• Deviant’s Qualities
• Passion
• Moral or Social Purpose

• Shaping Environment
• Nature & Nurture Together
• Spiral Dynamics
• Recommendations
• Closing Thoughts

• Nature & Nurture
• How Deviants Come To Be
• Nature
• Nurture

Today’s episode touches upon the following topics:

• Introduction to the topic
• Definition of a deviant
• Mutants
• Today’s deviants are tomorrow’s norm
• Deviants are feared
• Dangers of being a deviant
• Is it a choice?

These past few months have not been easy, as we have had to say goodbye to two good friends and teachers. Both of them enriched our lives with the magic of mythology and brought alive the Heroic Quest that would have otherwise been much more a theoritical and academic exercise. Words fail to do justice for what magical worlds these wonderful teachers, mentors and friends opened for us.

We are profoundly grateful for having had Paul Rebillot and Richard Roberts in our lives. And with sadness we mourn both their deaths, but with joy remember their lives, their contribution and their generous spirit with which they shared their learnings, not just with the founders of RCG but with the world at large

Both of them opened up their voices and hearts to RCG and made the only recordings they have available to the world at large. Their wisdom and generous spirit has touched thousands of lives worldwide and will be both missed and deeply treasured.

Richards & Paul has been for a long time battling their health issues and now are rejoined with the great spirit. They leave behind an array of students whose lives have been touched, transformed and enriched due to their presence.

We have had the unique honor and privilege to have been participants of the last workshop Paul did, and soon after he took ill. We will remember and treasure the wit, wisdom and above all the kind heart of this wonderful friend and teacher and the evenings we spent enthralled by his stories and learning his structures. He also introduced us to Gabrielle Roth and the work of 5 Rhythms which has had a significant impact on our lives. We will continue to bring some more of his recordings to the world at large through RCG and hope that his voice will find fertile ground where the saplings of new heroic quests emerge. This way his contribution will continue to live..

Richards gave us his time, his private recordings and many an insights into topics as diverse and esoteric as ESP, Seth material, Tarot, the Egyptian mythos, magick besides the magical encounters with Joesph Campbell. He brought Campbell to life, and made him even more a part of our lives. For this he will also have our profound gratitude.

As we lay our friends and teachers to rest, we realize that its never easy to say goodbye, and it leaves a kind of void that is hard to fill. And yet these goodbyes are also hello’s to a new world for both the departed and those still here. We wish that the journeys that Paul and Richards are now on finds happiness, peace and above all love.

And as once Paul told us “the caterpillar must become the butterfly” we will look to continue our quests in the becoming… and with love and fondness remember the enchantment both created for us, and hope to pass it on to the next generation.

Thank you Paul, thank you Richard – You both made this a richer world.

with love and gratitude

RCG

We are concluding our series of conversations with Ismana Carney – a Jung-based Earth-centered shamanic therapist. In these talks, Ismana explores with us some basic and very important questions through the eyes of a person deeply connected to Nature, Jungian psychology and shamanic traditions.

From the website of Terra Lucida Institute: Ismana Carney’s work is grounded in Carl Jung’s approach to dream work, archetypal, and Nature psychology, and cultivating the soul via Earth-centered rituals and therapeutic shamanic practices. Ismana teaches college and university courses in comparative world religions with a special emphasis on the mystical traditions. For the past two decades Ismana has also been involved both professionally and personally with Native indigenous tribal communities and their cultural and spiritual traditions. Ismana is also an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work focuses on Native American cultural and spiritual life.

In today’s episode:

• Living in a relation with nature
  • Everything is alive
• Men’s and Women’s paths
• Maturity
  • What is a Mature Woman? Man?

We are continuing our series of conversations with Ismana Carney – a Jung-based Earth-centered shamanic therapist. In these talks, Ismana explores with us some basic and very important questions through the eyes of a person deeply connected to Nature, Jungian psychology and shamanic traditions.

From the website of Terra Lucida Institute: Ismana Carney’s work is grounded in Carl Jung’s approach to dream work, archetypal, and Nature psychology, and cultivating the soul via Earth-centered rituals and therapeutic shamanic practices. Ismana teaches college and university courses in comparative world religions with a special emphasis on the mystical traditions. For the past two decades Ismana has also been involved both professionally and personally with Native indigenous tribal communities and their cultural and spiritual traditions. Ismana is also an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work focuses on Native American cultural and spiritual life.

In today’s episode:

• A Hawk Story
• Understanding the Language of Nature
• Changing our languaging
  • We are of the Earth, not on the Earth

We are continuing our series of conversations with Ismana Carney – a Jung-based Earth-centered shamanic therapist. In these talks, Ismana explores with us some basic and very important questions through the eyes of a person deeply connected to Nature, Jungian psychology and shamanic traditions.

From the website of Terra Lucida Institute: Ismana Carney’s work is grounded in Carl Jung’s approach to dream work, archetypal, and Nature psychology, and cultivating the soul via Earth-centered rituals and therapeutic shamanic practices. Ismana teaches college and university courses in comparative world religions with a special emphasis on the mystical traditions. For the past two decades Ismana has also been involved both professionally and personally with Native indigenous tribal communities and their cultural and spiritual traditions. Ismana is also an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work focuses on Native American cultural and spiritual life.

In today’s episode:

• Society and Love
  • The Great Soap Opera
• Discovering Your Nature through Nature
  • Jung: story of the egyptian scarab beetle
• Learning the Language of the Nature
• Interpreting the Meaning of the Nature’s Language

We are continuing our series of conversations with Ismana Carney – a Jung-based Earth-centered shamanic therapist. In these talks, Ismana explores with us some basic and very important questions through the eyes of a person deeply connected to Nature, Jungian psychology and shamanic traditions.

From the website of Terra Lucida Institute: Ismana Carney’s work is grounded in Carl Jung’s approach to dream work, archetypal, and Nature psychology, and cultivating the soul via Earth-centered rituals and therapeutic shamanic practices. Ismana teaches college and university courses in comparative world religions with a special emphasis on the mystical traditions. For the past two decades Ismana has also been involved both professionally and personally with Native indigenous tribal communities and their cultural and spiritual traditions. Ismana is also an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work focuses on Native American cultural and spiritual life.

In today’s episode:

• Decisions & Purpose
• Biological Perspective
• Heart and Love

A rare powerful earthquake has destroyed the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince, left the country in chaos, practically without police and government, and the survivors are relying on the foreign aid for the basic survival needs – food, water, safety, medical help.

We are shaken by the news, and are passing the word to all our listeners and readers to help the people of Haiti with what you can. The RCG founders have donated from their personal funds to “Doctors Without Borders”. Many more organizations are listed in a CNN article – a very much needed and concrete way to make a difference.

Today, we are starting a fascinating series of conversations with Ismana Carney – a "Jung-based Earth-centered shamanic therapist", as she describes herself in the introduction. In these talks, Ismana explores with us some basic and very important questions through the eyes of a person deeply connected to Nature, Jungian psychology and shamanic traditions.

From the website of Terra Lucida Institute: Ismana Carney’s work is grounded in Carl Jung’s approach to dream work, archetypal, and Nature psychology, and cultivating the soul via Earth-centered rituals and therapeutic shamanic practices. Ismana teaches college and university courses in comparative world religions with a special emphasis on the mystical traditions. For the past two decades Ismana has also been involved both professionally and personally with Native indigenous tribal communities and their cultural and spiritual traditions. Ismana is also an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work focuses on Native American cultural and spiritual life.

Here are the topics covered in this episode:

• About Ismana
  • Ph.D. in depth psychology
  • About 40 years on a spiritual path
• Value of a Shamanic Path
• Balance with Social Necessities

From the wikipedia and google video
The Power of Nightmares, subtitled The Rise of the Politics of Fear, is a BBC documentary film series, written and produced by Adam Curtis. Its three one-hour parts consist mostly of a montage of archive footage with Curtis’s narration. The series was first broadcast in the United Kingdom in late 2004 and has subsequently been broadcast in multiple countries and shown in several film festivals, including the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.
The films compare the rise of the Neo-Conservative movement in the United States and the radical Islamist movement, making comparisons on their origins and claiming similarities between the two. More controversially, it argues that the threat of radical Islamism as a massive, sinister organised force of destruction, specifically in the form of al-Qaeda, is a myth perpetrated by politicians in many countries—and particularly American Neo-Conservatives—in an attempt to unite and inspire their people following the failure of earlier, more utopian ideologies.

Part 1: “Baby It’s Cold Outside”
The first part of the series explains the origin of Islamism and Neo-Conservatism. It shows Egyptian civil servant Sayyid Qutb, depicted as the founder of modern Islamist thought, visiting the U.S. to learn about the education system, but becoming disgusted with what he saw as a corruption of morals and virtues in western society through individualism. When he returns to Egypt, he is disturbed by westernisation under Gamal Abdel Nasser and becomes convinced that in order to save society it must be completely restructured along the lines of Islamic law while still using western technology. He also becomes convinced that this can only be accomplished through the use of an elite “vanguard” to lead a revolution against the established order. Qutb becomes a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and, after being tortured in one of Nasser’s jails, comes to believe that western-influenced leaders can justly be killed for the sake of removing their corruption. Qutb is executed in 1966, but he inspires the future mentor of Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to start his own secret Islamist group. Inspired by the 1979 Iranian revolution, Zawahiri and his allies assassinate Egyptian president Anwar Al Sadat, in 1981, in hopes of starting their own revolution. The revolution does not materialise, and Zawahiri comes to believe that the majority of Muslims have been corrupted by their western-inspired leaders and thus may be legitimate targets of violence if they do not join him.
At the same time in the United States, a group of disillusioned liberals, including Irving Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz, look to the political thinking of Leo Strauss after the perceived failure of President Johnson’s “Great Society”. They come to the conclusion that the emphasis on individual liberty was the undoing of the plan. They envisioned restructuring America by uniting the American people against a common evil, and set about creating a mythical enemy. These factions, the Neo-Conservatives, came to power under the Reagan administration, with their allies Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, and work to unite the United States in fear of the Soviet Union. The Neo-Conservatives allege the Soviet Union is not following the terms of disarmament between the two countries, and, with the investigation of “Team B”, they accumulate a case to prove this with dubious evidence and methods. President Reagan is convinced nonetheless.

Part 2: “The Phantom Victory”
In the second episode, Islamist factions, rapidly falling under the more radical influence of Zawahiri and his rich Saudi acolyte Osama bin Laden, join the Neo-Conservative-influenced Reagan Administration to combat the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. When the Soviets eventually pull out and when the Eastern Bloc begins to collapse in the late 1980s, both groups believe they are the primary architects of the “Evil Empire’s” defeat. Curtis argues that the Soviets were on their last legs anyway, and were doomed to collapse without intervention.
However, the Islamists see it quite differently, and in their triumph believe that they had the power to create ‘pure’ Islamic states in Egypt and Algeria. However, attempts to create perpetual Islamic states are blocked by force. The Islamists then try to create revolutions in Egypt and Algeria by the use of terrorism to scare the people into rising up. However, the people are terrified by the violence and the Algerian government uses their fear as a way to maintain power. In the end, the Islamists declare the entire populations of the countries as inherently contaminated by western values, and finally in Algeria turn on each other, each believing that other terrorist groups are not pure enough Muslims either.
In America, the Neo-Conservatives’ aspirations to use the United States military power for further destruction of evil are thrown off track by the ascent of George HW Bush to the presidency, followed by the 1992 election of Bill Clinton leaving them out of power. The Neo-Conservatives, with their conservative Christian allies, attempt to demonise Clinton throughout his presidency with various real and fabricated stories of corruption and immorality. To their disappointment, however, the American people do not turn against Clinton. The Islamist attempts at revolution end in massive bloodshed, leaving the Islamists without popular support. Zawahiri and bin Laden flee to the sufficiently safe Afghanistan and declare a new strategy; to fight Western-inspired moral decay they must deal a blow to its source: the United States

Part 3: “The Shadows in the Cave”

The Neo-Conservatives use the September 11th attacks, with al-Fadl’s description of al-Qaeda,[citation needed] to launch the War on Terror.
The final episode addresses the actual rise of al-Qaeda. Curtis argues that, after their failed revolutions, bin Laden and Zawahiri had little or no popular support, let alone a serious complex organisation of terrorists, and were dependent upon independent operatives to carry out their new call for jihad. The film instead argues that in order to prosecute bin Laden in absentia for the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, US prosecutors had to prove he was the head of a criminal organisation responsible for the bombings. They find a former associate of bin Laden, Jamal al-Fadl, and pay him to testify that bin Laden was the head of a massive terrorist organisation called “al-Qaeda”. With the September 11th attacks, Neo-Conservatives in the new Republican government of George W. Bush use this created concept of an organisation to justify another crusade against a new evil enemy, leading to the launch of the War on Terrorism.
After the American invasion of Afghanistan fails to uproot the alleged terrorist network, the Neo-Conservatives focus inwards, searching unsuccessfully for terrorist sleeper cells in America. They then extend the war on “terror” to a war against general perceived evils with the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The ideas and tactics also spread to the United Kingdom where Tony Blair uses the threat of terrorism to give him a new moral authority. The repercussions of the Neo-Conservative strategy are also explored with an investigation of indefinitely-detained terrorist suspects in Guantanamo Bay, many allegedly taken on the word of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance without actual investigation on the part of the United States military, and other forms of “preemption” against non-existent and unlikely threats made simply on the grounds that the parties involved could later become a threat. Curtis also makes a specific attempt to allay fears of a dirty bomb attack, and concludes by reassuring viewers that politicians will eventually have to concede that some threats are exaggerated and others altogether devoid of reality

From The Wikipedia
“This series is about how those in power have used Freud’s theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy.” – Adam Curtis’ introduction to the first episode.

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, changed the perception of the human mind and its workings. His influence on the twentieth century is generally considered profound. The series describes the ways public relations and politicians have utilized Freud’s theories during the last 100 years for the “engineering of consent”.
Freud himself and his nephew Edward Bernays, who was the first to use psychological techniques in public relations, are discussed. Freud’s daughter Anna Freud, a pioneer of child psychology, is mentioned in the second part, as is one of the main opponents of Freud’s theories, Wilhelm Reich, in the third part.
Along these general themes, The Century of the Self asks deeper questions about the roots and methods of modern consumerism, representative democracy and its implications. It also questions the modern way we see ourselves, the attitude to fashion and superficiality.
The business and, increasingly, the political world uses psychological techniques to read and fulfill our desires, to make their products or speeches as pleasing as possible to us. Curtis raises the question of the intentions and roots of this fact. Where once the political process was about engaging people’s rational, conscious minds, as well as facilitating their needs as a society, the documentary shows how by employing the tactics of psychoanalysis, politicians appeal to irrational, primitive impulses that have little apparent bearing on issues outside of the narrow self-interest of a consumer population. He cites Paul Mazer, a Wall Street banker working for Lehman Brothers in the 1930s: “We must shift America from a needs- to a desires-culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. [...] Man’s desires must overshadow his needs.”
In Episode 4 the main subjects are Philip Gould and Matthew Freud, the great grandson of Sigmund, a PR consultant. They were part of the efforts during the nineties to bring the Democrats in the US and New Labour in the United Kingdom back into power. Adam Curtis explores the psychological methods they now massively introduced into politics. He also argues that the eventual outcome strongly resembles Edward Bernays vision for the “Democracity” during the 1939 New York World’s Fair.
According to BBC publicity:
To many in both politics and business, the triumph of the self is the ultimate expression of democracy, where power has finally moved to the people. Certainly the people may feel they are in charge, but are they really? The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society in Britain and the United States. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests?

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

Episode 4

Rare historical film that we ran into and are sharing it here for people to watch if it interests them

Ayn Rand represents to a large degree level 5/Orange intelligence, however we are curious what you think of this piece, as many of the things esp Big Oil she is talking about is still relevant in todays world.

And then we have another view point, this time from George Carlin, and he seems to speak about another level of intelligence, spoken from a very different world view.

- Stephen Covey, best-selling author 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
- His Holiness The Dalai Lama, Spiritual & Political Leader of The Tibetan People
- Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Brand, Entrepreneur, 245th richest person in the world
- Archbishop Desmond Tutu, South African Activist, opposed to apartheid
- Jack Canfield, co-creator, Chicken Soup for the Soul
- T. Harv Eker, creator, Secrets of The Millionaire Mind
- John Assaraf, star in The Secret, best-selling author and entrepreneur
- Russell Simmons, Entrepreneur & Philanthropist
- Byron Katie, Author, Speaker
- Wayne Muller, best-selling author, Legacy of the Heart
- Marci Shimoff, star in The Secret, best-selling author, Happy for No Reason
- Sir John Templeton, Billionaire, Investor & Philanthropist
- Hari Nam Singh Khalsa, Spiritual Leader & Corporate Mentor
- Gabrielle Roth, Musician, Dancer & Philosopher
- Hale Dwoskin, The Sedona Method
- Richard Carlson, best-selling author, Dont Sweat the Small Stuff
- Janet Attwood, best-selling author, The Passion Test
- Sam Keen, Author, Professor, Philosopher

This is the full length 90 min. version of Bill Moyer’s 1987 scathing critique of the criminal subterfuge carried out by the Executive Branch of the United States Government to carry out operations which are clearly contrary to the wishes and values of the American people. The ability to exercise this power with impunity is facilitated by the National Security Act of 1947. The thrust of the exposé is the Iran-Contra arms and drug-running operations which flooded the streets of our nation with crack cocaine. The significance of the documentary is probably greater today in 2007 than it was when it was made. We now have a situation in which these same forces have committed the most egregious terrorist attack on US soil and have declared a fraudulent so-called “War on Terror”. The ruling regime in the US who have conducted the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, are now banging the war drum against Iran. We have the PATRIOT act which has stripped us of many of our basic civil rights justified by the terror of 9/11 which is their own doing. This is the full length 90 min. version of Bill Moyer’s 1987 scathing critique of the criminal subterfuge carried out by the Executive Branch of the United States Government to carry out operations which are clearly contrary to the wishes and values of the American people. The ability to exercise this power with impunity is facilitated by the National Security Act of 1947. The thrust of the exposé is the Iran-Contra arms and drug-running operations which flooded the streets of our nation with crack cocaine. The significance of the documentary is probably greater today in 2007 than it was when it was made. We now have a situation in which these same forces have committed the most egregious terrorist attack on US soil and have declared a fraudulent so-called “War on Terror”. The ruling regime in the US who have conducted the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, are now banging the war drum against Iran. We have the PATRIOT act which has stripped us of many of our basic civil rights justified by the terror o…all » This is the full length 90 min. version of Bill Moyer’s 1987 scathing critique of the criminal subterfuge carried out by the Executive Branch of the United States Government to carry out operations which are clearly contrary to the wishes and values of the American people. The ability to exercise this power with impunity is facilitated by the National Security Act of 1947. The thrust of the exposé is the Iran-Contra arms and drug-running operations which flooded the streets of our nation with crack cocaine. The significance of the documentary is probably greater today in 2007 than it was when it was made. We now have a situation in which these same forces have committed the most egregious terrorist attack on US soil and have declared a fraudulent so-called “War on Terror”. The ruling regime in the US who have conducted the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, are now banging the war drum against Iran. We have the PATRIOT act which has stripped us of many of our basic civil rights justified by the terror of 9/11 which is their own doing

Gurdjieff – Meetings With Remarkable Men 1:42:52
Peter Brook, one of the pioneers of the experimental theatre movement of the 1950s and 1960s, was the director of Meetings with Remarkable Men. Brook tells the story of Asian mystic G. I. Gurdjieff, here played by Dragan Maksimovic. Gurdjieff devotes his entire existence, from youth to old age, in quest of the meaning of life. He eventually develops a form of meditation incorporating modern dance. Terence Stamp, who in Meetings with Remarkable Men plays Prince Lubovedsky, himself briefly retreated from his career after this picture, in favor of Eastern meditation.

Meetings with Remarkable Men
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Meetings with Remarkable Men is the second volume of the All and Everything trilogy written by the Greek-Armenian mystic G. I. Gurdjieff. A book of autobiography, it was originally published in 1963 and tells the tale of the young Gurdjieff growing up in a world torn between his unexplainable experiences and the developing modern sciences.

The book takes the form of Gurdjieff’s reminiscences about various “remarkable men” that he has met, beginning with his father. They include the Armenian priest Pogossian; his friend Soloviev, Prince Lubovedsky, a Russian prince with metaphysical interests, and a couple of others.

In the course of describing these characters, Gurdjieff weaves their stories into the story of his own travels, and also into an overarching narrative which has them cooperate in locating spiritual texts and/or masters in various lands (mostly Central Asia). Gurdjieff calls this group the “Seekers of Truth”.

Most of them do in fact find “truth” in the form of some suitable spiritual destiny. The underlying philosophy, especially as articulated in an appendix, amounts to the assertion that people generally live their lives asleep, are unconscious of themselves, and accordingly behave like machines, subject to outside causes and pressures. Also, one of the chief assessments of the novel is that the people of the past epochs lived in more suitable outer conditions and at higher inner levels than the people today. Many additional hidden harmonies are noted or alluded to.

These contradictory towards modern beliefs claims have inspired some to question the book’s “autobiographical” character. For example, Gurdjieff claims to have first heard the Epic of Gilgamesh as an oral epic sung from memory by his father; to have made contact with various ancient brotherhoods including the Sarmoung Brotherhood; to have copied a map of “pre-sand Egypt”, and to have witnessed a number of miracles and esoteric phenomena. There is currently in existence an esoteric group of loosely affiliated individuals who engage in what is called “The Work”, which is the doing part of Gurdjieff’s teachings.

In a way it can be claimed that many of the vignettes in Meetings are meant to be symbolic, or “teaching stories”.

This year also marked a transition for us at the Radical Change Group from relatively short and independent talks – to creating longer and more in-depth series of podcasts dedicated to broader topics. The first of such series – the “Body of Wisdom” has ended this year with our distillation of generalized principles from body-based disciplines such as martial arts, dance, rituals, and more.

In the coming year 2010 we are going to continue the dive deeper into such series of podcasts, starting with a new series on Positive Deviants. We will also be releasing more talks with our guests, and are planning on expanding our library of online material beyond the single stream of podcasts.

With that, we are wishing you Merry Christmas, a very Happy New Year, and Happy Holidays! See you back in 2010!

We are (finally!!) concluding our series of podcasts dedicated to the exploration of the body, the somatic disciplines and the underlying principles. Today, we are exploring the 15th generalized principle called "Don’t Leave the Body Behind". The complete series can be found on our website at http://www.radicalchangegroup.com/podcasts/series/body-of-wisdom/

• Don’t leave the body behind
  • Prime example – the science community
  • Dance
  • Martial arts

We are continuing our series of podcasts dedicated to the exploration of the body, the somatic disciplines and the underlying principles. Today, we are exploring the 14th generalized principle called "There Are No Paradoxes in the Body". The previous episodes from this series can be found on our website at http://www.radicalchangegroup.com/podcasts/series/body-of-wisdom/

• There Are No Paradoxes in the Body
  • Definition of a paradox
  • Martial arts
  • Paratheatre
• Applications
  • Relationships
  • Organizations, political parties
  • Personal development

$16,000/yr. to house a homeless person and help them build a better life
$100,000/yr. to leave a homeless person on the street
$1,000,000/yr. to send them to Afghanistan

Having your priorities completely skewed – PRICELESS!

For everything else, there’s Mastercard.

