“Democratic methods, rules, and laws alone do not create a sense of community. Rules and laws may govern mechanical systems, but not people. The new paradigm … acknowledges that organizations are partially mechanical beings…and also living organisms whose lifeblood is composed of feelings, beliefs, and dreams.“

Arny in the The Deep Democracy of Open Forums, p.4.

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Deep democracy is not only a political program, but also a way of working with people, a feeling skill, or “metaskills” as Amy calls such skills. After many seminars in the 80′s, Arny’s term “Deep Democracy” first appeared in book form in his, 1992/2000 book, “THE LEADER AS MARTIAL ARTIST, An Introduction To Deep Democracy, Techniques And Strategies For Resolving Conflict + Creating Community.” Today, many politicians, activists and writers often use deep democracy. We want to restate what we mean by the term here.

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We conceive of deep democracy as an elder’s/facilitator’s multi-leveled awareness experience. Let’s think of three levels of such an experience.

1. Consensus Reality (CR)

In everyday community reality, deep democracy deals with facts, figures, issues and people. Imbedded in everyday conflicts, lie power struggles and issues of rank. Hierarchy is often at stake.

a. Whenever you feel inflated, or depressed, powerful or terrified, more or less than someone else, rankism and power prevail.

b. Rankism is the overt, but more often subtle background to the various feelings in a given situation. Rankism, that is, the conscious or unconscious use of power over others– without feedback — is the mother of all (CR) “isms”. For example, nationalism, capitalism, racism, sexism, heterosexism, and ageism, strongly differ in content, but are similar in the hurt they cause.

c. Unconscious use (or conscious abuse) of rank is the core of all internecine struggles. We all need more awareness of rank issues.

2. Dream Level

In dreams and “dreamland”, you move in and out of being yourself as well as other people. In dreamland, roles are non-local (–that means, spread out everywhere in the universe at any given moment–). Therefore in dreamland, rank no longer has absolute significance. Rather, fixed CR rank and power become exchangeable, entirely relative and momentary, almost insignificant.

With awareness, we notice how what seems like real people and facts in everyday reality, are actually spirits of the times, roles and dream like figures. By playing these roles and switching roles, the background to everyday reality can become clear.

3. Essence Level

Finally at the non-dual essence level of experience, at the common ground within each dreamland figure and behind everyday reality, we sense a kind of oneness, an atmosphere or space–call it what you want– which gave birth to everything else. From this viewpoint, there are no separate things, only a sense of oneness  which includes and is beyond the potential parts.

Deep democracy, or the elder’s multileveled awareness is typified by a special feeling; accepting the simultaneous importance of all voices and roles, and the three levels of experience. Everyday reality and its problems are as important as those problems and figures reflected in dreamland, and are also as important as any potential oneness or spiritual experience at the essence level of reality where rank no longer exists.

As long as there is a sense that one person or level is more important than another, deep democracy is momentarily marginalized. As long as the essence or the dreamland level is given more importance than the CR level, deep democracy is not yet at work. In deep democracy, rank and no rank exist simultaneously. The attitude of deep democracy embraces our being both guilty of something, and at another level, innocent — at the same time.

Understanding the simultaneous and paradoxical nature of all levels is what distinguishes deep democracy from ordinary democracy, everyday politics, mainstream psychology and some religious viewpoints that feel one reality may be more important than another. We don’t mean to hurt anyone’s feelings but want to stand for the idea that, spirituality and mundane events, individual and collective processes are –from the viewpoint of the totality of a process — all equally important.

That is why we suggest that==> deep democracy is the elder’s multi-leveled awareness process.