Our Training
Whole Being Training
WHOLE BEING TRAINING will primarily be implemented as part of establishing Creating Our Future as a global social change organization.
Healing one’s wounds and learning how to help others heal their wounds:
This is the place to start from to be effective at whatever one wishes to accomplish in the world, and with one’s life. To be successful, one must be able to give oneself permission to succeed, which requires changing the stories in one’s subconscious that tell us “I don’t deserve,” “I am not good enough,” “I need to prove ourselves,” and the like. It is very useful when working with others to not need to be better than anyone, and to be able to accept advice and criticism about one’s work without it disrupting our sense of self-worth.
"I have found that the process of holding the Self Worth healing space for others has opened my heart to see the essential innocence of just about every human being, and to know that whatever errant behavior the person may be manifesting has its basis in how they were treated in the past. This knowing is not an intellectual half-knowing; it is whole-being knowing, based in the mind and the heart together." -Sat Santokh
Sacred Practices
Yoga/spiritual practice
Whether or not one has any spiritual aspirations, developing a daily practice of asana and meditation gives one a daily place of inner clarity, a center from which to view one’s world as if from high on a mountaintop. When I began my spiritual practice, I thought that in doing so I would find my center, but instead, by doing my daily practice, I found that I was building my center.
Chanting and singing
Chanting and singing in community help create love and connection amongst members and elevates individual and collective consciousness. Learning to open one’s voice and open the throat center helps one be able to speak in a way that can be more easily heard, whether speaking to a large audience or in a small meeting. Even when I thought I could not sing at all, I could always chant, and then when doing public speaking, I could create a sacred space, by leading the audience in simple chants, so that the audience and I would be in tune with one another.
Martial arts practice like Aikido or Tai Chi
This helps one to be grounded, centered in the navel area, and in touch with one’s chi, or ki. It provides the capacity to defend the self and others, and confidence in one’s capacity to do so.
Satyagraha
Training in the use of this powerful tool for shifting consciousness while working strategically for social change. It would be a great service to the world to make effective use of it, and demonstrate its power and utility. This would begin with theory discussion and practice training sessions, and then move to training through working on actual on the ground projects.
Community Building Entails learning how to establish a growing community of conscious people who share common purpose, a deep connection and love with one another, with the tools and skills to listen to and be present with and for one another; and who are committed to working for change while living in harmony with the planet and humanity in a deeply respectful an appreciative way.
Skills Development
Meeting process skills
We would learn from some of the leading meeting facilitation trainers in the country in the use of Appreciative Inquiry and other such processes many of which can be found on the National Council for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD) website. Then we would practice these skills within our own circles and in our community and project building endeavors
Project and Even planning skills
Training to develop and carry out effective strategies to accomplish one’s goals, and how to organize, plan, host, and conduct projects and events at any scale from 50 participants to tens of thousands. In addition to meeting facilitation and project planning, which would be encompassed under Meeting process skills, there is the body of knowledge and skills required to plan large and very large social change projects, festivals, demonstrations, conferences, rallies and marches.
Research
Studying best practices of successful leaders and movements of the past, as described earlier in this chapter.
Money skills Training in how to master money.
Politics (local, national, global) If one is working to change the system, one must know how it works, so that one can envision possible alternatives. This means learning know how things get done at each level of government, especially at whatever level one wishes to work at; knowing where the levers are and who is working them.
Macroeconomics Understanding the global economy, how the flow of goods, money and power works and how it impacts governments and daily life, is important knowledge if one wishes to play on the word stage and work towards more functional systems.
Entrepreneurial skills Training from accomplished social change entrepreneurs in how to create projects, businesses, and organizations that serve the greater good while being at least financially self-sustaining, and preferably substantially profitable. This entails in part learning to have the most appropriate and useful financial mindset, as it is as much work, and possibly more, to run a social change organization with a barely getting by on shoestring budget, as it is to allow financial ease and abundance. I clearly remember the transition within myself from the project fundraising I was doing feeling essentially like begging, to understanding that I was creating meaningful opportunities for people and organizations that had money to share, to be able to feel that we were doing something useful and important together.
Information technology It is critical to understand how to use this tool, the one medium that can compete with money for being the medium of the times.
Communication Training in good communication skills at every level of dialogue, from one on one, through very large groups, including effective use of social media. Plus, the skills required to communicate well with the fourth pillar of Democracy which is, the very much challenged in much of the world these days, public media; the first three of which are the major branches of government: legislature, executive, and judiciary.