Thanks Michael, that says it all.

We are continuing our series of podcasts dedicated to the exploration of the body, the somatic disciplines and the underlying principles. Today, we are exploring the 13th generalized principle called "Expressing Emotions". The previous episodes from this series can be found on our website at http://www.radicalchangegroup.com/podcasts/series/body-of-wisdom/

• Expression of emotions
  • Emotions cannot be supressed, they can only be expressed
  • Examples: dance, ritual work, spiritual work, martial arts
• Applications
  • Relationships
  • Emotion: energy in motion
  • Business: Transmutation of fear into hope
  • Personal growth: self-expression, arts, sciences

We are continuing our series of podcasts dedicated to the exploration of the body, the somatic disciplines and the underlying principles. Today, we are exploring the 12th generalized principle called "Boundaries". The previous episodes from this series can be found on our website at http://www.radicalchangegroup.com/podcasts/series/body-of-wisdom/

• Boundaries
  • Discovering & respecting your boundaries
• Applications of Boundaries

We are continuing our series of podcasts dedicated to the exploration of the body, the somatic disciplines and the underlying principles. Today, we are exploring the 11th generalized principle called "Gestation Periods". The previous episodes from this series can be found on our website at http://www.radicalchangegroup.com/podcasts/series/body-of-wisdom/

• Gestation periods
  • It takes 20 years to become an overnight success
• Managing the shocks
  • Session of Confessions
  • Openness

We are continuing our series of podcasts dedicated to the exploration of the body, the somatic disciplines and the underlying principles. Today, we are exploring the 10th generalized principle called "Movement to Wholeness". The previous episodes from this series can be found on our website at http://www.radicalchangegroup.com/podcasts/series/body-of-wisdom/

• Movement from Fragmentation to Wholeness
  • Seeing wholeness as a child vs. as a wise man
• Applications of Wholeness
  • NLP: Ecology check
  • Business & organizations
  • Personal Growth
  • Relationships

We are continuing our series of podcasts dedicated to the exploration of the body, the somatic disciplines and the underlying principles. Today, we are exploring the 9th generalized principle called "Presence". The previous episodes from this series can be found on our website at http://www.radicalchangegroup.com/podcasts/series/body-of-wisdom/

• Presence
  • Commitment, integrity & discipline
• Applications of Presence
  • In relationships
  • In business, organizations & politics
  • In personal development
• Presence defined again
  • How can you be present while in doubt
  • Presence is alchemical
  • Commitment to what is, even boredom
• Why presence is important

We are continuing our series of podcasts dedicated to the exploration of the body, the somatic disciplines and the underlying principles. Today, we are exploring the eighth generalized principle called "Body First ".

• Body First
  • Body leads, and mind catches up
  • Fine distinctions
  • NLP
• Applications of Body First
• Exercises for Body First

We are continuing our series of podcasts dedicated to the exploration of the body, the somatic disciplines and the underlying principles. Today, we are exploring the seventh generalized principle called "Embodiment".

• Embodiment
  • Examples from martial arts, dance, rituals
• Applications of embodiment
  • Relationships
  • Business
• Exercises for Embodiment

We are continuing our series of podcasts dedicated to the exploration of the body, the somatic disciplines and the underlying principles. Today, we are exploring the sixth generalized principle which we call "The Basics".

• Basics
  • Basics is the most advanced work your body does
  • Basics have to come together to support mastery
• Application of basics
  • Relationships basics: communication, ability to take care of yourself (independence), etc.
  • Business strategy basics: PEST and SWOT analysis, etc.
  • Personal growth basics: know where you are, know where you want to go, and how to get there, etc.
• Exercises for Basics
  • Walking
  • Communication

We are continuing our series of podcasts dedicated to the exploration of the body, the somatic disciplines and the underlying principles. Today, we are exploring the fifth generalized principle, "Sequence & Syntax".

• Sequence & Syntax
  • The very principles we talked about build up on each other in a particular sequence
  • Sequence in Dance, Martial Arts, Rituals, Relationships, Business and organizations
• Exercises for Sequencing
  • Becoming aware of what works and patterns. NLP modeling.
  • A way to feel the sequence is to change it and see what happens

We are continuing our series of podcasts dedicated to the exploration of the body, the somatic disciplines and the underlying principles. Today, we are exploring the fourth generalized principle, "Structure to Freeform".

• Structure to Freeform
  • Expert to genius, from knowing the rules to learning to bend the rules
  • Flowing with the rules (as opposed to "within the rules")
  • Learning a discipline or fitting in a culture: from chaos, to rules, to deeper principles to new forms
• Exercises for Structure to Freeform
  • Pick a discipline and study it deeply

We are continuing our series of podcasts dedicated to the exploration of the body, the somatic disciplines and the underlying principles. Today, we are exploring the third generalized principle that we like to call "Saying Yes to What Is". It is also known as "Flow".

• Saying Yes to what is
  • Two levels of response – immediate and deeper
  • Flow
  • Utilization
  • Accepting unexpected invitations in the dance (like an accidental bump)
  • In relationship – a child shows up, what do you do?
• Exercises for "saying yes"
  • Becoming aware of anything that touches your body (wall, another person) – stay with it
  • Join a tumbling class, or Aikido, or Tai Chi, or any discipline based in flow
  • When you’re bored, commit to being bored 100% and stay with it.

We are continuing our series of podcasts dedicated to the exploration of the body, the somatic disciplines and the underlying principles. Today, we are exploring the second generalized principle called "Economy of Motion".

• Economy of Motion
  • The Path of Least Resistance
  • Following your impulse – as opposed to stopping yourself with negative thinking
  • Goal setting in NLP – planning direct path to it
  • Dance – and everyday situations – economy of motion shows in elegance
• Applications of the economy of motion
  • Allows you to live longer
  • Communicating in relationships – almost a sixth sense
  • Organizations – producing what’s absolutely necessary, without the extra bells and whistles
  • Learning – making as many mistakes as fast as I can. "Least resistance" doesn’t mean "the easiest" – sometimes it’s actually hard.
• Exercises
  • Stand still
  • Move from your center
  • Doing the most with the least

We are continuing our series of podcasts dedicated to the exploration of the body, the somatic disciplines and the underlying principles. Today, we are exploring the first generalized principle that we call "The Center", or "Centering".

• What is Center
  • The point around which I organize my body, my balance
  • Center of gravity
  • The Vertical centerline (in ritual, paratheatre) – "asocial"
  • Horizontal centerline (in dance) – "social"
  • Leverage for the power (e.g. lifting somebody in dance, or throwing an opponent in martial arts)
  • Point of balance
  • Center and gravity in relationship – "marriage to gravity"
• Applications of Center
  • Center in relationships – fluid center, shifting from one partner to the other depending on the context
  • Center in personal growth and rituals – connection to gravity, being grounded
  • Center in organizations – core competency
  • Size of the Center – what’s encompassed in the center
• Exercises for the Center
  • Discovering your center – straight walk heel-to-toe (enhance – close your eyes)
  • Shift your center into different parts of your body

We are continuing our series of podcasts dedicated to the exploration of the body, the somatic disciplines and the underlying principles. This is the second of the two introductory episodes, laying out the context, the definitions, and some of the foundations of the main body of the series.

• Somatic journey
  - Stages of learning a somatic discipline
  - Stage 1: not fitting, feeling clumzy, no idea what I’m doing. Excitement and fear.
  - Stage 2: surviving, staying through
  - Stage 3: competition
  - Stage 4: mastery – competition with yourself, precision
  - Stage 5: spirituality and sharing – transpersonal discoveries, teaching others. You don’t do it, you are it.

We are starting a major series of podcasts dedicated to the exploration of the body, the somatic disciplines and the underlying principles. The first two episodes are the introductory talks, laying out the context, the definitions, and some of the foundations of the main body of the series.

• Introductions & overarching structure
  • Principles, how they show in various somatic disciplines, and how we apply them in personal growth, relationships, and leadership / organizations.
• Definitions
  • What is somatic
  • Distinctions of body, mind, spirit
  • Impulses
  • Somatic syntax
  • Center
  • Pre-verbal
  • Direct experience, embodiment
  • Propioception – sense of orienting yourself
  • Flow – saying "yes" to life, going with what is
  • Paradox, tension of the opposites
  • Presence – where my attention flows, and how I am held as an entity proper. "I am here".
  • Basics – foundational elements, the alphabets, the grammar
• Why study somatics?
  • All changes start with the body
  • It all comes to emotions, which starts in the body. So, feeling our body is our basic need.
  • The myth of our life resides in our body
  • Being mindful and "bodyful" – paying attention not only to what you are paying attention, but also with what part of your body
  • Changes in the body as a way to heal, to release tentions
  • Focusing on the body leads to wholeness
  • In modern society, especially western, body is considered a shadow (sinful, shameful) compared to the mind. Mythologically though, the shadow often has the greatest potential and energy, and needs to be integrated in order to do any serious work.
• Somatic disciplines covered
  • Dance (ballroom, 5Rhythms, contact improv)
  • Meditation
  • Martial arts
  • Rituals (Paratheatre, mythological work with Paul Rebillot)
  • Tantra
  • Anthropology
  • NLP
  • Spiral Dynamics
• Applications:
  • Personal growth
  • Relationships
  • Leading change at the level of a unit (organization, society)

In this episode, we are talking an important aspect of any transformation – accepting and letting go of the old, before embracing the new.

• Why it is important
  • What we accumulate holds us back
  • Directionality – let go of what to move where? Changing the state of being
  • "Gods of one level are the demons of the next"
• What keeps us stuck?
  • Delusions – and acceptance as a path
  • Emotions that keep us back, and forgiveness as a way out.
  • When you don’t see an alternative
• Sequence of steps
  • Forgive the old before moving on – otherwise, you’ll keep being bound to the old
  • Denial, anger, sadness, acceptance (same sequence as for trauma)
  • If you don’t let go of the old, it will haunt you
  • Accepting, forgiving (if appropriate), finding an honorable closure, then moving on through a "rite of passage"
• Closing remarks
  • Don’t confuse forgiveness & acceptance with forgetting
  • Hardest to accept & forgive yourself

We are continuing our Swimming with Dolphins series of conversations with Dr. Paul Kordis. Check back to the previous episode (#93) of the series, or start with the first episode (#52) , if you haven’t heard it yet.

Paul has been researching writing, and speaking to groups for over 20 years about the processes of profound change. He is a globally traveled speaker and seminar leader on futuristic, human development, change and other topics. He received his Ph.D. degree (with honors) in human capital and economic development from Colorado State University in May, 2008.

His 1,500-page dissertation is entitled “The Superhighway to Serfdom: How False-Social-Norms Marketing is Hijacking the American Dream.” He is a co-author (with Dudley Lynch) of the books The Strategy of the Dolphin: Scoring a Win in a Chaotic World, which has become a best seller, and Code of the Monarch: A Guide to the Real Global Business Revolution. He is also the author (with his wife, Susan) of the book Name Your Passion: A User’s Guide to Finding Your Personal Purpose.

Today’s conversation touches upon the following topics:

• Choosing the change
  • At level 7, change becomes autogenic and conscious
• Learning to learn
• Solutions at one level are the problems of the next
  • Or, as Joseph Campbell put it, "Gods of one level are demons of the next"
• Progress and Regress
  • Transitions may happen backwards, to the lower levels
• Previous value systems are necessary for the higher ones to emerge

Most of us have heard the admonition, “Treat others as you would have others treat you.” It’s the golden rule. And most of us have also heard it’s corrupted corollary, “He who has the gold makes the rules.” The first is a recommendation for getting along. The second is a sad recognition of the current facts.
This recognition is doubly sad as we observe America’s ongoing debate, if one could call it that, over healthcare. Once again those with the wealth, i.e. pharmaceutical companies and health insurance providers, are making the rules. And by what yardstick are these rules being measured? The primary metric for the pharmaceutical industry is the one with which we are the most familiar: charge as much for your product as you can and don’t worry too much about the product’s quality or ultimate effect. The primary metric for insurance companies is similar. It’s called the Medical Loss Ratio. This ration is the amount of money the insurance companies get from their clients versus the money they spend to keep their clients healthy. Currently the ratio is about 20 percent profit versus 80 percent outlay for the client (see http://www.pnhp.org/news/2006/march/medicalloss_ratios_.php). This ratio makes Wall Street very happy, but what does it mean for the rest of us if cutting client care is the most important item on health insurer’s agenda? It most likely means that even more people in America won’t be able to afford health insurance and that even more people who can afford it will go underserved. This also means that those who fear a healthcare system run by government, such as Medicare which operates five to ten times more efficiently than private insurance providers, are currently faced with a healthcare system run by Wall Street, the same folks who created the current financial debacle (see http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/transcripts/index.html).
But this is merely an instance. When it comes to any of the critical issues facing our nation the same players are making the rules, those with the gold. Whether the issue is energy, unemployment, the environment, war, healthcare, retirement, or almost any other important issue you can shake a stick at, the game remains the same. And the game is rigged. Recently I read a blog lamenting that America will soon have a population where the bottom 90 percent feed like leeches on the top 10 percent. But ignoring the fact that this is economically improbable if not impossible, the real truth is just the opposite. The top 0.01 percent have been living off of the bottom 90 percent for the greater part of the last 5,000 years (Korten, 2006, 2009; Rothkopf, 2008; Simon, 2005). That is, those who don’t work make their living from those who do by employing them for less than they are worth, selling them products for more than the products are worth, and by stealing their taxes.
So how is it that the rest of us, the regular people, have no voice whatsoever in all of the important decisions?
The answer is:
• Our government representatives are for sale to the highest bidder
• Our government representatives are continually campaigning rather than governing because they need the money
• Our government representatives are sold at a higher price than most can afford
• Our government representatives see no alternative
See (Blumenthal, 1980; Johnston, 2003, 2007; Ornstein, 2000; Phillips, 2008; Sirota, 2006; Thurber, 1995).
And how has this happened?
It most recently has come about by way of corporate personhood. That is, corporations are now legally considered to be persons, with all of the rights and fewer of the responsibilities of the real people who compose the true citizenry of the United States. This reality is based on a lamentable and infuriating mistake, but it is still a reality (Hartmann, 2002; Korten, 2000, 2001). This reality dictates that giving money to government officials is protected by a corporation’s right, as a person, to free speech. And whenever campaign reform is mentioned, one that would limit the ability of corporations to give money to a politician via campaign contributions, the cry is heard loud and clear that the free speech granted to the corporate world would be violated if such reforms were to be enacted.
But in reality it is the free speech of those who cannot afford opulent campaign contributions that is being continuously and overtly violated. We now have a system of “one dollar, one vote” rather than “one person, one vote.”
Many solutions have been suggested, including the one I like best, the elimination of corporate personhood. Another one that I like is as follows:
Allow anyone, even corporations, to contribute to political campaigns. The money would then be pooled and divided equally among the legitimate candidates. This would also force the media to give equal time to all candidates for free, which was their original public charter.
Ironically, this would take lots and lots of money to initiate and implement. But there is an equally powerful option that would have a similar effect in the long run. Simply put, we can and should exercise our economic power as citizens to withhold money from people and corporations who violate the public trust and the public interest. If money speaks so loudly in Washington then it can be deafening on Wall Street. They can’t buy our government if we don’t give them any money with which to do it. This would create another corollary to the golden rule, “I won’t give you any gold if you would use it to rule me.”

References

Blumenthal, S. (1980). The permanent campaign: Inside the world of elite political operatives. Boston: Beacon Press.
Hartmann, T. (2002). Unequal protection: The rise of corporate dominance and the theft of human rights. Emmaus, Pennsylvania: Rodale Press.
Johnston, D. C. (2003). Perfectly legal: The covert campaign to rig our tax system to benefit the super rich – and cheat everybody else. New York: Portfolio.
Johnston, D. C. (2007). Free lunch: How the wealthiest Americans enrich themselves at government expense (and stick you with the bill). New York: Portfolio.
Korten, D. C. (2000). The post-corporate world: Life after capitalism. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
Korten, D. C. (2001). When corporations rule the world (2nd ed.). Bloomfield, Connecticut: Kumarian Press, Inc. and Berrett Koehler Publishers, Inc.
Korten, D. C. (2006). The great turning: From empire to earth community. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
Korten, D. C. (2009). Agenda for a new economy: From phantom wealth to real wealth. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
Ornstein, N. J. (Ed.). (2000). The permanent campaign and its future. La Vergne, Tennessee: AEI Press.
Phillips, K. (2008). Bad money: Reckless finance, failed politics, and the global crisis of American capitalism. New York: Viking.
Rothkopf, D. (2008). Superclass: The global power elite and the world they are making. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Simon, D. R. (2005). Elite deviance (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Allyn & Bacon.
Sirota, D. (2006). Hostile takeover: How big money and corruption conquered our government – and how we take it back. New York: Crown.
Thurber, J. A. (1995). The transformation of American campaigns. In J. A. Thurber & C. J. Nelson (Eds.), Campaigns and elections American style (pp. 1 – 13). Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.

We are continuing our Swimming with Dolphins series of conversations with Dr. Paul Kordis. Check back to the previous episode (#90) of the series, or start with the first episode (#52) , if you haven’t heard it yet.

Paul has been researching writing, and speaking to groups for over 20 years about the processes of profound change. He is a globally traveled speaker and seminar leader on futuristic, human development, change and other topics. He received his Ph.D. degree (with honors) in human capital and economic development from Colorado State University in May, 2008.

His 1,500-page dissertation is entitled “The Superhighway to Serfdom: How False-Social-Norms Marketing is Hijacking the American Dream.” He is a co-author (with Dudley Lynch) of the books The Strategy of the Dolphin: Scoring a Win in a Chaotic World, which has become a best seller, and Code of the Monarch: A Guide to the Real Global Business Revolution. He is also the author (with his wife, Susan) of the book Name Your Passion: A User’s Guide to Finding Your Personal Purpose.

Today’s conversation touches upon the following topics:

• Systemic Consciousness
• Interconnectedness of the modern age
• Break-through to level 7
  • Bigger than all the previous levels combined
• Neurological changes
  • Level transitions are reflected by physical, neurological brain changes

Wouldn’t it be great to turn your failures not just into success, but into great moments? This is our second part of the conversation, where we share our personal stories of our own great moments:

• Applying principles of great moments
  • Sergey: making a movie
  • Mahipal: adapting to the job conditions
  • Arman: relationship with parents
• Closing thoughts

Wouldn’t it be great to turn your failures not just into success, but into great moments? Here’s our first part of the conversation on the subject:

• What is Failure
  • Something to avoid
  • True failure – try it, fail, and never try again
  • Finding excuses to justify never trying again
• Why do people fail?
  • Do the same mistake over and over again
  • Lack of sensory acuity
  • Lack of skills
  • Perspective on failure (falling down or failure to get up)
  • Losing hope or not acting
  • Forgetting to learn, giving it time ("expert desease")
  • Fear of failure, protecting the ego
• Great Moments
  • Realization of having fallen down and process of getting up
  • Not letting the results define me
  • An "Aha!" moment
  • I’ve just learned something more about the reality!
• Examples of great moments
  • Thomas Edison
  • Buckminster Fuller – lake Michigan story
• Structure of great moments
  • Selebrating your mistakes as new learnings
  • Willingness to try new approaches
  • Willingness to test your assumptions
  • Knowing the directon
  • Willingness to go into unknown territory
  • Comfort vs. Being Alive
  • Making new mistakes

We are continuing our Swimming with Dolphins series of conversations with Dr. Paul Kordis. Check back to the previous episode (#89) of the series, or start with the first episode (#52) , if you haven’t heard it yet.

Paul has been researching writing, and speaking to groups for over 20 years about the processes of profound change. He is a globally traveled speaker and seminar leader on futuristic, human development, change and other topics. He received his Ph.D. degree (with honors) in human capital and economic development from Colorado State University in May, 2008.

His 1,500-page dissertation is entitled “The Superhighway to Serfdom: How False-Social-Norms Marketing is Hijacking the American Dream.” He is a co-author (with Dudley Lynch) of the books The Strategy of the Dolphin: Scoring a Win in a Chaotic World, which has become a best seller, and Code of the Monarch: A Guide to the Real Global Business Revolution. He is also the author (with his wife, Susan) of the book Name Your Passion: A User’s Guide to Finding Your Personal Purpose.

Today’s conversation touches upon the following topics:

• Team dynamics model
• Ideas for the sequel to the Dolphins book
• Dolphin behavious & attributes
  • Levels 6 through 8

We are continuing our Swimming with Dolphins series of conversations with Dr. Paul Kordis. Check back to the previous episode (#88) of the series, or start with the first episode (#52) , if you haven’t heard it yet.

Paul has been researching writing, and speaking to groups for over 20 years about the processes of profound change. He is a globally traveled speaker and seminar leader on futuristic, human development, change and other topics. He received his Ph.D. degree (with honors) in human capital and economic development from Colorado State University in May, 2008.

His 1,500-page dissertation is entitled “The Superhighway to Serfdom: How False-Social-Norms Marketing is Hijacking the American Dream.” He is a co-author (with Dudley Lynch) of the books The Strategy of the Dolphin: Scoring a Win in a Chaotic World, which has become a best seller, and Code of the Monarch: A Guide to the Real Global Business Revolution. He is also the author (with his wife, Susan) of the book Name Your Passion: A User’s Guide to Finding Your Personal Purpose.

Today’s conversation touches upon the following topics:

• Emotions of Change
  • Dolphin book – written in late 80s
  • Win-win concept
  • Dolphin metaphor
  • Sharks and Carps
  • Types of behavior: sacrificial, selfish, compromise, collaboration
  • Emotion cycles for each side of the wave
• Decision strategies
  • Accelerating rate of change
  • Openness to change, ability to see it coming
  • How much involvement you have in decision making
• Purpose
  • Why are we here?
  • Context for the decisions

We are continuing our Swimming with Dolphins series of conversations with Dr. Paul Kordis. Check back to the previous episode (#64) of the series, or start with the first episode (#52) , if you haven’t heard it yet.

Paul has been researching writing, and speaking to groups for over 20 years about the processes of profound change. He is a globally traveled speaker and seminar leader on futuristic, human development, change and other topics. He received his Ph.D. degree (with honors) in human capital and economic development from Colorado State University in May, 2008.

His 1,500-page dissertation is entitled “The Superhighway to Serfdom: How False-Social-Norms Marketing is Hijacking the American Dream.” He is a co-author (with Dudley Lynch) of the books The Strategy of the Dolphin: Scoring a Win in a Chaotic World, which has become a best seller, and Code of the Monarch: A Guide to the Real Global Business Revolution. He is also the author (with his wife, Susan) of the book Name Your Passion: A User’s Guide to Finding Your Personal Purpose.

