T’is the season of darkness in the northern hemisphere. It is also a time in which many of the world’s religions, regardless of hemisphere, prepare to celebrate a festival of lights.  Presumably this tradition has its roots in the cultural response to darkness, that which challenges our safe and secure human existence in the face of mysterious threats or the threat and challenges of mystery…

Modern secular society isn’t much for the darkness either.  Writer and eco-activist Bill McKibbon characterizes the dark to be one of the three endangered species of human experience in modern times – the other two are silence and solitude. The prevailing attitude tends to privilege the light—whether the actual light of day, the artificial lighting of the night, or the light of knowledge, progress etc.—viewing it as a kind of deliverance from that which would otherwise jeopardize our sense of order, security, identity, or wellbeing. Ironically, it seems that despite all of the light penetrating dark spaces in modern times, our world is still confronted with some form of collective shadow wherever we turn.

By contrast, wisdom traditions view turning toward the darkness or shadow as central to spiritual practice. The journey toward freedom or enlightenment is less a conquest of the darkness than a metabolizing, an embrace, a realization of the non-duality of what we encounter both in darkness and light, their interpenetration in the larger whole of existence. What happens when we allow an embrace of the darkness, turn toward the shadow sides of ourselves as persons and leaders?

An answer can be discovered by actually visiting the dark, literally speaking. Consider taking time to sit or lie on the floor in a room in your home that is absent of light in any form (note that you may need to unplug something to make this possible!). Or just take a moment to pause before turning on the lights when you enter your house or a room when it is dark. What you discover in the process may not surprise you, but it may give you a new perspective in relation to some of the questions and challenges you are facing just now.

Darkness brings us closer in to ourselves, closer to our vulnerability as well as our resourcefulness.  We can’t rely on the same things in darkness that we do in the light.  There are ways of knowing that become important in the darkness while other ways of knowing seem irrelevant. Our experience here is a solitary one, allowing the socially driven notions and concerns about who we think we are to fall away. This provides an opportunity to see what else may be there.

Give yourself to the direct, embodied experience of the dark as an unknown territory that has something to reveal to you. Notice how you feel in your body in the darkness. What concerns and instincts arise or fall away?  What experience of yourself, your being-ness comes to the fore under the cloak of darkness?

The pace of things slows in the dark. Nature cycles all living things through periods of darkness – what does that allow for?  What is the wisdom in that? Certain things are lifted from us in the dark; demands, expectations fall away in the space of this quiet, solitary place. The urgency we feel in the daylight naturally loses some of its hold when darkness descends. At the same time, there may be new anxieties or fears that arise, ones that are tied to the deeper core of our being. The invitation is to examine the discomfort with curiosity, or even wonder.

As you accustom yourself to being in the darkness, bring to mind something you have been feeling “in the dark about” in your life.  Some question, or situation, a cross roads or transition point. Breathe the question through you in the darkness, feel it in your body. How you are with the situation right now?  What would it be like to be in the dark with this question as if that is exactly where you need to be? Let the question spread itself out in the darkness – there is nothing to hem it in here.

Darkness invites us into not knowing. There is so much we can’t know there. In fact, to survive in the darkness, one has to embrace the not knowing, respect it, use it as a platform for curiosity, discernment, guidance. There is no room for judging what we don’t know when we’re in the dark. The steps we can take can only really be considered one at a time. Questions, then, can grow roots in the conditions of stillness and quiet that darkness provides.  

Let your question grow roots in this still place – how many layers beneath the ground does it need to go before it finds the nourishment it needs in the very center of your being? Breathe through the layers, trust the darkness to provide you with discernment about what is important and not important to see about your situation right now…..

These are some of the gifts to our leadership that turning toward the darkness brings: the room not to know; a stillness and solitude that gives immediacy and directness to our experience and allows us to see the emptiness in the constructions we create; the lifting of urgency so that our questions can breathe and go deeper; access to our instinctual, intuitive ways of knowing; being with our vulnerability as deep intimacy. Imagine what it would be like if, collectively, we took on such an embrace…

Jung writes: “when the soul embraces and accepts suffering, the pain reveals itself as the birth pangs of a new inner being.”

And Rilke offers “if only we could arrange our lives in accordance with the principle that tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us to be alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience.”

The womb of darkness is ultimately a transformative crucible, at some moment giving way to the luminous, inner light of Awareness, of Being itself. This then is what the celebrations are about, the festivals of light.  They celebrate an inner transfiguration of the darkness more than its escape.

May this be your experience during this season and in the coming of the New Year.

Step into your greater service to bring about a more beautiful, equitable and sustainable future for humanity. GTC Starts April, 2012 in the U.S. and September, 2012 in Australia and New Zealand. Learn more.

leadership.wisdom 11.08.11

“We stand at a critical moment in Earth’s history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise…. We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on a respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace. Towards this end, it is imperative that we, the peoples of the Earth, declare our responsibility to one another, to the greater community of life, and to future generations.” – The Earth Charter, 2000

What is the #Occupy Wall Street Movement to you? What could it mean for our times? These are questions to consider as we seek to live and lead consciously in stewardship of the planet and her inhabitants. In this article we offer a mosaic of perspectives and questions to stimulate shared inquiry.

