful observation of experience. To see it requires a
deeper level of connection with the world as a participant in it. Havel (1992a), again:
It is my profound conviction that we have to release from the sphere of private whim and
rejuvenate forces such as a natural, unique and unrepeatable experience of the world, an
elementary sense of justice, the ability to see things as others do Things must once more
be given a chance to present themselves as they are, to be perceived in their individuality. We
must see the pluralism of the world, and not bind it by seeking common denominators or
reducing everything to a single common equation. We must try harder to understand rather
than to explain. The way forward is not in the mere construction of universal systemic
solutions, to be applied to reality from the outside; it is also in seeking to get to the heart of
reality through personal experience. Such an approach promotes an atmosphere of tolerant
solidarity and unity in diversity based on mutual respect, genuine pluralism and parallelism. In
a word, human uniqueness, human action and the human spirit must be rehabilitated.
This seeking the heart of reality through personal experience may be groundbreaking, as it
happened to me seven years ago. At the time I was believed to be a participation expert, but
nonetheless in practice I couldnt move beyond the systems entropy in my quest for deepening
participation. I approached then an elder facilitator internationally regarded as a wise man.
Perhaps, I thought, my offering him an opportunity to work with me in a new field could be a good
deal for him, while I could learn some new methods to improve my intervention on complex
meetings.

25

But this did not happen. Instead, I heard: It seems a very interesting work, Eduardo. However,
what you are doing is not participation, as I understand it. His first lesson was to show me how my
professional attitude actually was playing the game of the machine; my vital energy was promoting
entropy rather than reversing it. The means I was using did not exemplify the ends I was longing
for; thus my practice had become an instrumental one. It wasnt a matter of my intentionality: the
reality I was immersed in and my own professional identity pushed me away from the very core
purpose in that work. Participation is not something to be facilitated; participation is a quality of our
relationship with the world that arises through us and that simultaneously moulds us realising this
quality embodies a way of living rather than a consequence of facilitation he told me.
That encounter brought me into a new learning journey, carrying me beyond whatever places my
imagination had ever reached before. I entered not just a capacity building programme, but an
environment in which a radically different kind of approach to life was experienced, in which abilities
would be developed way beyond the boundaries of facilitation and consultancy and political work.
Actually, my very notion of what it means to be a human being would also be transformed - from an
abstract notion of self and of the world, deeper into the roots of lifes meaning.
I joined a group of social practitioners, some of them beginners and others more experienced in this
Art of the Invisible12. Our common quest was to embody, in our social practices, another way of
seeing the world that would bring effectiveness to our transformative efforts in the social realm. We
would spend weeks immersed in nature, stretching our thinking as deep and as far as possible:
twisting our old senses of reality with meditations and observation exercises; dissolving our
dualistic modes of perception by seeing the phenomenon of light in prisms; reframing our ways of
perceiving the world with drawing activities; baring the laws of the infinite through projective
geometry; allowing our unconscious mind to be expressed through clay; relating with nature from
different perspectives in order to understand the deeper formative patterns of life.
These exercises would sharpen our sights, preparing us to see the invisible patterns in the social
realm. We would search over and over again our practices, observing through many angles the
various social situations each of us was immersed in. We would also reflect on our own lives
developments, refining our capacity of becoming aware of our blind spots, connecting to the true
intentions in every action, learning to notice more of what was really going on in each challenging
situation we had faced. Reflections were done always giving space for the integration of body and
thought, returning to our breathing, and to the contemplation of Nature again as our greatest source
of wisdom. Taking from an enlarged sense of being, we would once again proceed with observing
our practices. And then we would come back to our own lives and working fields, until a few months
later we would meet again for another learning journey.
to release from the sphere of private whim
and rejuvenate forces such as a natural, unique and
unrepeatable experience of the world
The first practical effect, right from the beginning, was to unmask my comfort zone. I realized that
although my cause was participation, without being a participant I could never really neither
facilitate, nor lead, the kind of transformation I was searching for. So I moved into a new space in
which my weakest side could be revealed in action, in which I had to learn to let go of my idealized
persona of an expert and become equal to others. In the beginning, letting go the old armour
and the weapons of abstraction was hard. This happened while I was entering the cipoal, where my
professional capacities were not considered of great value and I ended up getting myself lost in my

12

Artistas do Inivisvel, a Programme offered by the Proteus Initiative and Instituto Fonte, under the tutorship of Allan
Kaplan, in So Paulo, Brazil, from march 2009 until November 2011.

