First interview trilogy

Dr Michael Gaeta and I felt there was more to say after our evening interview the other night, so we did our third interview looking at the importance of activism and service, and what he calls the primacy of the divine.

Expect more time with Michael in the future!

Again, to find out more about Michael's work or to book him for your next event, visit www.gaetacommunications.com.  As I write, Michael is on a 4-day speaking tour of the Pacific North West and the previous week/weekend did a 5-day tour on the East coast.

My sister's choir is joint winner of BBC Radio Norfolk Choir of the Year

Okay, slight break off from my normal postings about my travels and learnings.  Quick newsflash from the UK...Many of you will have heard me talk about my sister's Jody's super-musicality.  One of her choirs, Viva Voce, has just become joint winner of the BBC Radio Norfolk Choir of the Year. In the radio interview, she modestly describes her conducting role here as 'just standing out the front'! 

It was on last Sunday morning, so it will only stay online until the end of Saturday UK time, we think.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/p00kts9s

If you'd like to hear it / you read this before the end of Saturday, scroll to 2 hours and 48 minutes (and 30 seconds!) to hear her talk and the choir sing.

Well done Jody et al.!  Super proud of you!

Fully alive, fully present

After positive feedback on my previous interview with Dr Michael Gaeta, here Michael goes much more deeply into the nature of personal transformation, the 'being' aspect of human beings and how to cultivate our biggest sense of our identities beyond our thoughts, feelings and bodies.

See the interview here:

For more information on Michael's work, see www.gaetacommunications.com - be sure to sign up to Michael's radio show!

The Great Disruption or The Big Shift?

Thomas Friedman muses on what's currently going on with Occupy Wall Street:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/opinion/theres-something-happening-here.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212&pagewanted=all

In spiral dynamics or evolutionary terms, capitalism is a modernist system with both its advantages and disadvantages. So it seems likely that as more people develop to post-modern or post-post modern consciousness, there will be other forms of organizing principles which arise.  The integral perspective would seem to be to have the awareness to choose which systems and practices serve in which situations, rather than doing away with everything that has come before;  said otherwise, each of the memes or worldviews has and will continue to have something very valuable to contribute.

Interview with Dr Michael Gaeta: health, nutrition and raising consciousness

I have very much enjoyed getting to know Michael and his wife Deanna over the last week.  Michael is an acupuncturist, herbalist and speaker.  He also runs a number of health websites, trains health practitioners, has his own radio show and is on a big mission to shift people's awareness of their nutrition and wellbeing.  For more on this work, visit www.gaetacommunications.com for information on his work, to listen to his podcasts - it's packed with some great free resources.

See our on-the-move interview below:

Now and Zen

So, some of you like me may have been proud owners of your a Zen alarm clock, one which produces natural chimes and unfolds according to the fibonacci sequence.  Well, if you are such a person, chances are you will have come by your alarm clock through Now and Zen who retail them out of Boulder, Colorado.  Founder and President of Now and Zen is Steve Mcintosh, who is also a leading integral philosopher and author.

I was privileged to spend a couple of hours with Steve today talking about integral consciousness (thanks Steve for a great meeting and being generous with your time). Lots of ground covered, very stimulating to hear him in flow.  I will just mention a couple of things here.

He made a really useful distinction between problems to be solved and polarities to be managed, and the fact that we oftentimes get into knots becuase we confuse them.  How much to attend to self and how much to attend to other (community) is not a problem to be solved, it's a dynamic polarity to be managed.  Different times of life may require a different balance.  The fact is:  you need to deepen self in order to serve others best;  and you need to work with others in order to deepen self.  So it's an ongoing iterative journey.

We touched on the size of the integral segment of society (those at 2nd tier consciousness - see here for an explanation).  Some in the Boulder community have estimated the US integral population at 2-5m.  Many people have mentioned the monkey island experiment which suggests that once 11% of a population take something on (with the monkeys, it was washing their fruit), it has the potential to become a mass movement.  So it's a small segment thus far but one that is established, emerging and growing. 

Steve's new book which he is working on now will have more on how to apply integral consciousness(whereas his previous book was more of an exposition).  Be sure to check back at www.stevemcintosh.com to keep posted...

Feeling bookish?

So, I went to one of the two main book stores in Boulder today, Trident.  This is what I bought:

- The Spiritual Dimensions of the Enneagram (Nine Faces of The Soul), Sandra Maitri (Sandra is a senior teacher at the Ridhwan School, which I would like to connect more with and my sense is she is very well regarded within the Enneagram community)
- The Enneagram of Passions and Virtues, Sandra Maitri
- Grace and Grit, Ken Wilber (story of the five years of his wife's terminal battle with cancer)
- Up from Eden, Ken Wilber (according to David Riordan of Integral Life, in putting together Ken's biography, this is the one they keep returning to, written in much more of a narrative and less academic style)
- Social and Political Science, Rudolf Steiner (come across several people teaching at or sending their kids to Steiner schools, thought it was about time to look into the man himself - plus about time I put that Social and Political Sciences degree to work ;))

Waking Up or Waking Down?

I was very privileged to spend an hour and a half with Saniel Bonder, founder of the Waking Down in Mutuality approach, at his home in Sonoma.
Saniel's work has sometimes been described as the 'finishing school for enlightenment', offering spiritual searchers who have been round the houses, a radical transformation or 'second birth' (nondual awakening).  Waking Down helps people integrate both being an infinite and unlimited being with the finiteness of being in human form.  He says it is both easier than harder than you think: easier in that all you need to do is put yourself in proximity with the transmission (easier now given the advent of internet video) and is a bio-spiritually natural process (including becoming friendly to your animal nature);  harder in you have to learn 'whole being integrity' which means accepting all of you including the parts you tend not to like and also because in your process you will lose higher states of consciousness that you have accessed (which typically we judge and think of as non-spiritual). The mutuality aspect talks to a non-hierarchical approach to the work fundamentally different than the approach often associated with a guru and disciple form of spiritual transmission.

Saniel is excited about the place we are in today, the numbers of people awakening, the opportunity technology is affording and that there may likely be further unfoldings beyond nondual. The first half of our interview is below.

Michael Gaeta interview - upcoming

Michael Gaeta is doing some fantastic work through his seminars and publications to get the truth out there regarding health and nutrition.  40,000 people subscribe to his radio show, so he is creating quite a following. He has agreed to an interview later in the week so watch this space. In the meantime, see his website here:http://gaetacommunications.com/site/   If you click on the top right purple icon, it will take you to his previous podcastsa and shows.

Thriving part 3

I was super excited I got the opportunity to meet again with Jeff Vander-Clute and interview him.

Jeff is a co-founder of Thrive Napa Valley and has helped found about 9 start-up ventures.

You can follow him on twitter here - http://twitter.com/#!/jvanderclute

Or more about his previous ventures here:  http://www.circlabs.com/about/vanderclute/

Thanks Jeff for taking the time to talk!  Interview below.