Today’s conversation touches upon the following topics:

• Graves model
• The basic value systems
1. Autistic (right now)
2. Tribal (family, clan, blood relationship)
3. The loner (motocycle biker, leave me alone)
4. The loyalist
5. The achiever
6. Egalitarian
7. Dedication to what works. Negative side: arrogance.
8. Global
• Movement from one system to the other
  • It’s a Hero’s Journey
• The rule of fours
  • Freedom and Structure
  • Task and Relationship
• Importance of all systems

Perhaps, one of the most difficult things to do in life is to open it up for ourselves and others to see – and accept it the way it is, without hiding from it or making up excuses. Today, we are opening the first half of the "can of worms" with the following topics:

• What is openness?
  • Context of challenge
  • As opposed to closedness
  • Acceptance of new and fresh
  • Space for everytihng
  • Opportunity of the full expression
• Levels of openness
  • Self, Others, God / Transcendent

In this podcast, we bring back the theme of accelerated learning that we started way back in one of our first episodes, now approaching it from a totally new angle and with the new learnings and experiences that we ourselves have learned in the meantime:

• What is learning?
  • What takes time in learning is "not getting it" (Marshall Thurber)
  • "Phase change," or transformational learning, in contrast to "slow learning"
  • The tipping point in learning
• Examples of accelerated learning
  • Learning NLP techniques – finding the bigger structure
  • Ballroom dancing – exploring the space of mistakes
  • Strategy to execution
• What people remember?
  • The first thing, the last thing, and any strongly emotional moments in between
  • Structuring learning in smaller chunks
  • Segmented learning
  • Constructing stories
• Examples of learning through stories
• Different kinds of learning
  • Academic
  • Experiential
• Games – making learning fun
• Closing remarks
  • Making games on the fly
  • Look for humor
  • Learning as new ways to have fun
  • "Mischief accomplished!"

This episode concludes our series of conversations with Dr. Paul Kordis on the transformational leadership. Paul has been researching writing, and speaking to groups for over 20 years about the processes of profound change. He is a globally traveled speaker and seminar leader on futuristic, human development, change and other topics. He received his Ph.D. degree (with honors) in human capital and economic development from Colorado State University in May, 2008.

His 1,500-page dissertation is entitled “The Superhighway to Serfdom: How False-Social-Norms Marketing is Hijacking the American Dream.” He is a co-author (with Dudley Lynch) of the books The Strategy of the Dolphin: Scoring a Win in a Chaotic World, which has become a best seller, and Code of the Monarch: A Guide to the Real Global Business Revolution. He is also the author (with his wife, Susan) of the book Name Your Passion: A User’s Guide to Finding Your Personal Purpose.

Today’s conversation touches upon the following topics:

• Resistance to Change
• Taking Responsibility
• Head, Heart, and Hand
• Emotional "Proud Flesh"
• Through Suffering to Joy
• Poetry – David Whyte

We started this journey 3 years ago with some explicit goals, as a means to share our learnings and discoveries with the world as a gift, something coming from deep within and offered without expectations of anything in return. We also made a conscious decision not to advertise, promote or in other ways try to seed this content to generate artificial demand for it. We wanted this to spread organically, meaning that:

1. People would spread it by word of mouth, after being wowed by what they experienced;
2. We believed that if the ideas were valid and have value, they will survive. Otherwise, there is no need for them.
3. We wanted to allow nature to take its own course, as we expressed our voice in the deepest possible way.

So here we are, and we are both proud and humbled by what we have accomplished with your support. The highlights are:

1. Over 200k downloads with no advertising or promotion;
2. Listeners in over 80 countries worldwide;
3. We have been blessed with teachers from all over, teaching and sharing with us, many are our friends and continue to guide us on our journey. We want to also thank them for their time and contribution to our project:
   • Sensei Sastri
   • Gabrielle Roth
   • Kathy Altman
   • Antero Alli
   • Paul Kordis
   • Richard Roberts
   • Marshall Thurber
   • David Neenan
   • Paul Rebillot

In closing, we are thankful to you all, and would love to get your feedback on what you liked, what you would like to see, and how we can improve our shows. Further if you have found these podcasts to be of value, help us now by spreading the value around, do share this site and this labor of love with those you think may benefit from it. If you enjoy this work, perhaps, you may consider forwarding this link and this work to 5-10 other people you think may benefit from it, spread the gift, spread the contribution, and help us move the evolution of ideas and beings a little further along.

Thank you!

We are continuing our series of conversations with Dr. Paul Kordis on the transformational leadership. Paul has been researching writing, and speaking to groups for over 20 years about the processes of profound change. He is a globally traveled speaker and seminar leader on futuristic, human development, change and other topics. He received his Ph.D. degree (with honors) in human capital and economic development from Colorado State University in May, 2008.

His 1,500-page dissertation is entitled “The Superhighway to Serfdom: How False-Social-Norms Marketing is Hijacking the American Dream.” He is a co-author (with Dudley Lynch) of the books The Strategy of the Dolphin: Scoring a Win in a Chaotic World, which has become a best seller, and Code of the Monarch: A Guide to the Real Global Business Revolution. He is also the author (with his wife, Susan) of the book Name Your Passion: A User’s Guide to Finding Your Personal Purpose.

Today’s conversation touches upon the following topics:

• The Dark Side of the US Politics
• The Dark Side of Business and Organizations
• Blindness to the pattern
• Emotions of change (see the article at Human Capital Sustainability)
• As above, so below
  • From system level to personal level
• Why acknowledging the dark side is importart?

Today, we are bringing you another series of conversations with Dr. Paul Kordis, this time on the transformational leadership. Paul has been researching writing, and speaking to groups for over 20 years about the processes of profound change. He is a globally traveled speaker and seminar leader on futuristic, human development, change and other topics. He received his Ph.D. degree (with honors) in human capital and economic development from Colorado State University in May, 2008.

His 1,500-page dissertation is entitled “The Superhighway to Serfdom: How False-Social-Norms Marketing is Hijacking the American Dream.” He is a co-author (with Dudley Lynch) of the books The Strategy of the Dolphin: Scoring a Win in a Chaotic World, which has become a best seller, and Code of the Monarch: A Guide to the Real Global Business Revolution. He is also the author (with his wife, Susan) of the book Name Your Passion: A User’s Guide to Finding Your Personal Purpose.

Today’s conversation touches upon the following topics:

• Dark and Light Side of Leadership
  • The two extremes, and the middle – the transactional nature of leadership.
• The 3-legged stool
  • The Seat: Doing the right thing
  • The legs:
    • Do you want to do it? Motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic
    • Can you do it? (Skills, abilities, etc)
    • The Resources – that’s where the leadership really falls into (tangible, intangible, etc.)
  • The "Race Car Driver" model
• Transformational Leadership
  • Considering the emotional and spiritual aspects of leadership, in addition to the transactional aspect.
  • Comes difficult in the business environments where the main idea is that the only purpose of business is profit. Yet when implemented, transformational leadership brings lots of profit.
  • Ethics
• The Dark Side of Leadership
  • How it’s been ignored for too long, and what it cost us. A good leader should lead people to confront the dark side.

How to Choose the Work that Makes You Happiest.

From Walter Murch, an Academy Award-winning film editor and sound designer:

“As I’ve gone through life, I’ve found that your chances for happiness are increased if you wind up doing something that is a reflection of what you loved most when you were somewhere between nine and eleven years old…At that age, you know enough of the world to have opinions about things, but you’re not old enough yet to be overly influenced by the crowd or by what other people are doing or what you think you ‘should’ be doing. If what you do later on ties into that reservoir in some way, then you are nurturing some essential part of yourself. It’s certainly been true in my case. I’m doing now, at fifty-eight, almost exactly what most excited me when I was eleven.

“But I went through a whole late-adolescent phase when I thought: Splicing sounds together can’t be a real occupation, maybe I should be a geologist or teach art history.”
– from The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film

happiness, walter murch, work life balance,

We are continuing our series of conversations with an author, a poet, a Tarot scholar and a mythologist Richard Roberts.

In the 1960s, Alan Watts presented Roberts with a letter of introduction to Joseph Campbell, which led to a 20-year mentorship with the famed scholar of mythology – a partnership which included collaborating in seminars and writing books, and which lasted through the remainder of Campbell’s life.

In his college days, Roberts had vowed never to write a novel until he had an idea no writer before him ever had. In a vision, he conceived of a book in which his characters would "go into" other literary classics and interact with the characters, all the while writing in the style of the original authors of those classics. Roberts regards the resulting book, The Wind & The Wizard, as his life’s masterwork.

In this episode, Richard Roberts illuminates some details about Tarot and Numerology, specifically the "Magic 9" Arrangement of the Major Arcana. He also reads a few excerpts from Colin Wilson’s introduction to Richard’s and Joe’s book Tarot Revelations.

• * The "Magic 9" Arrangement
  • Numerology influence on the arrangement of the Major Arcana
• Colin Wilson’s introduction to Tarot Revelations

In the Hands of Alchemy includes Depung-Loseling Tibetan Monks blessing a tower that Jerry built.

“There is a tremendous kind of courage that Jerry showed in the midst of the chaos and the individual loneliness of the Post-Modern world, to go his own way. It was the ultimate artistic step.” -David Whyte

“In the Hands of Alchemy is a delightful film, an alchemical mixture in itself of inspiration, spirituality, art and the story of a remarkable human being.” – David Spangler

BUY THE VIDEO!!! THIS IS A TRUE VISIONARY JOURNEY, A TRUE HERO’S JOURNEY, A TRUE ARTIST OF LIFE!!!!

This brings to mind a great story of a true artist and proponent of this way of being – Jerry Wennstrom!! Read him to understand the inspired life, and for a good introduction watch these videos of the poet david Whyte speaking of Jerry’s journey

We are continuing our series of conversations with an author, a poet, a Tarot scholar and a mythologist Richard Roberts.

In the 1960s, Alan Watts presented Roberts with a letter of introduction to Joseph Campbell, which led to a 20-year mentorship with the famed scholar of mythology – a partnership which included collaborating in seminars and writing books, and which lasted through the remainder of Campbell’s life.

In his college days, Roberts had vowed never to write a novel until he had an idea no writer before him ever had. In a vision, he conceived of a book in which his characters would "go into" other literary classics and interact with the characters, all the while writing in the style of the original authors of those classics. Roberts regards the resulting book, The Wind & The Wizard, as his life’s masterwork.

In this episode, Richard Roberts dives into his research of life after death and the works on the subject, consciousness of the Universe, Gnosis, and his collaboration with Joseph Campbell on their book Tarot Revelations.

• From ghosts to enlightenment
  • Earlier, Richard studied ghosts to find out if souls survive after death. In the same way, later he started to study gnosis to approach enlightenment. One day he found himself in a conscious sleep, and asked the question of "What is the meaning of everything". He was given a telepathic symbol
• The Symbol of Gnosis
  • Richard describes how to draw the symbol and its meaning
• William James afterlife
  • William James (in the book published by Jane Roberts about his afterlife) says that he never encountered the God of the Bible, but there was this presence, a light that would give him anything that he needed to grow his consciousness in his afterlife state.
• Consciousness of the Universe
  • Growing consciousness. We are part of God and God’s consciousness, and God’s consciousness grows as we grow our consciousness.
• Indian myths of reincarnation
• Collaboration with Joe on Tarot Revelations
  • Joe’s contribution – the arrangement of the Marseilles deck
• A Disguise of Hidden Knowledge
  • Game of Tarot has been designed to appear as simply playing cards
• Tarot Revelations – a unique book
  • No one else at the time could have written this book, due to the combination of literature and study one had to go through
• Western "Book of the Dead"
• Richard’s & Joe’s palm readings

Dalai Lama: Smart does not mean happy

dalai lama, smart, happy

We are continuing our series of conversations with an author, a poet, a Tarot scholar and a mythologist Richard Roberts.

In the 1960s, Alan Watts presented Roberts with a letter of introduction to Joseph Campbell, which led to a 20-year mentorship with the famed scholar of mythology – a partnership which included collaborating in seminars and writing books, and which lasted through the remainder of Campbell’s life.

In his college days, Roberts had vowed never to write a novel until he had an idea no writer before him ever had. In a vision, he conceived of a book in which his characters would "go into" other literary classics and interact with the characters, all the while writing in the style of the original authors of those classics. Roberts regards the resulting book, The Wind & The Wizard, as his life’s masterwork.

In this episode, Richard Roberts introduces the MonoMyth as a path to individuation, tells a story of his own "belly of the whale" experience, and how his publishing company Vernal Equinox Press came to be.

• MonoMyth as a path to individuation
• Myths are psychic openings to individuation
  • For many academics myths at the time were nothing more than a bunch of fairy tales
  • For one who places self-knowledge above empirical knowledge, myths are psychic openings to the inner world and to the outer cosmos
  • Ouroboros symbol, ying-yang symbol
  • Joe pointed out that serpent was the God of Levant thousands of years before the creation of the Book of Genesis
• Sophia and serpent
  • Creation of the World, Adam, and Serpent as an instructor
• Joe’s mentorship for Richard’s evolution
• Tarot book publication
  • Modern psychology confirms that the Tarot cards comprise an image comparable to that encountered in dreams of the path of initiation
• Belly of the Whale
  • Morgan & Morgan press – a hoax publisher
  • Richard’s mother got sick
  • Getting stuck in New York airport
  • Joe tells Richard to "ride the tiger"
  • Court gives rights back to Richard
• Idea for the Vernal Equinox Press
  • Publishing was expensive back then; Richard proposes the idea of his own publishing to Joe, he agrees
• Story of Vernal Equinox Press
  • 1953 – Richard being grad student
  • Course "Myth and the Bible" – no courses like that anymore
  • Early vegetation gods (4000BC) would die and revive around Vernal Equinox, and it appears the Easter resurrection of Jesus follows this pattern. Therefore, synchronicity with Richard’s birthday of March 21.

1. Purpose of the universe
2. Meditation and its uses
3. Sense of Service
4. Money making as the root cause of the predicament we are in today

Watch the videos!!!

Lately Ihave been coming face to face with my own shortcomings and failed expectations quite a bit. One wise teacher/friend once told me – “look at the faults and work with them, they give you the human experience fully. Nobody is perfect.”

Foudn this write up rather heart warming and in some ways very rich so here sharing it with you.

Click the link to read the whole article/write up. The posting below is but an excerpt if the well written piece

Let Go Of Expectations | Joyful Days

Let Go Of Expectations

The one thing that shatters relationships and ruins friendships more than any other is expectations. When we say that someone is not meeting our ‘needs’, we usually mean that he is not living up to our expectations. True needs are very few, but expectations are limitless.

When a person’s behaviour does not match your expectations, you can try to change their behaviour, or you could let go of your expectations. The first is an exercise in frustration and causes untold damage to relationships. The second is also difficult, but possible and worthwhile. Learn to let go.

1. Identify faulty assumptions

2. Seek to understand

3. Observe carefully

4. Recognise the consequences

5. Ask for agreement

happiness, peace of mind, expectations, assumptions, understanding, observing, consequences, agreement

Anticipating happiness and ‘achieving’ happiness | Exchange | Ode Magazine

I remember when I was in high school, looking forward to college, I thought independence from my parents, thousands of new people to meet and access to all the arts, shows and parties I could handle would make me the happiest person on the planet. I remember, years earlier, staring at the ashes of half of my family’s house – the half containing my room and all my belongings.

College was good. After a while, though, it was kind of average. As for all of my possessions burning up, a year later it was only a curious fact from my past. Many researchers have found that people significantly overestimate the emotional impact of both positive and negative future events. Dan Gilbert, a leading researcher in this area, cites the dramatic study of a group of people that have won the lottery and a group of people who have become paraplegic; a year later, both groups are equally happy.

Art Markman, in a Psychology Today blog, cites other studies in which people were asked to anticipate how they would feel upon receiving high or low scores on an intelligence test. Those who anticipated their emotional response worked harder, longer and felt more confident about their achievement than people who did not anticipate the test’s emotional outcome.

These results form a curious paradox, in which anticipating happiness can lead us to achieve what we think will make us happy, but when we achieve it, there’s no serious or long-lasting impact. What can we do to find happiness, then? Well, according to this paradox, we can’t do anything. On the other hand, as soon as we view happiness as a state of being instead of an accomplishment, the conflict disappears. Of course we can rush around doing things and never be happy, because nothing external translates into internal contentment.

These odd study results have been anticipated for thousands of years by many spiritual traditions. The writer of Ecclesiastes writes about the vanity of accomplishment and our inability to anticipate the future. Eastern meditation focuses on learning to be “present.” Happiness is something we are or we are not, in the present moment. It has to do with the things we choose to believe or to focus on, with the stories we tell ourselves, with our ability to avoid worrying about the future or hanging our hopes on a later day.

Take a deep breath. Savor the moment. Nothing will make you much happier or much less happy than you are right now.

For more information, watch a presentation by Dan Gilbert or read Art Markman’s blog.

happiness, ode magazine, art markman,

• Where do we find new patterns
  • Mythology
  • Spiral Dynamics
  • Modeling (NLP)
  • Artificial Intelligence
• Strict, probabilistic and Fuzzy logic
• Science patterns
• Techniques for shifting patterns
  • Trying first in a safe context
  • Dance, relationships, school, classes
  • For future-oriented, look for the shortest path, make as many mistakes as possible. Learn from the shock.
• Patterns of Empires

Social responsibility is/should not be just the domain of governments, but in so many ways is the duty of its citizens as well. This whole incident has left me numb to an extent that something like this can happen, and we – i.e. people like you and me are not even aware of it, and most likely feel helpless. I wonder what is the way out, how can we claim to be human and not take some action on something like this.

This has left me totally at a loss of words – but this kind of crisis is also fertile ground for seeds of transformation to be planted. The question is what kind of seeds do we plant both in the place of tragedy and in our own consiousness. I would be curious to hear what you may have to sayHow

1,500 farmers commit mass suicide in India – Asia, World – The Independent

1,500 farmers commit mass suicide in India

Wednesday, 15 April 2009

Over 1,500 farmers in an Indian state committed suicide after being driven to debt by crop failure, it was reported today.

The agricultural state of Chattisgarh was hit by falling water levels.

“The water level has gone down below 250 feet here. It used to be at 40 feet a few years ago,” Shatrughan Sahu, a villager in one of the districts, told Down To Earth magazine

“Most of the farmers here are indebted and only God can save the ones who do not have a bore well.”

Mr Sahu lives in a district that recorded 206 farmer suicides last year. Police records for the district add that many deaths occur due to debt and economic distress.

In another village nearby, Beturam Sahu, who owned two acres of land was among those who committed suicide. His crop is yet to be harvested, but his son Lakhnu left to take up a job as a manual labourer.

His family must repay a debt of £400 and the crop this year is poor.

“The crop is so bad this year that we will not even be able to save any seeds,” said Lakhnu’s friend Santosh. “There were no rains at all.”

“That’s why Lakhnu left even before harvesting the crop. There is nothing left to harvest in his land this time. He is worried how he will repay these loans.”

Bharatendu Prakash, from the Organic Farming Association of India, told the Press Association: “Farmers’ suicides are increasing due to a vicious circle created by money lenders. They lure farmers to take money but when the crops fail, they are left with no option other than death.”

Mr Prakash added that the government ought to take up the cause of the poor farmers just as they fight for a strong economy.

“Development should be for all. The government blames us for being against development. Forest area is depleting and dams are constructed without proper planning.

All this contributes to dipping water levels. Farmers should be taken into consideration when planning policies,” he said.

This article is from The Belfast Telegraph

mass sucide, farmers, transformation, consioussness,

A 60-year-old academic psychologist might seem an unlikely sports motivation guru. But Dweck’s expertise—and her recent book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success—bear directly on the sort of problem facing the Rovers. Through more than three decades of systematic research, she has been figuring out answers to why some people achieve their potential while equally talented others don’t—why some become Muhammad Ali and others Mike Tyson. The key, she found, isn’t ability; it’s whether you look at ability as something inherent that needs to be demonstrated or as something that can be developed.

What’s more, Dweck has shown that people can learn to adopt the latter belief and make dramatic strides in performance. These days, she’s sought out wherever motivation and achievement matter, from education and parenting to business management and personal development.

mindset, stanford, carol dwack, effort effect,

• Somatic patterns
  • Martial arts
  • Dancing
• Biological patterns
• Linguistic patterns
  • NLP: Meta-model, Milton model, Sleight of mouth patterns
  • Priming
• Habits
• Relationship patterns
• Spotting patterns
  • Asking for help and going for diversity
  • Intent and attention

Scientists ‘discover’ source of wisdom in the human brain | Mail Online

human brain

Breakthrough: Scientists have pinpointed the part of the human brain related to wisdom

Scientists have discovered the source of wisdom in the human brain, it was revealed today.

Experts have pinpointed the part of the brain that guides people when they are battling with difficult moral dilemmas, according to a study.

Highly-sophisticated brain scans show that the response is linked to certain areas usually associated with primitive emotions of sex, fear and anger.

The findings, revealed by the Observer, are to be published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

They are a significant departure into an area of expertise that has long been regarded as one of religion and philosophy.

Study author Dilip Jeste, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the University of California in San Diego, said: ‘Our research suggests there may be a basis in neurobiology for wisdom’s most universal traits.’

He and colleague Thomas Meeks discovered that a person weighing up an issue that just called for an altruistic response used the medial prefrontal cortext of the brain.

This is linked to intelligence and learning.

But when someone is battling with a moral dilemma, other areas of the brain are used such as the parts linked to rational thought and primitive emotions.

Mr Meeks said: ‘Several brain regions appear to be involved in different components of wisdom. It seems to involve a balance between more primitive brain regions, like the limbic system, and the newest ones, such as the prefrontal cortex.’

This type of research has only become possible in recent years due to technological advances in brain scanning, including functional magnetic resonance imaging.

This means experts can examine which parts of the brain that are used when people consider various tasks.

Such research has been made possible by the increasing sophistication of brain scanning techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

These allow researchers to see which parts of the brain become active when people undertake mental tasks.

Professor Jeste admitted the possibility that wisdom and free will are based on the make-up of someone’s brain rather than metaphysics is unsettling.

But he said: ‘Knowledge of the underlying mechanisms in the brain could potentially lead to developing interventions for enhancing wisdom.’

8 circuit brain, prefrontal cortex, wisdom,

• High-level structure of patterns
  • Context
  • Sequence, Syntax
  • Time scale
  • Triggers
• Types of patterns – Unconscious signals
  • Personal unconscious signals
  • Cultural unconscious signals – Time and Space

The greatest goal you can set this year is to make peace with your life, no matter your circumstances. These 10 powerful insights from Eckhart Tolle will get you started.

1. Don’t seek happiness. If you seek it, you won’t find it, because seeking is the antithesis of happiness. Happiness is ever elusive, but freedom from unhappiness is attainable now, by facing what is rather than making up stories about it.

2. The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation, which is always neutral, which always is as it is. There is the situation or the fact, and here are my thoughts about it. Instead of making up stories, stay with the facts. For example, “I am ruined” is a story. It limits you and prevents you from taking effective action. “I have 50 cents left in my bank account” is a fact. Facing facts is always empowering.
3. See if you can catch the voice in your head, perhaps in the very moment it complains about something, and recognize it for what it is: the voice of the ego, no more than a thought. Whenever you notice that voice, you will also realize that you are not the voice, but the one who is aware of it. In fact, you are the awareness that is aware of the voice. In the background, there is the awareness. In the foreground, there is the voice, the thinker. In this way you are becoming free of the ego, free of the unobserved mind.
4. Wherever you look, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence for the reality of time—a rotting apple, your face in the bathroom mirror compared with your face in a photo taken 30 years ago—yet you never find any direct evidence, you never experience time itself. You only ever experience the present moment.
5. Why do anxiety, stress, or negativity arise? Because you turned away from the present moment. And why did you do that? You thought something else was more important. One small error, one misperception, creates a world of suffering.
6. People believe themselves to be dependent on what happens for their happiness. They don’t realize that what happens is the most unstable thing in the universe. It changes constantly. They look upon the present moment as either marred by something that has happened and shouldn’t have or as deficient because of something that has not happened but should have. And so they miss the deeper perfection that is inherent in life itself, a perfection that lies beyond what is happening or not happening. Accept the present moment and find the perfection that is untouched by time.
7. The more shared past there is in a relationship, the more present you need to be; otherwise, you will be forced to relive the past again and again.
8. Equating the physical body with “I,” the body that is destined to grow old, wither, and die, always leads to suffering. To refrain from identifying with the body doesn’t mean that you no longer care for it. If it is strong, beautiful, or vigorous, you can appreciate those attributes—while they last. You can also improve the body’s condition through nutrition and exercise. If you don’t equate the body with who you are, when beauty fades, vigor diminishes, or the body becomes incapacitated, this will not affect your sense of worth or identity in any way. In fact, as the body begins to weaken, the light of consciousness can shine more easily.
9. You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you and allowing that goodness to emerge.
10. If peace is really what you want, then you will choose peace.

