Early Conundrums and Enigmas Transcended
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I’ve had some amazing opportunities to learn sense-making patterns and processes while raising a family, finishing a BS degree and serving our Church as an Elder. My first exposure and opportunity was in the aerospace industry in my mid-20s, managing a $7 million/month production desk for commercial spares with over 800 items. I led a 35-member department in reaching the numbers, unknowingly, just because I treated people with dignity and respect.
I reached the top of others’ priority lists because I understood structure and systems, yet I applied interpersonal skills consistent with the golden rule. It just made sense to me, however, in a command and control environment there was a lot of aggression present in the general activity of others attempting to meet monthly numbers and OEM requirements for military and commercial aircraft. It did not make sense, and the corporate culture bereft of essentials for long-term results with individuals. The burnout and sour attitudes were nearly ubiquitous.
A couple of years later, after much depression and finding solace, I had the opportunity to produce and host a public access TV show sponsored by the Christown Lions Club with an all-volunteer crew trained by the local cable company. We called it One World, with the intention of peering into the lives of people and professions to uncover what keeps us afraid, angry, ignorant and immobile toward reaching our dreams and goals. We produced 120+ shows with guests that spanned the gamut of personal and professional activity. I felt like I got a Ph.D. in interpersonal relationships as I learned to weave guests conversations into sense-making reality.
Creating Opportunities for Excellence
Like many, my early endeavors didn’t work out so well and I misjudged people and situations, including my own. After a devastating divorce, compounded by corporate and church expulsion simultaneously, I had the opportunity to choose my future engagements without fear of potential pitfalls, knowing many of them from recent experience. I vowed to continue to follow what worked, whether I could fully explain it or not.
Life got really interesting as opportunities to do things I’d dream of being possible started to show up in my life. I’ve enjoyed time in coaching, construction, education, events, manufacturing, music, theater as well as start-up businesses and developing organizations. I’ve led events, seminars and workshops for business owners, entrepreneurs, and instructional designers. The construction industry was particularly adversarial until the introduction of ‘partnering’ in the early 90s. AZ DOT saw a reduction of litigation costs, dropping from $19 million to less than $1 million within two years. The principles of partnering can be adapted to any project where people, places and things are involved.
Are you co-prescencing your prototypes?
The principles of partnering include the hard and soft skills represented in the top graphic, which are essential for any sense-making activity. In the mid-2010s, I was introduced to coursework presented by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, called ‘Transforming Business, Society and Self;’ joining 32,000 students around the world. Theory-U, developed by Otto Scharmer and Peter Senge, was the core of the activity. That model was nearly the exact process I’d learned as a ‘partnering’ facilitator.
Culminating Activity and Co-Creating a Future
Some 45 years after a spiritual awakening as a teen that I’d kept quiet about for decades, sort of, I learned that my early naïve and innocent notions in aligning with my life’s path actually set up future opportunities. After a time I learned to just go slow, enjoy the flow and let activities and engagements be determined by the synchronicity of their arrival, not by force of will. It truly is the philosophy and psychology of optimal experience. You can read more about that in this book.
Sense-making is determined by our ability to sense, which is far beyond the activities of the brain and thinking. In many respects it has to do with not thinking. The notion of ‘nothingness’ brings terror in the minds of many, instead of freedom beyond thei3.r imagination to co-create opportunities to do such things as change the world collaboratively for the better of all. Is that even possible? Sure it is.
If we look at the progress of time, circumstances and opportunities, we can observe our evolution toward understanding a bigger picture in which we are all bytes or pixels that merge into a beautiful picture, hopefully.
We’re all electronic; electromagnetic force fields generated from the core of our Being, unconscious of that activity for the most part. Quantum science has lifted the veil, apocalyptically. It sounds to sci-fi for incorporation in our physical reality, yet it’s being done moment by moment. It’s observable and replicable.
Where Are We Going?
That’s a question many have opinions about, profess to know, and reside in false belief systems about contrivances of the human spirit and its capacity for unification. In answer to being asked if I was willing to die for what I believed in (cosmic consciousness), I’ve been led along an amazing path with excitement and excruciatingly fun opportunities. The ‘excruciating’ was without knowledge of patterns in evolution from observing and processing without attachments or expectations.