26

striving to transform it. It took me a couple of years and many efforts in vain, struggling with that
reality, until I gave up trying.
This very gesture of letting go of my usual ways of acting revealed that a deeper change was
happening in me; another way of seeing was grounding my way of being, in which the whole
situation, myself included, was being perceived from a broader perspective. An inner observer was
strengthened, which calmed me down into taking a deep breath and becoming able to surrender to
that situation, accepting the uncertainties and paradoxes of that context and my own vulnerabilities.
Ok, I am lost, and this is part of my journey, I wrote in my journal (march 2014). This is when the
disentangling of the lianas began to happen: new possibilities of acting appeared, which required
from me an attitude of allowance instead of struggling. From the borders I was finding my way back
to my true centre, and therefore to my true power, through a renewed relationship with the world.
This is where the real effect of the learning journey was happening, in the transformation of my way
of seeing. As Goethe would say: There is a difference between seeing and seeing, that the eyes of
the spirit have to work in continuous living conjunction with the eyes of the body, for one otherwise
risks seeing and yet seeing past a thing. (Barnes, p 270). That other mode of consciousness, as
Henry Bortoft (2004 p. 64) would name it, in which we unleash our thinking from the analytical
mode to a change in how we see the relationship between the elements, i.e., in their mode of
togetherness, was becoming stronger. Seeing relationships between all the elements, and myself
included, from this broader perspective, revealed what needed to be done, and where my real
place was. The tensions and disputes were not over, the contradictions were still there, and nothing
had changed but my own mode of consciousness: and yet everything had changed completely.
Things must once more be given a chance
to present themselves as they are
Seeing the invisible means seeing relationships it is the ability to identify everything as part of a
larger context, or the whole, and to see every part in its relationship to every other part forming this
whole. Goethes intuitive way of science goes inside the phenomenon to find that it is the same
phenomenon in another dimension, says Bortoft (2004, p. 73). This understanding of nature and of
myself allowed me to approach with more respect and contemplation the paradoxes of every
situation; I began seeing through the overwhelming density of words and actions in the cipoal, to
understand some of the patterns that were behind the conflicts. I would let go of meaningless words
and gestures, and hold onto those in which a living meaning was found.
Now, the law according to which there is no empty space in politics was revealed as a mere
habit of thinking which was conditioning our blindness in regard to this (previously) invisible realm. I
could see how the centres fear of the border was being formed with this belief, and began
questioning it. Every time a peer would repeat this phrase, I would respond, I see us surrounded
by emptiness, inviting him/her into an appreciative reflection upon the unseen possibilities of
action. The truth amongst us then became strongly felt as one of these meaningful threads to hold
with: as I deepened my intention in this thought, the gap between our discourse and practice was
no longer a mere incoherence, but as one of the paradoxes we were being invited to bear with.
The truth is that we need each other, and who we are at this stage of our development is our basic
raw material for political action, I wrote in my journal. (August, 2014).
It is part of us to be simultaneously open and closed, to act vertically and horizontally, to think in
pragmatic and idealist ways we are paradoxical beings; and it is part of our quest to discover our
strength in our weakness, our lights through our shadows, our true power through our misleading
attitudes. What to do was simply (and yet quite a complex task) to bring our limits and
contradictions into awareness, by paying closer attention to the inner relationships of the field. We
can see that the polarity between centres and borders is also inside us: for an individual to be truly

27

centred (to be whole and present) he has to be open to his borders, while generous and free
activity on the peripheries of our being enables an open and embracing centre to arise. So the
strength of one pole is what guarantees the strength of the other: we must occupy spaces if we
want to make them open and empty for life; our uniqueness is found in our condition of being equal;
we can only promote long term transformations by engaging fully in each moment; and so on.
Such an approach promotes an atmosphere
of tolerant solidarity and unity in diversity
Beyond the disputes around the centre of our power, where once I joined the choir of complainers
about what seemed to be a lack of internal leadership of Marina Silva, I began to understand her
attitude not any more as ambiguous, but as a way of cultivating emptiness at our centre, and
simultaneously bearing the heaviness of the old political game. That centre now, in my eyes, was
holding a living impulse of openness to its borders, which would not force us to find our true power
ahead of time. Life was showing me that it was not time to engage directly in the centre: another
kind of work was necessary; avoiding the future entropic political force, shifting its centres
tendency toward enclosure, would only be possible by enhancing the capacity of leadership from
the very borders. A maturation time was required for this field to be formed; freed from the
pressures of a coming election I could focus on weaving together another kind of shared
leadership, with a long-term perspective of action.
Precisely here lies a possibility for our shared power to be found: in a conscientious relationship
with our deeper reality with the very laws of our being a right relationship with polarity can
begin. This perception made it visible to me that there was plenty of space for this art of the
invisible to be cultivated without any need of disputing the existing spaces. Here is when my
renewed activism for an attitudinal change emerged, and from the borders, it appeared quite
naturally: my place was with young members of Rede and also with other groups of political
activists outside the party, which will inevitably converge at some point, independently of electoral
circumstances.
After the campaign, in the second national youth meeting of Rede, Marina Silva joined our meeting
unexpectedly and unannounced. She kindly asked if she could just listen to the youths; I want to
learn from you what our next steps might be, she said in her brief words during the encounter. Her
attitude of coming to the youth gathering only to listen, instead of speaking, was one amongst many
demonstrations of a stand for a long-term transformation, indicated an opening and alive field built
through our human bonds.
More than changing the development model, we need to change the way we see things. It is a
matter of an eternal quest for meaning. this is another of Marina Silvas recurrent sayings (Prado,
2008). This brief story is about how I found again the meaning to be part of that process, and began
integrating this other approach to life back into the political field. As I developed this living thinking, I
began to notice how the intuitive capacity that Marina Silva carries, just like Toinho other peers with
whom I find wisdom alive in practice, also gain this capacity to perceive the subtle dynamics of life
from an experience of deep relation with nature. I noticed how their honouring ancient cultures,
their symbolic way of thinking, carried that impulse of refining the eyes of the spirit that I was
learning in phenomenology. Here I found again the eternal quest for meaning, the quest which
could not be imposed neither obtained only allowed to emerge in us, amongst us, through time.
In a word, human uniqueness, human action
and the human spirit must be rehabilitated.

