FTP119: Bonnitta Roy – Ego & Group Practices

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Our guest in this episode is Bonnitta Roy, an author, philosopher, and teacher who’s focusing on building greater capacities for human sense-making.

She has a wealth of experience in working with groups, and in her work she integrates cognitive science, phenomenology, and Qigong with emergent themes in transformative education, leadership, self-organization, and complexity science.

In this episode we talk about group processes, ego deconstruction and shadow work in group setting,  the insights into the nature of the mind, and rediscovering our evolutionary spiritual capacities.

If you didn’t have the concept of Shadow, what would you be experiencing now? - @BonnittaRoy Click To Tweet

In This Episode of Future Thinkers:

• How to deal with groups getting stuck in a never ending cycle of creation and deconstruction of personal and interpersonal problems
• Looking at ego as an energy arising in both individual and group setting
• At what point one can consider being “done” with trauma processing and individual work, and taking action in the world
• Why there is such a widespread interest emerging for collective intelligence and group practices
• What is the role of shadow material in group setting
• Problematizing Ego vs. Ego Deconstruction
• The pitfalls of deconstruction of ego as a practice and falling into nihilism
• The nature of mind, and natural inhibition between thoughts and perceptions
• What is happening in the world right now that leads people to engage in self-exploration and group processes
•  How to evolve our spiritual capacities from the past, instead of creating something new for the future
• How to find the most relevant transformational practice for each individual

Your psyche is not something to be achieved, it’s something to be continually practiced through. - @BonnittaRoy Click To Tweet

Resources and Mentions From This Episode:

• Bonnitta Roy’s blog on Medium
• Sonia Blignaut, a complexity thinker
• Collective Presencing system by Ria Baeck

There is existential pain in being a human. And not all that existential pain is trauma. - @BonnittaRoy Click To Tweet

Recommended Books:

• The Way of the Shaman by Michael Harner

More From Future Thinkers:

• Future Thinkers Interview with Ken Wilber
• FTP106, 107: Nora Bateson – The Complexities of Climate Change And Cultural Evolution
• FTP105: Jim Rutt – Game B: The Fifth Attractors, A New Social OS
• FTP098, 099: John Vervaeke – Overcoming The Meaning Crisis