Awakening Together – Details, episodes & analysis

“If our capacity for wisdom arises from influences and practices at a relatively small scale, but our biggest problems arise from underlying delusions within system dynamics at a planetary scale, what follows for how we should educate ourselves?" ~ Jonathan Rowson

With this next conversation, I’m officially launching my Wisdom Dialogue Series. If I only had time to tell you how this is a culmination of my life up to this moment, and how this is the result of a flow of synchronicities in my life that have been growing and growing so powerfully.  Without further adieu, the first episode is with my guest Alan Briskin.  He’s so perfect to be the first guest and let me share about him and you’ll see why.

Alan Briskin, Ph.D. is the author and co-author of multiple books on the workplace, health care, and collective wisdom, including The Stirring of Soul in the Workplace, Daily Miracles, and The Power of Collective Wisdom. He has been working with groups and organizations for 40 years as an executive coach and consultant. 

Co-founder of The Collective Wisdom Initiative, sponsored by the Fetzer Institute, Dr. Briskin’s long-term clients have included Kaiser Permanente, George Lucas Educational Foundation, and the Goi Peace Foundation in Tokyo.  He has held positions as Executive Advisor at the Institute of Noetic Sciences and Senior Advisor to the One Humanity Institute.  His work has sought to integrate the interior experience of individuals and groups with the realities of external power, privilege, and institutional history.  He is currently working on a forthcoming book with Mary Gelinas, Space is Not Empty: Harnessing the Power of Relational Fields to Impact Our World.

That is just the tip of the iceberg of who Alan is because we are infinite people who are more than our bios.  Nonetheless, it’s inspiring to hear part of his story.  I hope that this wisdom dialogue supports you, my listener and viewer and Awakening Together community member, in discovering more of your own capacity, your own deep longing for meaningful conversation and more of the wisdom in your own life.

I believe that the world needs more wisdom and we need more dialogue and we also need spaces and containers for dialogue beyond just the normal meeting kind of conversations.  Of course you might want to know “What is a wisdom dialogue?” What is wisdom and what then is dialogue?  Listen in and find out.  

This first Wisdom Dialogue emerged out of what was going to be our ‘prep’ call for the formal interview I was going to have with Alan.  It wanted to be a Wisdom Dialogue.  We were quickly in a deep connected (communitas) space that was guiding us as much as we were guiding it through the flow of our conversation.  There was a delightful exploration.  Many of my listeners and viewers are familiar I am sure with the aboriginal scholar and author Tyson Yunkaporta, and if not please check out his work.  In his book Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Will Change The World (which I highly recommend), he speaks generously about the difference between having an ordinary conversation and having a ‘yarn’.  Yarning is simply put the Aboriginal approach to group dialogue, knowledge creation, sharing and decision making; it’s also about “the creation of a space without a stage to share experiences, to draw on the ground and sketch ideas out to illustrate a point.”  Doesn’t that sound like what a Wisdom Dialogue might be?  I hope so.  So this wonderful yarn was inspiring, nurturing, insightful, and invited each of us into deeper parts of ourselves together, as we care about each other and the earth and these times we are in.  Let us learn as members of this global family different ways of learning and sharing in language - letting the heart lead with the head following - mastery and the emissary.