#OWS signals a call to a higher moral order in business, economics and politics – a demand for accountability to the well being of the general populace, the environment and the world. Early in the movement, integral commentators characterized it as a clash of perspectives where those who champion post-modern values (green) were rising in opposition to the excesses of modernity (orange) in the form of unregulated capitalism and corporate-driven politics. This placard, defining #OWS in terms of what it is seeking to become instead of what it is reacting against, underlines that its own identity is evolving and maturing.

The following questions are offered to prompt reflection from first, second and third person perspectives: that is, a personal view, a view in relation to others, and a view from the larger unfolding of life.

We invite you to share your thinking in the comment space that follows this post so that all of our readers can consider and grow with #Occupy together.

• What is #Occupy Wall Street to me?
• How am I and those I love affected by the current economic and environmental crisis?
• In what ways am I dependent on/embedded in the systems perpetuating this crisis?
• How do I begin to untangle myself from these systems and ways of being?
• What do I say yes to? What do I need to say no to? What actions do I know I can take that I have not yet done?

We are not alone in our awakening. It is extraordinary to witness even at some distance what is coalescing in this movement – the communities being generated in the occupy sites, the refinement of their decision-making, the impact of their actions. And then there are the networks of individuals and groups online, organizing to support those on the ground with encouraging perspectives, questions, skill building, and an expanding virtual community in conversation. We are seeing the awakening of a wider swath of the populace to what ‘cultural creatives’ such as Joanna Macy, the authors of the Earth Charter, and others have been advocating for decades.

“…let’s take a look at what is in this moment. There is a deep and broad grounding going on, connecting many locations and involving thousands of people who are organizing into working groups to address dozens of issues that require attention if this burst of energy is destined to be more than meteoric. And while direct actions are being contemplated everywhere and there is brilliance emerging with respect to strategic advance, the reality is also that winter is approaching.

This will be our Valley Forge, a time of forming networks and alliances, deepening relationships, appealing to broader audiences, framing the conversation, articulating a new narrative…

But it is not yet time to bring forth a manifesto. It is time to recognize that holding the Commons, tending the inner structures and process, creating micro-economies that work for all will be the seeds of a living manifesto that need not be articulated in words or demands, but which can stand as a statement of who WE are.” Gary Horowitz http://www.occupycafe.org/

• Where do you feel the invitation in the above words?
• In what ways and with whom are you engaged in what is happening?
• David Korten writes: “Whoever controls the prosperity, security, and meaning stories that define the mainstream culture, controls the society.” (http://livingeconomiesforum.org/the-great-turning-in-bullet-points):  What are the new stories we need to tell ourselves, in order to inspire and inform our actions toward a shift in paradigm?
• How shall we redefine success, wealth, productivity, growth within this narrative?
• How might we approach those whose points of view differ from our own in order to invite and ignite broader and deeper participation?

Taking our examination of #OWS to the ‘20,000 foot level’, consider that what is occurring, what we are all participants in – Wall Street executives, occupiers, onlookers, all, is the inevitable movement of earth and her inhabitants through patterns of evolutionary unfolding.

Historians William Strauss and Neil Howe describe American history as a series of recurring 80-100 year cycles. Each cycle has involved four “turnings” – a High, an Awakening, an Unraveling and a Crisis. At the time their book The Fourth Turning was published in 1997, Strauss and Howe estimated that the US was midway through an Unraveling and roughly a decade from Crisis. “Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. Remnants of the old social order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation, and empire.”

Broader still, from the cosmological vision of the late James Hillman, what is occurring across the globe may be viewed as a rising up of Anima Mundi herself, to say ‘No More!’ and to ignite the hearts and souls of people on the street and elsewhere, sparking the impulse to speak and act on behalf of the Soul of the world.

• What are the most pressing concerns we need to address at this time?
• What other perspectives would be useful to help us understand what is going on in the US and across the globe?
• What is good about capitalism? How can we preserve its value to the whole while deconstructing the practices that lead to its corruption?
• Where in our local communities are there changes taking place, new prototypes forming that give manifestation to the forms of community governance, alternative currency, sustainable economics we seek to grow?

#OWS is a process, an ongoing and evolving conversation, the coalescing of a new collective consciousness in the US and across the globe. It is a manifestation of a larger shift within the earth community toward a new social, political and economic order. The outcome is not guaranteed, but more than ever before, it can be deeply influenced and shaped by our consciousness, our choices and our collective actions.

As conscious leaders, how shall we respond? What is ours to do?

Tell us what you think in the space below… We’d love to hear your thoughts, your experience, the way in which this movement is moving through you.

Step into your greater service to bring about a more beautiful, equitable and sustainable future for humanity. GTC Starts April, 2012 in the U.S. and September, 2012 in Australia and New Zealand. Learn more.