28

The field of our relationships is an infinite realm of possibilities to be transformed. As we pay

attention to these invisible patterns (we make them visible through paying attention) then there is a
demand for us to become much larger in order to be big enough to encompass them in our sight.
And when we dont get caught in sides or poles, we become whole thanks to looking always
towards the whole which is invisible until we are able to see it. We can find a vast and fertile
emptiness, just ahead of us, waiting to be discovered as new ground for our development.
And although this change is in a collective realm, it begins with a change in our intimate perspective
upon life. The question is how to cultivate a reciprocal capacity of keeping one another aware,
which can be manifested ever strongly as we climb the hills of our political challenges. Here is a
kind of participation that is not the result of facilitation it is not instrumental but is the expression
of our actual presence in the world, from where a generative level of engagement can be realized.
This seems to be the practical wisdom to be nurtured.
What would it be like if this wisdom was something more consistently grounded in the political field?

29

It is my impression that sooner or later politics will be faced

with the task of finding a new, post-modern face.
A politician must become a person again, someone who trusts not only a
scientific representation and analysis of the world, but also the world
itself. He must believe not only in sociological statistics, but in real people.
He must trust not only an objective interpretation of reality, but also his
own soul, not only an adopted ideology, but also his own thoughts; not
only the summary reports he receives every morning, but also his own
feeling.
Soul, individual spirituality, first-hand personal insight into things, the
courage to be himself and go the way his conscience points, humility in
the face of the mysterious order of Being, confidence in its natural
direction and, above all, trust in his own subjectivity as his principle link
with the subjectivity of the world these in my view, are the qualities that
politicians of the future should cultivate.
Vaclav Havel
Davos World Economic Forum - 1992

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5. Holding Emptiness
Its always good to bear in mind that an empty glass is full of air
Gilberto Gil
Our inner observer Goethes eyes of the spirit flourishes when our thinking becomes more
open, alive, and permeable to the subtle expressions of life. Here is the ground on which another
mode of consciousness can be sustained, from where one finds place to become more whole,
where one disentangles from judgments and misleading perceptions, and discovers ways in which
the vital forces of life reach our consciousness and inform new ways of acting.
In a phenomenological thinking, a living thinking, we learn to see how polarities generate a dynamic
movement through all forms of existence. We contemplate in depth the processes of growing and
decaying; the hidden and the visible; the light and the shadow; emptiness and fullness - as
complementary elements of the whole in each being and each living process. The more we learn
how to observe without filters, the more we develop our organs of perception, in Goethes terms
(Goethe in Seamon, 1998, p. 262). Here, wisdom becomes the ability of entertaining a kind of
presence to each living phenomenon, which allows us to understand rather than explain; to see life
from the inside (or put differently, to experience the inner light and life of the phenomenon).
Arendt was a pioneer in bringing a phenomenological understanding into political thinking. Her
essays, especially Eichmann in Jerusalem, became paradigmatic milestones by reaching places
the usual theory (which observes reality from a hypothesis and pre-established frameworks) was
not capable of perceiving (Hayden, 2014, p. 1 19). The mentioned essay demonstrated that
analyses of the great trials against totalitarian regimes were misleading when blaming scapegoats,
and that a more complex kind of responsibility, one which should embrace the whole societys lights
and shadows, was to be found by seeing beyond the polarization between good and evil.
History shows that authoritarian patterns can be reversed and must be, if we want democracy
and true power to consolidate as a vital thread of human evolution. My activism of reversing the
notion of no empty space in politics, which is embedded in our political culture, has found in
development practice a renewed fountain of energy from where my personal transformation
emerged as a new beginning: emptiness was to be found firstly inside myself, allowing me to
occupy my place in the political field with renewed integrity.
Two situations appeared in which this unfolding could take place, and these took my research into
a new way of unleashing a new politics through a developmental approach. The first situation was
initiated by one of the original members of our political group. Ricardo Young, who in the year of
2012 was elected a city council delegate, realized that it was impossible to change politics with the
references of thinking he was used to. A series of encounters took Young to another
phenomenological learning experience that has been, for him, the turning point in my political
journey, when I realized that there was another theory from which I could bring the new politics into
practice, based on complexity thinking rather than on cartesian theory, he said (2014).
Young then envisioned beginning a study group where this other theory could be explored with
other partners. Rangel, one of the founders of MovMarina who worked in his mandate, told him that
my studies were similar to his new dream. So I was invited to join this group where the same
language I had been learning could be spoken for the first time. Other facilitators and social
entrepreneurs who also had been looking to be more involved in political practice joined the group,
and a powerful sequence of in-depth meetings has continued since.

