Almost everyone I speak to says that Burning Man is transformational. This was true before the burn, it was true during the burn, and it was even true among people who have never been to the burn. Something is happening here that has the potential to change people's lives. It is something that wakes up commitment and effort to be part of this community.

But what do we mean when we say "transformation." I think of it as change that cannot be undone. Developmental change. Leveling up from one stage to the next.

The transformational experience is my life's central concern. It is what I seek for myself. And it is what I facilitate for others. It is key to evolution itself.

But we live in hyper-advanced capitalism. This late stage capitalism is more immersive than Burning Man. It is the ocean we swim in, it is where we live, love and work in every day of our lives. It is the default world. And the default world seeks to comodify the human experience. It does not matter what you are into. It can be virtual reality or the great outdoors. It can be meditation or sex positivity. It can be the workshop circuit or sacred medicine work. It can be Burning Man.

All of it can be commodified.

All of it can be reduced to an experience that you pocket.

You get to speak of it.

You get to remember that you had it.

But it will not be something that changes you.

Change demands integration.

There will be moments when good people who care for justice and the planet will be able to pass national policies that may have an impact on our collective destiny. But any and all hope for long-term survival is to be found locally, in relationship to each other, learning and experimenting together. Depending on one another.

In this episode I interview author Cyndi Suarez, who has just released The Power Manual, a book on how to master complex power dynamics. Cyndi has written a comprehensive operations manual for living into the tension of these distinctions and quite literally enacting our way to freedom.

Last month I was blessed to facilitate the fourth annual Evolutionary Leadership Workshop, our flagship program. A workshop to make dreams real. I also facilitated the first ever Evolutionary Leadership Graduate Program, an opportunity for former workshop participants to come back and level up. 

I was moved to learn that my friend Kenzo An, runner, meditator and all-around passionate man, wrote a post on the practice of fulfillment for About Meditation.

In Yes, Fulfillment Is a Path but It’s Also the Goal he writes that:

There is a deeper source that doesn’t fluctuate based on external conditions. The sense of fulfillment is immediate and unconditional.

The impulse to develop the Evolutionary Leadership Workshop was the desire for creative freedom. I work for institutional clients, the client is the convener and I’m invited in to design and facilitate the experience. It is beautiful work and I am privileged to do it. But it is work that demands compromise. The client has their own goals, their sense of what is possible and their own set of constraints.

I set out to create a space that was free of such compromise. I decided to try being the convener. And I developed a workshop where I could apply the very best of what I have learned in service of what I see as our highest purpose.

Intention. Connection. Experimentation. These are the tenets of the Evolutionary Leadership Workshop.

When I launched the Better Men Project I chose to focus on cisgender (term for people whose gender identity matches the sex that they were assigned at birth) heterosexual men in committed relationships. The intention was not to exclude other men, but to humbly begin the process based on the experience that I know. You have to start somewhere. And it is good to start with yourself.
My dear friend Felix Endara was generous enough to sign up for an interview anyway. Felix is a trans man. I had no idea until the moment of our interview. I have been working with Felix for years. It turned out to be the most powerful interview that I’ve had during this process.
Who better to speak to the redeeming aspects of masculinity than people who have had both experiences, the experience of being assigned female at birth and the experience of transitioning to life as a man. I write with Felix’s permission and with his eyes on these words. 
 

We need to grow. To stop growing is to start dying. But the quest for achievement is not always about growth. It often is about wanting to become whole. It can be fueled by the idea that we are somehow not enough, and that happiness can only be found at some point in the future, when we become worthy of it. This is wrong.