Photo credit: Katie Teague

leadership.wisdom 08.27.11

A couple of years ago I had the privilege to spend an afternoon with Ken Wilber and a relatively small group in his Denver loft. Ken talked in detail about the variety of problems the world faces. And he made the point—and he’s not the only one who has—that the magnitude and complexity of these problems can’t be addressed by the same consciousness that has created them. He talked about the relatively recent entrance of integral consciousness in humanity. You might call integral consciousness, or any level of consciousness across the developmental spectrum, a platform from which people see and respond to life. Integral consciousness is, among other things, a deeper and more expansive stage of awareness that can look back with discernment across earlier and often problematic stages of human consciousness and see possibilities for integration and alignment. This is why this new worldview appearing in humanity is so valuable in our deeply turbulent times of transformative passage.

Ken said that, barring nuclear catastrophe, he saw how those who exercised this broader view could decisively influence the successful transformation of planetary human life. Some studies suggest that tipping points occur when seven percent of a population adopts a new idea or paradigm, and it could be less when that population holds the desire to act with large scale vision and naturally sees key leverage points. At one point in his talk, Ken looked around the room and said, in effect, “We’re the ones who have come to respond to the moment. Might as well accept it.”

You don’t have to accept everything Ken Wilber says to value the development of consciousness, to accept the idea that there are whole new platforms for human perception from which people grow and act far more effectively. Which brings up the question: are there accelerators for the growth of consciousness in these years of peril and possibility? There appear to be. One of the most powerful is participation in conscious, integral collectives. These collectives can be organized for specific work, in which work and reflective learning occur, or they can be organized directly for growth and learning, in which greater clarity about possible work to do or how to work often arises.

These collectives – communities, organizations, practice groups – offer an intriguing area for exploration and development. Generally in these collectives, people not only explore the subject matter of their interest, but in the process develop deepened levels of intimacy and awareness that allow them to express their deeper selves into a receptive group and the world. In so doing, members bring light to long held doubts, while also admitting or discovering heightened capacities and surprising possibilities for service. In GTC cohorts, which are examples of conscious collectives, participants evolve in a transformative way, stepping beyond existing frameworks to settle themselves in a planetary context and also experience insights beyond the ego from the domain of spirit. Participants realize greater impact in their worlds of action.

Recently, Pacific Integral was a co-sponsor for Next Step Integral’s five-day “Integral Community Seminar: Evolving the We.” Participants explored humanity’s evolutionary context, the journey from stardust to self-aware species in crisis. They also considered the self as an effect and an instrument of evolution and—getting to the main point—participants considered and practiced the self-aware collective as an evolutionary form. In a collective, more views, capacities, and possibilities come on line when the individuals who are its constituents can learn (teach themselves) to work in an aligned flow.

Often, in the practices at the Community Seminar, there was a deepened quietness, which not only invited profound reflection, but revealed the sense of a field, the “we-ness” of people together. This “we” sense is one of the important characteristics of a maturing collective, a marker of intimacy and possibility that people can begin to embody and return to. In the “we” recurring over time, trust deepens further. More of what’s been held is articulated: the individual grows beyond previous bounds, the collective strengthens, and there is evolution in an upward virtuous process as the “I” speaks itself in the “we” and the “we” grows from the deepened “I’s.”

When cast in the context of our human unfolding and this moment of evolutionary quickening, this practice, this sense of being together, deepened at the Community Seminar. There was a feeling of being resonant with Life and open to an engaged and exciting alignment with an emerging global transformation. As one participant blogged:

All of us finding our place as a part of a deeply aware and vibrantly alive We. A We where each individual is so transparent that attention and awareness can be intentionally placed where it is most impactful in creating a future that is almost unimaginable, a future that feeds and nourishes us in ways that we deeply yearn for, and almost cannot recognize.

We can hold this larger view and potential. We can experiment with forms that allow its further flowering and transformative impact. In evolving collective life, we can develop trust with one another, bring light to our shadows, move beyond the confines of our ego, claim our greater capacities, and experience ourselves in an aligned flow of service that draws upon existing and evolving collective capacities, which can then be applied with resolve and compassion in the journey of our planetary life.

Step into your greater service and self. Give your deepest gifts. GTC Starts October, 2011 in the U.S. Learn more.

leadership.wisdom 07.09.11

When Katie Teague entered GTC4 she was a psychotherapist in Seattle. Now, she travels the world as a documentary filmmaker. Katie’s creating a groundbreaking film, “Money and Life,” that offers an expansive vision of how money operates in the world, how each of us can be empowered by our use of it, and how it can be a primary driver for world transformation.

Katie’s is the first of our leadership.wisdom profiles of GTC grads, which will be a periodic feature. In our conversation with Katie, she recounted the personal journey that started with honoring an inner urge and following it into a new life that includes a new career and a scale of participation and leadership in the world that she wouldn’t have imagined. Katie jokingly says it’s “all GTC’s fault” and credits her cohort friends with a “profound webbing of support and encouragement [to] help her step over this threshold.” Katie’s story has some classic elements of responding to a calling.  Here it is.