31

Meanwhile, a few young members of Rede insisted that, despite my disappointment with the initial
developments, I should participate in their first national youth meeting. I was happily surprised to
learn that they would be meeting in a quest to find ways to bring new politics into their own
practice. This was when I realized how courage was needed to do what needed to be done, to
say what needed to be said. My initial response was to offer a development workshop to a small
group of young candidates, focusing on the preparation of their coming campaigns.
This workshop (Rombauer, 2014) and the study group were the two spaces where, for the first
time, I could really experiment with my approach as a development practitioner in politics, and in so
doing, I could actively research this new way of working in the social field. We held reflective
conversations observing our experiences and ourselves from a phenomenological perspective,
often surrounded by nature, allowing the polarities of practice to rise in our awareness, and thus
push us toward an expanded view of new ways for effective action. It was through these spaces
that the invisible bridge across the chasm seemed to take form.
Here are a few short illustrative stories.
Joo Francisco, an intellectually engaged founder of Rede, proposed the idea of the workshop for
young candidates. He was also preparing his own campaign, based on an inspiring political vision
of rescuing Fraternity as the third pillar of a republican democracy without which Freedom and
Equality are incomplete13. Around him, an enthusiastic group of activists was being formed mostly
lifelong friends who do different kinds of social work. But Joo Francisco seemed to be stumbling,
alone and anguished, confused in regard to how he would be leading them, and how to walk his
talk of cooperation in his own campaign.
During the workshop, the interaction with other candidates made Joo Francisco realize his need to
review his approach to his team and his social basis (in politics all candidates must have a social
basis). So he asked me to support him further on, and I spent a whole day with his group, in their
strategic planning meeting. My approach was to create a space of intimacy and honest
conversation, a strange situation for some of them: I cant see why are we talking about us here,
when we have a whole campaign to discuss. I asked them to give me some of their trust; later,
resistances were completely reversed after we dedicated some time for Joo Francisco to share his
own personal challenges with the whole group. I encouraged him to reveal issues he was holding to
himself: his own fears, how he was uncertain of being a candidate, his loneliness in the midst of an
overwhelming amount of tasks. The group asked him straightforward questions, which helped to
bring him to a strong place of honesty and openness.
As he spoke and expressed his personal struggles, I could see his countenance transforming, his
body getting looser; a knot in his voice seemed to be untying. Also, the group was more and more
grounded into listening, up to a point in which the truth amongst them became clear: he couldnt
move anywhere without their active involvement. Then, I invited the whole group to revisit the very
meaning of their activism: what is really at stake here? In a few moments, a broader understanding
of their historical role as a social and political group was being foregrounded. Regardless of the
electoral result, they were now standing for their shared values and responsibilities and thus Joo
Francisco was one of them. The campaign was now being seen as an opportunity to strengthen
their story as a group: a new generation of citizens involved with the history of their own city. Later,
Joo Francisco reflected: From this moment onwards, a renewed understanding of the group
emerged, with a new narrative for the campaign (Maria, 2015).
Z Gustavo, the youngest candidate in Rede, had also joined the workshop. From my previous
interactions with him and his team, I could see how his challenge was almost the opposite (as

13

Fraternity, in practice, is cooperation and engenders a fundamental premise for another model of development Joo
Francisco argues in his book Pathways Towards a New Politics (Maria, 2012, P. 61), based on his master degrees
dissertation, in which a theoretical framework is proposed in the context of the New Politics Movement.

32

compared to Joo Franciscos): his campaign drew a self-organized team of volunteers who could
do the walking amazingly well. The new politics was embodied in their forming culture, and was
quickly and spontaneously growing. His limitation was in the talking: Z Gustavo seemed to be
trapped in a labyrinth of insecurity, which increased as the actual campaign drew nearer. His ideas
were dispersed, and his motto, - Occupy Politics - initially a powerful message, seemed to be
mechanically repeated, and therefore was losing its strength.
In the workshop, especially during activities focused on self-awareness, Z Gustavo dived like a
bear into the pot of honey. A drawing exercise, in which he expressed himself as divided in two
different images, brought him an insight: the fear he had of becoming himself a figure he despised an opportunistic candidate - was immobilizing him. Noticing his need to elaborate further on in his
inner work and narrative, I invited him to a session of our study group in the beautiful mountains of
Mau just a week before the electoral campaigns would start. My intention was to create a space
in which his true voice could emerge, and we offered a couple of hours for him to share his life
journey into becoming a candidate. We would vividly ask him questions, often quite confronting
ones, grounding him into expressing strongly what had been his real intention behind this whole
journey.
At a given moment - the conversation had reached backwards into his childhood memories - a
sudden shift happened, which was evident to the whole group: we could sense that his speaking
was coming from his soul. His inner candidate came to life in front of our eyes; a renewed
narrative began to emerge, and his whole approach to the campaign was uplifted from this moment
onward:
In Mau I have reached a place of self-awareness that today I realize as the beginning of a
new cycle for my political activism. With that experience of sharing my deepest vulnerabilities,
and being asked strong meaningful questions which provoked me into reaching beyond my
previous understandings, I could assume that being a candidate was just another expression
of whom Ive always been () Recognizing these deep feelings inside me, along with my own
limits and contradictions, was essential not only for the development of my candidacy, but
also for my leadership role and personal life as well. (Silva, 2014)
Similar experiences occurred with other young candidates, most of them resulting in some kind of
transformation in their teamwork or in their narratives. Meanwhile the encounters of the study group
were going deeper into our varied personal experiences as sources of collective learning. From this
fertile space of allowance, we could discern and focus more properly on the effect of our actions.
We are learning to see here how politics is a real transpersonal practice, one which can only be
understood and practised at a level of excellence when these multiple dimensions can be
integrated in such a way that we can bear with all its contradictions, said Ricardo Young (2014)
during one of the meetings.
Bearing with these contradictions is indeed quite challenging, since we easily lose track of this
awareness in the midst of the political game14. And our quest in this regard seems to be just a
beginning. Amanda Gambale, a facilitator who participated in both initiatives, and who volunteered
as a member of Z Gustavos campaign, pointed out to me this limitation in our peer evaluation:
These meaningful conversations were fundamental to nurture our vision and strategies, but they
clashed with the reality of the campaign. We did not have enough time to maintain this nurturing
alive, in practice, she told me afterwards (Gambale, 2015). Precisely! To carry this nurturing quality
as our cultural path, and not just an occasional exercise, was revealed to be the next challenge to
the development of our activism.

14

Edgar Morin (2007, 47-59) argues that, within the complexity of political realm, ethical contradictions are inevitable,
forcing a constant need to face a high level of uncertainty. In response, we must build a kind of knowledge which enables
us to consider the very conditions of action, he says, which requires us to bear with our contradictions in an open and
dialogical manner.