Exerpted from Oneness with All Life by Eckhart Tolle. Published by arrangement with Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. Copywright © 2008 by Eckhart Tolle

eckart tolle, happiness, radical nlp, radical change group, openess to all life

• What are patterns
  • Science: map of the world, theory
  • Structure wih a specific rhythm and beat
  • Mythology: Frank Herbert’s quote
  • Usefulness: patterns are everywhere, which ones we care about?
  • Repetition of a structure, sequence
• Patterns in Self
  • Personal growth
  • Where you are, where you are going, and how to get there
• Patterns in Relationships
• Patterns in large systems
  • Business, politics
• Why spotting patterns is important
  • Survival
• Usefulness and dangers of patterns
  • Saves you CPU cycles
  • Learn from prior generations
  • Automated thinking, robotizing
  • Distinction: who has control – you over pattern, or pattern over you
  • Patterns help to survive, but too much pattern kills adaptation, which leads to extinction
  • Context of war: make sure you spot your patterns before your opponent does
  • Context of personal growth: use your friends / teachers to spot your patterns
  • Whose patterns are these? Where did you get them from? Do they work for you?

If its of interest to you and you wish more details on modeling Einstien look into the work of Robert Dilts 3 volume masterpiece on strategy of genius.

Einstein’s Secret to Amazing Problem Solving (and 10 Specific Ways You Can Use It)

Einstein is quoted as having said that if he had one hour to save the world he would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem and only five minutes finding the solution.

This
quote does illustrate an important point: before jumping right into
solving a problem, we should step back and invest time and effort to
improve our understanding of it. Here are 10 strategies you can use to
see problems from many different perspectives and master what is the
most important step in problem solving: clearly defining the problem in the first place!

It is our great pleasure to present to you a series of conversations with an “urban shaman”, a cartographer of the inner space, an author, a musician, a dancer, and the founder of the 5Rhythms – Gabrielle Roth. This is the second episode of the series.

In this episode, we touch the following topics:

• Resonance in the body – emotions
  • Flowing resonates in the feet
  • Staccato resonates in the hips and heart
  • Chaos resonates in the neck, shoulders, head
  • Lyrical resonates in the hands
  • Stillness resonates in the breath
  • We can learn to dance from anytihng – flower, rock, mountain, animals…
  • Not “good” and “bad” – what is – is.
  • In the West, we became afraid of fear
• Dance of the nations
  • We are in a millenium of Chaos, a humbling time. Shattering.
  • The US might not be a super-power.
  • It’s a review of what am I going to die for, and what am I living for
• Body as a Living Bible
  • Many people don’t know how to read it
  • Reading it is a dance
  • People open up in the face of danger

It is our great pleasure to present to you a series of conversations with an “urban shaman”, a cartographer of the inner space, an author, a musician, a dancer, and the founder of the 5Rhythms – Gabrielle Roth.

In this episode, we touch the following topics:

• Maps of Ecstasy
  • Timeless, egoless state of being
  • Unleashed but focused
  • Dance – a firey prayer
  • You can dance forever (regardless of age)
  • At first a refuge. But then became much bigger than a refuge, and more people were coming into my refuge.
  • 5Rhythms – DNA of the creative process
• Devnagiri and Jhoom
  • The Western world lost its root – we are afraid of what is primal in us, and afraid of being touched and touch others in a way that awakens them
• Being rooted and grounded
  • Rooting is being off the Earth, and grounded is being on the Earth
  • Centered and Grounded
• Discovering the rhythms
• Transformation and alchemy
  • Fall in love and stay there
• Shadow side of 5Rhythms
  • Shadow to flowing is to be inert
  • Staccato – tense and rigit
  • Chaos – mentally confused and panicked
  • Lyrical – spaced out
  • Stillness – numb

We are continuing our conversations with our teacher and friend Paul Rebillot on the topic of the Healing Theatre – the combination of acting and drama, mythology, gestalt therapy, and rituals. For more information about Paul and his work, please visit his website – Direct Impact Creativity.

In this episode, Paul is describing the structure called Owning the Shadow.

The topics covered in this talk are:

• What is the shadow?
  • If there is no light, there is no shadow
  • "We have met the enemy, and he is us"
  • The shadow is "forbidden"
• Illuminating the Shadow
  • My way of dealing with shadow is to illuminate
  • Shadow is a tricky character – he escapes, moves back and forth
  • Once you begin to recognize your shadow, it loses power
  • Change the duel to the death (with the shadow) into a lover’s quarrel
• Looking at the Shadow
  • Looking at the Shadow has to be approach step-by-step
  • Shadow frequently appears in dreams
  • People that keep appearing in your life whom you cannot stand
  • Jokes – what we laugh at
• Revealing Shadow through Humor
  • And things we cannot laugh at and take too seriously
  • Anti-defamation (Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence)
• Distilling the qualities of shadow
  • List 25 people that disturb us most in our lives
  • Distilling 5 common qualities, drawing them and putting in the bag
  • We are dragging the bag of parts of us that we were told is bad
  • The Golden Shadow
  • Acting out the characters
• Integrating the Shadow
  • Creating a mask
    • First of your face
    • Then add bumps and colors
  • Then have a costume party to enact the shadow completely, all out
  • Gestalt work to integrate the shadow – dressing a partner into your shadow costume and see your own shadow
  • By the end, love begings to happen for the shadow, which is really the answer
  • Finally, a medicine wheel, to take the shadow with you on a spiritual level
• Examples of shadow integration
  • A man recognizing his homosexual shadow
  • Turing stories you tell about people to yourself into creative works
• Dealing with political shadow
  • Take some action
  • Look at the person you dispice and see where you are doing the same thing
  • Talk about it to people
• Justice and Vengeance
  • If become what you kill
• Parallels in the books and movies
  • Harry Potter (book)
  • The Matrix (movie)
  • V for Vendetta (movie)
  • "The Terrorist" (movie)

Technocrati Tags: Myth, Mythology, Hero's Journey, Lover's Journey, Owning the Shadow, Paul Rebillot

Great Potential Press – Guiding Gifted Learners

Existential Depression in Gifted Individuals
James T. Webb, Ph.D.

Existential Depression in Gifted Individuals
James T. Webb, Ph.D.
Supporting Emotional Needs of Gifted

Dr. Webb is co-author of the book Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnoses of Gifted Children and Adults: ADHD, Bipolar, OCD, Asperger’s, Depression, and Other Disorders

It has been my experience that gifted and talented persons are more likely to experience a type of depression referred to as existential depression. Although an episode of existential depression may be precipitated in anyone by a major loss or the threat of a loss which highlights the transient nature of life, persons of higher intellectual ability are more prone to experience existential depression spontaneously. Sometimes this existential depression is tied into the positive disintegration experience referred to by Dabrowski (1996).

Existential depression is a depression that arises when an individual confronts certain basic issues of existence. Yalom (1980) describes four such issues (or “ultimate concerns”)–death, freedom, isolation and meaninglessness. Death is an inevitable occurrence. Freedom, in an existential sense, refers to the absence of external structure. That is, humans do not enter a world which is inherently structured. We must give the world a structure which we ourselves create. Isolation recognizes that no matter how close we become to another person, a gap always remains, and we are nonetheless alone. Meaninglessness stems from the first three. If we must die, if we construct our own world, and if each of us is ultimately alone, then what meaning does life have?

Why should such existential concerns occur disproportionately among gifted persons? Partially, it is because substantial thought and reflection must occur to even consider such notions, rather than simply focusing on superficial day-to-day aspects of life. Other more specific characteristics of gifted children are important predisposers as well.

existential depression, gifted children,

We are continuing our series of conversations with an author, a poet, a Tarot scholar and a mythologist Richard Roberts.

In the 1960s, Alan Watts presented Roberts with a letter of introduction to Joseph Campbell, which led to a 20-year mentorship with the famed scholar of mythology – a partnership which included collaborating in seminars and writing books, and which lasted through the remainder of Campbell’s life.

In his college days, Roberts had vowed never to write a novel until he had an idea no writer before him ever had. In a vision, he conceived of a book in which his characters would "go into" other literary classics and interact with the characters, all the while writing in the style of the original authors of those classics. Roberts regards the resulting book, The Wind & The Wizard, as his life’s masterwork.

In this episode, Richard Roberts describes his meeting with Colin Wilson and his wife, talks about James Joyce’s Finnigan’s Wake, Sam Keen’s encounter sessions at Esalen, and his work on Tarot with Joseph Campbell.

• Meeting Colin Wilson and corroborating Joe’s Writings
  • In 1967 Colin came to San Francisco on a lecture tour. Richard mentioned that "Outsider" caused him to give up teaching and become an outsider.
  • Richard then took Colin to a pub to discuss this – and had an instant rapport, just like with Joe before
  • Colin invited Richard to visit him in England
  • Colin’s two books from 70s on paranormal are probably best representations of the subject
  • Colin’s wife was interested in archaeology and mythology, she took Richard to the site of King Mark’s Castle, and other places
  • Richard took photos of these sites, and later showed them to Joe, who was overjoyed because he saw historical corroboration of the myths
• Finnegan’s Wake as Death & Resurrection
  • Irish musical song on which Finnegan’s Wake is based
  • James Joyce’s version of the story – a dream of one man in one night, encapsulating the dreams of all men
  • Joe’s wife decided to do a dance version of Finnigan’s wake
• Esalen Encounter Sessions with Sam Keen
• Poem for Joe As Parsifal
  • Poem called "Chapel Perilous"
• Tarot Revelations with Joseph & Richard
  • Arrangement of Major Archana
  • The 22 cards can be interpreted as Western Book of the Dead
  • Jung’s work on alchemy
• Tarot Rebellion
  • Tarot and You (book)
  • Many people in tarot community charge money by simply referring to the books of interpretation
  • Richard had a "free association" method that conflicted with the traditional way
  • Film on Tarot interpretations

Technocrati Tags: Richard Roberts, Joseph Campbell, Hero with a 1000 Faces, Colin Wilson, Finnegan's Wake, Tarot

Today, we are starting a series of conversations with an author, a poet, a Tarot scholar and a mythologist Richard Roberts.

In the 1960s, Alan Watts presented Roberts with a letter of introduction to Joseph Campbell, which led to a 20-year mentorship with the famed scholar of mythology – a partnership which included collaborating in seminars and writing books, and which lasted through the remainder of Campbell’s life.

In his college days, Roberts had vowed never to write a novel until he had an idea no writer before him ever had. In a vision, he conceived of a book in which his characters would “go into” other literary classics and interact with the characters, all the while writing in the style of the original authors of those classics. Roberts regards the resulting book, The Wind & The Wizard, as his life’s masterwork.

In this episode, Richard Roberts describes how he came to meet Joseph Campbell and the related part of his life and work at the time.

• Alan Watts and “the Hero with a 1000 faces”
  • Richard came to California in 1956 – always carrying J. Campbell’s book, even to the beach
  • Alan gave him a letter of introduction to J. Campbell
• Meeting with the mentor Joseph Campbell
  • At the athletic club, running around the track
  • That evening Joseph’s wife was returning from a world’s tour of her dance version of “Finnigan’s Wake”
  • After running around the track, Richard and Joseph went to the bar, and after a few drinks became friends for life
  • “Waiting for the Goddess to unlock the waters”
• Joe stays over and Henrich Zimmer is introduced
  • Richard lets Joseph stay in his apartment in San Francisco for his Bay Area trip. Joseph later ships two boxes of books by Henrich Zimmer on Indian art and civilization to Richard as a thank you gift. These books furthered Richard’s interest in gnosticism.
• Joe and The Major Arcana Tarot
  • Joe was shown a deck of Tarot cards that he saw last time in 1940s at his friend’s Henrich Zimmer, who apparently was a Tarot scholar as well.
  • Richard was also given a deck of cards that were alchemical in nature.
  • They later began to correspond about arrangements of the Major Arcana
• Gnostic Traditions, Jane Roberts & Nag Hamadi Library
  • In 1972 the book “Seth Speaks” came out (Jane Roberts).
  • Aug 11, 1971 – last session of Seth. Christ was not crusified – it was a conspiracy.
• Laughing Jesus and Joe Campbell
  • “A Seth Reader” book by Richard
  • Joe read “A Seth Reader” and said, “I think this is how the Universe works”

Technocrati Tags: Richard Roberts, Joseph Campbell, Hero with a 1000 Faces, Alan Watts, Tarot, Seth Speaks, Nag Hamadi Library

Reframing (Wikipedia) – Another meaning or another sense is assigned by reframing a situation or context, thus sees a situation in another frame. A frame can refer to a belief, what limits our view of the world. If we let this limiting belief go, new conceptions and interpretation possibilities can develop.

This episode is framed by the following topics:

• What is reframing?
  • Changing the frame
  • Changing the way you look at it
• Examples of reframes
• Where reframes are useful?
  • Business: it’s not the best product that wins, but the one that communicates the best
  • Relationships: Freedom to change my or other’s perspective
  • Getting unstuck
• Structure of reframing
  • Content reframing
  • Context reframing
  • 6-step reframing
• Reframing in personal growth
  • Midlife crisis – getting laid off and starting out from scratch
  • Real example – someone survived a car and plane crash, got paralysed and burned, and ran for the senate
  • "Murderball" – a documentary on quadruplegics playing professional wheel-chair version of football
• Reframing in relationships
• Reframing in organizations

We are continuing the series of conversations with Antero Alli on an experiential medium called ParaTheatre. To have a better understanding of the context, and for the introduction of the speakers, please refer to the first talk in the series.

In this episode, we touch upon the following topics:

• ParaTheatre – how to start
• Qualities needed for this work
• Flexibility of ego
  • Ego as a self-image. Fixed ego is an attempt to preserve this self-image. Flexible ego is the ability to be at home with both self-image and its opposite.
  • Polarization technique as a way to support flexible ego
  • Flexible ego is the same as a strong ego; as opposed to big ego.
• On thinking before acting
• Existing conditions
  • Dealing with things that come up
  • Antero’s example – escaing INTO reality, instead of away from it
• Keeping a journal
• Talking with our bodies
  • We are continually sending signals
  • Becoming more conscious of these signals, and allowing their expression without the constant need to evaluate the appropriateness of your actions, as you would in a typical social context
  • Exploration of unfamiliar; creativity
• Codification project
• (Not) Mythologizing Archetypes
• No-form – nothing special
• No-form "conversion" period
• ParaTheatre from books
• Finding a language
  • And how weird it may look for an uninitiated observer

Whereas an interest in one’s philosophical foundation seems these days to surrender to sound bites, simple rhetoric, and ideology, it is still an imperative when discussing human capital sustainability. Therefore, I shall divide the issue into three axes, each with diametric opposites at either end. These axes are love – greed, connection – isolation, and life – death, and are illustrated in the figure below:

From an historical perspective these axes seem to have always been in play. For example, when the universe first came into being, the big bang, it expanded for a short while and then almost immediately began to run down, that is, to succumb to the force of entropy. But just recently in the history of the universe life emerged on planet Earth, the little bang, and against all odds, even against the force of entropy, life began to run up, to escape to higher and higher orders of complexity, processing and organization. Life was then and continues now to be syntropic, that is, anti-entropic. Individual life forms may die, but life as a whole continues in an upward spiral of greater function and complexity. (From this perspective, for example, it would be erroneous to argue whether or not life begins at birth because life began eons ago and should continue unbroken into the future. Some even argue that the purpose of the universe is to foster life and its advancement, the strong anthropic principle. Therefore, the beginning of life was when life began and the only end of life would be the utter end of life everywhere.)

Once life was up and running, genetic evolution eventually led to memetic evolution in the form of intelligence and communication, and ultimately humanity’s genes and memes gave rise to phemes, or wisdom. Over the course of history humanity has done a marvelous job of transferring its genes and a fair-to-middling job of transferring memes, but it has really botched the job of transferring and disseminating phemes. However, this is a subject for another section.

For now suffice it to say that love, connection, and life appear to be essential ingredients of syntropy whereas death, isolation, and greed fall within the critical mix of entropy. This is not to say that one group is always good and the other always bad, or that one always represents syntropy and the other entropy. But for the most part these key ingredients define entropy and syntropy most of the time.

Therefore, the essential philosophical foundation for human capital sustainability, at least on these pages, will be grounded in the primary aspects of syntropy, i.e. love, life, and connection. Other similar ethics will certainly come into play, but these are the syntropic triad upon which they will be built. In aggregate, unfortunately, America appears to have spent several decades leaping into the gaping chasm of entropy, having strolled towards it for at least forty years and sprinted towards it for the past eight. This must change absolutely.

The only difference was that I used the word fear in the original text instead of greed. Having grown up in the psychological community, it was almost de rigueur to think of fear as the opposite of love. But love is such a big category and fear is rather small. And, at times fear is appropriate.

The notion of fear being the opposite of love was starting to feel wrong and worrying about it a real nuisance. If love could contain so many things that were good; compassion, generosity, kindness, peacefulness, forgiveness, etc., then what was an equally large category into which most of the bad things fit?

A PBS presentation on the seven deadly sins provided an answer. Although the seven deadly sins were never in the Bible, they had come to be considered by many spiritual authorities to be characteristic of the most common set of bad behaviors among we humans. But the sin that they consider to be the father of all sins, and to contain within it the seeds of all the others, was greed. And greed was the bad behavior bucket that I was looking for. Fear is merely a tool greed uses to get what it wants. Greed is the big enchilada. Greed is what has brought our ecosystem, economy, government, and society to the brink of disaster. And it doesn’t just exist at the top of the economic ladder, although the top has a disproportionate share.

Most citizens in America now demand that their merchandise be purchased at absolutely the lowest price while simultaneously demanding that they get the highest return on their investments – regardless of the cost imposed on other people or the planet (Reich, 2007). The herding instinct, when manifesting greed or fear, is what makes the market behave so erratically; when one person gets scared most everyone else gets scared; when one person gets greedy so does most everyone else (Ferguson, 2008; Shiller, 2000). Smart crowds do not operate well in this environment and they most likely never will (Surowiecki, 2004). When we spend most of our time and resources on quid pro quo and caveat emptor there is little time left over for summum bonum.

And we behave badly because this is what most of us have been taught. The classical and neo-classical creed have been drilled into our little consumer minds. The Market and unrestricted Capitalism, we are told, will work through an invisible hand to produce maximum benefit for everyone. Misquoted and misunderstood, Adam Smith is cited as the venerable father of this philosophy. But capitalism wasn’t even in the lexicon when he was writing his tomes on the economy, and the invisible hand only worked in the local market economies that he studied.

In the past people had better information, because things were not that complex, and they could deal with local bankers, suppliers, and producers on an eyeball-to-eyeball basis. At that time it was in the self interest of the provider to take care of the customer. In the past the rich rubbed elbows with the poor on a daily basis. At that time it was in the interest of the wealthy to protect their sensibilities by providing for the less fortunate. But now things are different. Neither honest business nor charity thrive when the wealthy are cocooned and live separate lives or when the banker, investor, supplier, manufacturer, etc. live at great distances from their customers. We are no longer, if we ever were, perfectly informed, purely self-interested, and perfectly rational – nor is the market free. There is no perfect competition and large businesses are forever the recipients of tax breaks, favoritism, protection, subsidy, and so on. Therefore, greed has been left to run rampant and unfettered, and what most of us are now experiencing in our tattered economy is the result. The invisible hand moved to coddle the rich, strike down the poor, and squeeze out the middle class.

So greed is a bad thing, even in small amounts, and has no laudable rationale. It is also the progenitor of many if not all of the subsequent bad behaviors that we exhibit as individuals and as a society – and this truth has been know for a long, long time. The Bible has often been misquoted by the anti-Herans as proposing that, "Money is the root of all evil." Some will then correct them by noting, "No, it says that the love of money is the root of all evil." But, in fact, the original Aramaic reads, "Radix omnium malorum avaritia," or "The root of all evil is avarice."

Recently Barack Obama has made a point of telling Americans that we must work together to love each other better, to make life richer, and to focus on the non-monetary things that improve our quality of life. But this will not happen until America gets over its case of addictive greed. For far too long we have worshiped greed as a virtue. It’s time to turn our backs on it and recognize it as the deadly vice that it truly is.

References

Ferguson, N. (2008). The ascent of money: A financial history of the world. New York: The Penguin Press.
Reich, R. B. (2007). Supercapitalism: The transformation of business, democracy,
and everyday life. New York: Knopf
Shiller, R. J. (2000). Irrational Exuberance. New York: Broadway Books.
Surowiecki, J. (2004). The wisdom of crowds: Why the many are smarter than the few and how collective wisdom shapes business, economies, societies, and nations. New York: Doubleday.

We are continuing the series of conversations with Antero Alli on an experiential medium called ParaTheatre. To have a better understanding of the context, and for the introduction of the speakers, please refer to the first talk in the series.

In this episode, we touch upon the following topics:

• Relationship to Space
  • The very first ritual – entering the room
  • Territorial instinct
  • Relationship to space and no-form
• Verticality
  • Virtical vs. Horisontal attention
• Asocial Intent
  • To avoid the burden of social considerations – approval, attraction, wanting to beat up someone, etc.
  • Not the same as anti-social (meaning "hostile"); instead, re-focused on relation to space around people
  • Allows for connection to "verticality"
  • Interaction with other people becomes from the place of offering, where one’s needs are already met by the connection to the vertical sources. The interactions become more authentic; you present yourself as you are, not as you want them to see you. You are not losing yourself in the other person. In contrast, most social interactions are based on meeting the needs, "what can I get from you", and very little vertical connection.
• Feeling the body deeply
  • ParaTheatre as a medium for triggering visions
  • Feeling the body deeply to find the visions / images that are
• Direct Experience
  • Choice of what to be true to
  • Ritual is not solving the conflict, but exposing the conflict, and interacting with it as the energy source for movement
• The Force of Commitment
  • Your capacity for follow-through
  • Commitment always determines the quality of the result, in anything you do.
  • Increasing the force of commitment
  • Fear (of inadequacy) is where commitment is most required. Fear is the beginning stage of converting fears into commitments.
• Integrity Point

Today we are starting another series of conversations with Antero Alli on an experiential medium called ParaTheatre.

Antero has been producing work in various mediums of theatre and
paratheatre since 1977 and, experimental video documents and feature
fiction films since 1993.

His paratheatre work is documented in his book, "Towards an Archeology
of the Soul" and in his videos "CRUX", "Archaic Community" and "Orphans of Delirium". Alli’s 2005 docufiction feature, "The Greater
Circulation", incoporates a paratheatre performance in a critically
acclaimed cinematic treatment of poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s "Requiem
for a Friend". His recent experimental feature, "The Invisible Forest" was inspired by the ideas of French Surrealist playwright/actor,
Antonin Artaud.

