Reflections of an Inspired Talk by Joan Halifax I am told that Buddhist sutras open with the word Nyozgamon, which means ‘I heard it like this.’  Hideo Takahashi titled his book on the spiritual teacher Masahisa Goi with these five words. What I like about these five words is that they make room for the listener to reflect back what was treasured while still adding new depth and meaning.  In this way wisdom becomes collective because it is not a possession of any one person.

As a child, I recall my mother yelling at me in Yiddish, Hak mir nit keyn tshaynik!, whenever she felt pressed. To me, it simply meant "back off or you’ll get what’s coming to you". Years later, I learned its literal meaning, which like so much of the Yiddish language is expressive of the feeling state: “Don’t bang a tea kettle at me!” It’s a tactile reminder that we all have thresholds that trigger reactive modes, our fight-flight systems go on red alert and feeling states

Since 2016, David Sibbet, Gisela Wendling, Ph.D., Holger Scholz and I have been collaborating on the topics of leadership and the sacred. A wonderful series of retreats and online learning journeys have emerged from our work called LEADING AS SACRED PRACTICE (LASP). In this time of pandemics and increasing concern for social justice, ethics, and wise action, we have released our first eBook about a different way of leading and knowing. Join the LASP email list & download th

Noetic leadership is a visionary concept with ancient roots. When Claire Lachance, CEO of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), first brought it to my attention, I felt an immediate sense of its significance and a personal Yes! Check out the webinar we did as part of IONS Noetic Global Gatherings, and read my blog post on my meeting with Edgar Mitchell and the meaning of the Greek word nous . See the recording of the webinar here: https://tinyurl.com/ybnz6sep A Chance Enco

One of the fundamental questions for those who believe in listening, respect, and tolerance is what to do with people who appear to us as dominating, certain of their positions, and intolerant of those who disagree with them. Tea and Intolerance  is a five-part series exploring the political emergence of a Tea Party, and what that represents in the larger social and political collective. (originally published 2010) Tea and Intolerance: Part One Tea and Intolerance, Part Two:

A serial journal of cogent reflections and irreverent insights on the social effects of capitalism and the roots of partisan politics. Pairing prose with HDR photography and “flash points” drawn from current and historical perspectives, the author seeks to recover lost wisdom and courageous action beyond the shouting and noise of today’s headlines. Chapter I: Eight-Leaved Clovers of the World, Unite London, 1847 Chapter II: The Calculus of Capitalism Chapter III: Ghosts of Pa

For the first time in quite a while, I am moved to consider a book project, something I do with a fair amount of trepidation.  When an idea is powerful enough to take me over, I find it can be all consuming and I never really know where it will take me.  I find it exciting but also disorienting, never knowing what leads to treasure and what to swamp land. Joining me in this writing venture directly is my colleague, Mary Gelinas, as well as colleagues mentioned at the end of t

This post is a reflection inspired by an active dialogue between Kathia Laszlo and me, as we co-design our upcoming retreat Unfolding Wisdom scheduled for April 16 th – 19 th at the Mercy Center in Burlingame, CA. It is adapted from the original post at our Unfolding Wisdom website, as a response to Kathia’s blog post “ Learning, Leadership and Spirituality .” Reading Kathia’s posting on the threads woven through her life gave me pause to consider my own. We are made up of

What we need more than shouting our answers out loud is a quiet confidence in not knowing. We need better questions and most critically a practiced tolerance for allowing the new to arise from the old. From the perspective of neuro-science, not knowing is an intentional choice to inhibit the part of the brain wired for certainty, predictability and control. Not knowing doesn’t mean we ignore what we know. It means we hold what we know lightly so something new can emerge. We

Note from the authors : We, Alan Briskin and Kathia Laszlo, have been in deep exploration on Unfolding Wisdom as part of the design process for an upcoming retreat on this topic. The retreat is meant for leaders, facilitators, consultants and change agents who are curious about the tension between intuitive knowing and its practical application in organizations and society. Our rich conversation has become fertile ground for our future time together. The following post will