33

When we discussed in-depth, in our study group, how to bring more effectiveness to transforming
this complex and tense reality, we reached a common understanding: we must learn how to build
more mutual trust. The clashing Amanda speaks of, as I understand it, is against a barrier where
competition, bureaucracy, hidden interests, interpersonal conflicts, etc. , become stronger than our
human bonds, thus undermining our capacity to hold the continuous spaces of openness required
to emancipate us from our small crystal cages. Fundamental political competences, such as the
ability to read complex situations, the ability to set effective strategies, and the articulation of actors
and effective teamwork, are all based on our capacity to build and hold mutual trust.
Trusting each other as Ive come to understand it so far is the relational space where our
openness is grounded into action and meaning; it is the very gesture of cooperation. And yet,
trusting is tricky for all the reasons Ive illustrated earlier with the image of the cipoal. So this initial
exercise of heightening our awareness seems to indicate that part of our next level of development
is to nurture stronger bonds in our relationships in the field, consolidating this quality of openness
beyond our cosy conversational spaces. How to transform trustfulness into an embodied culture,
when we are so conditioned to avoid a deeper level of experience with the world?
The Art of the Invisible is precisely about enabling social organisms to reverse their destructive
patterns and maintain vitality by enabling awareness to be held more consistently. We work with
the culture of the organism, its purpose and its vision, its values and its understanding of itself and
its world; we must work with the spirit which animates. The organism must be in touch with itself,
and with the impulses which move it. If it is such, the rest will follow, writes Kaplan (2002, p. 108). I
understood how an active intentionality of qualifying our inner observer in every political situation,
and in our human bonds through time, can be a way forward to sustain transformations in the
political culture from where this aliveness we search for can be nurtured.
Exercising self-awareness reveals to be a ground for this step further, an example that again is
found in Vaclav Havels practice: a disciplined journal writer, he almost obsessively searched for his
own shadows as a matter of keeping faithful to his political purposes. Suspicious to himself, Havel
would say that the lower I am, the more proper my place seems; and the higher I am, the stronger
my suspicion is that there has been some mistake (1990b). His own vulnerabilities were revealed
in public gestures, throughout his speeches, plays and even movies, intentionally breaking down
any tendency towards self-idealisation. Like a political Woody Allen, Havel owns his contradictions,
often with a hilarious tone of irony15.
His example illustrates how self-awareness keeps us awake to the unavoidable traps of political
games that challenge us to deal with many polarities: to play both the old and new ways of doing
politics, to integrate the short-term with long-term perspectives, to work with the visible and the
invisible, to be skilled in the horizontal and the vertical ways of collective action. Succeeding only in
either pole will always mean failure; like in the Webberian quest, our goal is to be able to integrate
the qualities of both poles constantly stretching us as explorers of this mysterious Art of the
Impossible.
Yet nature is able to hold itself open to the impossible, and accomplish it at every moment. Whilst
another phenomenological practitioner, the therapist Fritz Perls (Perls 1969, in Naranjo, no date),
understanding that the exercise of awareness is about being simultaneously empty and full, names
this inner space as the fertile void thus acknowledging its radical impossibility so Goethe
observed that a plant grows through the paradoxical counterforce of a vacuum which draws it

15

Havel (1985) assumes that his main inspiration for this ironic trait was Franz Kafka: in Kafka I have found a large
portion of my experience of the world, of myself, and of my way of being in the world. () Is not Franz Kafka, one of the
most serious and tragic authors of this century, at the same time a humorist? Anyone who does not laugh when reading
his novels (as Kafka himself is supposed to have done when he read them out loud to his friends) does not understand
them.

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upward and outward, against gravity (Adams and Whicher, 1982). All of nature follows similar laws
of polarity where impossibility is transformed (again in a paradoxical fashion) into a radical
possibility against all odds.
The simultaneity of emptying and occupying is not a mere passive attitude: we co-create
spaciousness to allow the others action, as an expression of life, to pass through us - and to
become part of us. As in a dance, we learn to move in ways that occupy and empty, holding an
open tension that brings attentiveness to the relationship, where a fertile space for the new can
emerge at every moment. We hold emptiness in the invisible fields so that people can move inside
them, find themselves and find others, and enable their world our common world. And all this is to
find another kind of power, one which challenges the core of the person holding power to become
enlarged.

35

All forms of general knowledge are important, of course,

but only when their application is accompanied by things
as apparently banal and mysterious as compassion,
a sense of peace, taste, appropriateness,
solicitude, understanding, solidarity.
I repeat again that all of this is easy to say but difficult to do.
To follow this path demands infinite tenacity, infinite patience,
much ingenuity, iron nerves, great dedication,
and last but not least, great courage.
I am in no way claiming to know how to walk this path myself.
Nevertheless, I feel that in today's dramatic, confused and generally
endangered world, that is precisely the path we must take.
And I feel that the specific dissident experience can
- when carefully thought through and evaluated
provide this kind of politics with a solid foundation,
with inspiration, with something to which to measure up.
Naturally, I do not know whether we will succeed.
Only time will tell.

Vaclav Havel
Wroclaw University - 1992

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6. The Art of Spaciousness

What would happen to the world if we were human?

