BEING AN ELDER – BEING APART. SOME MUSINGS

“No one is apart from anyone. All is all and one.”
~ Frida Kahlo

“Although an infant becomes a child simply by aging, a person cannot become an elder by simply becoming older. Elders fall into the category of things that are made, not born. Becoming an elder is not a ‘natural occurrence;’ the qualities needed don’t simply develop from physical changes brought on by aging. Rather, there is something meta-physical involved; something philosophical and spiritual that is required. Old age alone doesn’t make the elder.”
~ Michael Meade, “Fate & Destiny: The Two Agreements of the Soul” 

Note: I had written a draft of this post last week, and then heard about the “Elder Speaks” event held by the Retired Ministers Council of CSL. I could not attend that event due to my time zone, but it is another interesting “coincidence” in life.

I am at a point in my life where I see myself as intentionally in an outsider status. Looking back on my life I can see many instances where I was apart from the collective sense of whatever community I was in. In 24 years as a police officer, I was never really part of the tribal sense of “us and them” which is so prevalent in that service. I never let attachment to community or place keep me from moving away, figuratively or literally, when my inner sense said it was time to move on.

But none of that was about being an outsider or apart intentionally – it was just an expression of who I am or was. I’m sure that some psychological digging could find some way to reason about that – I was adopted – that’s a good place to start perhaps, with abandonment issues. But I am not concerned about that at this point. I am focused on who I am now, what the circumstances of my life are, and what I see as giving meaning to my life. And for me, it is meaningful to contribute to some greater good.

I am in my 70’s, in good health, with most of my mental faculties intact (memory is becoming an issue). I wear glasses most of the time for reading and some of the time for distance vision; I am on my second pair of hearing aids. I have been retired from active pulpit ministry for seven years and retired from law enforcement for 26 years. But none of that makes me an elder.

My ministry these days consists of writing this blog, the occasional book on spiritual leadership, and some coaching and consulting. So, I work part of the time, basically when I choose to. If I see myself as an elder (see Michael Meade’s quote above) it is because others have called me that. As I see the term “elder,” it is an honorific, something one does not call oneself, like “reverend.”

An elder is someone who is supposed to carry the wisdom which has emerged over a lifetime of experience. Within a community an elder carries aspects of the communal or organizational memory. Joseph Campbell wrote of the idea of seeing ourselves as the ancestors to future generations living new paradigms, new myths.

We in New Thought have now and had in the past a number of elders of great wisdom. Each has their own set of wisdom and experience; each has lived the teaching in their own way.

Since my retirement, I have been apart from the community of spiritual leaders and my CSL community after deep involvement over two decades. I live in Europe, where New Thought is barely present, only occasionally attend events or conferences, and am no longer all that interested in the organizational happenings. This sense of being apart after deep connection is, I think, a natural progression for me. Out here on the perimeter, I can selectively observe and find places to act from what I may have to offer.

My retirement was intentional, although somewhat driven by circumstances. Dorianne and I came to a mutual decision to change the direction of our lives, meaning I would have to leave my ministry in Simi Valley. It subsequently evolved into travel and then settling in France while my work became more about writing, coaching, and consulting. My intention in a more general sense was to leave while still effective and to make room for others to step in. For me, that leaving entailed departure from a concentric circle of communities. Others who retire stay as members of the communities where they have served.

I have been a change agent for most of my life. An Edgewalker (LINK) in the sense that I value being in the chaos of change processes which can lead to improvement. I prefer that to the static nature of status quo. This has kept me apart in a sense as is noted in this quote:

“The most effective change agents, states the report, ‘stimulate the latent willingness to act by questioning business as usual policies.’ They also put open questions and challenges on the agenda, and embody alternative practices in the ways they work.
Change agents, the think tank finds, ‘tend to frequent the margins of society where unorthodox thinkers and outsiders are to be found’. Grassroots initiatives are especially important source; this is because ‘local actors can refer to context bound knowledge’ and ‘appreciate what will work under specific local conditions, and what will not’.”
~ World in Transition Report, Germany, 2010

The path of the change agent is one of being apart, at least to some degree. You have to remain at a sufficient distance to see what needs to change and be willing to irritate those at the center who are either dependent on the status quo or who are too immersed in it to see what needs to change. Change involves discomfort; some find the discomfort of failing to change (a known) preferable to the discomfort of a change process (an unknown). When I was in law enforcement, I got transferred a lot after irritating various commanding officers. In ministry, I served in four centers and had lots of conversations with people who were disturbed by changes we were making – this was especially true during the Integration process between UCRS and RSI into CSL.

“If we enter into it, that chaos can resurrect us into a higher wisdom, rooted in the wisdom of the creative process. The chaos that we fear is the very thing that can free us.”
~ Marion Woodman

This blog, which at its heart encourages a positive attitude toward change and evolution, could not be what it is if I were still active in pulpit ministry or if I were still serving in organizational leadership. It is a view from the periphery, not from the center. You can see things from the periphery you cannot see in the center – and vice-versa. Being on the periphery as an elder feels right to me at this time. So here I am. As to where you are and where you are headed, you will need to figure that one out for yourself.

As always, your comments are welcomed and encouraged.

There is no deepening;
you are deep enough already.
There is no completing;
you are already complete.
There is no freeing from;
you are already free.
You don’t have to try
to be what you already are.
~ Wu Hsin

Copyright 2022 – Jim Lockard

NOW AVAILABLE ON ALL AMAZON SITES:

HOLIDAY MESSAGE: 2018 – INVITING THE EMERGENCE OF THE NEW

“The real miracle of Hanukkah is the fact that, even after the Temple was profaned, it could still be restored.  Who you are matters. What you need matters, and your intuition—the still, small voice within—tells you this, all the time. The hard part is making the space and time to hear it—but sometimes in the dark, it’s easier to find that one, tiny flicker that we need to follow all the way home.”

~ Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg

I am restating some ideas from my holiday post last year (LINK), and adding some new stuff, too. May this last part of December be a time of new ideas and a birthing of the best version of you to bring to the world in 2018.

“If it is useful to do so, you must abandon your identity and start again. Sometimes, it’s the only way. Set fire to your old self. It’s not needed here. It’s too busy shopping, gossiping about others, and watching days go by and asking why you haven’t gotten as far as you’d like. This old self will die and be forgotten by all but family, and replaced by someone who makes a difference. Your new self is not like that. Your new self is the Great Chicago Fire—overwhelming, overpowering, and destroying everything that isn’t necessary.”

~ Julien Smith 

As we move through the final two weeks of 2017, it is time to look forward to 2018 and to set the stage for who we will be when that New Year dawns. Spiritual work is best done in advance. When we lay the groundwork of building consciousness over time, our strengths are made available when the inevitable challenge or crisis comes.

