Tag Archives: transformation

We Are Hard-Wired to Care and Connect – Part IV

By David Korten | Website

Reprinted from  "Purple America," the Fall 2008 YES! Magazine
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Read the first part of the article here.

=&0=&Getting out of our current mess begins with a conversation to change the shared cultural story about our essential nature. The women’s movement offers an instructive lesson.

In little more than a decade, a few
courageous women changed the cultural story that the key to a woman’s
happiness is to find the right man, marry him, and devote her life to
his service. As Cecile Andrews, author of Circles of Simplicity,

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Werner Erhard

I saw a documentary film last night entitled, “Transformation: The Life and Legacy of Werner Erhard”. I had heard a lot about it from many friends who shared some of the ‘heady’ experience of working with him in the 70s and 80s. The film was a very well done tribute to his work and to the man I knew.

I had expected that the film’s purpose was to restore his reputation after his departure from the USA following a controversial ‘character assassination’ piece on CBS’s 60 Minutes.

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Clinton and Obama

Well, it looks like Hillary is bowing out—actually more like accepting the fact that she can’t win. Polls in that league are realists above all else. I assume we’ll get the inside dope on whatever backroom deals were made in the weeks ahead. Now the healing and reunification of the Democratic Party must begin.

However, before we relegate Hillary to the political graveyard, I want us to stop and reflect on what an incredible process this has been and acknowledge her for her strength and courage.

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Youth / Adult Partnerships and Growing Communities

By Zakia Carpenter | Unending Conversations of Hope blog

This article appeared in the April 20-26, 2008 issue of the Michigan Citizen and is reproduced here with the author’s permission. Please post your comments here.

I have noticed a breakdown in youth-adult functionality that I’m just beginning to articulate. From what I have read about the Millennial Generation (youth, like me, born between 1977 and 1998), experts predict it will be more separate from previous generations due to

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Emptying House

By Shae Hadden | Bio

Spring is in the air today. The first crocuses blaze their yellow glory at me from across the lawn. I’m staring into the sky blue expanse above the mountain ridge, and wondering why I’ve chosen to move from this place. The quiet location and the natural environment were perfect for me when I moved in a year and a half ago. And now these four walls and many of the things gathered around me loom like barriers to living full out. The friendships I had before I moved have all, save for a few, disintegrated. Some people have dropped out of my life entirely. Others, still present, relate to me in very different ways than before. Similarly, the activities we used to do together have disappeared from the picture as well. I am changed.  My inner transformation has created outer changes in my circumstances and relationships. I find myself attracted to the ‘New Me’ and distracted by, even uncomfortable with, the ‘Old Me’. Holding on to anything from my past would seem to be an exercise in futility. I sense an overwhelming urge to ‘clean house’, to empty my life of what no longer serves. It’s said that, as we journey through life, we find ourselves letting go of people, places and things that no longer align with who we are. While I’m grateful for everyone and everything in my life today, I’m also realizing that transformation has a price: we must let go of who we have been and what we once treasured to become who we are choosing to be. I’ve decided I’m going to do a bit of spring-cleaning this afternoon. I just wonder what my empty house will fill up with next…?   read more

Too Late for Later

Thomas Friedman’s great op-ed piece about global warming definitively declares that, when faced with making decisions that have life or death consequences, there is, at some point, no more time for procrastinating, debating and analyzing. At some moment, to continue to procrastinate or put off until tomorrow becomes a fatal decision.

I love this idea that ‘later’ ceases to be an option when the stakes are high enough. When this is the case, we are committed—no matter what we choose. It

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Menomorphosis

At my men’s group meeting this weekend, my friend Vian was observing that as we aged, most of us middle-aged men seemed to be emerging from a kind of chrysalis and that we were in various states of becoming ‘butterflies’. After a few chuckles at the metaphor, we had to admit that, on the back side of our middle-aged crisis, we were a lot more mature, a lot more comfortable in our own skins and a lot more grateful, humble and serene than at earlier

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Generation Next

I just finished watching a CNN International presentation in my hotel room in Sao Paulo. It was an extraordinary production called “India’s Generation Next”. What made it special from my perspective is that it was a genuine conversation of many young people, accented with dialogue with 5 prominent Indians, including two celebrities from the entertainment industry, a politician and two prominent business people.

The program, very well produced and hosted by two of CNNs social commentary people,

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Transformation

The word transformation came into vogue as a personal and social phenomenon in the 1970s principally through the success and notoriety of Werner Erhard, a friend I have admired and worked with for a decade. His est training touched the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and generated numerous books and a couple of films. The ‘training’ was a four-day intensive immersion into a smorgasbord of experiential exercises and intense lectures punctuated with engaging ‘coaching’ conversations

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It’s a Great Life!

During the five months I’ve been blogging, I’ve spoken with more than a hundred people in their 50s and older about their experience and views on aging. The resounding consensus is that life is great and getting better all the time. It seems to me this is indicative of a real transformation underway: instead of growing older being a story of ‘decline’, a couple of generations are starting to declare that the 2nd half of life might be the best half.

Here are a few of the common themes from

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