The Journey

Receiving the Call “When I was 36 there was a real restlessness and a deep rumbling that something was trying to push and come through me. It really was my creative self and it was expressing itself as filmmaking.” This impulse was hastened into expression by the ending of a long-term relationship, which Katie experienced as a “real earthquake to all the reference points in my life, the perfect storm to invite new reference points.”  She continues, “I’ve heard a lot of women talk about this feeling of wanting to be a mother as though the being in them is pushing to come in and through their being. I was feeling this way with the creative impulse.” Still, Katie had to “overcome a whole host of limiting beliefs around being an artist, and, you know, the clamor of “’I can’t do it.’”

Stepping In “[Filmmaking] was such a radical departure for me, and I did have these limiting beliefs. … I actually did need a handhold, which ended up being a four month immersion program at San Francisco State.”  After completing her program, Katie moved to Los Angeles. She “conventionally” thought that she should work for somebody else to hone her skills, but was stymied by the idea that she “edit in a dark closet on a reality television show, transmitting that level of consciousness.”

Katie chose her “destiny path” instead. “It was great moving to Los Angeles and that being so disillusioning—nothing else made sense but for me to start my own production.” Katie decided to risk her remaining financial resources for this purpose. “I figured what better use of my resources that were a gift to me but to step into what felt like my gift. So much of the push and pull in me was about being more authentic about my participation as a global citizen.”

Asking for Clarity “It started with my decision to do my own production. I proverbially put it out to the Universe … where is the primary wound to the world soul, and that’s where I want to be in service. That’s what I want to make a film about.”

“I asked this question in Fall of 2008. The financial crisis was starting to show itself. I had been introduced to the work of Bernard Lietaer. I read a quote of his, something to the effect of ‘money is the key leverage for creating systemic change.’ … It was intriguing enough for me and it was powerful. … It woke me up to the idea of doing a film on money.”

Yes! After reading Bernard Lietaer’s quote, “I started with saying, Yes, this is the film I am going to do. I said Yes with an enormous amount of naiveté, which you can call blind faith. … The saying Yes to the film project, and it could have been anything, but it was the place in which I was being called and that I was saying Yes from. … It was an initiation to the gift of my own being, and stepping into that unapologetically, with a willingness to meet whatever consequences arise.”

“In that moment that I said Yes with total blind faith, things started to issue forth, things started to come to me. “ Katie got her first interview with Orland Bishop, a community organizer and money thinker who lives in Los Angeles. At the start, Katie “made every error a first time filmmaker makes. Textbook.” She hired a cinematographer for the interview with Orland. He did a beautiful job, but his services cost $700, an overly rich standard. Fortunately, the cinematographer was selling his equipment, which Katie bought for her “good enough package.”

Unfolding “It’s mysterious how things unfold, but one person leads you to another person—if not directly, you’re reading their work and there’s links. And you start to see, especially in this world of money and finance and the economy, that there’s a circle of people who have been deeply, deeply in this conversation for decades. That’s part of the education. You start to see who’s out there and who’s speaking what. There’s a natural gravitation. Slowly, after I had a few people under my belt and was able to put together my initial trailer that I put up on the website, that became a calling card.”

Glimpsing an Arrival The calling card of Katie’s initial trailer was important for future interviewees and sponsors, but also to Katie. Seeing it, she realized that “there was enough of a self there; it reinforced the following of that initial impulse. The project itself had enough internal cohesion by that point that the project and myself as a filmmaker were co-evolving. I saw that initial trailer that I did—oh, there’s something here. I was sufficiently surprised and in wonder. I was able to witness the filmmaker self in a way that increased my capacity to step into that role with no division or at least less division.”

Money and Life

Katie’s journey is instructive and motivating, but she’s also got something to show. She’s in the homestretch on “Money and Life.” Katie’s shot about 75 hours of film, mostly interviews with people who, from various vantage points, take a long historical view of money across the multiple eras of its development and use. Through their perspectives, as well the experiences and reflections of people on the street, and other explanatory and visual devices that she will add, Katie gives a big vision view of money opening beyond it’s current mythic hold and toward it’s great possibilities for assisting transformation.

In Katie’s words:

The film is a narrative about the co-evolution of money and human consciousness. Both of those embedded in the greater narrative of life.

It takes the stand that the converging crises… that are systemically threatening us <are> a reflection of a deeper structural, systemic transformation … We’re really riding the tide of a profound structural shift.

The money system that dominates the world and dominates our lives by the fact that our lives have become so dependent on it… came into being during the pre-industrial and early industrial era at a time when the general worldview and understanding of life on the planet was really different.

The central thesis is that—and this is what Bernard Lietaer meant by this statement of money as the greatest leverage point for creating systemic change—money, being a pervasive influence in our lives, really does co-evolve with the evolution of life.

We’re really looking at a redesign of the system. Money is not a static thing. It’s a human invention. It’s made possible by human intention. By that rethinking, re-visioning of money we’re really at an important moment of human evolution where we can consciously redesign given what we know now.

