Who are we in a changing climate?

What are we called to do?

Who are we called to be?

 
 
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THE DEVASTATING POWER OF GLOBAL WARMING HOLDS A PARADOXICAL POTENTIAL: TO CATALYZE A PROFOUND SHIFT IN AWARENESS BY REQUIRING US TO FACE LIFE’S IMPERMANENCE, AND THUS WRENCHING US OUT OF OUR CONVENTIONAL (AND UNSUSTAINABLE) WORLDVIEW.

Jonathan Gustin

 

The Transformative Climate Advocacy Program is an online learning journey that explores the interior dimensions of people’s engagement with climate change—worldviews, beliefs, emotions and mindsets. Including those of change-makers, ourselves, while also expanding and empowering us!

The program integrates theory, transformative practice and application creating a community of change agents and opening up new inner and outer horizons.

Research in psychology and worldviews helps us understand not only what people believe about climate change but why they believe it and how they see themselves as agents of change (or not). Understanding this helps us to navigate values-based conflicts and design solutions that speak to the motivations of different communities.

Additionally, engaging with our own psychological and spiritual development helps us to show up in fuller ways. That supports us to work with emotions of grief, anger and denial as doorways. This deepens our impact, awakens us to generative futures for all of life and supports new ways of approaching change work.

The program includes contributions from experienced climate change agents who integrate interior development in their work, and it includes embodiment and awareness practices, and collaborative learning and inquiry.

This program, while focusing on climate and planetary sustainability, will benefit advocates and change-makers in any field! You’ll find a more detailed course description below.

This offering is in partnership with Worldview Journeys and BeBenevolution

 
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The most radical thing any of us can do at this time is to be fully present to what is happening in the world.

Joanna Macy

 

The very pressures of climate disruption may function as a catalyst that awakens humanity to the kind of planetary awareness and interdependent global actions that we need to create life-sustaining societies.

With regard to this crisis, it’s become almost a cliché to say that we need a mind-shift or a paradigm change. This signifies an increasing recognition within the climate and sustainability movements that the most important barriers—and supports—for transformative change are, in fact, interior.

The dominant, exterior-oriented climate strategies (focused on governance, economic incentives, technology) are necessary but inadequate. It’s become clear that new approaches are urgently needed—approaches that can support a more profound transformation towards sustainable, regenerative and life-enhancing societies.

This program explores such new approaches and focuses in on the interior dimensions of climate change, aiming to:

  1. Expand our understanding of cultural and psychological development (ie., of how mindsets and worldviews change and evolve) and apply these insights to climate advocacy and change work;

  2. Support our own psychological development and inner transformation, to deepen impact and empower ourselves as change-makers;

  3. ‘Lean into’ the magical and mystical, to tap into the deeper purpose and greater potential that’s called for in this transformative historical moment.

    Each of these purposes is further explained below.


Expand Understanding of Culture & Psychology to Support Change Work

How we perceive life, each other and our planetary challenges is shaped by our meaning-making or mindset. As Tibetan cosmologies recognize, the world we live in is manomaya or mind-made. However, this also means it can be unmade or remade by engaging with thoughts, beliefs, and emotions! Systems thinker Donella Meadows identified that one of the deepest ‘leverage points’ for systemic change is the mindset or paradigm out of which the system arises.

This program aims to expand our understanding of these mindsets or paradigms—focusing on adult developmental psychology and the evolution of worldviews—and apply their insights to advocacy and change work. This is crucial as one of the main challenges confronting the climate movement today is how to appeal to both hearts and minds, inviting people into sustained, collective action and positive change.

Developmental patterns shape how people make meaning of climate change, what motivates us to act and can inform how we design and communicate change initiatives. Moreover, being able to understand and relate to different perspectives and experiences—including those that contradict our own—is essential to the process of forging sustainable, inclusive solutions.

 

Support Personal Transformation to Empower Change-makers

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The program also aims to support our own psycho-spiritual development—that is, one’s personal growth and transformation. This is crucial for those who aspire to be transformative change-makers. We can’t convincingly ask others to change if we’re, personally, not willing to change nor familiar with the experience of transformation.

Change in culture and systems is shaped by the development and maturity of the change agent. In Otto Scharmer’s words: “the success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervener”. Exploring our frames and values, mental habits and states of mind alongside embodied awareness is therefore a powerful investment in our activism!

Research shows developmental growth forges a gradual widening of viewpoints, an increased ability to deal with complexity and uncertainty and an expanded circle of care and compassion. Through embodied exercises and exploratory practices we’re inviting and challenging ourselves to grow into the very planetary perspectives needed to address our planetary issues.

 

Lean Into the Mystical to Tap Into Deeper Purpose & Potential

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The program invites all of us to explore and ‘lean into’ the magical and mystical. We do this with the intention of tapping into deeper purpose and greater potential. This is called for in our present challenging and transformatively historical times. As sustainability advocates and change-makers we’re well aware that humanity is on a highly destructive pathway. Facing this heart-breaking reality, dealing with our own fears, anger and grief, supports us to stay committed to constructive and creative responses.

