I enjoyed Dr. Joe's response on this thread.
> an earlier comment was about a group of people treating
> Personal Mastery solely as a means of "getting what you want." They are
> operating from a self-orientation alone ("I want"), while overlooking
> the necessity of being able to also dis-engage egoic desires so that
> pure Service can be given to something bigger than, and outside of,
> self.
My experience, too, has been that many people view this aspect of the LO
strictly from the ego (at least some of Senge's work would suggest that he
perceived this in a more transegoic way). Much like profits, it's too
often used as an end in itself, rather than a means to a greater end.
> The basic premise was that you need to attain personal Mastery before
> you can be of full Service to others. . . In the context of Learning Orgs,
> this suggests that personal Mastery is,
> in some sense, a necessary condition for being able to give full Service
> to others, un-contaminated by unspoken, covert neediness and
> expectation, in order to attain an interdependence and synergy with
> colleagues acting to achieve a common goal (one way of conceptualising a
> LO).
That's a tall order, of course. It seems, though, that much of our
Personal Mastery comes about as we struggle to be of service to others.
I'm not sure it can be worked towards or achieved fully separate from
Service. In my experience, my more significant (or at least noticeable)
gains in the area of mastery came about as a result of my interactions
with others; I think mastery supports and is a necessary condition for
service, and in turn service provides new opportunities for mastery at a
different level.
--Terri A. Deems tadeems@aol.com
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