“One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore.”

~ André Gide

Ours is to find ways to allow the innate wholeness of ourselves to emerge. We turn our gaze inward to do our own house cleaning before casting judgement on others. We take accountability for our reactions, our responses, our thoughts and feelings.

“So perhaps change is less about fixing a broken world and more about uncovering hidden wholeness in all events, all organizations and all people and remembering our personal power to make a difference. This old story has greatly changed the way that I am a physician and also a teacher. It has given me new eyes. Everyone and everything has in it a seed of a greater wholeness, a dream of possibility. Perhaps what I once saw as ‘broken’ or ‘lacking’ might just as easily be seen as the growing edge of things … a place to be valued and nurtured in our patients, our students and in ourselves.”

~ Rachel Naomi Remen

Humanity is bursting at the seams with the new. Our old ways need to be released like the snake releases its skin. A radical newness is emerging, and we must adapt radically to midwife it into being. We need visionaries who can see the possibilities and help to bring them through the veil from potential to actuality. Anything that holds us to the old ways delays emergence of the new. We must transform ourselves from the inside out, creating a space of invitation for a new way of being.

“Anything from the past, like an idea of what man of this or that culture might or should have been, is now archaic, and the transformation we are experiencing is really of the whole sense of humanity; what it means to be a cultured and world-related human being. This is a whole new thing. And so we have all of us to leave our little provincial stories behind. They may guide us as far as structuring our lives for the moment, but we must always be ready to drop them and to grasp the new experience as it comes along and interpret it.”

~ Joseph Campbell

This has been a difficult year for many, as every year is. It has also been a year of blessings for many, as every year is. But 2017 also saw more than its share of loss, tragedy, fear, and ignorance. What is ready to be shed is rising into visibility – racism, sexism, misogyny, radical nationalism – all expressions of fear and separation. Women are rising. There is much work to do to right the ship of humanity.

Edgewalkers: “Shhhh! She is traveling between worlds right now. You can see her holding the tension of not knowing ~ she is simply breathing into her unanswered questions. Sometimes she wakes up with quaking hands, not knowing where her relationship or her bank account is going. But this time, she is holding onto the tension of not knowing, and is not willing to hit the panic button. She is unlearning thousands of years of conditioning. She is not being split between the opposing forces of fight and flight. She is neither naïve nor ignorant. She is a frontier woman, paving new roads & making new choices. She is willing to make a new transcendent possibility emerge. You may see her now ~ standing at thresholds, or at crossroads ~ breathing into her body ~ intently listening for inner signals. She’s learning new navigation skills as she arrives at a most magical moment of her life.”

 ~ Sukhvinder Sircar

We are ready for this, or it would not have come. Emergence can only happen through a vessel that is ready for it. As we come to accept this truth, we call forth our courage, our love, our compassionate hearts. We express generously to those in fear and we support everyone it is within our power to uplift. We are the generation where the shift from automatic evolution to conscious evolution occurs – it is us. We really are the ONES WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR.

“Conscious Evolution signals the evolution of evolution itself from an unconscious to conscious choice. It has occurred in our generation because humanity has gained the power to destroy the world, or to co-create cultures of immeasurable possibilities. It means that we are becoming conscious of our effect on evolution and must learn to guide our new powers toward a life-affirming future.”

~ Barbara Marx Hubbard

My prayer for you and for us:

I am knowing that those who have the capacity to awaken, awake.

That those who become aware of their own shadow, do the work.

That those who have the capacity for compassionate action, act.

That those who can teach compassion and love, teach.

That those who are ready to hear, listen.

That we are transformed by our thoughts and feelings of beauty, love, peace and possibility.

That THE BELOVED COMMUNITY is nurtured into being.

That I am being, doing, and having my share of Awakening Humanity to its Spiritual Magnificence!

And so, it is.

 

“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.”

~ John Cage

 

Sorrow prepares you for joy.

It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter.

It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place.

It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.

~ Rumi

Copyright 2017 – Jim Lockard

MY BLIND SPOTS, PART 3

“There is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order. This quality of lukewarmness arises partly from a fear of adversaries, who have the law on their side, and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it.”

~ Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

What do we do with our individual and collective blind spots? How do you deal with something that you are either unaware of, or once you discover it, you realize that dealing with it may be very unpleasant? If we take Machiavelli’s quote above, and we make all of the characters internal and personal, we can see the challenge. The reformer is in me, the defender is in me, the adversaries are within me. It is me that must be convinced to do the work of coming to awareness of the blind spots, and then doing something about them. Me.

This may also extend to a group – spiritual communities can have blind spots. So, can families, nations, religions. The work is always first within the person or group.

Ernest Holmes hits us in the face with one of his most profound statements, which was never officially published – maybe due to one of his or his editor’s blind spots?

“The difficulty we find in our field …is the difficulty of sincerity, the heart not acquiescing to the statement of the lips; it is the difficulty of using constructive rather than destructive conversation; it is the difficulty of not being able to see reflected in each other the symbolic Christ or manifestation of the Infinite, the Spirit. That is what heals – seeing the Spirit in each other – it is the difficulty which arises from a certain form of spiritual stupidity which we all have, a lack of faith, a lack of absolute conviction that now we have it and we can use it., the absolute simplicity of it – the difficulty of surrendering the mind in complete abandonment to the idea; that is hard. That means putting the foot out, as it were, into a vacuum, into a nothingness; but if the faith and conviction is there it will be on a solid rock.”

~ Ernest Holmes, Unpublished Papers

“Spiritual stupidity” – quite a phrase. Stupidity is beyond mere ignorance, which we all are of many things. Ignorance is merely not knowing something; it is cured by learning something. Stupidity is much more serious. To be stupid, means you have learned something and then refused to use it. In other words, you can’t be stupid unless you know better. Yet he says that we all have this spiritual stupidity. To cure stupidity, you have to act differently – “putting the foot out, as it were, into a vacuum, into a nothingness.”  You have to take a leap of faith.

That is what revealing and healing our blind spots is – a leap of faith in the name of the Oneness of Humanity. How can we ever open the compassionate heart and co-create #TheBelovedCommunity if we do not take such a leap? If we are unwilling to subject all of our limiting beliefs to radical and rigorous questioning, are we not condemning ourselves to living limited lives? The “lukewarmness” described by Machiavelli is our own tendency to let ourselves off easy, not to push too hard, not to rock the boat.

Well, that isn’t working, is it? The world is filled with inequality of every description, all of it unnecessary and capable of being rectified if we, as human beings, realize more of our potential for love and compassion. Perhaps if we come to understand the need to recognize that we are in a liminal space, it will help us. Liminal space is the place between the old and the new, between one room and another.

