In 1999, Sheryl Erickson and Tom Callanan asked me to research and co-author a paper involving when people have remarkable experiences in groups. We interviewed dozens and dozens of people from around the world and the stories began to make patterns and the patterns began to make meaning.

What was the larger pattern we were witnessing? How were contemplative practices linked with wisdom and wisdom with a different way of knowing that involved body awareness, intuition, and knowing from our heart center? We began to see how collective intelligence and spiritual wisdom, like consciousness itself, had emergent properties associated with intention, coherence, and authentic engagement.

We also became aware of a constellation of practices and network of practitioners from around the world guided, it seemed, by a common impulse to understand what benefits, including healing properties, groups might have. We began to hear story after story, in vivid detail, of how unexpected insights and practical wisdom have become evident through groups.

We published our initial findings in a small spiral bound book titled Centered on the Edge. With further funding from the Fetzer Institute, we established a web site that would act as a virtual loom for weaving together the threads of ideas, people, and practices. As we have continued to draw out the depth and breadth of the field, we have identified relevant areas of experience and expertise in disciplines as diverse as cognitive science, spiritual practice, depth psychology and organizational learning.

With Berrett Koehler Publishers as our partner, we plan to create a book of foundational ideas for the field. The sense of urgency is very real as we see the results of polarization and antagonism spread across the globe but the hope that "another way" might be found has its own remarkable momentum.