Twice a year, he facilitates paratheatre labs in Berkeley, California
with each lab having a focus on rituals based on specific themes, like
movements recalled from dreams, beginer’s mind, and others.

In this first episode, we touch upon the following topics:

• What is ParaTheatre?
• Reasons to do ParaTheatre
  • To get high, to get in a certain state of consciousness
  • Spiritual reasons, self-healing in a way. Experience communion with minimal interference of one’s beliefs, conceptions, ideas.
  • To stay honest to one’s impulses, get in touch with spontaneity, flexibility of ego
  • To induce visions: it’s a process of entering of feeling my body deeply; releasing energies that are trapped in my body, committing fully to the expression of those energies, and releasing images that have been trapped in the body with these energies.
  • Performance arts people enter because they’ve got into a rut of repetition, to let their talent take over
  • As a yoga: a physically intensive discipline with mind attention and intention and focus
  • Those who have outgrown the hedonic motivation, the need to get high, move to circuit 6 in a way
  • People who approach it more like a worship, more like a 7th circuit
• What is a ritual?
• Ritual as initiatic experience
  • Cultivate greater receptivity to the unknown
• Ritual Process
• Group Circle
  • Talk about what happened
  • Let off steam
  • Begin psychological intergation of pre- or post-verbal experiences

1. I am not going to tolerate anything that is wrong to my conscience.
2. God is not a thing but a process.
3. Everything belongs to me.
4. Whatsoever the consequences, I am not going to be deviated from myself.
5. Don’t give me advice, – I want to learn on my own, – life has to be learned through trial & error.
6. If I accept death, there is no fear. Only life creates worry.
7. I am not here, I am a nobody, nothingness.
8. Never to allow an unintelligent thing to be imposed upon me, to fight against all kinds of stupidities, whatsoever the consequences. Be rational, logical to the very end.
9. Be more and more alert, so I don’t end up being just intellectual.
10. When I do something, I do it to the very end.
11. What is gone is gone, – I never look back.
12. I am not a man who can be stopped.
13. I am satisfied with something very simple – the very best of things.

Modeling forms the heart of NLP. It is a process of extracting the recipe, the blueprint behind repeatable success. Such recipe typically consists of patterns of beliefs, psychosomatic states and specific behaviors. When modeling from a book, only beliefs are visible (the other two require being with the person), so that is what I have listed above.

In the previous talk, we have explored the difference between being a catalyst and an enzyme of change. In this episode, we continue our discussion, and move it into the realm of personal stories, experiences, and learnings.

In this talk, we cover the following topics:

• Personal stories
  • Learning NLP
  • Relationships and jealousy
  • Changes in business
• Switching from catalyst to enzyme, and from enzyme to catalyst

Technocrati Tags: Change, Transformation, Catalyst, Enzyme, Structural Change, Deming

A boy has a dream that he can float, but unless he holds on, he will drift away into the sky. Even when he is grown up, this idea recurs. After a strange accident, he walks through what may be a dream, flowing in and out of scenarios and encountering various characters. People he meets discuss science, philosophy and the life of dreaming and waking, and the protagonist gradually becomes alarmed that he cannot awake from this confusing dream

waking life,

…

If you doubt this, consider the fact that the mutual convertibility of the elements means that all things are available everywhere; what is lacking are the ideas about how to get at those things. And this general principle applies not only to this extreme case. Ideas have always been controlled for the benefit of the few: the chief, the shaman, the God-king, the priesthood, the lord, … the power elite. It is in the control of ideas that we find the source of scarcity, and hence the justification of coercion.”

- an excerpt from “The Moon of Hoa Binh” by Cong Huen Ton Nu Nha Trang and William Pensinger.

“Believe me when I say we have a difficult time ahead of us. But if we are to be prepared for it, we must first shed our fear of it. I stand here, before you now, truthfully unafraid. Why? Because I believe something you do not? No, I stand here without fear because I remember. I remember that I am here not because of the path that lies before me but because of the path that lies behind me. I remember that for 100 years we have fought these machines. I remember that for 100 years they have sent their armies to destroy us, and after a century of war I remember that which matters most… We are still here! Today, let us send a message to that army. Tonight, let us shake this cave. Tonight, let us tremble these halls of earth, steel, and stone, let us be heard from red core to black sky. Tonight, let us make them remember.” And the drums beat and dancing begins

- Morpheus In Matrix Reloaded before the cave explodes into
the ecstatic dance

I remember the scene from Matrix Reloaded where after the speech, the citizens of zion break out into an ecstatic dance, what may seem oblivious to the impending attack on Zion. A friend sitting next to me said to
me “they are insane, who dances the night before such a big battle. They have got to be out of their minds to do that.” I laughed and did not think much of it then, but later it hit me, yes that’s the real question “Are you out of your mind or not?”

Fast forward a couple of years, it’s a September night in California and about 7 pm. The parking lot outside the quite gymnasium is full and the its getting a little chilly. The music is now thumping, and about 70 people are dancing, each moving to their own beat, to what would seem oblivious to the outside world. There is ecstasy, smiles and pain all intermixing in a medley of emotional movements. We are looking at the dancers from the outside, and not sure if this is something we want to do. Paul Rebilots words to us were “Check out Gabe Roth and her 5Rhythms.” We speak briefly to the DJ/5Rhytms teacher about what we need to do in order to
learn and participate “oh, nothing really, don’t think too much, just let the music move you.” It seemed insane a bit, a little out there, a little scary too perhaps given its rawness and that was all the reasons we needed to join. We have been dancing since, and during the seminars and workshops with Kathy Altman, Gabrielle Roth, Lori Smullin and Lori Saltman the key theme has always been “don’t think, feel the music, remember
feet first, move, move, trust yourself, find your own movements.” The key theme is “let the movements find you.”

As we danced more and more, the initial thinking am I moving ok? Do I look silly or do I look good? Can I impress? Etc all melted away and emerged pure movement, pure ecstasy. 2-3 hours of dancing leaves you “out of your mind, and deep into your senses” and the quality of sheer joy just sparkles in you and those around you.

Reminds me of another incident, in the early 90’s, we had been working with Sensei Sastri for a bit, and on our way for our Oku Iri (entrance to secrets) certification in Kaze Arashi Ryu (The wind storm system). We were doing randori and we were blindfolded now. I remember my muscles tensing, and my mind racing at a 100 miles an hour. The attack could come from anywhere, and I could be smacked in a million ways. The more I was thinking, the more I missed the attacks, the more I got smacked, the more I got smacked, the more I thought….. I could keep hearing sensei in the background saying “feel, feel, flow.” Tired and exhausted, my mind finally yelled and gave up ( a few good smacks do that) and I settled in and started to gently move to touch and feel the opponents, and finally I got the knack of feeling ones way through it, of trusting something other than just your mind, and seeing through with more than just ones eyes and one’s thinking. Suddenly the hit ratio improved, and was able to hold my own much better and divert the zuki’s (punches), feel my way out of throws and locks and even get into and destroy the power of kicks. How did this happen “by getting my mind out of the way, and allowing other intelligences to kick in.” Many Japanese martial arts call this Mushin or “no mind”

That evening on the way home a little bruised and in pain all over, yet with a smile on my face it stuck me that this was just like in Star Wars. When the Jedi are in training one frequently heard “use the force” or “trust the force” or “may the force be with you.” Even as the final battle unfolds, Luke lets go of the machines and uses his own force, his own higher instincts to guide him through the battle. I had always wondered would it not be cool to experience that, and now I had experienced it, in body and flesh, no longer did I need to believe in it, I knew it. I jumped and danced, and told myself, get the mind out, get the machines out, learn to trust those instincts. My fighting transformed that day, and I never looked back from then. I made a resolve, not to think too hard about it, but jump in and work it and let “it” flow through me.

Other good examples can also be found in works of great mythological fiction, both in Frank Herbert’s DUNE series and MATRIX. Paul Maudib trains while being blindfolded, and when the assassination attempts on his life fails and he is blinded, he discovers he can still “see great visions.” In Matrix Neo goes blind and yet “sees the truth.” What these wonderful myths of the future (good sci fi in my opinion are future myths, coming towards us) are telling us is that there is a truth visible only when we close our eyes to the so called system or world as we see it. Aligning to this higher truth, vision, force or instinct is what allows these heroes to pass through
their moments of greatest despair. Where the reliance has moved from man or man made technology, and moved towards something more primal, something we share with everything and everyone. Some call it the force, some call it god, some call it instinct or truth.

Call it what you may,I attest it’s the same thing. And one powerful way to access this is through “feeling the body deeply” and “sheer physicality.” The movement towards deep physical movement tends to bring one
into “one’s senses” and out of the prisons of our minds. Working on ParaTheatre Labs with Antero Alli, which has been inspired by the work of Jerzy Grotowsky the same themes arise, the physicality. The idea behind the ritual technology is to start by feeling the body deeply and as Alli has told me a few times “don’t worry about understanding, do the movement, the no form, the mind can catch up later.”

Don’t get me wrong, the mind can be a useful thing, useful when you are using it. It is perhaps the greatest parasite when it is using you. Wen those thoughts don’t stop and seem to run amock and have a life of their own. Learning the trick of “stopping the world” as Castaneda put is crucial. This “stopping the world has been critical even in the development of NLP and almost ALL spiritual work. There are many ways of arriving here, of
stopping the world, of getting out of your mind, of connecting with your deepest instincts. The quickest way is  perhaps “through the body proper.”

It came a full circle recently at my dojo when one of my students when asked to take rolls across the football field said out loud “ I must be out of my mind to do this” and I smiled, thought back of all the incidents mentioned above and said “if you are not yet, I sure hope this will lead you there soon.” And with that we started rolling on the field one thump after the next

mushin, no mind, come to your senses, nlp, stopping the world, castaneda, 5rhythms, sensei sastri, antero alli, jerzy grotowski, frank herbert, dune, matrix, neo, star wars, luke skywalker, morpheus, zion

We’ve all heard the phrase – "being the catalyst of change or transformation." But have we really thought of the implications of this metaphor, and how often do we consider the alternatives?

• Change – the process of becoming different (Wikipedia)
• [Catalyst] is a substance that increases the rate of reaction without being consumed by the reaction (Wikipedia)
• Enzymes are biomolecules that catalyze chemical reactions. As with all catalysts, enzymes are not consumed by the reactions they catalyze, nor do they alter the equilibrium of these reactions. However, enzymes do differ from most other catalysts by being much more specific. (Wikipedia)
• Coenzymes are small organic molecules that transport chemical groups from one enzyme to another. […] Coenzymes are chemically changed as a consequence of enzyme action. (Wikipedia)

In this talk, we cover the following topics:

• Why studying change is so crucial?
  • Either you live in a rut and eventually die, or live a full life. And to live a full life, you better study change.
  • You are always changing – whether you want it or not. The question is only, do you want to take the reins of your transformation into
    your own hands, or not?
  • "Change is the only constant" – and Deming added "you don’t have to change. Survival is optional."
  • It’s in the moments of change fortunes are made and lost;
  • It’s in the moments of change you either survive or die;
  • It’s in leading these changes that great shifts happen.
  • It’s knowing the waves of change enables you to ride with the change, if not lead it
  • Like in surfing, if you calibrate it right, you ride the wave. But if you misjudge it, you go underwater.
• Kinds of change
  • Cyclical and Structural change
  • How do you know a priori what kind of change it is?
• Catalyst and Enzyme
  • When leading change, what primary behavior you are demonstrating?
  • Are you putting yourself on the line and changing with it, or simply observing the change on the outside?
  • As in language – are you a verb or a noun (nominalization)?
• Contexts for being enzyme or catalyst
  • When it’s appropriate to be one or the other; sequencing

Technocrati Tags: Change, Transformation, Catalyst, Enzyme, Structural Change, Deming

Why is it that no one is interested in experiencing the multi-unity of the other-self? Why is woman no leader? She should know! She should feel it in her abdomen. She should demand a fullness of the other-awareness. But she, too, never remembers the miracle of being-ness, or reaches for the fullness-of-the-context in moment to moment awareness. She, too, lives in a fog. What is it with woman that she does not know? Why does her inner taste not tell her? Why does she believe what she is told? Why she not already learned? If anyone should have deep sensitivity to the omni-multi-relation at the root of existence, it should be woman. Man-woman relating should highlight this omni-multi-ness. Why does she not know and insist? Why is she, too, afraid to embrace the being-branching at the heart of existence? Is not to birth a child, to experience the multi-unity? Where is her integrity? How can she let the intellectual aporia of enculturation short circuit her acting-from-the-being?” 

- an excerpt from “The Moon of Hoa Binh” by Cong Huen Ton Nu Nha Trang and William Pensinger.

The intellectual runs away.afraid of drowning;

the whole business of love is to drown in the sea.

Intellectuals plan their repose; lovers are ashamed to rest.

The lover is always alone. even surrounded by people;

like water and oil, he remains apart.

The man who goes to the trouble of giving advice to a lover

get nothing. He’s mocked by passion.

Love is like musk. It attracts attention.

Love is a tree, and the lovers are its shade.

- Rumi

I sat down at The Palace of Fine Arts, wondering what the evening would be like. And appears this demure and understated man, in a pair of jeans and an old white shirt. Shy, somewhat clumsy when you first see him, and he bows to the crowd three times and sits down on his piano. And out of nowhere this once seemingly shy man is transformed, into sheer poetry. The music flows, and enthralls one and all. His piece ends and there is silence, before the crowd erupts in a crescendo of applause.

I sat there, mesmerized and lost in his music, lost in the sound and melody, especially of his classical pieces. His presence, and more importantly his passion with his piano had transported me from the chains of time, into the boundlessness of that space which is free of time. The music served as a gateway into the timeless. Two hours at the Palace of Fine Arts passed as though in a jiffy.

As I was driving back home, my mind kept going back into that feeling of timelessness, the passion George Winston shared through his piano at the Palace of Fine Arts, the music and how it evoked the feeling of total merger with it. And it dawned on me that this is pure being, pure presence, pure ….. and this is not the only time I have experienced it.

I remembered watching my sensei (who you can listen to on the way of the warrior podcasts) perform cross blocks followed by kokyu nage (a way of deflecting an oncoming attack followed up by a throw by disbalancing the opponent). It was sheer poetry in motion, all of us were in awe, and entrained into seeing beauty unfold right before our eyes.

The other incident which came to mind is watching Kathy Altman dance with us for three days, from 11 AM through 6 PM. Watching her merge and move with the music and the 5 rhythms progressed. Flowing smoothly, to expressing her will in staccato, to the rumble of chaos, into the smooth merger with the lyrical and arriving at peace into stillness. As she moved in her own way, there was that sense of beauty and sense of pure being flowing through, that captivated all of us who watched.

I have always been fascinated by watching mastery in any form, and always wanted to learn how people do things they do with exquisite finesse (this is the heart of modeling IMO). Upon approaching both my Sensei and Kathy (many years apart) they had interestingly told me the excat same thing when I told them ‘wow I want to move like that” – they said NO!! “you want to move how you move.” My sensei was a little more colorful when he said “don’t be my vomit” meaning don’t do things or say things exactly as he does, I needed to find my own way, my own art of expressing myself and my body in this world.

No matter what discipline one chooses to practice, with enough dedication (usually about 10 years of constant practice) you start to bring out that expression which is truly you, this is beyond all rationality, rationalization, all intellectuality and goes deep into the realm of CREATIVITY. Somehow from here, from this place YOU HAPPEN NATURALLY and FULLY.

The person you are, no matter how perhaps clumsy in the ordinary walk of life, are transformed into the an object of sheer beauty. Not only do you arrive into the timeless realm of pure being, but in the process of you arriving there, you take those who are with you or watching you along for the ride as well. This is the highest purpose of any art, any discipline IMO, one of transcending time and definitions into the realm of timelessness and awe. This is where Aesthetic Arrest happens naturally not only to you but also through you.

The trick is finding those devices and activities that take you more and more into the realm of your own being. It may be dancing, it may be martial arts, it may be sewing. Hell it may even be in the service of something or someone other than you. Reminds me of this story about Ramana Maharishi, who was a very revered sage in India.

One day a woman, who did not believe in god came to him. Upon further discussion on god and nature of love, maharishi asked her “is there someone or something you love more than anything else?” to which she replied “yes of course, my nephew. “ Maharishi then tells her “ well then go and attend to him, serve him, love him – and there is god.”

This process of finding something to serve and dedicate oneself to also brings out the very best in us. It also IMO brings us close to our element, closest to that which we are. And staying with this element, and true to it transforms the wobbly creature into a majestic swan

This clumsy living that moves lumbering
as if in ropes through what is not done
reminds us of the awkward way the swan walks
and to die, and to die, which is the letting go
of the ground we stand on and cling to everyday
is like the swan when he nervously lets himself
down into the water which receives him gaily
and which flows under and after him wave after wave
while the swan, unmoving and marvelously calm,
is pleased to be carried, each moment,
more fully grown, more like a king, farther and farther on..

- Rainer Maria Rilke “The Swan”

Irony of ironies, you find yourself only when you are willing to lose yourself to something/someone greater than yourself. In serving this expression you come more and more into yourself, and in the process of this “alchemy,” this transformation, you entrain those around you as well to be “captured and transformed by beauty” be it the piano, the samurai sword, the sway of a dancer or the play of a child.

The trick in this, is to “model yourself at your very best, when you are serving something other than you.” Get the syntax, magnify it.

May you lose yourself fully into something you truly love and in the process find yourself and entrain the world.

Aikijujutsu, 5rhythms, sensei sastri, kathy altman, Rumi, rilke, the swan, george winston, ramana maharishi, aesthetic arrest,

Dear M,

I just received an article (see below) from David Neenan as part of Live Capital LLC. This is an extraordinary document that, hopefully, will soon be published in the New York Times. Because of this possibility please do not send it to other newspapers.

This article makes sense; please take the time to read and digest it. When you have, and if you agree with the contents, I would like you to forward it to as many influential people as you know for their assessment and ask them to get it to as many influential people as they know (network science at its best).

Your action in doing this is democracy at its best; you can be part of improving our and the global financial situation; you can help by being part of a ground swell demanding this action. In most cases, politicians don’t lead; they follow the will of the people. Let them hear your voice and those of your friends.

If our Politicians follow this course of action the economic pain will be dramatically shortened. You can clearly make a difference by doing this.

This is the first time I have ever written a request like this. Please do your part.

With gratitude,

Marshall Thurber

IT’S ABOUT PAPER NOT BUBBLES:  Stopping the Meltdown

By Hernando de Soto©

The meltdown of the global economy is due not to failing markets but to a violation of the rule of law. In recent years aggressive financiers have gutted the rule of law by taking out several essential inner mechanisms replacing them with an immense financial shadow economy, manufacturing hundreds of trillions of dollars of derivative paper so unruly, poorly recorded and untethered to real value that it has become increasingly worthless and difficult to trace.  No one knows precisely how much there is or who holds it. Fear that potential borrowers could be burdened with so much of this toxic paper that they will be unable to repay their loans has initiated an inevitable chain reaction to a meltdown: as trust in legal paper breaks down, it paralyzes credit, which shrinks transactions, leading to a catastrophic drop in employment and in the value of everyone’s property.

When U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson initiated his Troubled Assets Recovery Program (TARP) last October with the widely reported objective of identifying and weeding out the toxic paper, I figured Western leaders understood that in their all-out efforts to avert meltdown the main challenge was to restore trust in the market:  once TARP informed us of the amount, the location, and the nature of the bad paper, we would be in a position to know whom to help – and how to do it. Equally important, we could target the causes of this pandemonium and find ways to reform the law so that this never happens again. Once you are aware that in modern markets value travels on paper, you don’t have to be a genius to know that by restoring credibility to paper credit will resume.

Two months have passed, however, and TARP’S solution of isolating the toxic paper appears to have faded into the background. I now fear that Western authorities don’t really comprehend why mere paper is so important. In the non-Western world, where I come from, this is pretty obvious: the prosperous sector of our economy sit in their modern high rise buildings with all their assets well paperized (sending out clear signals regarding who is who, who owns what, what is where, and what is risky). But most people live in the anarchy of the  shadow economy with their assets and contracts covered by paper that is endemically toxic: not recorded, not standardized, difficult to identify, hard to locate, their real value so opaque that ordinary people cannot build trust in each other or be trusted in global markets; they thus operate in a constant credit crunch and are stuck in
poverty. In short, for shadow economies outside the U.S. and Europe, “meltdown” is a chronic condition.

That is why property paper is so important: it embodies in precise written form the rule of law in the market and thereby destroys its main enemies – ambiguity and opaqueness. Ever since we humans started cooperating beyond the scope of the family, the tribe, or the fiefdom, and found it profitable to transact with people and assets beyond the confines of the neighborhood, we have depended on legally authenticated written statements to get the facts about things of value. That legal authority matured over the past 200 years, until developed economies finally reached a global consensus on the procedures, standards and principles required to document facts that everyone can easily understand and trust. Today, under the rule of law, we have a formidable legal system that we call “property,” which specializes in providing all the rules and recording mechanisms
needed to securely fix on paper the knowledge required to legitimately hold, transfer, transform and use the things we own, from houses to airplanes, from mortgages to stocks, and from patents to screenplays.

How Derivatives Violate the Rule of Law

Guess what are the only assets not governed by the rules of law that fix property to paper. You guessed it: derivatives, the very toxic paper currently melting down the global economy. That toxicity is the direct result of legal tinkering that substituted the authoritative  and tested global consensus, which underpins the rule of law, with mathematical models and ratings for hire. During the past decade, in an effort to raise capital, some financiers have taken value from where the rule of law has positioned it  – the property system – and repackaged it into paper synthetically created in the shadowy area of the law that governs derivatives. Once
paper crossed that line, it left behind the six automatic regulators that keep the written law in sync with economic reality:

Automatic Regulator 1: Only what is real may be recorded on paper.
Derivatives law is so untethered to real value and the rules of proper record-keeping that financiers have created bonds to represent homes, borrowers, and mortgages that literally do not exist.  More astonishing still, these derivatives have strayed so far from the original assets that they were derived from, that a rating agency can decide to change the initial risk classification of a given set of mortgages just to make them more marketable.  In contrast, property law accepts only real assets and interests (e.g. houses, owners, equity and mortgages), and demands that all the information about them be recorded carefully in centralized registries where anyone
interested can access it, relatively easily.

Automatic Regulator 2: All inter-party interests must be in sync with external interests.
The financial law governing derivatives has increasingly been re-engineered to suit the narrow needs of parties in a financial contract, disregarding how derivatives affect other interests. It foments niches and clandestine passages.

Property rests on what the law calls erga omnes (“towards everyone”) obligations– for every situation, it fixes rights and obligations regarding not only the ownership interests secured by a contract but also any external
interests that could suffer side effects. Property legally interconnects all interests and relationships directly or indirectly linked to an asset or a liability – whether credit or debt, vested or contingent, expectant, inchoate or consummate, potential or unliquidated – and thereby ensures that paper moves in step with the general interest. This network of signals and cross references creates common knowledge, and makes it easy for anyone to
track down paper, determine the various controlling interests, and protect his own. Significantly, property law was historically developed to open up the market by undercutting the secret prerogatives typical
of royal, feudal and mercantilist aristocracies.