Fernando Pessoa

When I reflect on my own striving to honour the legacy of Havel, Arendt, Marina Silva, and other
political thinkers and activists, I realize how my generation has a unique opportunity to break the
patterns that transform our leaders into mere shadows of our hopes. Were being challenged to
articulate a deeper change, from our living spaces at the borderland of societies through the gears
of the political system, and to rescue political action for its essential purpose of service to the
common good.
How can we generate more cooperation and trust between those who think with radically different
perspectives? How can we develop an enlarged sense of political being from where a living
authenticity may be maintained? How can the ability to open spaces of power with an emptying
attitude be translated into effective action? How can meaningful action be continuously nurtured
and not fall into the utilitarian ways of doing politics? How can our discourses be more truly
expressed into our practices? And how do we build, in practice, a body of knowledge that allows for
the proper addressing of these questions?
My life journey made me respond by offering developmental spaces in which I can support
practitioners to develop some of the virtues, attitudes and abilities that may inform new ground for
transformative action. As I write this dissertation, a spontaneous and vibrant community of
transformative political practice is unfolding, and beginning a first in-depth learning journey founded
in Goethean phenomenology. In dialogue with this on-going experience, I will attempt to
summarize: how can these kinds of political developmental processes be like?
The observations contained in what follows iterate between the practical wisdom that emerges from
an understanding (based on attentive observation) of the noble art of politics, together with the
further research conducted through co-facilitating this first in-depth learning journey for political
practitioners engaging in phenomenological enquiry.
Being in the world: a broader understanding of political practice.
Here, once again, Havels heritage illuminates our path:
It is not true that you should first think up an idea for a better world and only then put it into
practice, but, rather, through the fact of your existence in the world, you create the idea or
manifest it create it, as it were, from the material of the world, articulate it in the language
of the world.
Political activists need to be immersed in a space where they can refine and expand their
understanding of their own life experience and political practice. As we have been reflecting in the
previous chapters, a more appropriate articulation of a practitioners own capacity of exercising
power authentically will emerge from this understanding.
One of our members, Dr Patricia Shaw, in the preparation of our first internship programme
observed:

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We do not need more theory. We need to collapse the split between theory and practice. We
need detailed precise descriptions and accounts of action that reveal new practice new
ways of working and living together, new ways of knowing and of thinking. We find these as
we tell our stories live, publicly, amongst our peers, so that whatever is fresh and significant
and unprecedented can reveal itself in the attentive reciprocal speaking and listening.
The discipline, so to say, is not theoretical, but process-oriented: the main content is the
participants own experience. This kind of approach, as Donald Schn demonstrates (1983, p. 21 69), means a different stand in regard to the dominant epistemology of practice; and an
appreciative perspective towards the kinds of intelligence which are not accomplished by the
hegemonic attitude of specialized knowledge:
A practitioners reflection can serve as a corrective to overlearning. Through reflection, he
can surface and criticize the tacit understandings that have grown up around the repetitive
experiences of a specialized practice, and can make new sense of the situations of
uncertainty or uniqueness which he may allow himself to experience (Schn, 1983, p.61);
This means that such a formative process must be designed to support a qualitative reflection on
ones practice, which can be more adequately held without a fixed grid. Facilitators (or teachers)
must be deeply prepared to hold a space where each component is brought forth in dialogue with
the shared reflection that political practitioners build together, whilst searching for a fine-tuning with
each participants integral development.

Weaving spaciousness in the field of action.

Here a phenomenological perspective is offered, not as a theoretical framework, but as an openending invitation for a renewed (and thus more meaningful) relationship with ones political
experience. Considering that politics is the sum of all things concentrated (Havel, 1996), this is
how participants can make sense of the multiple layers of reality in which their practices unfold, in a
more consistent manner. Wherever the practitioner is, there is a uniqueness to be revealed and
boundless possibilities for acting to be discovered.
Below, an example of how this understanding can be illuminated with Arendts (1958, p. 190)
words:
Since action acts upon beings who are capable of their own actions, reaction, apart from
being a response, is always a new action that strikes out on its own and affects others. Thus
action and reaction among men never move in a closed circle and can never be reliably
confined to two partners. This boundlessness is characteristic not of political action alone, in
the narrower sense of the word, as though the boundlessness of human interrelatedness were
only the result of the boundless multitude of people involved, which could be escaped by
resigning oneself to action within a limited, graspable framework of circumstances; the
smallest act in the most limited circumstances bears the seed of the same boundlessness,
because one deed, and sometimes one word, suffices to change every constellation.
While concepts derived from practical wisdom, such as borders and centres, the Walls, and the
cipoal can illuminate this dynamic perspective, modern concepts used in a hegemonic perspective
such as interest, state, power (as power-over), as well as the split between means and ends
can be relativized. Since words and concepts in a phenomenological approach are perceived
more contextually, the world is seen as a living dynamic scenario where all possible variables are
to be considered, according to each situation. Thus, practitioners are to be encouraged to develop