Katie has called her journey an initiation. She says of initiations that you don’t enter knowing where you’ll arrive. “You have to go through the whole process wherever that takes you, down whatever scary corridor.” Deeply aligned with the process and the product of her work, Katie says:

“The more and more that every cell in my body lines up with this, the more I just want this to flow out in every way … to be a source of education that truly engages the soul of the viewer. It’s not some dry subject that we’re learning about. … So often with a big subject like money, the economy, most of us do feel completely disempowered. [We can] dispel the mythology of those disempowering positions. … All of us really profoundly can make a difference. What are we spending our money on? How are we making our money? How we are investing it if we have it to invest?”

As part of her deepened understanding of money—this great living currency of connected, relational life—Katie feels the deeper, subtle presence of money. “I’ve been listing every donor on the donation page. Something in me actually happens. I see it in my inbox when somebody donates. I see who they are and where they’re from. Often, I don’t know who they are, but even just to speak their name and take them in for a moment and to go through the ritual process of putting them on the website. In my being, these beings have become an integral part of the filmmaking. I actually take that very seriously.”

“Money and Life” is already at work. “I have people literally from all over the world who find the website one way or the other. I randomly get emails from people who are so excited about the film, who want to screen it, who are already starting to show that nine-minute trailer that I created. I have at least four people who have already or are going to show it to different workshops or symposiums. You know, that’s pretty cool.”

Now, two-and-a-half years along the path, Katie reflects: “Most of all, I’m feeling the power of a coherent heart; that’s really been the note bringing out the song of “Money and Life.” It started with this urge in my own heart and getting in coherence with that and following—you could say—trusting life.”

Step into the new emerging realities. Give your deepest gifts. GTC Starts September, 2011, in Australia and New Zealand and October, 2011 in the U.S. Learn more.

leadership.wisdom 05.05.11

Our life is an offering.
Can you feel the urge to offer more?
Unoffered love is our suffering.
Our ungiven gifts clench as stress.

You and I are love’s means.
This moment is our offering.
We will die fully given,
Or we will die ungiven,
Still waiting.

David Deida

It seems these days that there is much talk about the evolutionary moment we’re in. There is a desire on the part of many to offer their time, energy, creativity and gifts toward a more conscious stewardship of the future.

This beautiful poem by David Deida frames the invitation, the challenge, and the developmental movement toward this intent.

“Our life is an offering.
Can you feel the urge to offer more?”

By its very nature, life is an offering – life giving to life. The ecology of existence seems a kind of rich exchange. Amongst the wide diversity of life on the planet, any species of plant or insect or mold or mineral can be viewed as a contribution to something else, a partner contributing to the life and well-being of other forms.

At the same time, the reference to “our life” seems meant to be taken more personally. As reflected in Mary Oliver’s poem “When Death Comes,” each life can be regarded at once “as common as a field daisy and as singular.” So our lives – yours and mine – are each an offering. Unique in expression through various aptitudes, passions, perceptions and gifts. Unique in our embodiment of the “one wild and precious life” we have at our disposal, as Oliver says in another poem.

Within these two interpretations lies a tension between the unconditional nature of being – life as an offering just as it is – and life that has more particularity to it and is inhabited consciously from within. In this second sense, it’s a life that comes with an urge to live into and offer who we find ourselves becoming.

This urge – like something unavoidable – may be the “vitality, life force, energy, quickening” that Martha Graham writes of, something that “moves through (each of us) into action.” And yet, it doesn’t always seem to work that way, seamlessly as it might for the field daisy crooning for the light.

It’s more complicated than that for us humans.

Unoffered love is our suffering.
Our ungiven gifts clench as stress.

This offering, the impulse to express, to follow a particular thread, to live out the soul’s code inevitably gets blocked, thwarted, redirected. We get in our own way.

The hindrances are myriad – for some, there may be the necessity for even the most basic survival needs. For many of us, there is our conditioning –  fear or a need to perform, an urgency that lives like a mandate, the preemptive hijacking of our attention and energy by the expectations of others or ourselves or an instinct to stay under the radar.  The influences of our social nature and needs can collude to minimize the uniqueness, importance and value of many gifts.  So a good bit of life it seems is shaped by the ego’s needs for security, approval, control and keeps us at a distance from the deeper current of our desire.

So we suffer, we stress, we experience a loss of soul.

You and I are loves means.
This moment is our offering.

At some grace-filled moment, we come to realize that this life we are has nothing to do with one’s efforting “self”, the one who wants to “give.”  We discover that Love has been awaiting us even through the suffering.

The tension of the “ungiven gift” is resolved in the moments when the personal gives way to the transpersonal. When we find ourselves present enough to the immediacy of our life’s energy that we can open or surrender to what is moving in and through us in that moment. The gift is revealed then in the form of a written word, a spontaneous gesture, a tender gaze, an impassioned stand, the flow state that takes hold in the midst of facilitation. Whatever it is, the essence of it, by its being, its trueness, the love that motivates it – becomes, in an instant, the fullest possible offering.

This is not without sacrifice. Something must die in the moment of offering. He or she who would “urge to offer more”, must let go of whatever self-preserving instinct – fear, control, personal agenda or self-conscious sacrifice – would interfere with the offering.  Ego, in other words, has to step aside, surrender, has to lie down in order for us to be given, by Love…

We will die fully given,
Or we will die ungiven,
Still waiting.

