The form of our significant relationships, the roles and purposes we have for being with each other, often have a beginning, middle and end.  In a world where so many couples now choose to separate before “death do us part,” we must learn how to consciously evolve our way of transitioning our unions, moving graciously from communion back to autonomy with integrity and honor.

How can our relationships end with love, kindness and healing?
How can we honor all that we have shared and use the change to bring momentum into our lives?

Join Patricia Albere as she discusses with Katherine Woodward Thomas her powerful and practical knowledge that empowers people to bring love and effectiveness to something we all struggle with.

Katherine Woodward Thomas

Katherine Woodward Thomas is a national bestselling author of CALLING IN THE ONE: 7 Weeks to Attract the Love Of Your Life and creator and lead coach of the highly acclaimed Calling in “The One” 7- week transformative process. She is also a licensed psychotherapist, public speaker and the co-creator and co-leader of the Feminine Power courses and the Feminine Power Global Community, a thriving learning community serving thousands of women worldwide. Katherine is the founding director of The Rosewood Center for the Healing Arts & Lifelong Learning, which is dedicated to the evolution and advancement of loving and harmonious relations between all living beings, located in Los Angeles.

Katherine possesses a deep commitment to personal and planetary transformation that began with her own spiritual awakening at the age of 14, when she wholeheartedly devoted herself to the evolution of love in the world. For the past five years, since the release of Calling in “The One,” Katherine has worked with thousands of students throughout the world who have actively participated in the live and virtual transformative learning community she has co-created along with her teaching partner, transformative educator, Claire Zammit.

Katherine has appeared nationally on The Today Show and The Morning Show, as well as hundreds of local television and radio news and talk shows throughout the country. Her work has been written about in The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, Cosmopolitan, Ladies Home Journal and more.

She is also working on her forthcoming book, Feminine Power: Awakening to the Creative Force of Life (co-authored with Claire Zammit, and foreword written by Michael Beckwith).

Reblogged from Evolutionary Philosophy:

Over my last couple of posts I have been writing some thoughts about our sense of self. One way to think about our sense of self is to see that it is formed by a self-border – a line that separates our psyche into the ‘me’ and the ‘not me.’ On the outside of the boarder are thoughts that we recognize to be just thoughts. On the inside of the border are thoughts that we experience as ‘my’ thoughts or ‘me thinking.’ Those thoughts that exist on the inside of the self boundary appear to tell …

There are people in my life that I have been close to that I hoped I would never be separated from; and others, where the pain we inflicted on each other and ourselves made me want to disconnect in every way.  I’m sure you  know that awful sense of being in a Chinese finger pull with someone – the harder you try to get away the more stuck you are.

In quantum physics, Niels Bohr discovered that once subatomic particles have been connected, they can be separated by any amount of time and distance and they continue to affect each other.  No force or energy needs to be present.  It’s called non-locality or ‘entanglement’.   They ‘talk to each other’ and influence each other forever.

My gut tells me that the same applies to us.  We are made of subatomic particles.  When I read this it helped me understand the longing to never be separated, from a much deeper place, and it was reassuring to my doubting mind – that even in death, the connections never end and we continue on, together.

It can also have a sobering effect to realize that no matter how angry or hurt we might be in a relationship that has ended, that the relationship hasn’t ended and never will.  The forms change but to continue to learn and forgive and find a way to maintain our relatedness in peace is incumbent upon us.  It makes certain spiritual teachings about karma and the ‘golden rule’ really sink in.

Having recently ended a 4-year relationship with my fiance, I’m deeply grateful for our capacity to stay in the truth, the truth of the love and connection we have, and the truth of our life journey together looking differently than we had hoped.  I love him, and I continue to feel his love for me, and our mutual acceptance and enthusiastic support of each others’ lives.

I feel my mother and profoundly significant beloved, both whom are no longer in the this world.  The more I open my field of awareness to subtler realms, the more clarity and joy I feel, instead of sadness and loss.

