Throughout our lives we encounter problems we find hard to understand or resolve. We create these problems in ways that are uniquely structured to our personalities, which means that the solutions have to arise from the same uniqueness. We do this by tapping into the reservoirs of our own wisdom. The Grovian facilitator is a catalyst in, not a controller of, this process, supporting people to retrieve the information they need in a process of self-discovery that leads naturally to self-reorganization.
Where does this information come from?
The information needed to effect self-organized change is literally 'in-formation' - that which is found or formed from within. It is neither planted nor suggested by the therapist or coach. New information changes the brain, it changes behaviour, and it changes lives. David Grove called self-generated information the data that makes a difference. It is our inner intelligence at work.
How do we tap our inner intelligence?
Emergent Knowledge (EK) is a methodology for eliciting and utilizing a person's inner intelligence. The process is driven by six necessary conditions:
- Clean Input: the EK questions are minimally-assumptive, non-suggestive and influence-free.
- Present Tense: EK questions, client information and experience, are all in the here and now.
- Adjacent Spaces: new information is accessed in and emerges from a network of adjacent body~mind spaces.
- Iteration: each client response to the EK questions informs the next response in the sequence until new knowledge emerges.
- Formula: a simple formulaic procedure drives the process, which allows the client to concentrate exclusively on themselves.
- Six-ness: each of the six numbers has a unique role to play in the network while interacting and integrating to operate as a whole.
The first two conditions - Clean Input and Present Tense - are common to all Clean processes. The third, fourth and fifth - Adjacent Spaces, Formula and Iteration - are shared with Clean Space and Emergent Knowledge in general. All six conditions are present in Emergent Knowledge. Six-ness is exclusive to it.
What led to Emergent Knowledge?
A number of historical developments had a key role to play:
Clean Language originated with Grove in the late 80s through to the mid 90s. It taught facilitators how to keep their questions non-assumptive, non-suggestive and non-interpretive - 'clean' - in order to allow the client to access their subjective experience with minimal interference.
How did Emergent Knowledge emerge?
Grove was inspired by the new science of emergence. He worked on the notion that adjacent information spaces would network together, and that from their iteration and integration new knowledge would emerge with minimal input from the facilitator.
What is so special about Six?
When Grove mooted six as the optimal number of spaces or items of information a client would require to network together there was a wealth of scientific evidence to back him up.
In fact the number has proved to be remarkably consistent. Most people are separated from a state- or life-changing experience by six steps, six degrees, six responses to a set of elementary questions.
Dedicated to David Grove (1950-2008)