Are we destined in these last lines to face a final verdict as to whether our life was fully given or not? Or are we called to attend to something closer to us in time than the ultimate end – the present moment for example, our lived experience right now?

Given or ungiven, death is inevitable, but the one who dies may not be the same in each instance. When given, the self-preserving ego dies in the moment of offering. Perhaps when ungiven, it is a loss for the soul, held in human form with its vulnerabilities and frailties. When the channel is blocked in the urge to offer more, the gift finds itself still waiting, unfulfilled and unlived.

What does any of this mean for those of us seeking to offer our gifts and our passions in service to the unborn future?

For me, the tension described in these lines remains an ongoing developmental edge.  I often feel flooded in the urge to offer more, caught in fear that my life will end with my gifts unused or ungiven. The tension is amplified as my mind leaps over the present to anticipate – and judge – the unknown future.

The task in these moments is to pull myself back from the anticipated future, to return my attention to my breath, my embodied experience and the living impulse that is this life’s offering.  In the conscious breath, muscles unclench, the channel opens and “given or ungiven” are reconciled in the act of giving myself as fully and well as I can to the present.

We are love’s means….Let us trust, you and I, that the current moving through us can and will carry us to our next steps, to the unique expressions and contributions we have to make to the wider ecology of existence.

Let us entrust ourselves to this moment, life’s offering, fully given….

As a teenaged girl, I remember going to stay with my friend on the weekend. On Sunday her parents gathered us all up to go to church. Being a devoted in my own religion, at that time, my black-and-white received view was that going to another church a deadly sin, so it left me in a disorienting dilemma. What should I do? Should I refuse to go and insult this family, or should I go and risk my immortal soul? My religious community sensibility was quite strong, but in that moment I couldn’t bring myself to refuse to go. As I rode along in the car, I wondered what it would be like to enter another church, which I had never done before. And what should I do when I got there? Should I participate? Should I find a distraction?

When I entered this church I looked around quickly in desperation to see if there was a way out. As my eyes glanced at the alter and up to the ceiling, I noticed that it was covered with knotty pine…with hundreds of knots! What a distraction that could be…to count every knot on that ceiling while they held their ceremony. Perhaps I wouldn’t go to hell after all!
As the ceremony began with a hymn, I thought “Well singing can’t be bad.” Since I loved to sing I enjoyed this immensely and in-between the songs, eyes raised to the heavens, I counted knots.

When church was over a lovely breakfast was held, and everyone there was very friendly. They didn’t seem like people who were going to hell? They appeared to be kind and good people.

In this one event, dipping out of one community and into another, my understanding of community and myself changed that day. I was different, for I could no longer believe that these good people were going to hell, as I had been told. I had evolved just a little bit, and coming back into my own religious community, my new understanding was unraveled slowly within its walls. These two traditional communities, each telling their congregations what to do and what to believe, neither of which supported or trusted the other had a link through me that one day.

Of course there are many kinds of communities, but one might ask, what it is that holds a community together if it isn’t some kind of similar belief or mind set?

Such a simple story and I sense we all have had experiences when someone new came into our community, or we went into a new community and something changed, however small. Often we experience an internal conflict perhaps even feeling an energetic disconnect, and in each instance, we try to ascertain some resolution. And sometimes those conflicts are external, and resolution between members is an important part of being in community.

This view of collective life is framed with assumptions about the paradoxical nature of group life. Like-principled people can see the paradoxical nature of living in communities, and conflict can be looked at as expressing something on behalf of the collective and its wholeness with paradox.

Through principled reflection we may come to understand more clearly those paradoxical forces that draw us into the repeated oscillations of enchantment with the side we identify with and despair when the side we don’t identify with emerges.

And now as I look back on it all, I am grateful, for I know how important this early learning was for me, in learning friendship, non-judgment, compassion and plane ol neighborliness with all of human kind.

How did you learn these qualities?

This article has been crossposted from the PI Online Community; it is connected to a piece that was originally published in the Kosmos Journal. That original article and other worthwhile reads can be found in the online Pacific Integral library.

leadership.wisdom 03.19.11

Something happened suddenly. Or so it seems.

There is revolution through much of the Arab world. Young people, brought up on the Internet and opened to world consciousness, have arrived. They want lives of dignity, respect, and creative possibility—for themselves and for their families, communities, and countries.

For quite some time, there’s been conjecture and deep thinking about the impact of a worldwide medium of consciousness exchange, i.e. the Net. Commentators have noted the trends and considered what might emerge. Meanwhile, through the decade following 9/11, there’s been much cogitation and agitation about Islam, medieval versions of fundamentalism, and terrorism. And there’s been an accompanying dreary descent through war and fear, which becomes the expected background that obscures possibilities.

How surprising then, that before our eyes, something new has emerged on the planet. This appearance of the new can remind us of hopes and questions that fall away from consciousness, especially in the privileged places of life. Will I really let in the many crises? Is it possible that we’ll find our way through? Does something not quite seen want to be born onto the planet. Do I feel some reflection of it right here where I live? What might that mean for how I look at life and the coming years? What might there be for me to do?

