Emerge: Making Sense of What's Next

Is it still possible to create a more beautiful future for life on earth, or are we now merely stewards for the dying process of our world? How do we live with the weight of this uncertainty? Soryu Forall responds to these questions during a recent lecture at the Monastic Academy. Soryu is the founder and head teacher at the Monastic Academy for the Preservation of Life on Earth (MAPLE). You can hear my previously recorded conversation with Soryu by clicking here.

Rob McNamara is an author, leadership coach, advisor and consultant with expertise in adult development and human performance. He is a co-founder of the leading consulting firm Delta Developmental, a faculty member for the Ivey School of Business' LIFT Advanced Coaching Program, and is a Senior Monk and Integral Zen Dharma Holder training with Diane Musho Hamilton Roshi. McNamara’s coaching focuses leaders on clarifying life purpose, growing critical leadership skills to advance value creation and fostering organizational development to enhance learning and innovation. MAPLE Fundamentals Online Training (Cohort Begins August 8th) Vision Quest at the Monastic Academy (September 10th - 19th) Show Notes: 00:02 Who do we need to become to navigate this planetary meta-crisis? 00:05 “Revolutionary enfoldment” / new vectors of development 00:10 Limitations of just adding more complexity 00:18 Takes 10 years. Do we even have that? XR: “sacrifice for future generation” — Hero frame 00:26 Exploring other distinctions / sovereignty and surrender 00:33 “If we’re not willing to die, we don’t get to touch the ineffable grace of life” 00:36 The diversification of identity 00:43 The illumined reality / world as image structure 00:51 What needs to happen in public? / education 00:55 How do we cultivate the capacity to attune to image? / image is prior to language 01:04 Circling / need for community 01:08 “giving someone an image that is not their own” 01:11 Omniwin / “image structure is not an exhaustible resource” 01:14 Finite and infinite games / “switching arena of pathos to soul-making” / “game on, forever” 01:16 How to increase access to this? 01:19 Organizational development / “If this is our last thing, what do we do?” 01:22 How do we ground this in community? / problem-solving / play 01:25 Robert = “bright counselor” 01:28 Wrap-up

Emerge is back! This is a solo episode where I share a few life updates and thoughts about the evolution of the Emerge podcast. Support me on Patreon

In this first conversation after a year sabbatical from the Emerge project I'm speaking with Zak Stein. This is a far ranging conversation about ethics, education, trauma, the erotics of moral understanding, and more.  Support me on Patreon Show Notes 0:00 Opening 0:03 How to create the kinds of humans who can respond to the meta-crisis? 0:08 “We’re not sure what it means to be good anymore” / what’s worth loving 0:09 Eros and Ethics / Ensoulment 0:17 Moral development 0:23 “How do you get someone interested in what is truly good?” 0:25 Linking / meta-psychology 0:29 Community ethics feedback loops 0:33 Objective ethics 0:37 Embodied ethical sensing 0:38 Intersection between Trauma & Ethics, desensitization, somatic de-armoring 0:43 Trust, return of the Sacred 0:47 The Moral Exemplar 0:52 Exposure to the full ethical range 0:54 “Trauma” in culture 0:62 Evil 0:68 Practices for Wellbeing 0:72 “Enlightenment is your greatest disappointment” 0:74 Eros & Ethics 0:77 Human as ethical actor, intimacy and obligation 0:81 Circling, following “aliveness”, co-discovering moral landscape 0:85 Path = compromising moral integrity increasingly intolerable 0:88 Ethics in Community, MAPLE’s advantage 0:90 Closing

I've decided to put this project on hold and dedicate myself more fully my work and training at the Monastic Academy. In this episode I share some of the thinking and feeling that went into my choice. If you'd like to support me in my training and work you can do so through Patreon. A few recent pieces I've read that are relevant to this episode: Cutting Through Spiritual Colonialism by Vinay Gupta Mindfulness: Developing Agency in Urgent Times by Jamie Bristow & Rosie Bell

In the first episode after my 75 day silent retreat I sat down with Zak Stein to speak about the the current cultural moment and how we can respond to the chaos and uncertainty of the world with love and integrity. This is part two of a two part episode. In this episode we discuss: - An overview of Zak’s metapsychology - How the psyche is a triple of development, ensoulment, and transcendence and why one must work on all three - How much of the talk about ‘sense making’ is missing two thirds of the picture - The noetic function of love - The relationship between language, image and symbol - How ensoulment lags behind development and transcendence in terms of emphasis in transformational culture - Why working with image and ensoulment might be the most important work that can be done right now - What image has to do with the resolution of the meaning crisis - Zak’s theory that, at some point, a shared cultural image will spontaneously create collective coherence - How ethics is implicated in Zak’s metapsychology - How virtue ethics is the antidote to virtue signaling