Automatic Regulator 3: Financing must always be aligned to assets and their improvement.

The importance of aligning finance to property paper to create credit was spotted early on by John Kenneth Galbraith; studying the l929 Crash, he concluded that financial crises appear when the amount of debt secured
or created on the basis of assets becomes dangerously “out of scale” with the property required to pay the debt.

How does one measure Galbraith’s scale? By examining whether financing for the development of a particular asset will help generate surplus value. The reason for this is as old as Aristotle who explained
that the potential of any asset is bigger than the asset itself. This justifies leveraging, since discovering and developing potential requires supplementary credit scaled to our best estimate of an asset’s possible surplus value. The message is that growth comes from improving assets – a process in which financing plays only a supporting role (as we shall see in Automatic Regulator 4).

This “improvement” principle was honored from the very start of the American Republic: title was awarded to those settlers, railroads, and universities that could make improvements on the land they claimed or were granted.  Long-established property law, therefore, demands that the financier never let the assets out of his sights as a constant reminder that the purpose of financing is to create additional wealth out of them:  Assets can
be leveraged, transformed, combined, recombined, sliced and diced, and repackaged into any number of tranches, provided the process improves the value of the original asset.  By contrast, in the world of re-engineered financial products, there are no mechanisms or incentives to ensure that the division of paper into tranches develops an asset’s potential.

Automatic Regulator 4: Property and production drive financing – not the other way around.

Finance supports wealth creation but in itself creates no value. It should never be allowed to take the lead: the role of finance is to keep the exchange economy going by passing money from those who save it to
those who invent and produce things.  Financing is infrastructure, like roads and sewers. As Adam Smith wrote, money is the  “great wheel of circulation…and it carries to market all the grass and corn of the country (but) produces not a single pile of either.” Even Marx agreed that value has nothing to do with money. This is why we have to stop looking for solutions to the meltdown that sacrifice the property and the wealth of producers to
subsidize the messed up financial facilities.

Automatic Regulator 5: All economic agents must be motivated and forced to record their assets and transactions – the essential knowledge to infer reality.

We humans have the ability to use our minds to imagine, to create, to invent, and to make all sorts of productive combinations, while being able to deceive one another, be mistaken, ambiguous, inconstant, and swept away by our ambitions.  Like Janus, these two opposing aspects of the mind are conjoined; we cannot separate them. Financiers, too, can be both creative and predatory.

That is why property law has built-in restraints against too much “creativity” in transactions. The way information is recorded, arranged and formatted in property paper enables us to detect and sort out incongruities between a given reality and what is documented.  It is only by fixing factual knowledge about assets on paper, as required by property law, that we can establish the framework of rules for determining what is true and thus separate what is false from what is only fantasy – thereby promoting the creative talents of the financial community and reining in their evil twins.

Like any other business people, financiers must be accountable and to keep the public informed: all effective property recording systems are paired with mechanisms that motivate and force every asset holder to
continually update the information about his assets. If information about financial products had been properly registered and updated, we would now have a clearer map for a way out of the current recession;
and we might have been able to detect earlier the incongruities that led to it.

Automatic Regulator 6: Clarity and precision are indispensable.
Knowledge about new-fangled financial derivatives must be collated in a manner that facilitates effective accountability and the inference of risk. At present, their terms are written in ways that are so complex
and literally so unreadable that they cease to have any immediate meaning; even to put a value on derivative interests is a stretch. In case of default, for example, it is excruciatingly difficult to determine the value of a cash flow to be received on assets held or to figure how much they can be discounted with any degree of accuracy.

Unlike property, information about derivatives is not standardized; instead, there are thousands of idiosyncratic bonds scattered helter-skelter all over the market. Until someone categorizes them, it will be difficult to calculate their worth in a reasonable amount of time. After default, it may be close to impossible to find out who is accountable for repaying the debt for a derivative that has been sold innumerable times.  In fact, some derivative paper is so sloppily structured that not even banks have been able to figure out the contents of their own portfolios, and US courts continue to reject many foreclosures backed up by this kind of paper.  Financial law seems to have overlooked the fact that proprietary paper was created to integrate and clarify, not to exclude and confuse.

The Political Challenge

The rule of law is much more than a body of norms: it is also a huge information and management system that needs these six regulators to capture, filter and process local data, until it is transformed into facts organized on paper that allow us to infer what is true and what is false.  And that’s what the meltdown is: a massive collapse of trust in the rule of law as a provider of authenticated information due to a flood of derivative paper that no longer provides facts – and hence the contraction of credit.

What about the notorious bubble? A meltdown and the bursting of a bubble is not the same thing, though they can interact. While the bursting of the “sub-prime” housing bubble and the excess of liquidity that produced it may have triggered awareness that a lot of paper derived from bad mortgages was toxic, it did not produce the meltdown: a 7% of mortgage default and a 20% loss of value in the low-end housing market, though a social tragedy, is not enough to shatter trust in legal paper and freeze global credit.   Nor  is the meltdown due to under-regulation; the complexity and confusion in the financial sector indicates that there may be too much regulation overall.

If my analysis is right, then governments face two crucial tasks. The first is to purge the toxic paper: bankers are not lending because they don’t know how much of it is sitting in the balance sheets of potential borrowers. The second is to break the issue away from the restrictions of purely financial considerations so that authorities can see the economic collapse in its entirety and have access to all the levers necessary to avert meltdown. To purge the toxic paper, we have to step into the shadow economy, find it, count it and exorcise it.  Once that happens, we may find that the toxicity is not as painful as we have been told. The $600 trillion dollars of derivatives may be the result of counting the same value many times over, and thus the final tally of the paper that is actually jamming most of the trust required to unfreeze credit may be no more than a manageable couple of trillion.  In any case, the information we get is what we need to figure out the best way to deal with the crisis.

So let’s start counting. “It’s an impossible task,” say the Wall Street types I’ve talked to, insisting that “derivative paper is too complex and tangled up to sort out.” This is just not true. Most of us make a living finding
things and untangling them without asking for a medal –from doctors locating the source of an infection to paleontologists who recreate a dinosaur that lived millions of years ago from a fossil revealed by a rock fall. Americans and Europeans, in fact, used to be brilliant at finding toxic paper: lawyers and bureaucrats did exactly that to sort out conflicting claims after the California Gold Rush, to tame the Wild West, to pick up the pieces of Europe’s crumbling feudal order, to re-assemble Japan after World War II, and to reunify Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

That is how capitalism was built. Today, in developing and former  Soviet Union countries, we are constantly searching for toxic paper in our shadow economies –informal titles, licenses, contracts, laundered money and identity documents – in an effort to bring the people who hold the paper into the mainstream.

So why are most Western treasuries avoiding the search for toxic paper? My best explanation is that they continue to deal with the meltdown mostly within the narrow context of derivatives law and its
constituency. This puts them at a tremendous disadvantage. First, the law that governs derivatives does not have the automatic regulators required to keep paper tethered to reality, the indicators to size up the damage, the information-sensitive agents to detect toxic paper quickly, the categories to classify the obstacles to reform, or the tools to sort out the growing conflict of interest between the holders of derivative paper and the rest of society. And second, the financial community –which typically provides the staff for dealing with  all things financial— doesn’t have the inclination, the incentive or the economic interest to carry out the nitty-gritty, down
and dirty job that is routinely done by ordinary working people.

That is probably why some financial types keep saying, “Let the market do its work.” Well, that’s impossible in the current situation. Modern legal markets only work if the paper is reliable and people have some access to credit and information, which will not happen until the toxic paper jamming the system is dealt with.  “Let the market do its work” now means, in effect, “let the shadow economy do its work,” and that is a very different proposition.  In a shadow economy, with no widespread information and credit, the only people skilled at operating in the darkness are the vulture capitalists and the loan sharks who will devour producers with good credit scores but no credit, along with the recently unemployed, at bargain basement prices. And they will continue to do so until the stock of wealth of those who produce has paid off the undocumented debt generated by the toxic paper.

If you have ever wondered why there is so little enthusiasm for market economics in the Third World, now you have the answer: markets don’t work well when they operate without transparency, in the shadows and outside the rule of law. That’s what the violence was all about in the Wild West, in the black markets of the 1930’s, and today in the crime- and war-torn zones of developing nations.

What we are facing is a once in a lifetime event when the legal institutions that coordinate a production system have fallen into grave disrepair. This is a legal and political challenge. Legal because it is the result of American and European governments having allowed the paper that represents their assets cross the line from the rule of law into an incomplete legal space where arbitrary interests preside and paper swirls mindlessly out of control.  It’s a political challenge because only fixing the law can eventually stop the meltdown.

The main duty of government is to bring the whole toxic environment under the rule of law where it will be subject to enforcement. No economic activity based on the public trust should be allowed to operate outside the general principles of property law. The rule of law sustains all economic activity, all of society, even freedom itself. This was true under Roman law with its convention “ubi societas, ibi ius” (where society is, there lives the law). And it has become even more widespread as globalization and international treaties have increased over the past 50 years.  Financial institutions will have to serve society and fully report what they own and what they
owe, just like the rest of us, so that we get the facts necessary to find our way out of the current financial maze. They must be moored to reality and they must learn to put on paper statements about real things instead of statements about statements. Never again should financiers lose sight of facts and real value –homes, industries, services, patents, ideas, dreams and their potential. That is the only way to ensure calculability and create verifiable audit trails.

It is now time for politicians to muster the courage to rise above the narrow focus of financial specialists and take their position on the commanding heights, where they can view all the problems of a failing order and use all the levers of the law to address them. Markets were never intended to be anarchic: it has always been government’s role to police standards, weights and measures, records, and not condone legalized sharp practices in the darkness of the shadow economy.

Once it is clear that the meltdown is not about bubbles but about paper, government can step in to block the meltdown –in the name  of property, capital, competitive markets and prosperity for all – without being accused of pandering to state socialism.

marshall thurber, hernando de sato, positive deviant network, financial meltdown,

This god-like being had committed a great transgression and was punished by his fellow gods, condemned to live imprisoned in a mortal human body.

At his birth, he was trapped inside an infant body with only an infant’s ability to move and speak. As he grew, every outward aspect of his life seemed ordinary, except that he knew inside he was a god. He knew that in
spite of his appearance, his family and his upbringing, there was nothing ordinary about him.

He decided that if he could not reclaim the greatness of a god then he would build his greatness as a man.

Every action he took moved him in that direction. He did so with a calm and undisturbed patience, for he knew that inside he was a god. All the time he kept silent about who he knew he really was. To speak of it would only cause others to think him mad and egocentric. As he grew, he accomplished one thing after another. Some people praised him but it meant nothing to him. Others were envious and threatened by his achievements, but he was unmoved.

He continued to live a life of achievement.

On his death bed, he was surrounded by his friends and associates. Their eyes were filled with tears as they saw life slowly passing from him.

One of his closest friends leaned forward and asked ,"You have done so much for all of us and for yourself. How can we possibly live up to your achievements?" And in that moment he saw something in everyone around him that he had never recognized before. He saw a light within each of them that was the light of his former life as a god.

Still holding on to his secret and knowing that his imprisonment was about to end his last words were uttered: "Take what is important and live it."

As the light from his human eyes faded his real eyes opened, surrounded by the gods who had condemned him. Smiles filled their faces and they welcomed his return as if he were a returning king.

Without them ever telling him, he knew then his sentence was not a punishment but a blessing given by his closest friends.

Technocrati Tags: God, story, achievement, greatness

Happy New Year 2009 to all of you!

As the founders of RCG, we have gone a long way, and sometimes,
looking back, it is hard to recognize the people we were just over two
years ago. And yet, as we look forward, we see that the journey has
but just begun.

In the coming year, we have a whole bunch of podcasts already lined up
for you as gifts from the Radical Change Group, and from the people
and practitioners who are working with us, and through us, in bringing
this to you.

The coming year will see some exciting topics that the three of us
cover – the original trio of the three friends.

In addition, we’ll be introducing some new conversations. Some
highlights of the topics include:

• The talks on Shamanism with Ismana
• On 5Rhythms dancing with the originator of the 5Rhythms Gabrielle Roth
• Continuing our conversations on the strategy of the dolphin with Paul
  Kordis
• Speaking about a form of theatre known as ParaTheatre with Antero Alli
• Mythology with Paul Rebillot

And we’re going to have a new focus on a few other areas, such as the works of Buckminster Fuller that impacted us deeply, and the work of Joseph Campbell and Richard Roberts.

We are also going to have more regular blog posts on our webpage – please visit us, read it, and if you like it – share it with your friends, and help us spread the word.

Why are we doing it?

In the spirit of Positive Deviance, because some things need to be done – to cause both societal and personal change. The key questions that we ask are:

• What if… Transformational teachings were given as gifts, rather than traded for money?
• What if… You had access to iconoclasts and change makers on-demand, rather than at their limited availability?
• What if… The conversations were spontaneous, open, and emergent, rather than scripted, dogmatic, and dry?
• What if… Change was approached holistically, through the synthesis of many streams of thought?
• What if… The project was based on a sense of contribution to a vibrant community of like minded individuals?

The Gift Economy

This is a whole notion that we have started with the RCG. We want to get involved – help us shape what is becoming a shared gift, a shared reality, and also for you to take charge and shape it in your own ways.

Currently, we have two more projects going:

• Restoring some old tapes by Joseph Campbell and Richard Roberts, and
• The Buckminster Fuller project

For both of them, our goal is to restore these tapes and videos, digitize them for the modern media, and distribute it across the World for free. We need your help here, we need you get involved, in any way possible.

We also have a Listener’s Survey – please take a minute to fill it out, so we know what resonates with you and what doesn’t, and how we can improve this.

Technocrati Tags: Radical Change Group, Transformation, Gift Economy, New Year, Shamanism, Ismana, 5Rhythms, Gabrielle Roth, Mythology, Paul Rebillot, Joseph Campbell, Strategy of the Dolphin, Paul Kordis, ParaTheatre, Antero Alli, Positive Deviance, Buckminster Fuller

I did not see that roundhouse kick coming in, and the next second I was bleeding on the floor, and the shape of my face was to be changed forever. This was the late 80’s and once again, when doing my kumite (free sparring) against someone from another style, a very senior member of a different school, had managed to get me flat on the ground.

Inspite of being a brown belt in Shotokan karate, I was unable to defend myself. I trained 3 nights a week, for 3 hours each session and yet my results were a broken nose and bruised ego. I started to ask the question “why is my speciality of shotokan karate not working” and why do I seem to do so well against members of my own style and when faced with another stylist I am at a loss for what to do.

In my teens then I quickly arrived at the conclusion that I need to train more, and train in more diverse disciplines. I went out to a book store and ran into a copy of Tao Of Jeet Kune Do by Bruce Lee. I was hooked. He helped me understand that I could not let my style be my limitation, I had to learn to fight at all ranges and with all styles. I worked hard, training with a hard Kenpo sensei, a soft wushu sifu, a crazy sports karate coach and with friends who dabbled in mixed arts and boxing. A few things began to click and yet i was not as effective as I wanted to be. My sparring improved, I was more fluid and able to move in and out of different ranges with ease, however was unable to weave/tie the various systems together. This all started to change when I ran into quite by accident into my present Sensei, sensei sastri. When I met him, he was not able to negate all my styles and throw me around like a rag doll but had a sense of calm and peace about, the kind of calm and peaceful confidence that is both very appealing and scary.

Well, the next few years I apprenticed under my sensei in Kaze Arashi Ryu , working out 6 days a week, for 2-3 hours a day and was able to fluidly fight in all ranges and yet there was a symmetry and some core principles at work. One of the core principles here was to focus on “generalized principles” and the focus was not so much on techniques but on embodying the principles.

The big epiphany was most styles were specialists – either punching or kicking systems, or infighting and outfighting systems, hard and soft etc. But in order to be a complete fighter one had to be a generalist, a comprehensivist. This is also true in just about every other aspect of life, that overspecialization kills in the long run, and it is the generalist who emerges the winner in the long run. This process of learning the principles and embodying them took us deep into various other fields such as philosophy, zen, Neuro Linguistic Programming and business strategy. Suddenly the realization hit, that they were all deeply connected, and one could not just learn about one thing and not have it deeply impact the other systems.

One night I sat down and was watching the PBS special with Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell and there during the the conversation Joe Campbell says “Specialization tends to limit the field of problems that the specialist is concerned with. Now, the person who isn’t a specialist, but a generalist like myself, sees something over here that he has learned from one specialist, something over there that he has learned from another specialist – and neither of them has considered the problem of why this occurs here and also there. So the generalist – and that’s a derogatory term, by the way, for academics – gets into a range of other problems that are more genuinely human, you might say, than specifically cultural.” And bingo I was nodding, Campbell could have been speaking about Martial Arts and not mythology and he would have still made perfect sense. Hooked as I was now to studying the Patterns of human development (the monomyth and NLP) I embarked to study the dots that connect.

Many years later as I sat down reading Frank Herbert’s Dune Series (yes again, for probably the nth time), there is a piece of the conversation where Herbert has in his ever poetic and magical language captures the heart of the same principle of generalization v/s specialization. He states “It is wise to have decisions of great moment monitored by generalists. Experts and specialists lead you quickly into chaos. They are the source of useless nit-picking, the ferocious quibble over a comma. The generalist, on the other hand, should bring to decision making a healthy common sense. The generalist must understand that anything which we can identify as our universe is merely part of larger phenomena. But the expert looks backward; he looks into the narrow standards of his own specialty. The generalist looks outward; he looks for living principles, knowing full well that such principles change, that they develop. It is to the characteristics of change itself that the generalist must look. There can be no permanent catalog of such change. You must look at it with as few preconceptions as possible. Languages build up to reflect specializations in a way of life. Each specialization may be recognized by its words, by its assumptions and sentence structures. Look for stoppages. Specializations represent places where life is being stopped, where movement is dammed up and frozen. ” Again he could have said the same about martial Arts, and I remembered with a smile and nod, as I checked for the validity of his insight with my body, with my impulses and yes it is so. These patterns connect, the generalist wins again.

In the past year my friends and I have been studing the work of Buckminster Fuller deeply, and this has lead to yet another reinvention of the work we do. Bucky has produced a series of “everything I know sessions” which would run anywhere from 20-40 hours. During these deep deep talks, he has emphasized the same idea again, that go with generalization and become comprehensivists. During one of the early EIK he eloquently states “Of course, our failures are a consequence of many factors, but possibly one of the most important is the fact that society operates on the theory that specialization is the key to success, not realizing that specialization precludes comprehensive thinking.” And continues “We have learned in biology and anthropology that extinction has been the consequence of overspecialization and our specialization is leading to extinction of the species. The only thing humans need is the ability to think. Unfortunately they think mostly about how to make a living and get along in the system rather than about what the universe is trying to tell us.”

Finally a few days ago was watching some video’s of Osho and there was the same thread again, this time from spirituality. He states “All experts are blind. Expertise means you become blind to everything else. You know more and more about less and less, and then one day you arrive at the ultimate goal of knowing all about nothing,”

I sat back and took notice, that yes in fact have spent many years becoming the generalist, and it has been the underlying principle in many thing I do. The jobs I have taken, my approach to martial arts, they approach to change work, how RCG has evolved and is continuing to evolve and the diverse seemingly unconnected disciplines we seem to learn – they are deeply connected. Not spending time to learn the principles that unite, leads one to overspecialization and that leads to stagnation and extinction.

I would like to leave this stream of consciousness with a few questions
1. Are you a specialist or a generalist?
2. How can you move towards a more comprehensive way of being and thinking?
3. Are you just studying success (mind technologies like NLP), or evolution of man and societies ( anthropology and spiral dynamics/gravesian model), or just working on the body (martial arts, dance) for example, or have you found ways to weave them together ?
4. How can you unleash your intuition towards higher and higher orders of being, and find patterns that connect and ride them.

radical nlp, change work, nlp, martial arts, shotokan, kenpo, wushu, aikijujutsu, bruce lee, frank herbert, dune, bill moyers, joseph campbell, bill moyers, power of myth, bucky, buckminster fuller, osho, generalization, specialisation,

Have a great day, and a Happy New Year!

BUCKY ON DOING YOUR OWN THINKING – FROM THE MAN WHO WANTED TO UNDERSTAND AND LIVE THE PRINCIPLES OF THE UNIVERSE

LEARY ON THINK FOR YOURSELF – FROM THE MAN WHO QUESTIONED AND CHALLENGED/CHANGED AUTHORITIES ALL THE WAY

BHAGWAD GITA/HINDUISM ON THINKING FOR YOURSELF, GO BEYOND THE VEDAS AND FOLLOW YOUR OWN TRUTH

It is amazing, that at the end of the day, the way out of of the problem is acutually to turn inward, inward deeper still.
All theory, all ideas, all beliefs just become “limitations to be overcome” and the path to oneself is “via negativa” by dropping away the adopted ideas, beliefs, and theory. This in so many ways is the birth of an artist, an artist in and of life. Not an easy path, not a path understood even by most, and definitely not a path walked by many. The path is filled with blood, sweat and tears, and yet at the end is the rapture and peace. So why does one need or why is one called to do one’s own thinking? Why is one called to become an “artist of life”… this I believe is a good question, a question for us to explore, a question perhaps to hold in one’s consciousness deeply and see what emerges, and see if and how it moves you.

We have been studying some of the paratheatre process inspired by Jerzy Growtowski and would like to end with his words in this short write up

“Why do we sacrifice so much energy to our art? Not in order to teach others but to learn with them what our existence, our organism, our personal and unrepeatable experience have to give us; to learn to break down the barriers which surround us and to free ourselves from the breaks which hold us back, from the lies about ourselves which we manufacture daily for ourselves and for others; to destroy the limitations caused by our ignorance and lack of courage; in short, to fill the emptiness in us: to fulfill ourselves. Art is neither a state of the soul (in the sense of some extraordinary, unpredictable moment of inspiration) nor a state of man (in the sense of a profession or social function). Art is a ripening, an evolution, an uplifting which enables us to emerge from darkness into a blaze of light.

We fight then to discover, to experience the truth about ourselves; to tear away the masks behind which we hide daily. We see theatre – especially in its palpable, carnal aspect – as a place of provocation, a challenge the actor sets himself and also, indirectly, other people. Theatre only has a meaning if it allows us to transcend our stereotyped vision, our conventional feelings and customs, our standards of judgment – not just for the sake of doing so, but so that we may experience what is real and, having already given up all daily escapes and pretenses, in a state of complete defenselessness unveil, give, discover ourselves. In this way – through shock, through the shudder which causes us to drop our dally masks and mannerisms – we are able, without hiding anything, to entrust ourselves to something we cannot name but in which live Eros and Charitas.”

BUCKY, BUCKMINISTER FULLER, TIMOTHY LEARY, BHAGWAT GITA, VEDANTA, jerzy grotowski

These two videos are by far the coolest and easiest introduction to the legend of th grail. Watch them, perhaps a few things will become even more clear and inspire you to explore mythology and the “path to personal transformation” even more closely.