A GTC graduate described an experience earlier this winter that may provide a useful metaphor to help reflect on these questions. She witnessed a complete transformation of a meadow landscape within a few hours. There had been rain and a rise in temperature, releasing winter snow from the mountains into the watershed below. A nearby river ran high and fast, and in a normally lazy tributary abutting the meadow, water began to breach its banks. At the same time, small pools appeared elsewhere in the meadow, showing that ground water was also rising. Within a few short hours, the entire field was flooded – the result of coalescing pools connecting from disparate parts of the property. In that confluence, the landscape was completely transformed.

What was remarkable was that the rapid occurrence of the change was not all due to the force of the ‘mainstream’. Much of the transformation took place below the surface—in the saturation of remote and disconnected parts of the land. The impact gradually and quietly showed on the surface until, at some critical moment, the process accelerated and it all came together in a single, large and seemingly unified flow.

As with the events in Egypt, Tunisia, and elsewhere, this dramatic and curious phenomenon of sudden arising opens to a set of questions for those interested in transformational change. How does widespread social movement happen? How do we begin to influence the social landscape toward change, toward the creation of a saturation point in which possibility flows into new reality? How do each of us as individuals make ourselves available to participate in collective action on behalf of positive change?

If we begin with ourselves, regardless of where we consider ourselves in the “grand scheme,” we all have some part to play that relates to the larger whole.  It starts with the part we occupy, our particular place in the social and economic landscape. Each one of us occupies a unique pocket of concern, perspective, skill set, a particular gladness, expression, or network of connection. One aspect, then, of our participation in the larger current of change is to identify what brings us alive individually and to engage it wholeheartedly. To saturate the field around us with the vitality of our purpose, consciously chosen and expressed.

We can also be aware of the interconnected life that surrounds us—our relationship to people, earth and her inhabitants, as well as the consciousness awakening in the culture at large. Whatever any one of us may care about represents an idea or an impulse that is present and already moving in the field of life. Like hidden ground water in a landscape open to initially remote influences, our ideas and actions come from sources and can generate synergies that only become known when the process has ripened and the confluence begins. This can show up in synchronicities in time and space or in strikingly similar expressions and insights that crop up in unrelated domains or disparate parts of the globe.

Unlike the change transpiring in a single day in a geologic floodplain, social cycles occur over lifetimes, decades, generations, regimes, dynasties. The adage ‘think globally act locally’ has a corollary in relation to time: we can act in the present moment on behalf of a future that unfolds at its own pace. The scope of social or cultural change requires a surrender to uncertainty—about the timing of things, the forms that emerge, or the roles we may be called to play. We can know, though, that we are more interconnected than we think, that the larger movement that has touched us is at work elsewhere and can be revealed to and through us as “the future that wants to emerge.”

There is a mystery as to how and when confluence happens that we can’t control or foretell, but we can open and make ourselves available for participation. The work we do now prepares for a current of change to come and prepares us to join with it when it does.

Step into the new emerging realities. Give your deepest gifts. GTC Starts April, 2011 in the U.S. and June, 2011, in Australia and New Zealand. Learn more.

Photo credit: Egyptians celebrating a new freedom–Alexandria, Egypt–February 15, 2011, by Mohamed Adel.

Russ Graham and Julia Smith contributed to this post.

leadership.wisdom 08.31.10

As leaders we often see conflict on the horizon. In fact, leadership is invariably defined in terms of conflict: the tension that arises between present reality – things as they are – and a desired future – things as they might be. It doesn’t stop there. Leadership encounters many other forms of conflict – between the individual and the organization, participation and direction, innovation and continuity, and so on.

While on the surface it might seem that the leader’s job is to resolve these seeming contradictions, most conflicts leaders face are surprisingly irresolvable when addressed merely through action to get from point A to point B. While we may seek to bring about a certain change – for example, developing greater collective intelligence – these changes often represent an underlying polarity that will persist over time, and which is simply being rebalanced or integrated through the present action.

There are tools, such as Polarity Management, which show us an elegant way to see and work with the underlying polarities inherent in many sources of conflict. What we think of as “problems,” for example, are often simply efforts to go from the downside of one pole to the upside of another. For example, imagine you are on a team that is mired in process and discussion and find yourself wanting to scream, “can’t somebody just make a decision and go!” What you are experiencing may be the downside of an excessively participative leadership – one side of the participative / directive polarity. If you start to move away from this unconsciously, resistance may arise as fear of the downside of the directive pole – too much autocratic decision-making, etc.

The end of conflict takes a deeper turn, however, as we look at how polarities evolve in the development of consciousness and leadership. Developmental theories such as the Leadership Development Framework and its elaborations described by Terri O’Fallon in her recent, award-winning paper, reveal a deeper pattern of our changing relationship to polarities as we develop.