For the rest of the show notes, visit www.awakeningtogether.one

When we hear the words ‘welcome disturbance’ what typically happens to us is that we have resistance.  This is deeply engrained in our lives thanks to a strong cultural tendency to fear change.  It’s been educated into us.  We think it’s who we truly are but it’s not; we are resilient and adaptive and we need to remember all this in order to activate our self-organizing capacities and future potentials.  Buckminster Fuller reminds us in his famous quote which is so on point here, that “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”  In the next 70 minutes we’re going to be pointing our navigation system toward that new model, new capacities to embody that new model and inspiration for how to share it wherever we go.  It gets so simple. This next episode is special for several reasons, one is because it’s full of wisdom of how we can create capacities for being more resilient, dissolving that tendency toward an immunity to change.   In order to create profound change in the world we have to be comfortable with change, we have to welcome the discomfort and stay curious and open.  Another reason why this is so special is because this dialogue is with two masters of process who both have been mentors of mine going back to 2005.  My life was profoundly impacted by them both.  They are Anne Stadler and Peggy Holman.  And the one deepest to my heart in this moment is because Anne left this planet only weeks ago.  This deep and nurturing dialogue happened last August and now I’m releasing it only weeks after Anne journeyed on.  Her bright radiant spirit is still with so many of us.  She lived and gifted us with her brilliance for 92 years.  She impacted so many people in so many ways as you will see.  I hope you will also feel the deep resonance of her bright presence.  Our conversation was recorded 15 months ago and is just now being released.  Both Anne and Peggy are elders and masters in Open Space Technology (OST) and they have brought a deep wisdom to every gathering they convened and every space they opened.  I was blessed to be at many of these and they had a huge impact on my training because I was essentially I was being trained by masters.  I didn’t really know that at the time.  Only with hindsight do I see the kind of perfection of the divine design of my life.  As I listened to this conversation again, my heart beamed with gratitude that I had this interview available to share with the world - to reveal the combined genius of Anne and Peggy.  Who are these amazing women?  Here is a short bio of each (longer bios are on the show notes).  Anne is a pioneering elder. Her 61 years of work have included co-creative community building; facilitating self-organizing leadership and organizational development; and award winning television production. She was the volunteer Founding Director of Friends of Third Place Commons. 

Peggy is the Co-Author of The Change Handbook which profiles 61 practices that engage people in creating their desired future. She’s also the author of the award-winning Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into Opportunity that offers a roadmap for tackling complex challenges through stories, principles, and practices. Co-founder of Journalism That Matters, a nonprofit that supports and equips the adventurers who transform relationships between communities and journalism for a strong, inclusive democracy.  You can check out the longer bios on the website awakeningtogether.one or in the show notes on the various platforms!  Do subscribe and share and share a review wherever you are inspired.

Thanks for joining us.

For show notes, visit www.awakeningtogether.one

When I think about the times we’re in and this moment of history and all that is being revealed to us, all that we haven’t seen, all that we have forgotten, when that all comes together in flashes of insight and wholeness, clear intuitive guidance, then we’re touching on that place in ourselves that already knows - this is innate and we are naturally multidimensional with more capacities than we yet realize.

We must recognize that we are at a collective fork in the road and we need to upgrade our capacities, attune to the highest frequencies of ourselves, listen deeply to the wisdom inherent in our life.  This deep gnosis, that knowing beyond what we were told, beyond what we learned in school or what we were raised with, that’s touching into the heart of who we truly are.  There are many ways to do that, through direct experience, teachings, books, teachers, life experience, perennial wisdom, the transmission through all the major religions and the mystical paths, and from life Herself, from the intelligence of Gaia and Divine Wholeness.

And my next guest will weave many of those strands together in an exquisite embodiment that will inspire and welcome you to step into more of your greatness.  Her name is Sarah Drew and she’s a dear friend who is “the visionary author of the eco-feminist novel, GAIA CODEX, which catalyzes powerful blueprints for the future deeply rooted in the gnosis of the past.  Sarah has been a featured speaker at the graduate level and at organizations such as Google, ABC Deepak Homebase, and Bioneers, and she is currently a popular teacher and mentor for women worldwide on topics such as Feminine Wisdom, Evolutionary Culture. and Regenerative Technologies. Her work expresses a deep curiosity and a polymathic approach to exploring multiple disciplines with a focus on humanity’s evolution, the cultivation of compassion and our multi-generational nurturance of Mother Earth.” This is 7 generation thinking.

We will touch on all of this in our conversation, and we do so in a deeply personal way that has repercussions for the collective and our global community.  She also shares some of her personal practices from her spiritual lineage and the divine feminine lineage of women who remember.  Toward the end she guides us into a simple yet profound visualization practice to bring forth a future that aligns with the more beautiful world we know, the vibrant seeds waiting to blossom in our hearts. I invite you to listen deeply, this is a transmission and conversation situated inside a pulsing field of life.  The way you listen will reveal what it is that you most need to hear.  Join us in this intimate container with Sarah who is a true catalyst for the transformation of culture and an activator for the role of women stepping into their fullness and majesty.  And you’ll be invited to participate at the very end in a wonderful collective intention!  And again, if you enjoy this, please share it and offer your comments and feedback which we deeply welcome.