Should you enjoy these videos, click on the link below for audio recordings of Joseph Campbell discussing the grail legends and links to our various podcasts on the mythology with paul rebillot

TALKS BY JOSEPH CAMPBELL ON THE GRAIL LEGEND

Joseph Campbell http://www.futurehi.net/media.html

* Joseph Campbell – The Grail Legends (4/82) – 1A.mp3 (17.9mb)
* Joseph Campbell – The Grail Legends (4/82) – 1B.mp3 (17.7mb)
* Joseph Campbell – The Grail Legends (4/82) – 2A.mp3 (17.7mb)
* Joseph Campbell – The Grail Legends (4/82) – 2B.mp3 (17.3mb)
* Joseph Campbell – The Grail Legends (4/82) – 3A.mp3 (18.2mb)
* Joseph Campbell – The Grail Legends (4/82) – 3B.mp3 (18.2mb)

TO LISTEN TO OUR PODCASTS ON MYTHOLOGY WITH PAUL REBILLOT VISIT
http://www.radicalchangegroup.com/podcasts/categories/mythos/

08/3/08 #45 Embodied Mythology Series 06: The Lover’s Journey with Paul Re… by RCG
07/27/08 #44 Embodied Mythology Series 05: The Lover’s Journey with Paul Re… by RCG
06/22/08 #40 Embodied Mythology Series 04: The Hero’s Journey with Paul Reb… by RCG
05/11/08 #34 Embodied Mythology Series 03: The Healing Theatre-2 with Paul Rebillot by RCG
05/4/08 #33 Embodied Mythology Series 02 – The Healing Theatre with Paul Rebillot by RCG
11/25/07 #13 Embodied Mythology series 01 – Stories of Our Lives by RCG

UNTIL NEXT TIME, LIVE MYTHICALLY AND FULLY SYMBOLIC LIVES

NLP, MYTHOLOGY, JOSEPH CAMPBELL, PAUL REBILLOT, RADICAL CHANGE GROUP, GRAIL LEGEND, EMBODIED MYTHOLOGY, PERSONAL MYTH

This is an interesting video which will explain how eye accessing cues work. This is a good visual representation of each of us access various faculties of our brain in order.

Eye accessing cues are one fo the first things we went aha over when we did get our “traditional nlp” training. Thi is a good into to it before getting into the more fun part of sub modalaties. For info/podcast on submodalaties refer to our podcast from 11/4/07. The link to it is below

http://www.radicalchangegroup.com/podcasts/categories/mind/nlp/page/2/#show-55

A submodality in neuro-linguistic programming is a distinction of form or structure (rather than content) within a sensory representational system. Submodalities refers to the subjective structural subdivisions within a given representational system. For example, in visual terms, common distinctions include: brightness, degree of colour (saturation), size, distance, sharpness, focus, and so on; in auditory: loudness, pitch, tonal range, distance, clarity, timbre, and so on (Wikipedia)

* Definitions of modalities and submodalities
* Hypnotic induction – finding The Goal of Your Life, and exploring submodalities in the process (Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic)
* Amplifying the submodalities of the life goal
* Explanation of the process and submodalities
o Control knobs for the submodalities
o Being the DJ of your life – what resonates the most with you
* What is real, and what is imaginary?
* Why visualization doesn’t work

nlp, radical nlp, eyeaccessing cues, submodalaties, visual, auditory, kinesthetic,

How mirror neurons allow us to learn and socialize by going through the motions in the head (12/23/2008)

How mirror neurons allow us to learn and socialize by going through the motions in the head (12/23/2008)
Tags:
neurons, learning

The old adage that we can only learn how to do something by trying it ourselves may have to be revised in the light of recent discoveries in neuroscience. It turns out that humans, primates, some birds, and possibly other higher animals have mirror neurons that fire in the same pattern whether performing or just observing a task. These mirror neurons clearly play an important role in learning motor tasks involving hand eye coordination, and possibly also acquisition of language skills, as well as being required for social skills, but the exact processes involved are only just being discovered. In particular the relationship between mirror neural networks and social cognitive tasks has been unclear, and greater knowledge of it could shed light on problems such as autism that may arise when this process goes wrong.

This emerging field of mirror neurons in social cognition was discussed at a recent workshop organized by the European Science Foundation (ESF), which laid the ground for the first common research network dedicated to this fast emerging field, within the EU’s 7th Research Framework Programme running until 2013.

The role of mirror neurons at all levels of social interaction is even greater than had been realized, according to convenor of the ESF conference Riccardo Viale, president of Rosselli Foundation in Turin, Italy and professor of Cognitive Science (University of Milan). “Most of the speakers highlighted how the mirror mechanism is crucial for both more basic forms of emotional recognition and also higher aspects of empathy,” said Viale.

mirror neurons, learning,

• Innate talent (genetical, governed by the threshold principle)
• Legacy (the cultural and family heritage passed on from ancestors)
• Opportunity (being in the right place, at the right time, – largely a matter of “luck”)

Also, (and this is key) the process of actualization is unstable. In the sense that two individuals starting with very similar innate talent & legacy, will diverge due to the “best get better opportunities” rule and to the “10,000 hours to expert” rule.

Ok. So where does this leave us, adults, who want to continue actualizatio of our own genius? It seems that all three factors are beyond our control and influence…

And this is where I take a non-traditional view. All three factors can be brought under our influence at any stage in life. The how will take a whole book to map out, so here are just a few brush strokes to start the map:

• Innate talent consists of genetical (or early childhood, – which for our purposes is the same thing) potential and the fulfillment of that potential through life experience. What I have noticed is that a lot (if not most) adults’ potential has been barely fulfilled. Most types of intelligence (mental, social, emotional, physical) can be substantially improved through training.
• Legacy is fixed only for kids. As adults we are free to enter the environments that carry different and necessary for us legacy. The institution of mentor/apprentice does exactly that.
• “Opportunity is random” belief is based on Newtonian model of distinct object/observer Universe. A more accurate quantum model says that our intent can influence what opportunities are offered to us throughout life. Or in the words of Oogway from Kung Fu Panda: “There are no accidents.” 

As the holiday season approaches here in the United States – as well as in many other parts of the World – we are pausing our regular stream of weekly podcasts for this period, and will resume again on the second Sunday of January, 2009 – that is on January 11th.

Over a year ago, we have launched the Radical Change Group with the the Gift Economy in mind, the idea that the Universe is a friendly and abundant place, and that the givers get, because what goes around, comes around.

In the last year, we have been working hard on bringing the talks and information as a gift to the world. Many amazing things have happened through that work, many doors have opened to us that we didn’t even know were there.

The focus of our podcasts have expanded to many fields like martial arts, mythology, adaptive intelligences (also known as Spiral Dynamics), the 8 circuit brain model, voice, dance, business, not to mention some advanced NLP topics. Many wonderful people have come and had great conversations with us – sensei Sastri, Paul Rebillot, Antero Alli, Paul Kordis, Marshall Thurber, David Neenan, Maniko, and Kathy Altman, to mention just those whose talks we have already released. We have learned a great deal ourselves in the process, and we hope you have enjoyed listening and learning with us as well.

In the next year, the year 2009, we are going to expand not only the range of topics, but also the range of projects we are involved in – and go well beyond the podcasts. We are starting this now with a new addition to our website – the Radical Projects section, where we’ve listed the first couple of projects we would like to announce at this time. Some of the gifts that we have received from the many people we’ve met this year were the recordings of various lectures and seminars of the great thinkers of the 20th century, that previously were not released or not widely available to the public. Two of these recordings we are going to restore, convert into the modern audio/video formats, and prepare for release to the world.

One is the audio recordings of Joseph Campbell – the renowned mythologist, together with Richard Roberts – a writer and a long-time friend of Joseph Campbell, who has produced and preserved these recordings – teaching what they called “The Third Model of the Universe” in a series of workshops in 1973-74 time period. These rare recordings have never been released to the public, and we hope that bringing these recording to life will help shed the light to what otherwise might have been lost to the world at large.

Another piece is the 20 hours of video recording of Buckminster Fuller – a true renaissance man, the Leonardo da Vinci of the 20th century – explaining everything he knew in a week-long meeting of late summer 1981, less than two years before his death. These recordings also have not been widely available to the public, and were preserved as a private collection of Marshall Thurber.

These and other projects, as well as our continuing stream of podcasts, will require much of our resources – both in terms of time and money – and if you have enjoyed the gifts of RCG in the last 16 months – this is your opportunity to join us in the spirit of the gift economy, and consider now giving us a gift of support for these and other projects. Please visit our website at RadicalChangeGroup.com and make a donation to support one or more of our Radical Projects, or volunteer to help us in any other way. We thank you for your continued participation as a listener, and appreciate any of your help – be it your feedback, spreading the word about our work, or supporting us with a donation. Thank you!

We are wishing you Merry Christmas and a happy New Year – Happy Holidays and see you again in 2009!

Technocrati Tags: gift economy, holiday, podcasts, Universe, abundance

We are continuing our conversations with Dr. Paul Kordis. Paul has been researching writing, and speaking to groups for over 20 years about the processes of profound change. He is a globally traveled speaker and seminar leader on futuristic, human development, change and other topics. He received his Ph.D. degree (with honors) in human capital and economic development from Colorado State University in May, 2008.

His 1,500-page dissertation is entitled “The Superhighway to Serfdom: How False-Social-Norms Marketing is Hijacking the American Dream.” He is a co-author (with Dudley Lynch) of the books The Strategy of the Dolphin: Scoring a Win in a Chaotic World, which has become a best seller, and Code of the Monarch: A Guide to the Real Global Business Revolution. He is also the author (with his wife, Susan) of the book Name Your Passion: A User’s Guide to Finding Your Personal Purpose.

Today’s conversation touches upon the following topics:

• Wave 4 – relationships and inter-dependency
  • Wave 5 will be about spiritual and ethical
• On "normal" distribution and the Gini coefficient
  • Mutation – punctuated evolution
  • Our society is far from "normal"
  • Changes the entire economics
• Leveling the playfield
• Revamping Economics
  • Rather than predicting, the economists should give us goals
  • Normal distribution of wealth could be one measure / goal
  • Cybernetic loop between me and the environment; continuous feedback-correction mechanism
  • Quality of the feedback
  • European Union is investing in the future by sacrificing something now. In the US, we are sacrificing the future to maintain (not even improve) our current level.

Technocrati Tags: Paul Kordis, Dolphins, Economics, Gini Coefficient, Inter-Dependency, Waves of Change, Generosity, Purpose, Passion, Globalization, Localization, NLP

We are continuing our series on the practice of 5Rhythms – a moving meditation, a dance without steps; a practice introduced in the early 1970s by Gabrielle Roth. We invite you for an insightful conversation with a long-time 5Rhythms practitioner, Kathy Altman.

As Co-Director of The Moving Center School, Kathy was the first person asked to help Gabrielle bring her work out into the world. Over the past 20 years Kathy’s teaching has brought thousands of people back to the joy of their own, original movement. Using dance as the medium, Kathy illuminates for her students "as on the dance floor, so in life". She is devoted to inspiring people to live the teachings of presence, patience and practice long after the music ends.

In this episode, we touch upon the following topics:

• Cosmology of the psyche
  • Maps – body, cycles, mirrors
• Personal experiences with 5Rhythms
• Systems theory
• Contact Improv
• Trynig 5Rhythms – Why not?

Technocrati Tags: 5Rhythms, Kathy Altman, Gabrielle Roth

…Almost one-third of the world’s people don’t get enough iodine from food and water. The result in extreme cases is large goiters that swell their necks, or other obvious impairments such as dwarfism or cretinism. But far more common is mental slowness…

…One of the attractions is that a campaign to iodize salt costs only 2 cents to 3 cents per person reached per year…

Technocrati Tags: Iodized salt, IQ, developing countries, charity, humanitarian aid

We are continuing our conversations with Dr. Paul Kordis. Paul has been researching writing, and speaking to groups for over 20 years about the processes of profound change. He is a globally traveled speaker and seminar leader on futuristic, human development, change and other topics. He received his Ph.D. degree (with honors) in human capital and economic development from Colorado State University in May, 2008.

His 1,500-page dissertation is entitled “The Superhighway to Serfdom: How False-Social-Norms Marketing is Hijacking the American Dream.” He is a co-author (with Dudley Lynch) of the books The Strategy of the Dolphin: Scoring a Win in a Chaotic World, which has become a best seller, and Code of the Monarch: A Guide to the Real Global Business Revolution. He is also the author (with his wife, Susan) of the book Name Your Passion: A User’s Guide to Finding Your Personal Purpose.

Today’s conversation touches upon the following topics:

• Emergent phenomena – that enhances people’s life. It’s in the systems, institutions, organizations.
  • Developments in the economic, political and religious systems are leading towards bifurcation point.
  • Artifacts
• Waves of change
  • Take human history as a 30-day month
  • First 29 days – hunting and gathering
  • Wave 1: The agriculture came along – peaked in early 1900s
  • Wave 2: The Industrial wave – started in 1650s, peaked in 1950s in the US
  • Wave 3: Informational wave – peaked out in mid-1980s
  • Wave 4: approaching the bifurcation point. Characterized by 6 primary technologies
    • Bio-engineering
    • Nanotechnology
    • Robotics (macro)
    • Machine cognition
    • New material science
    • Exotic energy sources
• Key observation: in waves 1 & 2, change was slow, and we could adapt on the back of the wave. Wave 3 was faster, we had to adapt with the change. With wave 4, we may have to adapt before it happens.
• Wave 4 technologies
  • Car battery – building the capacitor with a virus
  • Water filtration plant "Slingshot" – by the guy who built the Segway. Runs on methane, produces about mega-watt of energy, and produces enough fresh water for the entire village.
• Betrayal of the technologies
  • They de-centralize power, hence less profit for the richest

Technocrati Tags: Paul Kordis, Dolphins, Waves of Change, Syntropy, Spheres of Human Influence, Generosity, Purpose, Passion, Globalization, Localization, NLP

We are continuing our series on the practice of 5Rhythms – a moving meditation, a dance without steps; a practice introduced in the early 1970s by Gabrielle Roth. We invite you for an insightful conversation with a long-time 5Rhythms practitioner, Kathy Altman.

As Co-Director of The Moving Center School, Kathy was the first person asked to help Gabrielle bring her work out into the world. Over the past 20 years Kathy’s teaching has brought thousands of people back to the joy of their own, original movement. Using dance as the medium, Kathy illuminates for her students "as on the dance floor, so in life". She is devoted to inspiring people to live the teachings of presence, patience and practice long after the music ends.

In this episode, we touch upon the following topics:

• As in dance, so in life
  • We are all good at some rhythms, and not as good at others
  • We practice the whole wave to gain more balance
  • The first 3 rhythms are just gateways; lyrical and stillness are the reward
• The Shadow side of the Rhythms
  • Flow – inertia, where we can’t get ourselves going
  • Staccato – tightness, rigidity of boundaries
  • Chaos – confusion
  • Lyrical – spacing out, instead of spacing in
  • Stillness – getting numb, instead of quieting
• Rhythms in real life
  • Shadow sides are the extremes of the rhythms that define their true essense
  • You see this everywhere in life
  • Examples of famous people embodying various rhythms
• Connections between people in dance
  • Connecting essence to essence, soul to soul. Very different from connecting on a personality level.
  • Ventilate your personality – that’s the practice
  • "Just like me"

Technocrati Tags: 5Rhythms, Kathy Altman, Gabrielle Roth

• …Transformational teachings were shared as gifts, rather than traded for money
• …You had access to iconoclasts and change makers on-demand, rather than at their availability?
• …The conversations were spontaneous, open, and emergent, rather than scripted, dogmatic, and dry?
• …Change was approached synergistically, through the synthesis of many approaches?
• …There were no ads or infomercials?

At the Radical Change Group, we believe that questions are more important than the answers. Hence, we have formulated our mission and focus as these "what if" questions – for our listeners to decide for themselves.

As we are rolling into yet another evolutionary phase, we need your active support more than ever. Please consider supporting us by either volunteering / interning with us, hiring us, or sponsoring us. We – and most importantly our listeners and those who otherwise benefit from this work – will appreciate your help!

The Radical Change Group Team.

Network science is a new and emerging scientific discipline that examines the interconnections among diverse physical, informational, biological, cognitive, and social networks. This field of science seeks to discover common principles, algorithms and tools that govern network behavior. The National Research Council defines Network Science as "the organized knowledge of networks based on their study using the scientific method." (Wikipedia)

This introductory episode brings forth the following topics:

• What is network science?
• Structure of a network
  • Nodes, links, clusters, weak links, hubs
  • Examples of clusters and the power of the weak link
• The power of the weak link
  • Making connections
  • Interested vs. Interesting
  • Having / making friends
  • Interviewing for a job
  • Finding your love
• The Power Law
  • The "80-20 rule" (or "90-10 rule")
  • Examples – wealth distribution, biggest players in a market, etc.
  • Leveraging the power law
• The first mover advantage

Technocrati Tags: Network Science, power law, weak link, networks, connections, links, hub

We are continuing our series on the practice of 5Rhythms – a moving meditation, a dance without steps; a practice introduced in the early 1970s by Gabrielle Roth. We invite you for an insightful conversation with a long-time 5Rhythms practitioner, Kathy Altman.

As Co-Director of The Moving Center School, Kathy was the first person asked to help Gabrielle bring her work out into the world. Over the past 20 years Kathy’s teaching has brought thousands of people back to the joy of their own, original movement. Using dance as the medium, Kathy illuminates for her students "as on the dance floor, so in life". She is devoted to inspiring people to live the teachings of presence, patience and practice long after the music ends.

In this episode, we touch upon the following topics:

• 5Rhythms as a spiritual discipline
  • Most people medicate (drink), rather than meditate
  • "I’m just a <qualifier>" – we are bigger than that
  • It takes great discipline to move with our emotions rather than freeze
• Practices for embracing emotions
  • Recognize them as energy, not a static thing
  • Let it in, let it through, let it out
• Fear of your own greatness
• How can this practice help us understand our reason for living?
  • Learning to connect, despite of everything else. Err on the side of liveness, connection.
  • Can I dance in a group of complete originals, just like me?
  • Three types of relationships – to myself, to another, and to the community
• Naming the rhythms
  • Flowing – a grounded way of moving without stopping. No manipulation; following the needs and desires of the body in motion.
  • Staccato – start to organize. Having a clear beginning, middle, and end to our movements. Finding natural physical boundaries. Moving with no force, but lots of power.
  • Chaos – mind, and its watery nature. It’s where the build-up starts to crash, and we cannot control the uncontrollable.
  • Lyrical – where things re-pattern themselves, bigger than we could have imagined. Let go of letting go, and see what remains. Discovering our own patterns, as opposed to the external patterns that shape us (as in Staccato).
  • Stillness – the "dessert" after the "meal". Being.

Technocrati Tags: 5Rhythms, Kathy Altman, Gabrielle Roth

Change can mean:

• The process of becoming different
• The act or process of changing

(from Wikipedia)

In this episode, we discuss the following topics:

• Examples of structural and cyclical changes
• Defining cyclical and structural change
• Why this distinction is important
  • One you can undo, and re-do again and again, the other – if you missed the boat, it’s gone.
  • In business, fortunes are made (and lost) on correctly (or incorrectly) predicting structural changes.
  • All structural change leaves behind damage
  • Russian revolution of 1917 – a structural change that was a step back (from the Adaptive Intelligences perspective)
  • American Revolution of 1776 – a structural change that is a step forward
  • Personal growth – will the change stick? From the perspective of the neurological levels – on the lower levels, change is often cyclical (behavior), but higher up (values, identity, spiritual) it is often structural and thus, permanent
• Calibrating what change it is
  • Look for markers. In Business – where boundaries are dissolved or disrupted, it’s likely a structural change.
  • Relationships – same event can be either cyclical or structural, depending on the particular context, and with experience, you usually know pretty well which one is which in a particular relationship
  • Personal growth – first, by the neurological levels
• Dealing with change
  • Business – missing the change vs. riding the change.
  • Relationships – being responsible for your actions and knowing where to stop
  • Personal growth – embrace the structural change, be aware and either stack up or eliminate cyclical change, depending on whether you like it not
• Initiating change
  • how to choose the right type of change and how to do it in business, relationships, and personal growth

Technocrati Tags: Structural Change, Cyclical Change, Business, Relationships, Personal Growth

We are begining our exploration of  5Rhythms – a moving meditation, a dance without steps; a practice introduced in the early 1970s by Gabrielle Roth. We invite you for an insightful conversation with a long-time 5Rhythms practitioner and an elder of the tradition, Kathy Altman.

As Co-Director of The Moving Center School, Kathy was the first person asked to help Gabrielle bring her work out into the world. Over the past 20 years Kathy’s teaching has brought thousands of people back to the joy of their own, original movement. Using dance as the medium, Kathy illuminates for her students “as on the dance floor, so in life”. She is devoted to inspiring people to live the teachings of presence, patience and practice long after the music ends.

In this episode, we touch upon the following topics:

• Kathy’s story – how she met Gabrielle Roth and started 5Rhythms
• What is 5Rhythms? Wave-like patterns.
  • Completely organic, nothing imposed. Practice of recognition.
  • Everything in nature moves in wave-like patterns. 5Rhythms is a map of wave-like patterns.
  • Whole life as a wave.
  • Fractal – wave inside a wave
• Arman’s perspective
  • The goal of “normal” dance classes is to teach you how to move “right”
  • The goal of 5Rhythms class is exactly the opposite. You come with your own patterns, and the goal is to let them go.
• A dance without steps
  • It’s a training of listening, not responding
  • Dementia and dance
  • 2 things help: crossword puzzles and dancing without steps
  • 5Rhythms for seniors
  • It’s not about how you are physically fit. It’s not about how you move, it’s whether you move.
• Music in 5Rhythms
  • Music is a crutch, a seduction into the dance
  • This is a moving meditation practice, where the pillow is the music
  • Responding to music we don’t like – breaking away from the comfort zone
  • How can I respond to what is not comfortable?
• Dance no matter what
  • No matter how bad I feel, can I dance that?

Technocrati Tags: 5Rhythms, Kathy Altman, Gabrielle Roth

“Marshall Thurber is an evolutionary event in our time”
Dr. R. Buckminster Fuller,
World-renowned scholar and futurist

Marshall Thurber is a successful attorney, real estate developer, editor, businessman, educator, scholar, inventor, negotiator, author, visionary and public speaker.

A list of his students includes such success stories as Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen of Chicken Soup for the Soul fame, the founder and creator of Paul Mitchell hair products, Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Spencer Johnson, author of Who Moved My Cheese, Tony Robbins, Harv Eker, and Robert Kiyosaki (author of Rich Dad Poor Dad).

In today’s episode, we touch upon the following topics:

• Constructing the games
  • Starting with a theory
  • Game has to have a foreshadowing, a great theory, integrity, and come through fast
  • The Accounting Game
  • How to use the same principles to teach concepts to little kids?
• Positive Deviant Network – comparing to NLP modeling.
  • “Empowergy” – Marshall’s company
  • 99% is under the bell curve; progress is made by people outside the bell curve. Systematizing what Positive Deviants do.
• Emergence in PDN
  • Cooperation, but no control. Connections are weak ties.

Technocrati Tags: Marshall Thurber, Buckminster Fuller, Convergence, Abundance, Novelty, Risk, Sharing, Business, Dynamic Value, DyVal, Positive Deviant, Positive Deviant Network, PDN

Are you a Positive Deviant?

This may be the single most important activity
you can do for yourself and your career!

What is POSITIVE DEVIANCE?

Deviance is the distance someone or something is from the center of the bell curve. Almost all wealth and positive change comes from .1% of all human beings. It always has and always will be that way.

That one person in a thousand thinks and acts very differently. You can confirm or learn about positive deviancy right here. If you would like a FREE twelve page report on How Positive Deviancy and Network Science Can Speed Your Success by Ten to Twenty Times, register now using our easy sign-up form below.

