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WARRIORS FOR THE HUMAN SPIRIT
Training to be the Presence of Insight and Compassion
We need leaders who recognize the harm being done
to people and planet through the dominant practices that
control, ignore, abuse, and oppress the human spirit.
We need leaders who put service over self,
stand steadfast in crises and failures, and
who display unshakable faith that
people can be generous, creative, and kind.
Margaret Wheatley
Warriors for the Human Spirit are leaders, activists, and citizens who want to make a meaningful contribution in this time of increasing assaults on the human spirit and all life. To serve well, to be effective with their energy and influence, they train to refrain from fear and aggression and to embody the best human qualities of generosity, insight, and compassion. They are leaders who have already developed many skills in community engagement, productive workplaces and systems thinking. Yet these hard-won skills and valuable experiences are not sufficient; a different category of skills and capacities is needed if they are to act wisely and well, persevere, and use their influence and power to offer sane, life-affirming responses as challenges to people and planet intensify.
Who is a Warrior?
Warriors are people who focus their lives and work on making a difference. They respond to a sense of service that gives meaning to their lives beyond petty definitions of happiness and self-satisfaction. They are of all ages, faiths, professions, and cultures. Depending on their age, they have contributed in many different ways or are aspiring to contribute.
The Warriors arise when the people need protection. We step into this role of contribution and service, learning to assess what is possible and what is not. We are broken-hearted in witnessing what is being lost. We are exhausted from efforts that can no longer bear fruit. Yet we have abiding faith in the human spirit, in the capacity of people to be generous, creative, kind and compassionate–no matter what. It is our faith in the human spirit that inspires us to undertake the discipline of training to be of service for this time.
While despair might permeate the greater part of the nation,
others achieved a new realization of the fact that
only readiness for self-sacrifice could enable a community to survive.
Some of the greatest saints in history
lived in times of national decadence,
raising the banner of duty and service
against the flood of depravity and despair.
Sir John Glubb, historian2
[2] I used Glubb’s six stages of a civilization’s rise and fall as a major frame in Who Do We Choose To Be?
What is the Work of Warriors?
Wherever we are, whatever our work, Warriors train to offer ourselves in two essential ways:
- We strive to embody the best human qualities of compassion, generosity, and clear seeing, Our presence serves as a reminder and role model for others for who they are.
- With our leadership, we bravely stand in contrast to the current practices and dynamics of this age. We know what must be created and preserved to create good human lives and societies, and we embody this wisdom in our work.
As leaders, we train in the skillful means to:
- Refrain from using fear and aggression to accomplish our ends
- Maintain a stable mind even in situations of contention and conflict
- Use direct perception to see more clearly so we may act more wisely
- Stay aware of our biases, judgments, and triggers in order to diminish their influence on us
- Focus our efforts on the work that needs doing, not the work we want to do
- Endeavor to create Islands of Sanity wherever possible
- Maintain a keen sense of humor
- Rely on moments of grace and joy
- Offer and receive support from the community of Warriors
How the Warriors Train
We train in these key areas:
- IDENTITY FORMATION. We consciously take on the role of Warrior for the Human Spirit. In naming ourselves as Warriors, we take our place in the long history of those few people who always arise to stand against the tides of destruction, those few people who train themselves to protect, defend and exemplify what must be preserved. The Warrior identity supersedes prior roles and defines a path of service. Discipline, devotion, and community ground this identity and provide the skillful means to act wisely and to persevere through challenges that will only increase.
- STABLE MIND. Through meditation and contemplative practices, we learn to know and work with our minds. We develop heightened levels of awareness so that we can act consciously rather than compulsively, responsively rather than reactively. We develop the skill of being present in any situation, seeing it as it is, without our personal biases and needs.
- DIRECT PERCEPTION. Our actions are impeded by confused and clouded vision that springs from personal needs and biases. Blinded by our ‘self’ we can’t notice all the information that is so easily available in any situation. As we open to the world as it is, without trying to mold it to our liking, we recognize that the world is our ally, a source of information that gives us the capacity to see clearly and act skillfully.