The latter evolved to anticipation and expectancy of empathic resonance and opportunities beyond my imagination, yet framed within my ‘mission’ and with an assimilated skill set that met the demands of insight and understanding the facilitation of harmony among people and planet, a true ‘new world order.’ That phrase probably sent a shiver up or down your spine, depending on your status as an ascending or descending mortal – on who is learning or one who has volunteered to be a student/teacher in this life prior to incarnation.
Our reality may seem complex, and it is, yet the activity to create it is very simple. In that simplicity is a panoply of possibility driven by individual activity, first, acquiescing to the ‘nothingness’ (accessible unqualified pure energy) within each of us and aligning with the natural flow of one’s attention, intention and interaction toward becoming and Being. I wrote a book called The God Participle to illustrate that point. In our Being, we emerge unscathed by past trauma or future fears. It’s what’s been called, ‘in the moment,’ or ‘the precious present.’
Leading and Learning Something Different
I want to refer to a statement I made earlier, “I learned to just go slow, enjoy the flow and let activities and engagements be determined by the synchronicity of their arrival.” That notion provided the ultimate experience for me in the last half-decade, beginning with meeting and marrying my ‘twin-flame,’ a Russian by birth, who weathered her own storm and knew there was more. A conservatory trained pianist and pedagogue, as well as Kundalini yoga teacher, she had an understanding of energy, music and vibration; a perfect complement.
Wed on the base of Bell Rock in Sedona on the fall equinox of 2017, we grew in knowledge of ourselves and peered into the depths of the narrative that had kept most afraid, angry, ignorant and immobile in moving past our differences to find sameness. It was a most excruciatingly fun journey indeed, and we did it! As we did, we discovered much more in the congruence of awareness and mindfulness of our attention, intention and interactions.
One of those interactions in April of 2021 was her suggestion that I start talking to people again. We launched the first episode of One World in a New World on June 1, with Fyodor Ovchinnikov, the co-founder of the Evolutionary Futures Lab. We’ve had weekly episodes since and just recently reached 8,000 subscribers, so there is at least some interest in our Apocalyptic Chats. Today, the format is focused on bridging inner and outer worlds and the process of it, expressed by each guest in their own way.
Now here’s the upswing for me personally that happened in January 2022. One of the apocalyptic chats revealed an activity in which synchronicities were so replete with perfect order that the empathic resonance was replete with aligning with my life purpose – to facilitate a new world order of harmony among people and planet. How did that fit? I was introduced to a global peace movement founded by local defense attorney whose office was 3 minutes away from our home. It’s called Live and Let Live. What a profoundly simple yet practical activity to engage, I felt.
The Global Peace Movement Inspiring the World
As I peered into the depths of the Movement, there was a philosophy that was replete with practical and pragmatic activity. The Live and Let Live Philosophy contains two Principles – Live and Let Live; one legal, ‘don’t be an aggressor’ and one moral, ‘be a good human.’ The legal one will take some time to fulfill; calibrating the Law to remove aggression. The moral one gives opportunity for rich discussion and investigation of the dynamics of being good humans.
After flippantly offering that I had the skill set for being an executive director during my lunch with the founder, Marc Victor, a few weeks later. In March I was asked if I’d be willing to share the leadership role with a woman in Hawaii, who was also interested in the role, as the current E.D. was unable to continue. I was ecstatic with the notion of a gender-balanced leadership team and soon found our skill sets were unbelievably complementary. I got the title.
We interviewed all the chapter leaders, first off, and realized that notion I presented earlier was in play, “just go slow, enjoy the flow and let activities and engagements be determined by the synchronicity of their arrival.” The Movement is still in pre-launch, with nearly 1,000 members in dozens of countries, and our activity yielded appropriate nonprofit status, GuideStar/Candid approval for fundraising as well as Tech Soup’s approval for Google Nonprofits and Ad Grant. Our Foundation website is nearly complete as well.
Here’s the result and joy for me: