Cultivating Presencing as an Emergent Field of Learning and Action

Abstract

This article is grounded in ongoing work within a graduate-level educational context focused on vertical development through the co-creation of collective spaces where participants feel free to be themselves. Over three years of engaging the U process with students, faculty, administrative staff, and industry professionals, our inquiry required staying with  uncertainty for emergence to come forth. Guided by the insight that “the way to do is to be,” we approach presencing as the underlying phenomenon shaping this work—encountered as practice, shared space, moment of emergence, developing capacity, and lived outcome. Drawing on reflexive autobiographical narratives and facilitator journals, we observed participants suspending habitual reactions and orienting toward shared meaning, revealing multiple pathways into presencing and the need for sustained inner work. In dialogue with Theory U, Eastern wisdom traditions (including the Bhagavad Gita and Integral Yoga), and Bohmian–Krishnamurti dialogue, three themes emerged: the nature of the field across intra-personal, intersubjective, and outer environments; the evolution of consciousness as presencing becomes palpable within a collective social field; and the development of knowing–being–doing capacities supporting transformation. Two simultaneous movements were observed: the formation of a conscious ego (personal growth) and the transcendence of ego through surrender and letting go (inner growth). Through these movements, the bottom of the U came to be understood as an ever-present wellspring or Source, giving rise to a presencing knowing in the present through which boundaries soften and emergent possibilities arise.