“We keep praying that our illusions will fall away. God erodes them from many sides, hoping they will fall. But we often remain trapped in what we call normalcy—’the way things are.’ Life then revolves around problem-solving, fixing, explaining, and taking sides with winners and losers. It can be a circular and even nonsensical existence.

“To get out of this unending cycle, we have to allow ourselves to be drawn into sacred space, into liminality. All transformation takes place here. We have to allow ourselves to be drawn out of “business as usual” and remain patiently on the ‘threshold’ (limen, in Latin) where we are betwixt and between the familiar and the completely unknown. There alone is our old world left behind, while we are not yet sure of the new existence. That’s a good space where genuine newness can begin.”

~ Richard Rohr

To be in transition from one way of being to another is to be in liminal space. While it may not be possible for an entire spiritual community or organization to completely devote themselves to the experience of being in liminal space, it is possible for us to understand that dynamic as a critical aspect of our process of transformation. We must set aside time, alone and together, to be in this unknown, this in-between place. To vision, to meditate, to pray, to contemplate, and to converse. Perhaps to engage in some artistic endeavor or to delve into some new reading or to go to a place that is new to you and experience it for the first time. We must do the work of releasing our attachments to the old ways, the old forms, and of creating a space of invitation for what is next for us to emerge through our consciousness.

For me to move beyond my blind spots involves a process of disentangling the aspects of my psyche and personality connected to and dependent upon them, perhaps unconsciously. I am dismantling a structure, not simply changing a habit.

Multicolored plasticine human figures concluding an agreement on a white background

For a spiritual community, this is a communal process. Each person doing their own work in solitude and then coming together to join in the often-painful work of communal transformation. Such processing must be carefully facilitated, preferably by an “outsider” or a trusted elder. It is a combination of hospicing and midwifing –  the alchemical transformation of the old into the new. This is Edgewalkers work (LINK), the process of cultivating change at deep levels. The status quo is in grave danger when such work is being done; and appropriately so.

“What’s the point of spirituality and religion if you are not going to be out on the edge?”

~ Jim Lockard

Many aspects of the status quo aren’t working, are they? And many of the aspects that are working, or appear to be, are interwoven with and supporting what is not working. If your status quo isn’t serving you, why are you serving it?

Work with your teams (boards, committees, congregations, book clubs, families) to develop the deep trust that is required for rigorous inquiry into blind spots. That trust is essential if we are to call each other out on our blind spots. This is a challenging way of being which requires deep compassion, awareness, and love.

Finally, the gift in blind spots is that they will lead you closer to your best self or best community if they are recognized and healed. As our great spiritual teachers tell us over and over, we must focus on what we desire, from a pure heart and consciousness, to manifest heaven on earth. Let us get about our work together. Let us create The Beloved Community that we know is not only possible, it is our birthright.

Victor Hugo claimed Galileo spoke to him in a séance:
“You know what I would do if I were in your place? I’d drink from the milk basin of the Milky Way; I’d swallow comets; I’d lunch on dawn; I’d dine on day and I’d sup on night; I’d invite myself, splendid table-companion that I am, to the banquet of all the glories, and I’d salute God as my host! I’d work up a magnificent hunger, an enormous thirst, and I’d race through the drunken spaces between the spheres singing the fearsome drinking song of eternity.”

Your comments are welcomed below. Thank you for reading this series!

Links to Part 1 (LINK) & Part 2 (LINK) of this series.

Copyright 2017 – Jim Lockard

CONSENSUS AND THE EVOLUTION OF PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS, PART 2

“Change is inevitable. Progression is a choice.”

~ Sonya Teclin

In Part 1 (LINK) of this series, I pointed out how consensus decision-making is the result of an evolutionary dynamic – one which emerges with the movement on the spiral into the Postmodernist-Green Level of Existence.

Consensus as the primary, or sole, formal method of decision-making at the spiritual community or organizational level works very well, if not perfectly, when all of those involved in the decision-making process are centered at Green. It is less successful when participants are centered lower or higher on the spiral. (Remember that lower or higher is not better nor worse, simply a reflection of the level of complexity of thought at which someone is operating currently). There is a tendency for those who are not aware of the dynamics of cultural evolution to simply think that they have discovered something new, such as consensus, and seek to entice others or impose the new thing on them. This can lead to negative consequences. An understanding of cultural evolution will help one realize that we are all evolving differently and unevenly; and that there are vMEME-driven implications in our emerging values systems.

 

Let’s look at some pros and cons of consensus decision-making, then follow with some additional exploration of developmental and evolutionary factors.

PROS OF CONSENSUS (some from this LINK)

• A way to ensure that every voice is heard
• A way to make decisions without authoritarian energy
• A safe space to voice concerns
• A respectful hearing of all perspectives
• A bias toward the non-rational – this can allow exploration of deeper meaning (Presencing – LINK).
• A process by which a group mind emerges from individual input
• A process aimed at achieving a greater good
• A way to synthesize various ideas or perspectives into a uniquely new outcome
• A way to forge greater emotional connection between members of a group or team

CONS OF CONSENSUS

• Those operating at vMEMEs below Green will feel out of harmony with the processing and will believe they must comply or be a hindrance (they will project their own values system onto the process at hand). Those at Blue will want to know what happened to Robert’s Rules of Order and be uncomfortable with what is to them the free-flowing nature of the process.
• Those operating at 2^nd Tier may well become very frustrated with how long it takes to process decisions and by the tendency to succumb to manipulation by feelings (see below), and they may leave the group.
• When unhealthy elements of Green are present, consensus can be obstructed or, at minimum, become very difficult. Examples of unhealthy Green include:
  • Open-ended relativism – every idea or concept or belief system has equal value – “Who am I to say what we should decide?“
  • A bias toward the non-rational – Green is where elements of Tribal-Purple re-emerge. This can result in budget income line-items such as “God Will Provide” when dealing with scarcity. This will be very difficult for someone centered at Blue, Orange, or Yellow to accept.
  • A strong bias toward inclusion can lead unhealthy Green to overlook whether candidates for positions have the necessary skills, experience, or ethical backgrounds.
  • Unhealthy Green can become authoritarian (re-emerging Blue). Remember, unhealthy Green can be in shadow and have a high tolerance for dysfunction.
• A tendency to be manipulated. At Green, feelings are paramount. Everyone must feel that decisions are correct and in the best interest of all concerned. This can lead to two major issues:
  • Someone with a lack of emotional maturity can manipulate the group by expressing negative or hurt feelings about issues. A sociopath can effectively sabotage or even take over the group by manipulating emotions.
  • Getting everyone on the same page emotionally can take a long time. Seemingly endless processing can frustrate members and make it difficult to recruit new people into leadership due to the frustrations of some with the leadership culture – word spreads that being on the leadership team is no fun.