This is a ‘higher art’ that we can practice together, inviting and revealing wisdom and inner integration to emerge. We will share spaces where we can explore the complexity of our feelings allowing deeper purpose, wisdom and creativity to surface. Such responses may turn out to be essential in turning this crisis into a chance—an opportunity for a new world to be born while an old one is dying.

All in all, this program is going to be fun and engaging, profound and challenging, create a community of transformative change agents and open up new inner and outer horizons. Come join us on this transformative journey!

Abigail describes the Climate Advocacy Program during the November Info Session & Dialogue

 

Practical

The program is theoretical, experiential, and applied. Each session will include: 1) content (theory and knowledge); 2) experience (e.g., awareness practices, embodiment, shadow work, interactive exploration); and 3) practice (application or case-studies).

In addition to bi-weekly whole group meetings over Zoom you will meet with your own small ‘pod-group’ every other week. This is to deepen, explore and apply the material in your own context, work, and life. You’ll also receive insightful readings and other supportive materials as well as stimulating reflection questions and practices to boost your personal learning journey.

 

Learning outcomes

  • To explore ideas and insights from research on worldviews and adult developmental psychology in ways that are insightful and actionable for climate change and advocacy.

  • To support deepening self- and other-awareness learning about mindsets, meaning-making, and the development of consciousness.

  • To engage in personal and collective development through embodiment and awareness practices, working with emotions, shadow work, somatic awareness, and inquiries exploring our own internal landscapes.

  • To learn about climate action projects and campaigns that draw on and integrate human interiors and psycho-social development.

  • To create relationships,collective learning, and a community of change agents interested in integrating self, culture, and systems.

 

Who Should Participate?

This offering will be of most use to:

  • Change agents who seek to deepen their impact by integrating human interiors in their change work.

  • Change agents interested in supporting their own and other’s development in support of transformative (climate) action.

  • Researchers and practitioners passionate about applying adult psycho-social-spiritual development to (climate) change work.

Note: All changemakers and concerned planetary citizens are welcome to join, learn, and explore how these insights can be applied to your own fields of action and expertise. The program is useful and applicable well beyond climate and sustainability fields.

 

Schedule

Whole group meetings (1.5 hour Zoom calls) take place on Tuesdays 8 pm Central Europe Time (CET), 7 pm UK time and 11 am Pacific North America (PST) time. We start on January 25. Check the time zone converter for the first session.

We meet every two weeks as a whole group. In the week in-between you’ll meet with your small pod group to deepen, explore, and exchange further. We suggest meeting on the alternate Tuesday at the same time as the whole group session.

In total, there are 8 whole group sessions and 8 small pod meetings.

 

Course Dates

Session 1—Tues, Jan 25
Radical Presence: Coming Together—Being With Each Other & Climate Change

Session 2—Tues, Feb 8
Meaning Making, Communication & Transformative Leadership with Guest Contributor Barrett Brown

Assessment Debrief—Sun, Feb 13 (8pm CET, 7pm UK, 11am PST)
Group Debrief for Those Who Purchase the Optional Climate Change Developmental Assessment

Session 3—Tues, Feb 22
Worldviews as ‘Big Stories’: Understanding Cultural Landscapes

Session 4—Tues, Mar 8
Community Engagement & Action: Working across Differences with Guest Contributor Stephan Martineau

Session 5—Tues, Mar 22
Reflection, Integration, & Shadow: Powers & Pitfalls

Optional Additional Session—Tues, Mar 29
Post-Progressivism, Worldviews, & Climate Change Policies with Guest Contributor Steve McIntosh

Session 6—Tues, Apr 5
Cultural Responsiveness and Pluralism in Transformative Change with Guest Contributors Lynette Thorstensen & Sushant Shrestha

Session 7—Tues, Apr 19
Self as Instrument & Leadership Embodiment with Guest Contributor Anouk Brack

Session 8—Tues, May 3
Going Forth: Awareness in Action

Just Added - Optional Climate Change Developmental Assessment

This climate change meaning-making instrument offers a unique opportunity to explore your own thinking-patterns around climate change. It offers a means to deepen understanding about the developmental patterns that shape how you-I-we perceive and make meaning about climate change.

Understanding your own and others’ development supports increasingly accurate empathy, understanding and skill in navigating developmental differences, perspective-taking, values and beliefs around climate change. It can support your development as a change agent, revealing opportunities for growth and blind spots in how we relate to and interact with others whose views and values differ from our own.

Those who choose to take the assessment will have the opportunity to participate in a group debrief plus an optional one-on-one conversation. This will include information and insights that are likely to support your own growth, reveal your strengths and growth edges and deepen your impact as a change agent. We recommend that you choose this optional add on. It will contribute meaningfully to deepening the learning in the course and supporting your own development. The assessment and debrief are being offered at a significantly reduced cost in support of your learning and development.

We use a short form of the STAGES specialty inventory developed by Gail Hochachka. We will make the data, once anonymized, available to Gail and colleagues for research purposes. See www.stagesinternational.com for more information on the STAGES model, assessments, upcoming courses, and information about partnership opportunities.


Core Faculty

Guest Contributors