38

a greater flexibility in face of the ever-changing nature of reality, to realize the relevance of stepping
out of the traps of modern thinking, and to embrace their own journey within a more vivid and rich
portrayal.
Patricia Shaw (2014), drawing from Arendt, indicates how to engage with this perspective:
The political realm of action and speech is uncontrollable and unpredictable. The chief risk of
action is that we start initiatives that ripple out in unknown ways so people cannot know what
will come of what they do. This means that we must be always asking not what did I intend to
do but what is my doing doing? (...) We need to prepare ourselves to participate in the
immediacy and open-endedness of an everyday politics in which next steps continually
appear in front of us. We need to develop the skill, courage and restraint to see and respond
to the calls of these openings.
Furthermore, Shaw (2014) suggests that: We will look for ways to make this invisible web of
activity tangible and visible. When searching for an accurate and phenomenological perspective
on political action, we are precisely nurturing the place where the invisible meets the visible; culture
meets institution; gesture meets speech; and a more spacious approach engenders a renewal of
political action.
Because action is always formative, is always pedagogical, is always
simultaneously short and long term.
Nurturing Virtues: the underlying intergenerational work.
Virtuous people create virtuous institutions; and virtuous institutions correct people when these fail
with their virtues. This is another of Marina Silvas mantras in her activism for a democratic
renewal, which illuminates how a political practitioner must become able to constantly integrate the
cultural realm of practice with the life of political institutions. However, what do we really mean with
virtues? How can we nurture these virtues, in practice?
What we are calling Virtues must be carefully worked with not as things, but as qualities as
ways of being in the world. Alasdair MacIntyre (1984, p. 191), in his masterpiece After Virtue, in
dialogue with Aristotles Phronesis, offers an illuminating thought on this regard:
A virtue is an acquired human quality the possession and exercise of which tends to enable
us to achieve those goods which are internal to practices and the lack of which effectively
prevents us from achieving any such goods.
MacIntyre demonstrates how faithfulness to internal goods keeps the purpose of a practice of any
kind alive; and how the denial of external good (in our case, perhaps: fame, money and powers
over) is often required.
What does each person find as the internal goods of a political practice? And how to keep faithful
when the external goods may blur our own understanding? This question, which can be explicitly
or implicitly framed, supports our moving out from abstraction and brings us to Havels path
towards the heart of reality through personal experience. The practitioner of a horizontal, open,
power-shared, authentic kind of politics must become able to see whether the very virtues being
searched for are (or are not) alive in his actual experience.
Furthermore, MacIntyre (1984, p. 194) also illuminates how the practical wisdom is built through
generations:
To enter into a practice is to enter into a relationship not only with its contemporary
practitioners, but also with those who have preceded us in the practice, particularly those

39

whose achievements extended the reach of the practice to its present point. It is thus the
achievement, and a fortiori the authority, of a tradition which I then confront and from which I
have to learn. And for this learning and the relationship to the past which it embodies the
virtues of justice, courage and truthfulness are prerequisite in precisely the same way and for
precisely the same reasons as they are in sustaining present relationships within practices.
The more vividly participants realize that their own effort is a transpersonal and generational quest,
informing a tradition in the best sense of the word (as carrying a practical wisdom rather than a
set of dogmas or instrumental techniques), the stronger the foundation to their practices becomes:
from here the gateway to the eternal quest for meaning can be widely opened. Reflecting
together, political practitioners may ground a more refined capacity of practical judgment,
considering pros and cons of internal and external goods, and thus they can make more consistent
and integrated choices related to their political journeys. A mutual responsibility for their own ethical
integrity can be more strongly assumed.

Inner work meets the world: the split between theory and practice is collapsed.
Practitioners very experiences are our raw material in a developmental work. However, going a
bit deeper, we see how our capacity to explore our experiences is conditioned by the broadness of
each practitioners self-understanding. Only when we experience spaciousness within ourselves
may we engender the same quality between us. Here again, theories and models can also become
traps and the practitioner can become closed into a restricted (and often idealized) self-image (the
floor of our crystal cages). This is where the environment of the learning space has an even more
vital role: how to enable political practitioners to nurture a radical openness, when often a protective
shell has become such a relevant survival strategy to them due to the harshness of the political
field?
We must be careful here, and acknowledge how these learning spaces may demand of us to
stretch ourselves beyond our habitual comfort zones. Our own shadows (fears, habits, ambitions,
contradictions, etc.) are eventually to become the most precious learning material, because what I
fail to recognize within me will sooner or later meet me in the outer world through whatever
projections I have upon the other (Hollis, 2013, p 113). Therefore a proper ground must be
prepared until this stage of openness can be achieved. Life stories are a valuable resource here:
storytelling provides us to understand interrelatedness in all levels of reality, and to deconstruct the
unconscious perceptions that we project upon ourselves; it also opens our sensibility to see political
action from a human contour16.
I find in the phenomenological observation of nature the most fertile ground to enable this opening
capacity. The delicacy of plants, for example, with their subtle movements, invites us to slow
down our rapid thinking and perceive the relevance of our own subtleness: The plant is a natural
corrective for flights of fantasy or mere opinions. All we need to say is Look again, how is it
really?, says Craig Holdrege (2013, p 48). When we observe ourselves observing nature, we
create inner space for a more conscious relation with our own thinking and thus we are able to
emancipate from our tendencies of abstraction. In a plants development we may observe the living
and decaying, the part and the whole, the visible and the invisible, etc. and thus we gain new

16

Arendt also dedicates a significant space of her legacy to demonstrate the value of storytelling as a basis for a loyalty
to life to be nurtured, in a counterpoint to modern rationalistic thinking. Because nobody (alone) is the author or
producer of his own life story, the iterative and shared nurturing of our life stories in our imagination preserve a space for
critical reflection on what particular occurrences and events mean for our common world, thus a remedy to loneliness is
to be found. (Hayden, 2014, pp 66-77)