For more information and show notes, go to www.awakeningtogether.one

Hello everyone, thank you for joining us on Awakening Together. This next conversation with Tomas Bjorkman is a very meaningful one for the times we’re in right now. You might say it is right and timely. So much of Tomas’ focus in the world is about cultivating the inner capacities of people as well as the collective capacities that can make the biggest difference. One of his projects he’s been developing is the Inner Development Goals and Summit, all designed to support this inner growth and maturation of individuals so you can start deepening your own inner growth practices. One of the greatest things we can do as Gandhi said is “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Tomas Björkman is an author and social entrepreneur with great interest in science and philosophy. He used to be an investment banker and property developer working all over Europe. He has founded several companies and organizations, including Investment Banking Partners AB. Ten years ago, he founded the Ekskäret Foundation, with the aim of supporting sustainable development for individuals, organizations and society.

For more information and show notes, go to www.awakeningtogether.one

My next guest is a wise soul who combines the best of a scientific understanding of the cosmos with a deeply spiritual and intuitive knowing of the deeper reality all around us.  This story of the unity and convergence of science and the primary nature of consciousness is one of the gifts she brings to us.  Dr. Jude Currevan is a delightful human with a natural and highly contagious joy that exudes from her.  She is also a cosmologist, planetary healer, futurist, author, previously one of the most senior business women in the UK and co-founder of WholeWorld-View. For the last twenty-five years she has lived in the sacred landscape of Avebury. She has experienced multidimensional realities since early childhood and has worked with the wisdom keepers both incarnate and discarnate of many traditions.

For more information and show notes, go to www.awakeningtogether.one

Welcome everyone once again to Awakening Together. I’m your host Sheri Herndon and as always I’m very happy to be here. This is what I consider to be a sacred container. I have a great love for containers because they are the membranes around a field, around a conversation, a group, a potential, an emerging potential. This conversation is a container. We tend to not think of it that way but when we go deeper into the scientific understanding, or innerstanding, of energetic fields and our combined biofields and the nonlocal fields, we begin to see more of reality, we experience the veils dissolving, we see through the glass darkly and then face to face. Our next conversation is a deepening of the conversation I had with Anneloes Smitman on becoming future humans part 1. What was clear in that episode is that we covered a lot of terrain and now it’s time to go deeper. By going deeper we will be going under the more superficial top layer, and thus are bringing in more of the wholeness that we can access within ourselves. So think of this conversation as an exploration within yourself.

For more information and show notes, go to www.awakeningtogether.one

Hello everyone, welcome, I’m your host Sheri Herndon and we’re here again for another inspiring conversation. I recorded this dialogue about two months ago to the day and for a variety of reasons it’s just now getting out. And it’s perfect because some of the themes we’ve been seeing over the past 6 episodes there’s a weaving here and we’re seeing these themes being amplified again organically in this conversation. I want to invite you into a kind of mini moment of sense-making, because when we are paying attention to the continuity of a conversation, like this podcast, this isn’t just a set of discrete conversations, they are telling a story, they are laying down a new pathway, we can begin to see emerging patterns, and discover that we’re learning and unlearning as we’re in the process of deeply listening.

Go to www.awakeningtogether.one for more links and show notes!

Welcome everyone to Awakening Together. This next episode goes really deep into the heart of the new social DNA of an awakening culture. With my guest Tibet Sprague, we cover alot of terrain, starting with how we live in community, embody our values, stay connected when it gets difficult and do the healing work necessary for cocreation. It’s potent and enlivening to fully inquire together into what it takes to build a new culture, what are these building blocks from healing relationships to building deep and trusted friendships, navigating through the disconnection, as well as what will it take to birth these next generation of technologies, platforms and social networks. This is what is so inspiring because Tibet because he is bringing a whole systems way of embodying new culture. This is our collective creative opportunity to give birth to a human culture that is mature enough that we can actually work together in order to create a new kind of social coordination system for a planet in transition. We’ll hear wonderful examples of living together, working together, and working on a tech platform. Such a unique convergence. What will it really take to shift into Game B, the Infinite Game, or become a coherent superorganism for a regenerative culture. Basically we are talking about creating community, the kind that builds a beautiful structure of belonging. We’ll hear about the way of council, how it works in community and with for purpose businesses, as well as in a home, family, community. Here are living prototypes of the new operating system in action. Wisdom in action. We’ll learn about the Terran Collective and Hylo, a pro social platform, and ultimately as Tibet likes to say building a platform for stewardship of the planet. I think you will enjoy this, check out the show notes, subscribe and share with your friends and I am grateful that you are here. All feedback, comments and questions are welcome. It’s wonderful to share the things that inspire me with all of you.

