Be careful of the "grown ups." Seriously. They think they have figured it out. Be careful of anyone who claims to have figured it out.

Now think about it, when have you changed?

How have you changed?

What made you change?

It was either trauma or epiphany. It was either a broken heart or a flood of love and light. Our hearts change, then we change. We become more open or we become more afraid. And that's how we move ahead. We are either hopeful or hobbled by mistrust.

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This is my life. And today I get to celebrate it. I get to celebrate the treasure that is my family and I get to celebrate the blessing of living a life of purpose. This will be my 41st journey around the sun. Turning 40 came with a significant transition, a different way of being in the world. I am enjoying every bit of this decade. I feel like my feet touch the ground. I feel like I have something to stand on and I have something to build. It is nothing short of excilarating.

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I’ve been a meditator for about 12 years. I have experienced ebbs and flows in my practice and I have meditated every day of 2016. On February 29 I will be concluding a 60 day meditation “challenge.” A commitment to meditate at least 20 minutes per day every day for 60 days. I don’t want stop. And I want to invite you to join me.

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I became a minority at the age of 12. It wasn’t a good experience. The Autobiography of Malcolm X became a formative text. Identity is how I came into politics. I often refer to the process as a first liberation. It gave language to my experience. Nothing was wrong with me or my people. We were all victims of a system of oppression - the problem was structural, not individual.

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Feedback loops are at the very heart of our capacity to self-organize. They are what allow us to work together organically. We have to get them right. Feedback is what allows us to adjust behavior, to shift our approach, to adapt in ways that make self-organization possible. But feedback can get really hard for highly sensitive, emotional, social animals like ourselves.

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One post on feedback led to another and now I find myself writing a third one. This piece by Tara Sophia Mohr showed up on my feed and it got me thinking about how hard it is to get feedback. It can be crippling. Few of us had perfect parents, and critical feedback can often send us back to our worst childhood wounds. One of Tara’s insights is that “the criticism that we most fear receiving and that we find the most wounding is criticism that matches up with what we believe about ourselves.”

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On my recent post on “timely feedback” I made reference to “feedback loops.” I said that feedback loops are at the very heart of our capacity to self-organize. Self-organizing is the ecological antidote to our industrialized approach to planning. Of course it is important to plan! The problem is that we plan with an industrial mindset. The industrial mindset depends on high levels of predictability. But our increasingly complex world is highly unpredictable.

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Last weekend I participated in a weekend workshop led by Patricia Albere of the Evolutionary Collective. It was powerful. And it was deeply resonant with my approach to facilitation. Patricia Albere is a leading teacher and practitioner in a socio-spiritual movement that has been taking shape and picking up steam over the last few decades.

Here is the BIG takeaway - there is indeed a collective awakening going on, but it's not so much about a bunch of individuals waking up. It is a mutuality, a being-with, that is awakening to itself.

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More than 100 of us are now part of our three-week experiment in collective mindfulness. How is it going?

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Present Together - Getting Ready

Thank you for joining our experiment in collective mindfulness. We are thrilled by the enthusiastic response. This is a quick note to help you prepare.

There are many ways to “become present,” you can choose mindfulness at any instant. You will be receiving three different kinds of prompts. A breath prompt. A centering prompt. A heart opening prompt.

You will get two of these prompts per day, they will come at random and unexpected times but none will come too early or too late.

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