It is important that we realize the evolutionary nature of human cultural development as we explore how we make decisions in groups. Those centered at the various levels on the spiral will naturally gravitate toward decision-making processes which reflect the values systems of their own level. And, they will tend to reject the decision-making processes which reflect the values systems of other levels. So, for someone centered at Blue or Orange, consensus will seem less than ideal. And for someone at 2^nd Tier, Yellow or Turquoise, it will seem like an immature process. At the same time, someone centered at Green will see authoritarian or majority rule decision-making as undesirable as well.

Remember also that vMEMEs are fluid – we are always in an evolutionary flow, even if we are slow to change. Evolution is never static, always dynamic. The composition of vMEMEs present on any decision-making team will be in flux, as are other aspects of their developmental natures. Each will bring levels of psychological development, styles of being such as introvert or extrovert, orientations to change (LINK), and what is happening in their lives at the current moment to the decision-making process. That said, the vMEME levels occupied by those involved will have the greatest effect on what kind of decision-making process is most favored.

“While genes evolve slowly, the decision systems formed by vMEMES are always on the move. vMEMES can be so dominant they seem like archetypes and are easily misinterpreted as ‘types’ of people. When several are in harmony, vMEMES resonate like the notes in a musical chord. However, vMEMES in conflict lead to troubled individuals, dysfunctional families, corporate malaise, fractured churches, and civilizations in decline and fall. Since they are ‘alive,’ vMEMEs can ebb and flow, intensify and soften like a string of Christmas tree lights on a dimmer. Several different ones may line up in support of a specific issue, idea, or project because they share the values contents. At other times, people with essentially the same vMEME decision-making frameworks may disagree violently over details of beliefs and what is ‘the good,’ degenerating into holy and un-civil war.”

~ Don Edward Beck & Christopher Cowan, SPIRAL DYNAMICS

Consensus is a good fit when an organization and/or its leadership team is centered at the Green vMEME. That said, it does not guarantee that the consensus process will have positive results. That will depend on how healthy the team expresses at the Green level. It will also depend on how those centered at different levels on the spiral are welcomed within the leadership team and the larger spiritual community. Like all 1^st Tier levels, Green is fear-based, and those at Green will tend to view those expressing the values systems of other levels as being wrong. When there is pushback, those at Green may close in together and keep others out of the decision-making process. These are all things that good spiritual leadership will be aware of, and work to minimize.

“Cultures are moving pictures, adoptive flow states, that can either downshift under fear or upshift with waves of confidence, access, education and appropriate structures.”

~ Don Edward Beck

Finally, it is important to realize that while consensus may be an ideal fit when those involved are at the Green level, the evolutionary process will continue, and there will come a time when expression at a higher level on the spiral will emerge. Any given spiritual community or organization may be centered at the Green Level for a few years or a decade or more. In Part 3 of this series, I will explore some of what we know about 2^nd Tier decision-making.

“It’s a recognition that reality as we know it is being animated by an evolutionary current. This is true on the cosmological large-scale structure of the universe. It’s true biologically. But it’s true on a human level, too. The great mystery is living and wanting to transcend itself through us toward greater expressions of beauty, truth and goodness. And so evolutionary spirituality says that, for lack of a better word, God is implicate, intrinsic to that evolutionary push.”

~ Rev. Bruce Sanguin

 

Here is where you can get my book
CREATING THE BELOVED COMMUNITY:
A Handbook for Spiritual Leadership,At
in paperback or Kindle editions –
(LINK TO AMAZON.COM)
(LINK TO AMAZON.CA – Canada)
(LINK TO AMAZON.CO.UK)
And at DEVORSS.COM

 Copyright 2017 – Jim Lockard

MINISTERIAL COACHING PROGRAM – 2017 SESSION LAUNCHES IN JANUARY!

Our Ministerial Coaching Program has helped dozens of ministers gain a greater sense of self-awareness and professional direction since we began in 2014. Our 2017 edition is improved and will begin in January – with no increase in price from our 2016 program.

Here is one testimonial:

“This program is very valuable for personal enrichment as a spiritual leader. It’s always great to get outside your comfort zone, to gain new perspectives, to have support and focus on a direction for personal development, and connecting with others interested in growing their spiritual leadership. As Nike would say, ‘Just do it!’” 

~ Rev. Kathy Fernandes

There are a maximum of 12 positions in the upcoming program, which consists of two monthly calls: a group video call on Zoom.us and an individual call with Jim or Dorianne.

You can get the information and register at this link:

Ministerial Coaching Program

There will be two informational calls prior to the program start. Mark your calendar for the call that works for your schedule. Call #1 will be recorded.

Call #1: Friday, January 13, 2017 at 9:30am PT/ 12:30pm ET

Zoom.us Link: https://zoom.us/j/585410160

Or via Telephone (US): 408 638 0968 (US Toll) or 646 558 8656 (US Toll)

via Telephone International: Link to International Telephone Numbers

Meeting ID: 585 410 160

 

Call #2: Tuesday, January 17, 2017 at 9:30am PT/ 12:30pm ET

Zoom.us Link: https://zoom.us/j/334958715

Or via Telephone (US): 408 638 0968 (US Toll) or 646 558 8656 (US Toll)

via Telephone International: Link to International Telephone Numbers

Meeting ID: 334 958 715

The Ministerial Coaching Program is designed to support New Thought ministers who are, or plan to be, at any leadership level in a spiritual center, or church, or in a special focus ministry or other type of ministry. Ministerial students are also welcome. The program provides a systematic review of the skills, traits, and the consciousness of ministry needed in a rapidly changing world. It is about YOU as a minister, rather than about programs in your ministry. Timed with the release of my new book, Creating the Beloved Community: A Handbook for Spiritual Leaders, this session will focus on effective ministry in a changing world.

Center boards may want to consider covering the cost for their minister(s) to attend the program. Or this may be a wonderful gift to give yourself – to get 2017 off to the best start possible.

If you have additional questions, please private message me at DrJim-Lockard@att.net, or via Facebook Messenger (Jim Lockard).

In the meantime, knowing a joyous and fulfilling 2017 for all!

Love and Light,

Jim

Copyright 2017 – Jim Lockard

ONE YEAR BLOGGING AS NEW THOUGHT EVOLUTIONARY – HOW AM I DOING?

NOTE: I am attending the Centers for Spiritual Living Conference in Ukraine this week with Dorianne. I will blog about this experience next week from Poland.

 

One year ago I posted the first blog post on the NewThoughtEvolutionary.wordpress.com site. It was a statement of definition and purpose (LINK). I began the blog for personal reasons as well as for reasons beyond myself. The personal reasons included a love of writing and a strong desire to stay connected to my New Thought community; and to be of some benefit to that community that I have received so much from and served for so long.