40

references to observe more accurately how life also informs ourselves, and furthermore, informs
our social and political processes.
A delicate power: the art of invisible meets the art of impossible.
Once we begin to break through barriers of our own self-understanding, and reach a space of
integrated observation of our practices, a whole new range of possibilities emerges to guide our
journeys. The more accurately we are enabled to see multiple realms of reality interacting, and the
more we understand how transformation works in a simultaneity of polarities - inwardly and
outwardly, growing and decaying, visibly and invisibly, and so on, - the more robust our capacity to
engage in our political experiences becomes.
A recurrent image has emerged in our community of practice: each practitioner is shaping himself
as if a piece of clay, while also nurturing the process of others shaping themselves. Here the the
value of delicacy - to be held in every situation, in every encounter - is appreciated; precisely the
kind of understanding that my co-facilitator, Juliana Schneider, has developed in her research on
attentiveness: if we cultivate an attentiveness to see the non explicit () we may risk ourselves to
take our experiences through life seriously. (Schneider, p 51). In political practice, this
attentiveness is present when we acknowledge that an unconscious prejudice or reaction may
restrain us from building partnerships and alliances; that an excessive trust or mistrust will restrain
our acting possibilities; that an attitude of fear is pushing us away from what our real purpose may
be, and so on.
As participants develop, together and iteratively, this capacity of seeing the invisible through
themselves in practice, they also become increasingly skilled in engaging with each others
development, here included the handling of the most challenging situations. The mutual support
between practitioners to expand their understanding beyond their present limit, leads to a sharp
perception of the emerging forces which inform that scenario, bringing forth previously unnoticed
possibilities of action. The practical wisdom here is that, by perceiving the interdependence of facts
and events, we become able to put ourselves in a better position to work with the propensities
(immanent subtle transformations) which inform the silent transformations in each situation
(Jullien, 2004, p. 113 - 119). A phenomenological perspective, when properly worked with, may
enlarge a practitioners ownership of his doings doing.
So we must learn how to expand our organs of perception into organs of action! said one of the
practitioners, Rangel Mohedano (2015), during a learning session on Goethean phenomenology.
His playful (yet quite accurate) metaphor indicates how the learning practitioner, with his enhanced
capacity of seeing and acting through the invisible, transforms attentiveness into an enhanced
capacity of practical judgment in day-by-day decisions. Our organs of action are precious
resources when we must deal with conflicts, or discern when articulation ends and manipulation
begins, or catch the moment we are losing our authenticity and unconsciously missing what needs
to be taken into account, etc. Additionally, as the practitioner gains awareness of how inner life
relates with political life, and that if what we are doing is really right for us, the energy is available
and supportive (Hollis, 2013, p. 112), he also becomes prepared to make more mature choices.

Conversations: where the heart of true power beats.

Along this whole process, participants are sharpening the most fundamental capacity of political
action: to converse. Conventionally, a conversation in political circles might refer mainly to the art of
persuasion. But this is not the kind of conversation Im referring to here.
I mean the kind of meaningful conversation, as it is commonly named in the field of dialogue
practices, where an integral perception of self and others emerges in every encounter; allowing

41

each other to mutually embrace their singularities into their capacity of coordinating themselves in
joint action (Maturana, 1999, p. 74-79). Here, an enhanced consciousness of our inner dialogue is
vital: our self-awareness in a conversation opens, vastly, the immediate perception of our doings
doing; while at the same time our own speaking, emancipated from clichs, jargons and
abstractions, as Shaw suggests, more freshly gains broader resonance in the world.
Furthermore, meaningful and true conversation enables trustworthy relationships. A political activist
who incorporates in his way of living a virtuous dynamics of exchange, partnership, and trust; and
nurtures constant attentiveness to the other; will naturally become an uplifter of his very field of
action. And this can also mean becoming more authentically powerful: relationships generate
valuable information, opportunities to act, powerful feedbacks, and so on. Genuinely new
possibilities may emerge from the art of open, non-instrumental conversation geared towards
engendering real meetings between people in their common world.
Where there are no empty spaces, we create them!
The ultimate purpose here would be that, with an iterative journey of sharing experiences,
observing broadly, and building another quality of relations, participants will be consciously
embodying the field (or fields) that informs their capacity to serve, towards a political
transformation. From where the pre-narrative capacity of life (Hayden, 2014, p 73) takes place,
practitioners can feed themselves off a wide range of sources for transformative actions. The more
a participant is prepared to engage with the invisible and interwoven fields which inform each
situation, including the so-called spiritual levels, the greater is his or her freedom: even the most
subtle and intimate choices of life will have a conscious space in his/her political life. The vastness
for action is constantly nourished in the fertile spaciousness in which an ever-renewed political
being participates in the world, with another kind of power.
Hopefully, this whole journey will support the practitioners power to engender renewed narratives,
to nurture in-action cooperation, as well as to assist the other peers development. These vivid
narratives the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of our own lives, and from where our life
choices are referenced can perhaps gain a new life in the public realm, boasting the effects of
simple gestures beyond our horizons. Then, gradually, a lively, virtuous, meaningful, spirited and
why not, democratic political atmosphere can be built.
*****
History is a story which has many beginnings but no end. (Arendt, 1954, in Bairules, 2009).
Perhaps a contribution of this reflective journey is to portray how certain choices make history
jump out of the book and be experienced as our own life journey, in our own flesh. When the art of
the invisible meets the art of the impossible, another level of openness is to be found, to a kind of
spaciousness that enhances our sense of belonging in the world. If we can regard our choices
through the frame of broader perspectives of time and space, of the world and ourselves, perhaps
we can act more wisely, caring for a living legacy across the generations. And this, perhaps, is the
greatest inner gain of political practice: an ever-renewing sense of becoming more fully human, in
this mysterious and challenging world.

42

If I consider my own political impatience,

I realize with new urgency that a politician
of the present and the future
allow me to use the expression postmodern politician
must learn, in the deepest and best sense of the word,
the importance of waiting

Just as we cannot fool a plant, we cannot fool history.

But we must water history as well, patiently and every day.
We must water it not just with understanding,
not just with humility,
but wit love.
Vaclav Havel (1992)

43

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