Throughout the world, there are a few “positive deviant” individuals whose uncommon behaviors or practices enable them to outperform or find better solutions to pervasive problems, even though they share the same resource base as their associates. They consistently identify and exploit existing resources to provide unique solutions (Dynamic Value or DyVal)

“Marshall Thurber is an evolutionary event in our time”
Dr. R. Buckminster Fuller,
World-renowned scholar and futurist

Marshall Thurber is a successful attorney, real estate developer, editor, businessman, educator, scholar, inventor, negotiator, author, visionary and public speaker.

A list of his students includes such success stories as Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen of Chicken Soup for the Soul fame, the founder and creator of Paul Mitchell hair products, Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Spencer Johnson, author of Who Moved My Cheese, Tony Robbins, Harv Eker, and Robert Kiyosaki (author of Rich Dad Poor Dad).

In today’s episode, we touch upon the following topics:

• Pattern recognition
  • Structural vs. cyclical change
  • No high-tech without high touch
  • “Twoness”
• Openness to novelty
  • How to be open?
  • Story about Bucky Fuller – God makes no mistakes
  • The broken game (archistruction)
• Games – bringing the experience and fun into the training
  • Risk vs. Risky – the Land of Abundance game, making the point. The first 15%
  • Amount of waste – 40% of waste in US business

Technocrati Tags: Marshall Thurber, Buckminster Fuller, Convergence, Abundance, Novelty, Risk, Sharing, Business, Dynamic Value, DyVal

Are you a Positive Deviant?

This may be the single most important activity
you can do for yourself and your career!

What is POSITIVE DEVIANCE?

Deviance is the distance someone or something is from the center of the bell curve. Almost all wealth and positive change comes from .1% of all human beings. It always has and always will be that way.

That one person in a thousand thinks and acts very differently. You can confirm or learn about positive deviancy right here. If you would like a FREE twelve page report on How Positive Deviancy and Network Science Can Speed Your Success by Ten to Twenty Times, register now using our easy sign-up form below.

Throughout the world, there are a few “positive deviant” individuals whose uncommon behaviors or practices enable them to outperform or find better solutions to pervasive problems, even though they share the same resource base as their associates. They consistently identify and exploit existing resources to provide unique solutions (Dynamic Value or DyVal)

“Marshall Thurber is an evolutionary event in our time”
Dr. R. Buckminster Fuller,
World-renowned scholar and futurist

Marshall Thurber is a successful attorney, real estate developer, editor, businessman, educator, scholar, inventor, negotiator, author, visionary and public speaker.

A list of his students includes such success stories as Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen of Chicken Soup for the Soul fame, the founder and creator of Paul Mitchell hair products, Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Spencer Johnson, author of Who Moved My Cheese, Tony Robbins, Harv Eker, and Robert Kiyosaki (author of Rich Dad Poor Dad).

In today’s episode, we touch upon the following topics:

• Biggest picture – the Universe (looking for patterns)
  • No straight lines in the Universe; either converging or diverging
  • Convergence on Earth – because of computers and the Internet
  • Network yields to the power, but ultimately gets rid of it
• Business needs to be thinking in terms of convergence
  • Profit – filter of information
  • Primary scarcities – time and attention
  • Abundance – US is leading it
  • Converging, sharing, being part of a bigger pie, growing exponentially.
  • Information is going to be free. Sharing is having more – breaking from the paradigm of scarcity.
• Dynamic Value
  • Value = Quality / Price
  • Pet rock – fad, because there was no opportunity cascade
  • Create value that people are willing to exchange for money; more valuable than the money they have.
  • Value will be more intangible.
  • Technology and education

Technocrati Tags: Marshall Thurber, Buckminster Fuller, Convergence, Abundance, Sharing, Business, Dynamic Value, DyVal

Are you a Positive Deviant?

This may be the single most important activity
you can do for yourself and your career!

What is POSITIVE DEVIANCE?

Deviance is the distance someone or something is from the center of the bell curve. Almost all wealth and positive change comes from .1% of all human beings. It always has and always will be that way.

That one person in a thousand thinks and acts very differently. You can confirm or learn about positive deviancy right here. If you would like a FREE twelve page report on How Positive Deviancy and Network Science Can Speed Your Success by Ten to Twenty Times, register now using our easy sign-up form below.

Throughout the world, there are a few “positive deviant” individuals whose uncommon behaviors or practices enable them to outperform or find better solutions to pervasive problems, even though they share the same resource base as their associates. They consistently identify and exploit existing resources to provide unique solutions (Dynamic Value or DyVal)

We are continuing our conversations with Dr. Paul Kordis. Paul has been researching writing, and speaking to groups for over 20 years about the processes of profound change. He is a globally traveled speaker and seminar leader on futuristic, human development, change and other topics. He received his Ph.D. degree (with honors) in human capital and economic development from Colorado State University in May, 2008.

His 1,500-page dissertation is entitled “The Superhighway to Serfdom: How False-Social-Norms Marketing is Hijacking the American Dream.” He is a co-author (with Dudley Lynch) of the books The Strategy of the Dolphin: Scoring a Win in a Chaotic World, which has become a best seller, and Code of the Monarch: A Guide to the Real Global Business Revolution. He is also the author (with his wife, Susan) of the book Name Your Passion: A User’s Guide to Finding Your Personal Purpose.

Today’s conversation touches upon the following topics:

• Spheres of human influence
  • Individual behavior
  • Social & organizational
  • Political & Economic
  • Spiritual / philosophical / ethical
  • Political has built a wall from spiritual, so it cannot influence other spheres. Ideally, our decisions have to be based on the common ethics, which now becomes hard. Example: US foreign policy.
• Spirituality is simple and practical
  • Leadership and organizational development
  • Know where you are, where you’re going, and how do you get there
  • US founding documents – we just forgot to follow the map
• Natural generosity and good will
  • We’ve unlearned basic values
  • We need to expand our sphere of perception. Need to know the problem first.
  • Our brains are preoccupied with commercials and other noise
  • Expand our view of time. Learn history.
  • Expand our sphere of influence.
  • Expanding one’s perception without expanding one’s sphere of influence quickly follows by depression
• Purpose and passion
  • Who do I want to become?
  • What are my core competencies?
  • Combining the two together, what opportunities present themselves for me to move forward?
  • Think future (or historically), act now. The axis of expanding perception runs both ways.
• Globalization and localization
• Understanding ourselves
  • Movie: Lars and the Real Girl
  • Transforming oneself while transforming something outside
  • Schizophrenia as a heroic journey
• Concepts across disciplines
  • If you study any discipline deep enough, you come to the same conclusions
  • We adapt to systemic views

Technocrati Tags: Paul Kordis, Dolphins, Social Norm Marketing, Syntropy, Spheres of Human Influence, Generosity, Purpose, Passion, Globalization, Localization, NLP

Today we are going to introduce you to Dr. Paul Kordis. Paul has been researching writing, and speaking to groups for over 20 years about the processes of profound change. He is a globally traveled speaker and seminar leader on futuristic, human development, change and other topics. He received his Ph.D. degree (with honors) in human capital and economic development from Colorado State University in May, 2008.

His 1,500-page dissertation is entitled “The Superhighway to Serfdom: How False-Social-Norms Marketing is Hijacking the American Dream.” He is a co-author (with Dudley Lynch) of the books The Strategy of the Dolphin: Scoring a Win in a Chaotic World, which has become a best seller, and Code of the Monarch: A Guide to the Real Global Business Revolution. He is also the author (with his wife, Susan) of the book Name Your Passion: A User’s Guide to Finding Your Personal Purpose.

Today’s conversation touches upon the following topics:

• Spreading genes, memes, and phemes
  • Older and younger generations have been cut apart
• On existence of evil in the world
  • Default mode is entropy; it requires effort to go on syntropic way
• NLP
  • Looking for an edge over others
  • Direction of NLP: progression AND regression (standardization, certification)
  • Started out as modeling others. Presupposition – “I’m not good enough”.
  • Our approach – start out from my (individual) own uniqueness
• Social Norm Marketing
  • Book “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness” by Richard H. Thaler (Author), Cass R. Sunstein
  • Small changes – healthy food closer to the entrance of the cafeteria, organ donors by default (unless opted out), publish your neighbors’ energy use in the bill. “Social norms marketing”.
  • Binge drinking reduction through social norm marketing (how much do you drink & how much do you think others drink)
  • False social norm marketing – providing distractions to people, making them think their opinion is in minority, and voicing it is dangerous. Example: gay rights and abortions in religious rights. People are making decisions out of fear.
• The “Little Bang” – Life.
  • Universe is entropic, but life is syntropic. See yodolphin.com for an article.
  • 3 axis: Entropy-Syntropy, Love-Fear (life-death), Isolation-Connectivity
  • The US in the last 40 years has been moving to entropy/fear/isolation. Not a good sign.
  • How one handles novelty determines other dimensions

Technocrati Tags: Paul Kordis, Dolphins, Strategy of The Dolphin, Code of the monarch, Social Norm Marketing, Little Bang, Syntropy, NLP

www.authentichappiness.org

Technocrati Tags: Martin Seligman, TED, Happiness, Meaning, Positive Psychology, Flow, Pleasure

Besides the cleaner and better look, the most important feature of this design is the organization of all the published info (podcasts and blog entries) by various criteria (categories, participants, and series).

As we are celebrating our first anniversary of weekly podcast releases, we feel it is prime time to organize the amount of information we have, so you – our visitors, have an easier time finding what you really need. Mind you – when the organizers have trouble sifting through their own material, it is indeed prime time for a radical change

Happy Transformations,

The Radical Change Group, International.

We are continuing our conversation with David Neenan – the creator of the pioneering Archistruction(R) process for planning, designing, and managing building construction projects. As president of The Neenan Company, he has combined leading-edge information processing and design methods and innovative "people" approaches to reengineer how the construction process works from conception to completion. His company uses the Archistruction methods to design and costruct office, medical, retail, and light industrial buildings for clients throughout the Rocky Mountain region from offices in Fort Collins, Denver, and Colorado Springs. David is also a nationally recognized seminar leader, keynode speaker, business consultant, and the author of books such as "Evergreen" and "No Excuses: be the hero of your own life". He has produced his "Business & You" and other seminars in Colorado, Hawaii, California, Texas, Vermont, Taiwan, Sweden, Moscow, and Siberia. He and his wife, Sharon, live in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Archistruction
  • Why only building buildings?
  • Casper – lost $670K while having $93K
• It’s the mutants that make it
  • The learners will inherit the Earth (Marshall & taking the doors out)
• How do you transcend the parts and include the whole
  • Transition to system 7
• Family – applying same principles
  • The Nurture Assumption (book) – kids are more influenced by teenage peers, not by their parents
• Finding a partner for life

Technocrati Tags: David Neenan, Archistruction, Business, Existentialism

The actual Hernando’s presentation starts at 21 min into the video.

Technocrati Tags: Hernando de Soto, David Neenan, Capitalism, Economics

We are continuing our conversation with David Neenan – the creator of the pioneering Archistruction(R) process for planning, designing, and managing building construction projects. As president of The Neenan Company, he has combined leading-edge information processing and design methods and innovative "people" approaches to reengineer how the construction process works from conception to completion. His company uses the Archistruction methods to design and costruct office, medical, retail, and light industrial buildings for clients throughout the Rocky Mountain region from offices in Fort Collins, Denver, and Colorado Springs. David is also a nationally recognized seminar leader, keynode speaker, business consultant, and the author of books such as "Evergreen" and "No Excuses: be the hero of your own life". He has produced his "Business & You" and other seminars in Colorado, Hawaii, California, Texas, Vermont, Taiwan, Sweden, Moscow, and Siberia. He and his wife, Sharon, live in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Reinventing oneself – making mistakes at a higher level
• Dynamic capitalism – Hernando DeSoto
1. LLC
2. Private property rights
3. Open banking system
4. Rule of law
• ILD – Institute of Liberty and Democracy
• Readiness factor – mapping out countries and their transitions
  • Readiness for change
  • What kind of change
• Choosing opportunities to serve – how to choose the most effective ones?
  • 8-min video with Hernando
  • Showing results – Peru: getting a marriage license
• Diagnostics – finding the critical points
• Story – sardine factory

Technocrati Tags: David Neenan, Archistruction, Business, Existentialism

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.

To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.

To reach out to others is to risk involvement.

To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self.

To place your ideas, your dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss.

To love is to risk not being loved in return.

To live is to risk dying.

To hope is to risk despair.

To try is to risk failure.

But risks must be taken,

because the greatest hazard in life is to do nothing.

The person who risks nothing,

does nothing, has nothing, and is nothing.

They may avoid suffering and sorrow,

but they cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, live.

Chained by their attitudes, they are a slave,

they forfeited their freedom.

Only the person who risks can be free

David Neenan is the creator of the pioneering Archistruction(R) process for planning, designing, and managing building construction projects. As president of The Neenan Company, he has combined leading-edge information processing and design methods and innovative "people" approaches to reengineer how the construction process works from conception to completion. His company uses the Archistruction methods to design and costruct office, medical, retail, and light industrial buildings for clients throughout the Rocky Mountain region from offices in Fort Collins, Denver, and Colorado Springs. David is also a nationally recognized seminar leader, keynode speaker, business consultant, and the author of books such as "Evergreen" and "No Excuses: be the hero of your own life". He has produced his "Business & You" and other seminars in Colorado, Hawaii, California, Texas, Vermont, Taiwan, Sweden, Moscow, and Siberia. He and his wife, Sharon, live in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Changing Schools
  • Most beloved and hated man in town
  • Dealing with the School District – introducing superlearning into schools
• Observing the Observer
  • Handling opposition – Separate the observer from what is being observed
  • Observe the observer you are – learn from it
• Solving business problems – it’s about changing your life
• Confucius story
  • Always expect the unexpected
• Learning organization
  • vs. fighting or sleeping organizations
• Discover your magnifiscence in a breakdown
• Existentialism
  • I’m born free, make choices from my freedom
  • Responsibility – accountable for my decisions
  • Anxiety – the elixir of life
  • Evil
  • Death
• Taking responsibility
  • Patterns – what stops people, and what helps them to break through
  • If you have a problem, your options:
    • You can change yourself
    • You can change the system
    • You can get out
    • You can choose to suffer (99% of unconscious choice)
  • If you think your leader sucks, look in the mirror
  • Setting the right expectations
  • Biggest mistake in starting a company – thinking that everyone is like me
• Hiring is a crap shoot

Technocrati Tags: David Neenan, Archistruction, Business, Existentialism

Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Proposed by positive psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields.
Colloquial terms for this or similar mental states include: to be on the ball, in the zone, or in the groove. (Wikipedia).

This episode covers the following topics:

• What is flow?
  • Our experiences of flow for the first time
  • Arman – high school math team
  • Sergey – dance, since being a kid
  • M – flow is magic; martial arts – after a lot of training
• What is the structure to your flow?
  • Self-modeling (as opposed to modeling someone else)
  • Common components:
    • Resonance
    • Time distortion
    • Elite performance
• Building the capacity for holding the flow
• How and when to apply the flow?

Technocrati Tags: flow, zone, peak state, elite performance, groove, resonance, time distortion

We are continuing our conversation with Maniko – an accomplished musician and signer, personal voice coach, workshop facilitator, and a really wonderful person.

She has extensive professional and experiential training in expressive arts therapies, emotional release and integration, meditative disciplines as well as dance, movement and resonance awareness as vehicles for bridging the worlds of spiritual development, personal integration and authentic self-expression.

Maniko’s websites: TempleOfSong.com and VoxMastery.com.

This episode includes the following topics:

• Voice and Culture
• How one can explore this?
  • Just let your voice soar
  • Contextualized vs. everyday practice
• Range – knowing what’s available for me
  • Expand and relax back, gradually.
  • Physical movement, tonal movement, language movement, and silence – these are all our faculties
• Speaking and singing voice – make your talk sing
• Waking up the dead – voice in corporate world
• Tuning in to the heart of the listener
• Speaking to difficult audiences
• Tuning in – taking it across contexts
• Life as music – how do we sing it?
  • When something turns you on – stop and listen, pay attention
• Thank you!

Maniko’s songs used in this episode:

• And Now
• Just like this

Technocrati Tags: Voice, Embodied Voice, Alchemy of Voice, Maniko, Self-Expression

Today, we are introducing you to Maniko Dru Dadigan – an accomplished musician and signer, personal voice coach, workshop facilitator, and a really wonderful person.

She has extensive professional and experiential training in expressive arts therapies, emotional release and integration, meditative disciplines as well as dance, movement and resonance awareness as vehicles for bridging the worlds of spiritual development, personal integration and authentic self-expression.

Maniko’s websites: TempleOfSong.com and VoxMastery.com.

This episode includes the following topics:

• Singing voice – connecting to heart
• Terror of your own magnificence
• Building a “soul muscle”
  • Dance, singing and silence
  • Working from within – with person’s own material
• Standing up for what is true
• Listening to others
• Finding your own path – knowing your calling
• Leaving your legacy
• Maniko’s approach
  • You are already a miracle
  • Start with the body & breath
  • Get the voice moving – no content, just resonant richness
  • When things happen – write it down (so many songs came out from that)
  • State of loving awareness
  • Whole person integration
  • It stops being a problem – it becomes a fuel for creativity
  • Honoring what is
  • Release to your genuine self-expression
  • Purely experiential
• Resonant voice gives birth to the myth and mysticism

Maniko’s songs used in this episode:

• Nature of Things
• Ishq Allah

Technocrati Tags: Voice, Embodied Voice, Alchemy of Voice, Maniko, Self-Expression

This exercise is useful when one attempts to move beyond one’s
current belief structures. Record the the following in a soothing and
authoritative manner five times into a tape recorder.
(start of belief unlimited tape)

In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is
true or becomes true within certain limits, to be found experientially
and experimentally. These limits are beliefs to be transcended.

Hidden from one’s self is a covert set of beliefs that control one’s thinking, one’s actions, and one’s feeling.

The covert set of hidden beliefs is the limiting set of beliefs to be transcended.

To transcend one’s limiting set, one establishes an open ended set of beliefs about the unknown.

The unknown exists in one’s goals for changing one’s self, in the
means for changing, in the use of others for the change, in one’s
capacity to change, in one’s orientation towards change, in one’s
elimination of hindrances to change, in one’s assimilation of the aids
to change, in one’s use of the impulse to change, in one’s need for
changing, in the possibilities of change, in the form of change itself,
and in the substance of change and of changing.

The unknown exists in one’s goals for changing one’s self, in the
means for changing, in the use of others for the change, in one’s
capacity to change, in one’s orientation towards change, in one’s
elimination of hindrances to change, in one’s assimilation of the aids
to change, in one’s use of the impulse to change, in one’s need for
changing, in the possibilities of change, in the form of change itself,
and in the substance of change and of changing.

There are unknowns in my goals towards changing.There are
unknowns in my means of changing. There are unknowns in my relations
with others in changing. There are unknowns in my capacity for
changing. There are unknowns in my orientation towards changing. There
are unknowns in my assimilation of changes. There are unknowns in my
needs for changing. There are unknowns in my possibilities of me
changing. There are unknowns in the forms into which changing will put
me. There are unknowns in the substance of the changes that I will
undergo, in my substance after changes.

My disbelief in all these unknowns is a limiting belief,
preventing my transcending my limits. My disbelief in all these
unknowns is a belief, a limiting belief, preventing my transcending my
limits.

By allowing, there are no limits; no limits to thinking, no
limits to feeling, no limits to movement. By allowing, there are no
limits. There are no limits to thinking, no limits to feeling, no
limits to movement.

That which is not allowed is forbidden. That which is allowed
exists. In allowing no limits, there are no limits. That which is
forbidden is not allowed. That which is not allowed forbidden. That
which exists is allowed. That which is allowed, exists. In allowing no
limits, there are no limits. That which is not allowed is forbidden.
That which is forbidden is not allowed. That which is allowed, exists.
That which exists is allowed. To allow no limits, there are no limits.
No limits allowed, no limits exist.

In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either
is true or becomes true. In the province of the mind there are no
limits. In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true
either is true or becomes true. There are no limits.

(end of Belief Unlimited tape)

(from The centre of the cyclone an autobiography of inner space by John C. Lilly,M.D.)

When listening to the tape, lie in a comfortable position on the
floor with the lights very dim and just allow the words and meaning
enter you without any resistance. DO IT SOON, DO IT REGULARLY.

We are continuing our conversations with our teacher and friend Paul Rebillot on the topic of the Healing Theatre – the combination of acting and drama, mythology, gestalt therapy, and rituals. For more information about Paul and his work, please visit his website – Direct Impact Creativity.

In this podcast , we discuss with Paul the Lover’s Journey – the structure he has introduced in the previous episode.

• Hermes and the Dance of Transformation
  • Dedication to Gods
  • Story of the Dance of Transformation
• What is the essense of femininity and masculinity?
• Polarity, Acceptance, and Love
• Feminine-Masculine duality and universal human being
• Body Armor, Rolfing (see also Wikipedia entry)
• Somatics – applications in healing
  • Martial Arts – destructive / protective way. What are the healing applications?
• From Body to Heart to Mind

Technocrati Tags: Myth, Mythology, Hero's Journey, Lover's Journey, Paul Rebillot

We are continuing our conversations with our friend and teacher Paul Rebillot on the topic of the Healing Theatre – the combination of acting and drama, mythology, gestalt therapy, and rituals. For more information about Paul and his work, please visit his website – Direct Impact Creativity.

In this segment, Paul introduces us to his next original structure- the Lover’s Journey.

• What is lover’s journey?
  • A state of being. If the Hero’s Journey is phallic, masculine, then the Lover’s Journey is erotic
• Work a little with mother and father
  • “Parental possession meditation”: color parts for mother, father, your own
• Sexual history
  • Healing the sexual wounds; what comes out is a positive same-sex image
• The negative same-sex image of themselves or others
• Negative opposite sex image (anima / animus possession)
• Healing of the anima/animus possession – “the dance of transformation”
• Marriage
  • Bringing together the four “people” – the four aspects of themselves
• What is the result people get after the Lover’s Journey?

Technocrati Tags: Myth, Mythology, Hero's Journey, Lover's Journey, Paul Rebillot

Randy Pausch, the professor at Carnegie Mellon University who inspired countless students in the classroom and others worldwide through his highly acclaimed last lecture, has died of complications from pancreatic cancer. He was 47.

Read full article at the CMU website »

Technocrati Tags: Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

In this episode we are concluding the Sleight of Mouth patterns with the Alogical, or as we also call it Analogical, or Metaphorical SOM pattern.

• The Alogical SOM Pattern
  • Utilizes many different skills – metaphorical, hypnotic, by-passes logical objections
• 3 examples of the alogical pattern
• Explanations of the metaphors
• How do we use alogical SOM pattern in real life
• The Ultimate SOM Pattern

Technocrati Tags: NLP, Language, Sleigh of Mouth

In this episode, we explain and give examples of the "neurological" SOM patterns, the second class of SOMs in our classification.

• Neurological Levels and SOM
• SOM at the level of intent – capture the fort and rule the territory
• Any level higher than the level of the problem can solve the problem
• Examples of using neurological levels – three examples of limiting beliefs and an application of the SOM pattern.
• Exercises
• Changing the frame size (level of detail): chunk up / chunk down
  • What it is, and three examples of SOM

Technocrati Tags: NLP, Language, Sleigh of Mouth