The reasons beyond myself included a desire to address what I saw and continue to see as a general failure of our movement to grow and thrive. I wanted to use this blog to reach spiritual leaders and others in our member spiritual communities across the movement and to explore change, both organizational and cultural; and to explore the nature of spiritual leadership in an evolving world. My desire is to see productive conversations begin and lead to constructive action in New Thought Organizations and spiritual communities about moving forward in expanded ways as a spiritually relevant force on the planet.

The Blog Cover Photo – The Chapel at Asilomar Conference Grounds, Pacific Grove, CA

I have published 85 posts during the past 12 months on topics ranging from cultural evolution, to The Beloved Community, to politics, to “Is the Church Model Going Away?” We have looked at the Spiral Dynamics™, Edgewalkers™, SQ21™ Spiritual Intelligence and Theory U™ Models of human development. The site has had over 22,700 views, over 250 regular followers, and over 400 comments. There have been many more comments about posts from the site on social media. (You can search the site for any of these terms to find the posts about them.)

It is difficult to assess the effect of a blog like this. I hear from lots of people, including a good number of spiritual leaders, that they read and appreciate the blog. I have had feedback from two people in organizational leadership about the blog, but my guess is that more than that are reading it. A few of the posts from this blog have been re-published elsewhere online.

The blog has helped me to midwife a book, based in part on some posts, but largely original, that I am in the process of having edited before publication. The title of the book is CREATING THE BELOVED COMMUNITY: A Guide for Spiritual Leadership. The book is to address what I see as important if a local spiritual community is to embody the concept of The Beloved Community as envisioned by Howard Thurman and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., at the local level and to serve as a contributor to the creation of a Universal Beloved Community in the world at large. Or, as Centers for Spiritual Living puts it in their founding documents – Creating a World that Works for Everyone. The book will be applicable across all denominations.

Entering the second year of New Thought Evolutionary, I am exploring what directions to take. I will likely continue to focus on the exploration of how New Thought moves down the pathway of cultural evolution and finds ways to be spiritually and culturally relevant in our changing times. I will continue to focus on spiritual leadership, which I see as the key to our progress. I will poke at a few sacred cows along the way, I am sure.

We in New Thought need more spiritual leaders and we need those leaders to be emotionally and spiritually intelligent and competent to lead culturally and demographically diverse communities toward greater spiritual realization. We need to learn new forms of spiritual community and how to help the existing forms transition to what is next. We need to create vibrant, engaged, loving and compassionate students, practitioners, and spiritual leaders who will develop ways of being in community and reaching out to the world to co-crate The Beloved Community. This will attract more people who want to be a part of our spiritual communities.

To do all this, some sacred cows will have to die. But such is the manner of change.

Your Blogger in December 2015 at My Daughter’s Wedding on Oahu

I am interested in hearing from the readers of this blog – what do you want to see from this forum? How can I help you on your pathway? Your comments are always welcomed and I try to reply to them all.

Thank you for a great first year. Help me in knowing that the next twelve months bring us all closer to our highest vision for our beloved New Thought Movement.

Copyright 2016 – Jim Lockard

 

CHANGE, PART 3: MINDS MADE UP

Change is a funny thing. Whatever our orientation to change in the Edgewalkers™ Model (LINK), we tend to hold fast to our current belief system. This is not a new concept – Benjamin Franklin wrote about it (LINK). The human brain is designed to process thought in certain ways, and those ways are often not rational and do not have a bias toward finding the truth; in fact, they have a bias to confirming whatever we already happen to believe. This makes being open minded a quality that does not come naturally – it must be cultivated.

You will note that most of the references in this link-filled post come from the wonderful Brainpickings.org (LINK) site. David McRaney, a journalist and author of several books about thinking, has termed one of these non-rational tendencies the Backfire Effect.

“Once something is added to your collection of beliefs, you protect it from harm. You do this instinctively and unconsciously when confronted with attitude-inconsistent information. Just as confirmation bias shields you when you actively seek information, the ‘backfire effect’ defends you when the information seeks you, when it blindsides you. Coming or going, you stick to your beliefs instead of questioning them. When someone tries to correct you, tries to dilute your misconceptions, it backfires and strengthens those misconceptions instead. Over time, the backfire effect makes you less skeptical of those things that allow you to continue seeing your beliefs and attitudes as true and proper.”

~ David McRaney (LINK) (LINK)

What often happens when we are presented with conflicting evidence about a belief that we hold, is that we actually end up building new memories and new neural connections that further strengthen our original convictions. In other words, we tend to reinforce our existing beliefs by selecting (or fabricating) evidence that tends to support them, even in the face of greater evidence that we are wrong.

According to McRaney, part of this is just mental laziness:

“The more difficult it becomes to process a series of statements, the less credit you give them overall. During metacognition, the process of thinking about your own thinking, if you take a step back and notice that one way of looking at an argument is much easier than another, you will tend to prefer the easier way to process information and then leap to the conclusion that it is also more likely to be correct. In experiments where two facts were placed side by side, subjects tended to rate statements as more likely to be true when those statements were presented in simple, legible type than when printed in a weird font with a difficult-to-read color pattern. Similarly, a barrage of counterarguments taking up a full page seems to be less persuasive to a naysayer than a single, simple, powerful statement.”

~ David McRaney

If you refer back to the five-part series on U.S. politics and New Thought (LINK), you may see how this often plays out – once you become convinced that one political candidate is the best, it becomes very difficult to accept evidence to the contrary. Often, this means hearing such evidence and deciding that it is being falsified to attack your candidate. In fact, the more evidence you are presented with, the more likely you are to hold to your original position. This may also explain why it is often very difficult for those coming into New Thought to let go of their original concepts of God, heaven, hell, etc.

Philosopher Daniel Dennett has developed a process to approach people with different beliefs than your own. The purpose is to avoid the strong internal reaction to contrary evidence early in a conversation.

How to compose a successful critical commentary:

1. You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”
2. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
3. You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

~ Daniel Dennett (LINK)

The goal here is to help foster a space where true communication can occur. C. Otto Scharmer’s Theory U™ (LINK) is a powerful tool to understand this process, which I will blog on in a future post. Scharmer says that 90+% of our communication is what he calls downloading: speaking and listening from our existing belief system. Such communication tends to remain in the realm of the expected. Going deeper than that begins a pattern of disruption of beliefs and emotions, hence, we tend to stay near the surface. Going deeper without intention and love is usually a very negative experience.

To this we can add the concept of complementarity:

“Complementarity — the idea that two different ways of regarding reality can both be true, but not at the same time, so in order to describe reality we must choose between the two because the internal validity and coherence of one would interfere with that of the other — is a centerpiece of quantum theory (LINK).”