If we are together forever, then how much more consciously do we need to care for our relationships?  There is no where to go and we will touch each other always.

Katherine Woodward Thomas and I will be speaking about this topic on Wednesday, February 1st.  She is a brilliant author and teacher and has an extensive amount of practical, inspiring information to help us all take on this aspect of our love for each other.

Listen in here: http://www.evolutionarycollective.com/content/events/2012/happy-after-conscious-uncoupling/

Why are they coming? I would like to think that it is in part because of their faith in me and Patricia Albere to be able to create and guide a powerful, open, uplifting and supportive evolutionary field. And I am sure that is part of it, but there is more.

People are coming because they belief in the ideal that this work is based on. That ideal is rooted in the belief that those of us who have worked on ourselves for years can grow and develop in extraordinary ways by coming together in a spirit of open-hearted sincere commitment to creating something extraordinary together. What we are going to create is a new model for human relatedness – one rooted in a mutual commitment to each other’s highest possibilities.

They are coming for the same reason that I am – because I know that it is time and I know that we are ready. Ready to act in unison, ready to drop separation, ready to step through the boundaries that stand between us and enter into the intensely real intimacy of mutual love for the ultimate.

We often feel embarrassed for wanting it all – for wanting life to be deeply, supremely and magnificently meaningful and fulfilling. Who are we to imagine that such a life is possible? I have to earn a living. I have responsibilities. Life is hard. Life is full of sorrow. I have no right to demand fulfillment – and even if I did I would be a fool to imagine that I could. Even worse if I ever tell someone that I believe the ultimate is possible I would look like a fool.

In the Evolutionary Collective you don’t have to hide your aspiration for the ultimate – in fact you can celebrate it!  You want a life that makes sense. When you die. When you know that your time on this Earth is over. You should be able to relax and let go and know that you have no regrets because you attempted the biggest thing possible, for the best possible reasons, to your absolute greatest ability. Why would anyone want anything less?

In the work of the Evolutionary Collective Patricia Albere and I are committed to holding nothing less than this ideal – the biggest possible aspirations, for the best possible reasons, to the greatest of our individual and collective abilities. People are coming from all over the world to join us because they have faith in our commitment and our ability to hold these ideals. But much more importantly, they are coming because they believe in these ideals themselves and probably always have.  Join Us!

Imagine coming together regularly with people who are highly developed, intelligent, informed and deeply committed to individual and collective transformation. How would your life be impacted by being part of such a group?

If you have ever longed to be able to spend more time with people who share your values, your passions and your worldview – and who want to develop relationships rooted in a mutual commitment to inspire greatness in each other – then please join the Evolutionary Collective Orientation Intensive in New York City on February 3, 4 and 5.

The Evolutionary Collective is a forum built on a deep mutual commitment to change.

Nothing changes in this world without commitment. Commitment is what fuels growth. Any change that happens personally, organizationally, nationally or globally occurs because someone or some group was committed to it.

When I started working with Patricia Albere the first thing I realized was that she understood that commitment is essential to growth. She wasn’t interested in quick fixes or flashes of insight. She, like me, was interested in the kind of authentic transformation that only comes through dynamic and committed relationships over time. And that is why I wanted to teach with her.

The Evolutionary Collective works in the relational space that always exists between us. 

Patricia also recognizes the inherent limitation of individual development on its own. We all exist within a relational field full of shared expectations, possibilities and limitations. When you enter into the Evolutionary Collective you experience an updraft of positivity and inspiration. In this work we have created a relational field that pulls the best out of everyone and makes each of us want nothing more than to give our best.

The Evolutionary Collective is an extraordinary gathering of highly developed people who want their own transformation to serve each other and ultimately the future of humanity.  They are inspired individuals who are ready to step into a new arena of growth and engagement with others.

Patricia and I bring decades of experience in facilitating individual and collective development to this transformational community. We are committed to teaching mastery –mastery in inter-personal and trans-personal growth, and mastery in engaging together in an atmosphere of transparency, intimacy, and authenticity.