- MIND-BODY INTEGRATION. We suffer from many disconnections, believing that heart and mind are separate, or that body and mind are not one integrated whole. With physical practices we discover capacities of balance, energy, presence, and letting go. We develop a reliable body-mind memory of what true presence and balance feel like.
- COMMUNITY. So many of our relationships contain our earnest attempts to help, fix, heal. Yet healthy relationships are hindered by these desires. One of the Warrior slogans is: “Don’t fix, don’t flee, just stay present.” As a community of people devoted to exploring what it means to be a Warrior for the Human Spirit, we learn to practice this as we encounter the very real challenges, fears, and joys of our communal exploration.
Program Description
The Online Warriors for the Human Spirit Training goes through two major phases
Phase One
THE SKILLFUL MEANS OF WARRIORSHIP
This includes:
- An intensive retreat with Meg, Jerry and Ulrike. This session lasts 4 hours followed by
- Six teaching and practice sessions with Meg, Jerry and Ulrike. Each session is 2.5 hours.
Phase Two
DEEPENING TRAINING AND INTEGRATING INTO THE COMMUNITY OF WARRIORS
In the second phase of Warrior training, you will integrate into the larger community of Warriors in the Warrior Concerto, where those from earlier trainings are now actively engaged with deepening their training and supporting one another in a variety of ways.
Part 1:
- Participate in the online course, “The Warrior Journey.” Teachings from Meg and Jerry will be twice a month. The curriculum is based on their new work: A Warrior’s Songline: A Journey Guided by Voice and Sound. Other readings will also be used. Small groups will meet regularly between the teachings, led by a guide/facilitator.
- Participate in one 3-hour online Meditation and Qi Gong retreat led by Jerry and Ulrike.
Part 2:
- Continue in the Warrior’s Concerto online training, with a less intense schedule of once a month teachings and small group work.
- Participate in two 3-hour online Meditation and Qi Gong retreats led by Jerry and Ulrike.
Afterward you will be given the choice to continue to deepen and expand your training as a Warrior by joining the Warrior’s Concerto for the following year. There will be an additional cost for this.
Retreat Curriculum
A variety of processes are used to encourage learning, reflection, and community. And we delight in the opportunity to be together as we learn and explore this new role of Warriors.
These program elements are taught and practiced each day:
- Meditation practice and instruction: morning and evening
- The path of Warriorship
- Direct Perception: Exercises in listening and perceiving
- Qi Gong practice for mind-body awareness
- Warriors at work: Practical applications
- Community engagement
- Personal Reflection and Contemplation
Core Faculty
We three have joyfully worked together to develop and teach Warriors for three years, (Jerry and Meg have worked together since 2000).
Margaret (Meg) Wheatley is the author of nine books, from the ground-breaking Leadership and the New Science (1992) to Who Do We Choose To Be? Facing Reality| Claiming Leadership| Restoring Sanity (2017). Her career spans five decades as a teacher, consultant, advisor, professor, formal leader, and author. She has worked in nearly every type of organization, at all levels, and on all continents (except Antarctica). Since 2015 she has dedicated her work to training Warriors for the Human Spirit, now a thriving community of Warriors from more than 27 countries. www.margaretwheatley.com.
Jerry Granelli is a renowned jazz drummer/composer and an experienced meditation teacher in the lineage of Chögyam Trungpa and Shambhala warriorship. He teaches meditation and Direct Perception in Warrior Training and is co-designer, with Meg, of the overall structure and content of the program. As a jazz master of improvisation, he has developed the skills of being completely present to what is arising, following the music where it leads. Through voice, movement and perception practices, he works with warriors to develop their capacity to be present and come awake. “One reason why people like improvised music is that it’s a direct reflection of life, not something we thought up. It scares you…makes you think you’re going to die for a moment…do you have the courage to play? Can I move out of my desires and wants, and into compositional choices?” www.jerrygranelli.com
Ulrike Ebert is founder of a Tai Chi and Qi Gong school in Rome, Italy. As a long term teacher and practitioner of this internal discipline, it is her experience that mind space and body space need to fuse in a profound way to bring the mind to reign and transform the body into something we call inner peace, or openness, or wisdom. Working with the subtle perception of one’s own body, what has been blocked or disconnected can be brought into alignment; these energies then become available for mindful and genuine actions.
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