~ Maria Popova

This means that:

“To address different questions, we must process information in different ways. In important examples, those methods of processing prove to be mutually incompatible. Thus no one approach, however clever, can provide answers to all possible questions. To do full justice to reality, we must engage it from different perspectives. That is the philosophical principle of complementarity. It is a lesson in humility that quantum theory forces to our attention… Complementarity is both a feature of physical reality and a lesson in wisdom.”

~ Paul Wilczek (LINK)

Unless we are willing to be intentionally open-minded AND to recognize that we may have the truth, but not the TRUTH, we are going to have more than our share of problems, both individually and collectively. That razor’s edge between absolute faith and being willing to explore other ideas and possibilities is at the heart of any progressive spirituality such as New Thought.

In the next post, I will introduce (or re-introduce) you to Scharmer’s Theory U and explore how to create communication space that allows for us to open our minds, hearts, and even our will. Stay tuned.

As always, your comments are appreciated, as is your decision to follow and to share this blog with others.

Copyright 2016 – Jim Lockard

NANOBOTS AND THE FUTURE OF NEW THOUGHT SPIRITUALITY – Part 1

Let’s go out to the edge today and play.

This blog has been looking primarily at the present and near-term future in exploring how the way we do spiritual community is changing and will continue to change. Today, let’s move out a bit longer-term into the 2030’s – not that far away, really. But the potential transformations that are unfolding for humanity are staggering.

Ray Kurzweil is a well-known futurist and Edgewalker (which we will define in a future post about Spiritual Edgewalkers). In a very recent blog post (LINK) Peter Diamandis quotes Kurzweil as follows:

“In the 2030s, we are going to send nano-robots into the brain (via capillaries) that will provide full immersion virtual reality from within the nervous system and will connect our neocortex to the cloud. Just like how we can wirelessly expand the power of our smartphones 10,000-fold in the cloud today, we’ll be able to expand our neocortex in the cloud.” ~ Ray Kurzweil (LINK) 

Ray Kurzweil

Before we take on the implications of this, let me respond to what is likely going through your mind right now: something like “NO WAY! This is just some crazy prediction by some crackpot (or something to that effect).”

As reported (LINK), “of the 147 predictions that Kurzweil has made since the 1990s, fully 115 of them have turned out to be correct, and another 12 have turned out to be “essentially correct” (off by a year or two), giving his predictions a stunning 86% accuracy rate.”

So, just for a moment, consider the implications of human beings with brain capacities expanded 10,000-fold; or if you want to be conservative, imagine 1,000-fold.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Ready to proceed? Okay.

If this prediction falls into that 86% accuracy range, what implications will that have for New Thought and our teachings?

The first time I heard of Ray Kurzweil was in 2005 in the book RADICAL EVOLUTION by Joel Garreau (LINK to original hardcover edition). In that book, Kurzweil was one of several futurists working in areas of study that the author said would converge in the twenty to thirty years following 2005 to literally change he face of what it means to be human. The areas of study are information technology (IT), genetics, robotics, and nano-technology. Examples of the things cited in the book (which can be considered as a book of predictions which is in the process of becoming a history book) include robotic wheelchairs and exoskeletons for people who are paralyzed that are controlled by thought and allow movement (LINK), breakthroughs in sports medicine, psychotropic mood drugs, wakefulness and alertness enhancers, and more. Ray Kurzweil says that when the four areas converge, something he calls The Singularity will occur – meaning that humanity will be in a dynamically new area of human (even post-human) potential.

RADICAL EVOLUTION also described mental techniques that will allow instant healing of wounds (via expanded capacities provided by nano-tech), near elimination of the need for sleep, and much more – all of which were in development in 2005 and would appear over the next few decades.

Here, from the book (remember – 2005 – we are ten years in in 2015), is an excerpt that summarizes what we are moving toward:

Look at the girl who today is your second-grade daughter. Fifteen years from now, she is just home for the holidays. You were so proud of her when she not only put herself through Ohio State but graduated summa cum laude. Now she has taken on her most formidable challenge yet, competing with her generation’s elite in her fancy new law school. Of course you want to hear all about it. It is her first time home in months. But the difference between this touching tableau and similar ones in the past is that in this scenario–factually grounded in technologies already in development in the early years of the 21st century – changes in human nature are readily available in the marketplace. She is competing with those with the will and wherewithal to adopt them.

“What are your classmates like, honey?” you ask innocently.

“They’re all really, really smart,” she says. But then she thinks of some of the students in contracts class – the challenging stuff of One L fame. And she stops.

How does she explain what the enhanced kids are like? she wonders. She knows her dear old parents have read in their news magazines about some of what’s available. But actually dealing with some of her new classmates is decidedly strange.*

• They have amazing thinking abilities. They’re not only faster and more creative than anybody she’s ever met, but faster and more creative than anybody she’s ever imagined.

• They have photographic memories and total recall. They can devour books in minutes.

• They’re beautiful, physically. Although they don’t put much of a premium on exercise, their bodies are remarkably ripped.

• They talk casually about living a very long time, perhaps being immortal. They’re always discussing their “next lives.” One fellow mentions how, after he makes his pile as a lawyer, he plans to be a glassblower, after which he wants to become a nano-surgeon.

• One of her new friends fell while jogging, opening up a nasty gash on her knee. Your daughter freaked, ready to rush her to the hospital. But her friend just stared at the gaping wound, focusing her mind on it. Within minutes, it simply stopped bleeding.

• This same friend has been vaccinated against pain. She never feels acute pain for long.

• These new friends are always connected to each other, sharing their thoughts no matter how far apart, with no apparent gear. They call it “silent messaging.” It almost seems like telepathy.

• They have this odd habit of cocking their head in a certain way whenever they want to access information they don’t yet have in their own skulls–as if waiting for a delivery to arrive wirelessly. Which it does.

• For a week or more at a time, they don’t sleep. They joke about getting rid of the beds in their cramped dorm rooms, since they use them so rarely.

Her new friends are polite when she can’t keep up with their conversations, as if she were handicapped. They can’t help but condescend to her, however, when she protests that embedded technology is not natural for humans.

That’s what they call her – “Natural.” In fact, that’s what they call all those who could be like them but choose not to, the way vegetarians choose to abstain from meat.

They call themselves “Enhanced.” And those who have neither the education nor the money to even consider keeping up with enhancement technology? These they dismiss as simply “The Rest.” The poor dears– they just keep falling farther and farther behind.

Note the terms “Natural,” “Enhanced” and “The Rest.” These are terms coined by Kurzweil and others to describe different ways of living with the new potentials for being human that are already showing up and the even more radical ones that are coming sooner that we might think.