The Evolutionary Collective is an engine for personal and inter-subjective growth.

I am very proud of the work that Patricia and I are doing with the Evolutionary Collective because it is based on the only formula I know of that really leads to profound, deep and lasting change. That formula is bringing together individuals who are dedicated to their own and each other’s evolution in a committed partnership with the shared intention of realizing the highest possibilities for everyone.

Patricia brings with her a deep knowledge of leading edge transformational technologies including; over a decade of dedicated work with Werner Erhard and the EST training (now the Landmark Forum), and another decade mastering the Enneagram system. All of this within a forty year career working with hundreds of thousands of people in the realm of human potential.

I have spent two decades with EnlightenNext at the heart of one of the longest lasting and most globally connected evolutionary communities I know of. I have developed mastery of the principles and practices of Evolutionary Enlightenment and have been a principle architect and leader of the EnlightenNext global community.

Patricia and I are putting all of our experience at the service of the Evolutionary Collective and inviting you to do the same. Bring all of your development and your experience and use it to generate change for yourself and for the new spiritual compatriots that you will find. This generosity of spirit and shared commitment has its own transformative energy and it is exactly what fuels the phenomenal growth that people experience in this forum.

Too often we find that our higher possibilities and potentials are suppressed by the people around us. We feel we have to ignore them in order to fit in. In the Evolutionary Collective we find exactly the opposite. We discover higher possibilities within us that we didn’t even know we had rising to the surface. It is like a transformative anti-gravity field with an ever-upward drift.

In this field we engage beyond the traditional student/teacher paradigm. The field continues to be facilitated, guided and supported and yet now the growth opportunities emerge spontaneously from the deepest insights and realizations of everyone. We have become a self-generating engine of higher potential.

If as you read this your heart beats a little faster, or the hair prickles on your neck – or if it just makes profound sense – then the Evolutionary Collective might be calling you.

Join Patricia and me in New York on February 3, 4, and 5. During these three days you will experience the power of this work, meet the incredible people that are involved, and find out if this is the evolving community that you have been looking for. The weekend itself will be life-altering and if you find that it is everything you have been looking for and more you will be eligible to apply for acceptance into our yearlong program.

Register Here

“We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools.  We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.  And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.  For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.  This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.”            Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

How many times have you experienced meeting someone, felt a deep connection, chemistry that was inspiring and real – kind of like an amazing first date – where, of course, the possibilities between you will be further explored?

Then, no follow up, no call, no commitment to what was discovered and even what was said?  A kind of spiritual promiscuity and amnesia…  In our post-modern world we have been that way sexually, in our marriages, in many areas of life, justifying it with ‘going with the flow’,  ‘following our bliss’ and ‘being in the moment’.  Listening deeply to what is real and where the path of your destiny lies is important, deeply important.  But there’s something that’s been added that we need to pay attention to.  There a built in justification for not realizing the influence we are having on each other and on our own integrity.  I notice, that I have to recover from those interactions and it takes real work to continue to be open and resilient – loving and willing to engage.  It’s disheartening and energetically exhausting.   I don’t see it as an individual character flaw – but rather culturally a place where we need to grow up together.

Remember a time when you were trying to do something that was hard for you, something that really mattered but it was a risk, and where you could easily give up.  See if you can remember one person who really showed up for you, believed in you and took actions that genuinely gave energy and momentum to what you were doing?  It can mean everything at the right moment – change destiny.  It’s profound how our real love and support influences each other.  We affect each other – we are “tied together in a single garment of destiny” – we need each other to move to the next level.  There’s no way around it – thank God..

I know that we cherish our freedom – the freedom to do whatever we want to do and the freedom to not recognize the influence and impact we are having.  Can we expand and include our love for each other, our profound connectedness, and be more thoughtful, sensitive and considerate?  Can we grow into the power and influence we have?  The kind of destiny and vision I’m interested in isn’t something I can create by myself, for myself anymore.  A greater vision that unfolds into the unknown has to include others who are not only inspired but committed to themselves, the vision and each other.

