In a social media world that vacillates between endless positivity and bottomless outrage, I hesitate to share my recent reflections on mortality.

If you’ve known me for a while, you know that I’m a bright side of life type of guy. This has not changed. I make it a point to see goodness, seek beauty and cultivate joy.

I also grew up Catholic (no longer practicing). And yesterday was Ash Wednesday. This year’s beginning of Lent coincides with my more recent contemplations of our finitude. Of the irrevocable fact that our lives end. Sometimes tragically, and unexpectedly.

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We are coming to the last part of our Six Week Cycle. We are expanding our circle of compassion, to include the whole of this ailing and beautiful world.

How do we open our hearts during the Sixth Great Extinction?

We are ancestors in training. This is what our descendants need.

All right action moves from this place.

Know and trust that you can do this practice. You are held. You are not alone. And it is always, always best to face what is actual and true.

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What are you doing on the Winter Solstice?

We can get so caught up in the rush, excitement, and yes, consumerism, of the Holiday Season that we might forget that there is a perfect night when we get to dance gently with our star.

You know I’m keen on remembering ancestors. I am grateful for the ways in which they made effort to transmit the most important things that they thought we should remember.

Before there was religion, before writing and the internet, we human beings used ritual to teach what is most important.

The main point of this note is to invite you to think ahead to December 21, and make yourself a little Winter Solstice plan. Find a way to honor this movement among the stars. Do something simple that connects you to this practice that we’ve been doing together since the early days of time.

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I trust you are deepening your practice of courage and compassion.

I know that some of you are not receiving the daily texts.

Here I am including instructions for weeks 3 and 4, in case you find them helpful.

We are growing our circle of compassion. We are expanding our heart’s alchemy beyond our own selves to include the hurt of those we love.

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We live in times of both hope and turmoil.

How do you face everything and avoid nothing?

Let’s practice together.

This Saturday, November 20, we launch Six Weeks of Tonglen. A practice of courage and compassion.

It would be great to see your face at 9:30AM East on Saturday, November 20, just for an hour. But please know that you are welcome to practice with us even if you can’t make it on Saturday.

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I’m inviting you into a practice designed to overcome our own fear and suffering. A method for awakening our own compassion even in the hardest of times. We are calling it “Six Weeks of Tonglen.” We will each practice individually, for at least six minutes every day. And we will all come together as a group, once a week for six weeks..

I’ll show you how to do it!

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I was interviewed by the Psychedelics Today Podcast. It is a little scary to be speaking so openly about this work. But we are in the midst of a psychedelic renaissance, and I find it important to share some of what I’ve learned.

I am thrilled that we are reclaiming such powerful gifts for individual healing. But I think we are missing half the coin. Our ancestors did these practices together, held in sacred ceremony.

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I was recently interviewed by Psychedelics Today. The podcast will come out in a couple of weeks. So I want to prime you with some of my thoughts on this Psychedelic Renaissance. It is an exciting time. And it’s not just about Silicon Valley entrepreneurs microdosing their way into greater productivity.

We are opening new doorways to profound and lasting healing. We are becoming aware of pathways to deal with anxiety, treatment-resistant depression, all sorts of trauma and even end of life care.

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I have devoted my professional life to building networks of leaders. These are leaders who are already passionate about what they do. Committed people. Skilled and brilliant. My job is to bring them together and help them turn towards the power of their collective intelligence. The work hinges on the depth of authentic relationships that these leaders build with one another.

The idea is to help them re-connect with their own sense of meaning and purpose. We want these leaders to access their interior resources, connect with one another, and become better able to turn towards the challenges of our time. Becoming a network gives them a greater sense of what it takes to thrive in times of VUCA - volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.

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We have a complicated relationship with hierarchy. We tend to think they are a form of oppression. But there is an important distinction between dominant hierarchies and “nested” or developmental hierarchies. We learn things. We grow. We get better at doing the things that we practice.

We go from not knowing, to novice, to apprentice to master. This does not mean we exert dominance over anyone. But it does mean that we have ascended up a developmental hierarchy.

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