Sitting in a workshop on inclusion and diversity, author Fredrick Miller commented on his forty years heralding change. “I came to see my belief in fundamental change happening during my lifetime as a form of arrogance.” His comment, almost an aside, demonstrated a different kind of faith. It recalled to mind a tenet of Martin Luther King’s essay on non-violence, “An Experiment in Love.” King’s sixth and final principle declared that “nonviolent resistance … is based on the c

Third annual conference September 3–7, 2018 Beuerhof Farm, Vulkan Eifel, Germany We are all at once both a composition and a composer. We have the ability not only to compose the future of our own lives, but to help compose the future of everyone around us and the communities in which we live. ~ Maya Angelou With colleagues Gisela Wendling, David Sibbet, and Holger Scholz, we are excited to announce the third annual gathering of our Leading as Sacred Practice conference. We

Last week at Berrett Koehler 's author day for Parker Palmer, I had the pleasure of meeting Janet Perry. She is the founder of Nonfiction4life , a website dedicated to providing audiences with quality books and 30 minute author podcasts. Meeting Janet was delightful, her passion for books obvious, and we quickly agreed to do a podcast. Rare among interviews I’ve had, she read the book in detail and inquired about specific stories such as the fire at Mann Gulch, the Challen

From a systems perspective, emergence is a phenomenon in which something new arises from interactions among smaller or simpler components. The economist Jeffrey Goldstein describes emergence as " the arising of novel and coherent structures, patterns and properties during the process of self-organization in complex systems ." My colleague, David Bradford, tells the story of the birth of National Training Labs, a pioneering center for the study of group behavior that began sh

On May 12, 2017, the Goi Peace Foundation convened a symposium at United Nations University in Tokyo, Japan. The theme, “Co-creating a World in Harmony and Balance” , was an expression of the Fuji Declaration and Soul of WoMen Initiative begun two years earlier. I have worked with the Goi Peace Foundation for many years and was witness to the development of both the Declaration and Initiative. This symposium brought together thirty-five global leaders to address five perplex

These past few weeks, I have been aware of the practice of deep listening. When does it happen spontaneously or as an outcome of simply being present? At Trader Joe’s, the clerk was packing my groceries and asked “ Did you find everything you need, grocery wise. ” I said “ I noticed you asked ‘grocery wise.’" He looked up at me and smiled. “ You never know what people might say .” “ I guess that’s true, I say. ” He stated to talk but unfortunately got a catch in his throat

Teilhard de Chardin’s Noosphere: A Field of Consciousness Surrounding Us The genesis of a great idea can lie dormant for a very long time before ascending into consciousness. For the philosopher, scientist, and theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, it was germinated in the mud of Verdun, France, where, as a stretcher bearer in World War I, he carted the dead and wounded from the front lines. Like Edgar Mitchell, Teilhard had the ability to intuit a greater meaning from his i

A group of us were working on what was to become the Collective Wisdom Initiative , and we were staying by invitation at the Institute of Noetic Sciences’ new campus in Petaluma, California. They had not officially opened yet, and we were there during the same period that the Institute’s board of directors was also meeting — including its founder, Edgar Mitchell. This was in 2000, four years before Laszlo would publish his work on the Akashic field. In the evening, Mitchell w

Looking back on my earlier collaboration to articulate collective wisdom , I believe we all shared a faith in the centrality of spirit, the evolutionary potential of the human species, and the reality of our interconnectedness. We believed ourselves inextricably bound up with each other, enfolded within the larger forces of nature and subtle energies largely invisible to conscious awareness. Collective referred to a larger concept of wholeness and wisdom to its role in addre

This post was written collaboratively by Alan Briskin and Amy Lenzo . When thinking something through it helps to think in images, as that can offer a unique approach to clarifying thoughts and seeing the relationship among ideas. It’s like translating between languages - conceptual ideas becoming representational, and images and symbols acting as a counterpart to abstract thought. The reason for this lies in the very definition of image , literally an optical counterpart