In the first episode after my 75 day silent retreat I sit down with Zak Stein to speak about the the current cultural moment and how we can respond to the chaos and uncertainty of the world with love and integrity.  This is part one of a two part episode. We discuss: - My experience coming out of retreat into a 'post-covid' world - How strange and problematic it is that people speak with confidence about the world right now - How our media ecology forces us to take on perspectives even when uncertainty and ambiguity is more trustworthy - That sense-making has everything to do with acting from embodied love, and NOT about having the correct meta-narrative - How ideology acts on our lives to make it difficult to love and see each other - How we get captured by the simulation of reality being played out on social media and how that debases our lived relationships - How to respond to the psychotic break our culture is going through - Why we need to pull out of mainstream culture, reorient, and pull together a critical mass of coherence and sanity The NY Times article about my experience coming out of retreat COVID-19: A War Broke Out in Heaven by Zak Stein

Soryu Forall is the founder and head-teacher of the Monastic Academy.  Soryu has a decade of intensive monastic training, a degree in Economics from Williams College, and extensive experience in social and environmental justice. He was ordained in 1998 at Sogen Temple under the tutelage of the Zen Master Shodo Harada. The day this recording goes live I'll be beginning an 80(ish) day silent solo retreat here on the land of the Monastic Academy. By the end of this episode,  I hope you'll understand why I would do such a thing. We discuss: How awakening enables us to be of true service in times of crisis How easy it is to fool ourselves about the depth of our experience and insight Soryu’s personal crisis upon learning of the Japanese Zen traditions participation in the atrocities of World War Two A vision of awakening that is adequate to the meta-crisis Whether it makes sense to disconnect Waking Up, Growing Up, and Cleaning Up Does awakening make us more ethical? Better at making decisions?  The difference between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ enlightenment according to the Buddhist eightfold path What kind of monsters ‘wrong’ enlightenment creates Why transformative practices disconnected from ethical training is so dangerous How the cultural assumptions of liberalism, humanism, and materialism distort our understanding of what awakening is How your aspiration creates your understanding of the path Why it’s necessary to do these practices in community Soryu’s definition of awakening And more! 🧘‍♂️🧘‍♀️ Monastic Academy Podcast Donate to the Monastic Academy

Andrew J Taggart is a practical philosopher, Zen Buddhist, and entrepreneur. Recently Andrew wrote an article called 'Psychotechnologies of Self-Transformation' that led me to reach out to him and schedule a conversation. This episode was recorded a few months ago, but it occurs to me as exactly the right time to release it. If you are feeling panicked about the Corona Virus, I'd encourage you to slow down, get a hot cup of tea (or go for a walk outside) and enjoy this warm-spirited philosophical conversation. We inquire about: Why aren't human beings kinder to each other, let alone to all sentient beings? Is liberalism, humanism, and nihilism at the root of the meta-crisis? How social media requires a self-enclosed narcissistic humanism to function How do we move beyond humanism into a new cosmological sense of being? Is it possible to install new modes of being in time to confront the planetary challenges facing us? The necessity of existential openings as a portal to self-inquiry Whether we need to administer 'gentle shocks' to help people enter into spiritual crisis as quickly as possible How can we help ensure that instances of emergency and crisis can touch the heart and open the spirit? How do we precipitate mass existential opening? How do we help others encounter the truths of their heart? What Andrew has learned about having skillful philosophical conversations The importance of becoming sensitive in conversation to what Andrew calls 'existential weight' Why we must change our lives according to our existential truths, and the consequences of not doing so What is an adequate new definition of the human being that supports the emergence of a broadly contemplative culture Does wisdom arise from awakening, or does awakening arise from wisdom? What are the most important virtues to be cultivated now, in this time between worlds? Andrew's Home on the Internet

Jonathan Reams works at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), serves as Editor-in Chief of Integral Review, and is a co-founder of the Center for Transformative Leadership and of the European Center for Leadership Practice. He brings awareness based leadership development practices to his work, focusing on how the inner workings of human nature can develop leadership capacities for today’s complex challenges. His recent research and practice has focused on subjects such as; the impact of Immunity to Change based coaching, theoretical foundations of resistance to change, the integration of psychological and cognitive skill based assessments and the use of narrative based tools combined with developmentally informed reflection prompts for scaling development. We inquire into: What do we mean when we talk about human development? Why are there so many different models of adult development? Are higher stages of adult development all one thing or are there many different types of maturity? The various types of developmental models and the key differences between them How do we develop as moral and ethical beings? How does seeing the 'virtual' nature of the self help us become more mature and wise humans? And more! Enjoy. ❤️ Check out http://jonathanreams.com/ to see more about Jonathan's work and writing.