Leading from the Emerging Future
By Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer

Reviewed by Richard West –

Breaking into heightened consciousness

Otto Scharmer, author of Theory U, offers much more practical help in how to live from a higher consciousness in his later book, Leading From the Emerging Future. He explains what happens at the different levels in which we find ourselves. His assertion is that for the world to make it, more of us have to live from “level 4”, described in the excerpts below. He goes on to explain what happens at the different levels.

“The Blind Spot... What if all the symptoms at the surface level were a function of a split at a deeper level, which for now we are calling the source?”

Scharmer recalls a conversation with Master Nan in Hong Kong 14 years ago. Master Nan described a new spiritual path, which is different from spiritual paths of the past, either in the East or the West. A combination of natural science and philosophies...yet still deeply connected to the deeper dimensions of our humanity... and which will always go back to questions of... Purpose of life, Value of Life, Why do we exist?

Master Nan: The Blind Spot of our century was related to our inability to see the process of “coming-into-being” of social reality, or in different words, our inability to understand where our actions originate. The Blind Spot means we do not see ourselves bringing forth social reality in the first place, and with that we do not have an understanding of how our individual awareness and intention impacts (everyone and everything) around us.

Scharmer then takes us with him to Francisco Varela in Paris. The late Chilean philosopher shared with him three thresholds to be crossed in becoming aware: suspension, redirection and letting go. Scharmer writes “whenever teams and organizations confront complex challenges that require innovative responses and collective creativity, these three stages emerge:

1) Stopping and suspending old habits of judgment and thought... breaking habitual patterns and starting to pay attention

2) Starting to see reality from a different angle... listening to views and experiences of others, taking them in... seeing current reality from a multiplicity of views

3) If one is lucky, a profound moment of quieting (occurs)... letting go of one’s old self and connecting with another state of being... become aware of who we really are and what we are here for... allows us to operate from a co-creative flow.

Form follows attention or consciousness... and can change reality by changing the inner place from which we operate.

On level 1, the quality of listening is simply downloading, reconfirming what the listener already knows

On level 2, Listening is called factual listening... let the data talk, even if own theories/ideas contradict

On level 3, empathic listening... allows the individual to see reality from the perspective of the other and sense the other person’s circumstances... seeing from the viewpoint of the other stakeholder.

Level 4 is generative listening... to form a space of deep attention that allows an emerging future possibility to manifest... it’s what great coaches do... “listen from the whole and tune one’s own instrument to an emerging pattern.” On level 4, boundaries collapse and open up a new field of cocreative possibility... where the presence of the future begins...

I appreciate Scharmer’s patient step-by-step detailed descriptions of what happens in the “U” that enables consciousness to enter in so an individual or a group can literally draw from a desired future and begin to move into that future by the power of a transformed consciousness. He further takes his process personally into a great variety of situations and documents breakthroughs unimaginable at lower levels of consciousness.

My learning seems to increase with every reading of his book. I find myself desiring to have only the kind of conversations which are possible in level 4. My intention of writing this review is to encourage reading of Scharmer’s second book which documents the possibility needed for a world long hoped for.