First, we may see only one side of a polarity. For example, we may see that only quality matters. Later, we might, through a series of unpleasant but inevitable challenges, realize that the world is more complex. We must make cost and quality tradeoffs. Still later, we may see that cost and quality are two contexts from which we can see and which over time must be balanced. We may finally see that cost and quality are two sides of the same coin, i.e., that we can never have quality unless we have cost constraints and vice versa. They represent a single, emergent process. Seeing this unified process, we naturally lead others, perhaps those polarized in the tradeoff, with simplicity, compassion, and grace.

How we relate to polarities evolves in a pattern throughout life – first seeing conflict, then choice, then both sides, then a co-emergence. This pattern repeats, over time, with more and more subtle polarities.

As leaders, charged with confronting and transcending conflict, it is essential that we understand how conflict arises in how we see the world, more than the how the world really is. We must accept responsibility for the conflict in our own consciousness before we can begin to address it effectively in the world. In doing so, we become a clearer vehicle to integrate and transcend our deepest challenges and to bring about a positive future.

The conflict between the present and the future is really a conflict of imagination. Resolve that, and the future can begin, now.

Transform your consciousness and leadership. New GTC starting, October, 2010. Learn more.

Photo credit: Hindsight – 2883 by suburbanbloke on Flickr

leadership.wisdom 07.14.10

How do we live and lead in these times of extraordinary uncertainty? The answer may not only surprise you, but liberate you.

A recent gathering of integral practitioners and leaders, Engaging The Future, created by GTC graduate, Tom Curren, and his partner Allison Conte, looked at how to effectively encounter and lead through the extraordinary breakdowns and breakthroughs that may occur on the world scene over the next ten years. The opinions of the gatherers mimicked results of a recent IBM study of thousands of top business leaders – that the times ahead will be more complex, less predictable, and more chaotic.

These times challenge our capacity to act and lead, and demand greater skillfulness and complex thinking on our part. Yet, what’s being asked of us is more than simply better leadership. The complexity of our global challenges and opportunities are asking for our liberation.

Uncertainty, embraced without resistance, opens the mind. When we let go of our limited assumptions and patterns of thinking, the world opens to an expanse of unbounded choice.

Uncertainty, embraced without resistance, also opens the heart. Only in the straightjacket of our safe convictions can we avoid truly encountering the poignancy of the world in which we live and of our limited part in it. As Steve Jobs said in his 2005 Stanford Commencement Address, “Remembering you are going to die is the best way I know of to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

Ultimately there is no certainty. What we truly value is held in the hands of something larger, much more than it is in our own actions. Realizing this, we can find a basic trust in life, play our part, and let our leadership more deeply express our true self. When we resist this uncertainty, we naturally may feel fear. The secret gift in this fear is that it calls us to find and embrace this basic trust, such that we see the true source of our actions.

We live in extraordinary times. Whether we are heading towards a course correction, a transformative fire, or a significant breakdown, one thing that is certain is that we are heading towards the unknown, from the unknown and through the unknown. Embracing this realization, we paradoxically find our mind clearer and heart wider and our leadership flowing from a deeper source.

leadership.wisdom 05.04.10

Does leadership have a spiritual core? According to a new research study of developing ethical leaders, the answer is yes. If fact this evolutionary spiritual core may have everything to do with leadership. While modern perspectives have sought to divorce spirituality from the earthly realms, we see that, as we develop our consciousness, the wisdom and compassion of our spiritual life come right to the center and influence everything we do.

In her remarkable study, Marie Legault examined the experiences of leaders operating at post-conventional levels of development, ranging from Individualist to Unitive on the Leadership Development Framework, as described by Susanne Cook-Greuter. These are leaders who have developed beyond typical levels, expanding the breadth and complexity of perspective with which they see and work in the world. (Ms. Legault’s research will be posted on her web site later this spring and we will let you know as it becomes available.)

What she discovered were seven key themes of post-conventional ethical leadership, four of which particularly suggest that, as we develop, a spiritual, developmental core influences everything we do.

Legault found that late-stage ethically-oriented leaders operate from a spiritual center, which is experienced as a heartfelt embodiment of love and service. An orientation to spiritual practice is central. Furthermore, these leaders have come to operate from this realization of compassion and wisdom as a central theme of their leadership. These leaders integrate heart and mind and see their work as an inquiry and a meditation.

It appears, however, that these leaders also grapple deeply with the gap between the insights that this spiritual core reveals and current reality, both in themselves and in the world. Leault’s study found that these leaders have “an innate desire for and commitment to continuous development” and seek to align their working conditions with their values.

These themes point to some of the core conclusions of our experience: that stepping into the heart of conscious leadership means discovering and learning to live a life of the evolving self and world, informed by our deepest spiritual understandings and expressed as service in the world.

In the Heart of Conscious Leadership, we initiate ourselves into a deep experience of this understanding and learn core practices that help us to embody it in our life. In GTC, we engage in a committed journey to embodying this spiritual core and expressing it in all aspects of our life and leadership. Regardless of where we are and from whom we seek support, we are heading towards a deeper expression of our leadership and an expression of a more beautiful, whole, and thriving world, even if the path takes its twist and turns along the way.