“He rises a copy of a poster. On the left is a quote from The New York Times dated October 9, 1903. It says,’The flying machine which will really fly might be evolved by the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians in from one million to ten million years’. On the right is a quote from Orville Wright’s diary, dated October 9, 1903. ‘We started assembly today’ it says.”
~Joel Garreau

As these new enhancements come online, there will be a number of factors involved in whether and how people use them. In Part 2, I will look at the larger scenarios for the culture as a whole, but in this installment, let’s look at the individual kinds of responses.

Many of the potential human enhancement technologies will be very expensive, especially at first. Some will be able to afford them and some will not. Also, some people will see them as invasive or undesirable and decline to use them. Hence the terms “Natural,” “Enhanced” and “The Rest.”

If you are enhanced, what will you have to do prayer-treatment for? That’s a good question – it won’t be about pain, or about not being able to think things through, or probably about emotional issues either, as enhanced brain capacities should also deliver greater emotional intelligence as well. Maybe it will be to do prayer-treatment for family and friends who are not enhanced.

Perhaps there will be a great call for a more universal spirituality as these new capacities are developed and integrated into the culture. There may well be a need to counsel people in making choices about enhancing themselves or their children – moral and ethical choices. There may well be a very significant level of depression among those who either choose to be Naturals or who do not have the means to enhance and are among what Garreau described as The Rest.

As we contemplate our futures, individually and collectively, we cannot ignore the effects which these powerful new technologies will bring. Some will view these developments with fear, others with disgust, and others will embrace them eagerly. Whatever your response, it is time to really think about these developments – because they are coming your way.

In Part 2, we take a look at potential societal scenarios that will emerge from these new technologies and the human enhancements that they bring: The Heaven Scenario and the Hell Scenario; and The Curve Factor which will have a significant effect on how this all plays out.

MINISTERIAL COACHING PROGRAM – INFORMATION CALL ON 10/9

Hello Ministerial Colleagues,

As I posted here before, my wife, Dorianne Cotter-Lockard, Ph.D. and I have created a 6 month coaching program for ministers and ministerial students. The next session, limited to 12 participants, begins on November 6th with a group call on Spiritual Intelligence.

There will be two informational calls, one this Friday and one on Friday, October 16th for those who desire more information.

Here is the contact information for this Friday’s (9th) call:

Subject: Ministerial Coaching Program Informational Call #1

Date: 10/9/2015

Start Time: 9:30 AM Pacific Time/ 12:30 PM Eastern Time

End Time: 11:00 AM Pacific Time/2:00 PM Eastern Time

Meeting URL: https://www.fuzemeeting.com/fuze/3ad8bf48/30802038

Toll Number +1 201-479-4595

Please come online a bit early if you need to download the FUZE software (free to you).

As a key element of the program, all participants complete an SQ21^TM Spiritual Intelligence assessment to help increase self-awareness and give direction for personal and professional growth. Later in the program, each participant will complete an Edgewalker™ profile designed to explore their orientation to change. The entire process is designed to put ministers on a more professional and personally fulfilling pathway in ministry. A combination of individual and group experiences is provided to maximize the development of all participants.

The program is six months in length. Each participant takes on-line assessment tools and receives personal telephone coaching sessions (one each month – 30 minutes), group sessions (one each month – 90 minutes – recorded) that use supportive on-line software, and email support from Dr. Jim Lockard and Dorianne Cotter-Lockard, Ph.D.. There will also be additional supportive materials provided from time-to-time.

For more information and to register, go to our website (LINK).

Thank you!

WHAT IS 2ND TIER AND WHY DO I WANT TO GO THERE?

There are a lot of new terms floating around the New Thought Movement these days. As I pointed out in my five-part series, “IS THE CHURCH MODEL GOING AWAY (LINK), there is an increasing urgency to see and to understand how cultural evolutionary dynamics are changing more and more rapidly, and how that is having significant effects on our models for ministry.

Even if we assume that the “church model” will continue forward as a primary model of ministry, we must recognize that it’s form will change. This is not really new, as the church model has changed significantly over time. What is new is that the rate of change is changing. Things are speeding up. I am working on a book about these phenomena, and the trends are clear if the actual nature of the future is not.

One thing that is clear – nothing is now nor ever was in its final form.

The Spiral Dynamics™ model (LINK) as created by Clare Graves and further developed by Don Beck, shows us some of the dynamics of this process, namely that the levels of complexity of human thought have expanded over time, and that these expansions are linked to identifiable changes in human value systems.

From Spiral Dynamics comes terms like “meme” “vMEME” “1^st Tier” “2^nd Tier” “Levels of Existence” “Center of Gravity” and more.

Spiral Dynamics is a broad model, however it is but one “line” or measure of meaning in Ken Wilber’s AQAL Integral Model (LINK), which is the most complex and complete model yet developed of human existence. With it you can map human activities (including organizational policies and practices) across four quadrants or dimensions of human beingness.

From Integral we get terms like: “AQAL” (All Quadrants – All Levels) “holons” “states and stages” “pre/trans-fallacy” “span vs. depth” and more. (LINK to GLOSSARY)

Shadow Work is another concept that has been making its way into the New Thought lexicon for the past couple of decades. New Thought, being a philosophy based on “positive thinking” and “denial of a negative reality,” has shown an understandable, if unfortunate, resistance to Shadow concepts. The Shadow concept, as developed by C.G. Jung and others, posits that human beings repress aspects of themselves beginning in early childhood. The repressed aspects are things about themselves that seem unacceptable to themselves or to others. For example, a child punished for taking a toy belonging to another child may repress his/her “inner thief” and stop taking what does not belong to them. However, that inner thief will continue to function in the subconscious and show up in his/her life via projection and denial.

From Shadow work (LINK) we get terms like: “repression” “projection” “denial” “individuation” “anima and animus” “the dark side” “embracing our Shadow” and more.

For this post, we are focused on 2^nd Tier Levels of Existence from Spiral Dynamics – what they are and how one might move into those levels of being. The hallmarks of 2^nd Tier thinking include moving from a fear-based ego mindset to an empowered ego mindset with a corresponding reduction in the need to defend one’s ego needs; and a greatly expanded capacity to see the value of the whole spiral, everyone at every level, a capacity that is greatly limited at 1^st Tier levels of thinking.

Clare Graves, the developer of Spiral Dynamics, saw the movement from the most complex level of 1^st Tier – identified as Green in the model – to the initial 2^nd Tier level of Yellow as being a much more significant step than the movement from level to level at any point in the 1^st Tier. He called it a “momentous leap.”