For links, bio, and show notes, go to www.awakeningtogether.one

Our next conversation is going to take us into a full spectrum approach to regenerative agriculture. What does that mean you might ask. My next guest, Adam Russell, is an extraordinary person in his own regard and he also happens to have a profound and integral relationship with working with the land and life. There are many people working in this space, but Adam’s uniqueness is that he is an integral comprehensivist and is firmly in the lineage of Buckminster Fuller. In this conversation we’ll go deep into what it means to be in right relationship with the land itself and how essential this is to be able to mirror more of life’s intelligence. In this way we heal so much of the wounding in our relationship with the earth and our outdated story of separation. There’s alot of hope in this conversation. From his vantage point he sees a readiness and shift in culture to have a different relationship with the earth. This land consciousness has been a core thread in all of our conversations on Awakening Together thus far – This being in a participatory relationship with life. We also explore coherence and an ancient technology called agnithotra, the seemingly miraculous aspects of biodynamic farming and quantum agriculture, as well as what does it take to transition from conventional to regenerative agriculture. 

BIO 

Adam Russell is an ecologist, explorer, and educator. For a decade he was an educator for Remote Medical International where he has worked with human and land health in remote locations around the world since 2006. He has worked to regenerate land with the use of the Holistic Management framework, Regrarians platform, Permaculture, earthworks, biodynamics, pyramids, and Homa farming practices which include biofertilizers and agnihotra. He seeks to build a knowledge base of how we can work to release the potential from under-utilized lands. Adam’s current projects include broadscale soil and atmospheric regeneration and the spread of available solutions through his work with Symbiosis.

For links and show notes, go to www.awakeningtogether.one

My next guest is Joe Brewer who will be sharing with us the stories of his life in Colombia and the magic that has been unfolding around him because of a renewed relationship with the land, not in a conceptual way, but a deep embodied way.  Joe is the author of The Design Pathway for Regenerating Earth and has been building an empowered community of practice called Earth Regenerators.  His background is extensive in earth sciences, linguistic framing and understanding how we create greater harmony with the earth.  His journey is an empowering one.  One of the things I love about Joe of many things is that he holds a deep belief in the future of humanity and in the innate goodness of people.

During our conversation he shared this powerful observation around healing.  Here he was thinking he was healing land that badly needed regeneration but what started happening was the earth was healing him.  This is the beauty of reciprocity.  Who is healing who?   One of the themes in Awakening Together that we like to explore is that there is an essential worldview shift underway that will make all the difference, a spiritual consciousness of connection and unity and deep knowing that life is yearning to be in greater more intimate relationship with us.

Joe’s stories that unfold from his relationship with listening to the land and to healing himself are profound, like receiving messages directly from the land, to money showing up without effort to purchase the land, to profound healing for the indigenous people in Colombia living in the bioregion. The healing we are talking about here is the collective trauma of 100s of years of colonization.  This is in essence creating the ground for rewilding, out of being domesticated and colonized, we regain our freedom, our deeper sense of purpose, our higher capacities to see and listen and receive guidance and find joy.  This is when we know that we are standing in the wholeness of life and in right relationship.  Listen to the magic that is unfolding in Joe’s life.  It’s so palpable. I hope you enjoy the conversation.

BIO

Joe Brewer is the founder of Earth Regenerators. He has studied earth systems, complexity, and evolution in service to the future of life on our precious home planet. As an interdisciplinary scholar, he helped design educational offerings in Earth Systems, Environment & Society and participated in the founding of the Cultural Evolution Society. In the realm of social change, he worked with /TheRules to hack the global discourse on poverty and inequality. And as a father, he seeks to give his young daughter the opportunity to bring rivers back to life.

LINKS

Bio:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-brewer-4957925

Earth Regenerators:  https://earthregenerators.org/

Walking the Path of Regeneration:  https://medium.com/@joe_brewer/walking-the-path-of-regeneration-af56e6e54c0c

Birthing the Barichara Ecoversity:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrMzQxxGqfo