Paradigm shifts occur when we face persistent problems that we are incapable of solving, or when things happen that should not be possible.
Many of us have experienced both of these. And many of us have discovered some piece of the puzzle that can open up new possibilities for the world.
Historically the work of shifting paradigms has never been supported from inside the existing paradigm. The dominant paradigm doesn’t see the one that is coming even if some of the people inside it do.
Paradigm shifts are generated by circles of pioneers who start to see the same possibility together. These groups incubate new possibilities, develop them, and ultimately share them with the wider world.
A new paradigm is being developed on this planet and it has been for many years.
In this series of recorded lectures you will explore some of the most original contemporary voices of the new paradigm.
These presentations were recorded over one year as part of a program that I ran for visionary thinkers and paradigm shifters. The program was called The Breakthrough Intensive and I wanted that program to be intellectually rigorous enough to challenge us to think deeply and creatively about some of the foundational ideas of the paradigm that is emerging.
The program was an unparalleled success and the lectures that emerged from it have all been gathered together here with summary notes that support your learning and contemplation.
Many of us have graduated to a place where a new kind of course offering is needed – you can think of this lecture series as a graduate level course for the soul.
Over years of study I have found that what many are calling ‘The New Paradigm’ has a long history. At the very least it is a few hundred years old.
A different understanding of reality had already begun to shine through the poetry, art and philosophy of 18th and 19th century Romantics.
These creative spirits understood that we are participants in an inherently creative process. They embraced the mysterious and the unknowable aspects of reality as well as rational and comprehensible parts.
New visions of life also emerged in Charles Darwin’s recognition of the continuity of species, in the spiritual systems of Theosophy and Anthroposophy, in the work of William James and the American Pragmatists, and more recently in the new physics of Relativity and Quantum Theory.
The work of Carl Jung, Alfred North Whitehead, Peirre Teilhard de Chardin, Sri Aurobindo and many others offer unique expressions of a new reality.
And new paradigm thinking inspired the birth of the literary movement of the American Transcendentalists that included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Margaret Fuller.
In Paris in the 1920’s artists and writers including: Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Salvador Dali continued the revolution in thought.
New York City in the 1940’s and 50’s produced another circle of poets and artists like William Carlos Williams, Barbara Guest, Jackson Pollock, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsburg who fueled the counterculture of the 1960’s and beyond.
Those of us who are inspired to give birth to a new paradigm today are continuing this work.
This lecture series is an invitation to explore some of the most exciting ideas currently being developed so that you are better able to take part in writing the next chapter of the story of a New Paradigm.
The psychospiritual educational model that inspires me is the Mystery Schools of ancient Greece. Plato had an Academy. Aristotle started the Lyceum. Plotinus, Zeno, Epicurus, and many others all had their own schools.
These schools offered much more than knowledge. They were inspired by visions of reality and possibility, and they were dedicated to giving people a lived experience of those visions.
In these lectures you will certainly find new ideas, but you will also engage with those ideas in practices and inquiries that explore new perspectives and new perceptions of reality.
Like the participants in the great Mystery Schools of Ancient Greece you will learn to think, feel and act differently. The intention for this lecture series is to support you to move into a different reality and explore what life can be from there.
The new paradigm needs ambassadors.
To develop and expand a paradigm we must be able to articulate and express it effectively. This means that some of us need to become deeply fluent in a new way of being so that we can express it and share it with others.
Take a Journey of Discovery...
Over a number of years I have identified some of the most exciting contemporary books that illuminate different aspects of the New Paradigm. In this lecture series you will be taken through these books, each one opening a new window of possibility in your heart, mind and soul. You will move into the ideas found in each book and explore them from the inside out so you will not only understand them, you will also see the profound implications for human life that they contain.
I am very excited to invite you to join me on this journey.