Clare Graves – Developed Spiral Dynamics

“The reason that Graves called second tier a “momentous leap” is that unlike all first-tier waves (which imagine their values are the only correct values), second tier has an understanding of the crucial if relative importance of all previous values—including Red, Blue, Orange, and Green. Orange thinks green is mindless; Green despises Orange; Blue thinks both of them are going to burn in hell forever. Yellow, on the other hand, finds all of them necessary and acceptable, as long as none of them gets the upper hand and starts repressing the others. This, needless to say, would have a profound influence on any (organization) operating from Yellow or second tier values.” ~ Ken Wilber

The vMEMEs or Levels of Existence at 2^nd Tier (coded as Yellow and Turquoise) are qualitatively and quantitatively different from those at 1^st Tier. The key to this is a personal evolutionary development that takes one beyond living in fear. It is said that less than 5% of the global population is currently existing primarily at 2^nd Tier. This is significant for two reasons: first, it means that movement into 2^nd Tier is very challenging at this point in our collective evolution; second, it means that there are few models of how to be at 2^nd Tier for us to emulate. So we are all pioneers in this regard.

2nd Tier Levels of Existence show up in people as a high degree of authentic self-acceptance, an embrace of chaos as a necessary component in most change processes, a greater capacity for compassion for others balanced with a strong emphasis on excellence in getting things accomplished. The complexity of 2nd Tier can be described at the Yellow level as a kaleidoscope of natural hierarchies (holarchies), systems, and forms; flexibility, spontaneity, and functionality have the highest priority. Differences and pluralities can be integrated into interdependent, natural flows. (LINK TO ARTICLE ON YELLOW)

At the Turquoise level there is recognition of a universal holistic system, holons/waves of integrative energies; feeling is united with knowledge; there are multiple levels interwoven into one conscious system. Universal order is valued, but in a living conscious fashion, not based on external rules (as in traditionalist-Blue) or group bonds (as in postmodern-Green). A “grand unification” is possible in theory and in actuality. This involves the emergence of a new spirituality as a meshwork of all existence. This new spirituality is beyond the right and wrong approach of current religious traditions. Turquoise thinking uses the entire spiral; sees multiple levels of interaction; detects harmonies, the mystical forces, and the pervasive flow-states that permeate any group or organization. (LINK TO ARTICLE ON TURQUOISE)

This is, of course, only a brief snapshot of what the Spiral Dynamics Model tells us about 2^nd Tier thinking, however, it may serve to give you an idea of what those levels of thinking are like.

Some of the comments on earlier posts on this blog speak about the need to bring New Thought spiritual leaders to 2^nd Tier levels so that our teaching will continue to be relevant to those moving into the more complex Levels of Existence. This arises from several assumptions about spiritual leaders who operate from 2^nd Tier levels. One being that they will attract many of those who are either departing our communities now or that they will attract people who have never come before because they did not relate to spiritual leaders operating from 1^st Tier. Another assumption is that spiritual leaders operating at 2^nd Tier will have capacities for greater complexity and value systems that are “ahead of the curve” of many of today’s greatest challenges.

Yet another assumption is that all we have to do to move people to 2^nd Tier is create a few weekend seminars or give some Shadow work classes and there will be 2^nd Tier spiritual leaders aplenty.

I am all for providing a pathway and support for those who desire to move into 2^nd Tier consciousness. I believe that this is essential for the future of humanity, as many of the emerging issues on the planet created in 1^st Tier thinking cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that created them (thanks Einstein!).

However, as of yet there is no clear understanding of what it will take to create that pathway; there are few people available to design it, as there are so few people centered at 2^nd Tier now; and, perhaps most importantly, much of the evidence that exists suggests that the “momentous leap” described by Clare Graves is just that – momentous. For some it may involve a cathartic event of great personal significance such as the death of a loved one, a grievous illness, bankruptcy or divorce, or a personal betrayal. There are, of course more positive ways to move forward, but the psychological shift described by Graves in the model is, well, it’s simply huge. Using Shadow work as a path forward is certainly a viable option, but many people do not realize that Shadow work is very difficult and can be very painful. The results may be described as positive, but the process itself reveals much about the self that is painful, which is why it was repressed to begin with.

There are 2^nd Tier practices such as Visioning that can be used, however, such practices experienced in a 1^st Tier consciousness will have 1^st Tier results. The few studies that exist and the few examples of organizations operating at what we can call 2^nd Tier level (LINK) require at a minimum that the CEO/Spiritual Leader AND the Board be operating at 2^nd Tier in order for an organization to function at that level.

2^nd Tier functioning does not mean that there are no more problems. It means that those whose thinking is centered at 2^nd Tier are generally free of ego-based needs to take things personally or to see oneself in a diminished way. At 2^nd Tier you are free to vigorously debate ideas without concern that the other party or parties will be personally offended by what you say. They know that you are not attacking them when you find fault or have a difference with an idea or a behavior; there is a comfort level, if you will, with a certain amount of personal discomfort. When you have leadership operating at 2^nd Tier, those entering the community who are at 1st Tier have models for more compassionate and powerful behavior. Also at 2^nd Tier in organizations, decisions can be made by just about anyone without the need for hierarchical approval. There is much more to it, of course, but this gives a glimpse.

What does this mean for Centers for Spiritual Living, Unity, and others in New Thought? It means that there is no magic button to push to bring us to 2^nd Tier or even to design and implement a 2^nd Tier training program for spiritual leaders at this moment in time. On order to get to the point where we can actually design an educational pathway to 2^nd Tier existences, there will need to be a thorough study of the models available and a considered look at what we are doing now in our educational programs, especially at the practitioner, lay minister, and minister education levels. While there are some guides available, including models such as Spiral Dynamics, AQAL, and Edgewalker™ (of which more will be written in a future post), the necessary evolutionary lens through which to view these models is only just developing.

A challenge in this area of exploration is the human tendency to view oneself at a higher level on the spiral than one’s current level of being –  radical self-honesty is not a 1^st Tier trait. I think that you can see the difficulty in creating a 2^nd Tier developmental pathway if many in the creation process are not operating at 2^nd Tier.

As a very critical first step, one that does not require the same degree of 2^nd Tier functioning, we can use materials about Emotional Intelligence and  Shadow work as a vehicle that can be incorporated into our educational programs, once suitable standards are developed as to who can teach this subject in a safe environment (not a small concern). There are programs now available that can be adapted for New Thought and used for this purpose. Just one example from New Thought is Dr. Gary Simmons’ Shadow work program, The Q Process™ including The Art and Practice of Having Nothing and No One Against You. Here is the (LINK) to Gary’s current blog post on Shadow Work: A Path to 2nd Tier Ministry.

Now is the time to plan, to explore, and to practice being open to new ideas and new ways of being and doing. We will never throw out our principles, but we must change many of our organizational practices to remain current, or better yet, ahead of the curve, in a world that is speeding up.