With love and appreciation always,

Patricia

There is one type of of thought, which involves thoughts that appear to just come to us out of nowhere. These thoughts we commonly refer to as random thoughts or inspirations. When we speak of these we usually say that we ‘have a thought.’ There is another activity of thought that we relate to as us talking to ourselves. When we speak of these thought we usually say that we are ‘thinking.’ In this case we make statements that start ‘I think…’ Simply put, the distinction is between ‘thoughts’ and ‘me thinking.’

To contemplate the distinction that I am making more deeply lets use an example. Let’s say that you need to have dinner and the idea of Mexican food crosses your mind – maybe in the form of an image of a plate of tacos, or maybe as the sentence “I could have Mexican food.” There will be times that you will relate to this as just a random thought – a thought that comes to mind and should be considered. On the basis of the arising of this thought you might decide to, or decide not to, go out for Mexican food.

If that same thought comes in a different form – perhaps accompanied by a feeling sense of desire – you might not relate to it as a random thought to be considered, but rather as a description of yourself.  In this form the thought might take the form “I want Mexican food.” The appearance of the thought of Mexican food in this form will probably result in your going out for Mexican food.

Consider these two thoughts, “I could have Mexican food.” vs. “I want Mexican food.” The second is much more laden with identity. It is infused with selfhood. The first one we simply relate to as a thought to be considered. The second one we relate to as a statement about ourselves, from ourselves, telling us who we are. If you examine how we construct our sense of self you will find that it is constructed with thoughts just like, “I want Mexican food.” “I am a mother.” “I am a good person.” “I am a person who does this and not that.”…. and on and on and on. Our self is constructed by a never-ending string of conclusions that appear in our minds as statements directed toward us telling us who we are and who we are not. They are statements of limitation.  I am this and not that. I do this and not that. This never ending set of conclusions draws a boundary around who we are and who we are not.

When we look closely we see that these ideas are just ideas like all other ideas. They are just a collection of ideas about who we are and they may be right or wrong, but in themselves they are just ideas and they do not dictate who we are or what is real.

This realization is part of the dawning of enlightenment. It is the realization that there is a whole classification of thought that we have unknowingly and blindly accepted as accurate descriptions of who we are. This is what spiritual ignorance is – the unconscious belief that a certain set of unexamined ideas defines the limit of who we are.

When we make this discovery we experience the freedom of no-limitation. It isn’t that we replace these ideas with some new idea about who we are. We simply realize that we don’t know who we are. And because we don’t know who we are, we could be anyone. The dawning of enlightenment is the experience of unlimited potential.

In any group of individuals, be it as small as a couple or as large as a nation, there exists what we could call a relational field. This field consists of the conscious and unconscious shared agreements held by the members of that group and a common language used to communicate together. These agreements and the language they exist within dictate what ways of being are possible and allowable in that space. To an extent much greater than we realize the relational field that we exist within governs the ways we think, feel and act as individuals.

Many of us have made the heroic effort to transform ourselves as individuals only to find that there is only so much room for growth within the relational spaces that we occupy. We can only become so different before the relational space and those that we share it pushes back on us.

The Evolutionary Collective is building a different kind of relational space. It is a space that invites and promotes growth and novelty. In this space a new way of evolving together is being explored that could be called Improvisational Transformative Poetics.

It is improvisational because the growth that occurs is not managed according to any preconceived plan of development. There is no specific teaching and no exclusive authority held by any individual. There are certainly areas of expertise held by different members of the group, but there is a free-floating respect for authority, as the work of the group requires the perspective of different individuals with different areas of expertise. In this way the form of the work is built collectively through authentic responses to the needs and demands of each moment in the same way that a jazz band or a theater group will improvise a performance by building it one response after the next.

The ultimate goal of this work is the transformation and advancement of the relational space and the subsequent development of the individual lives of the members. The shared intention of everyone is to optimize the creative evolutionary potential of the space between them and to abide in that space together for the benefit of all. In this way each individual finds his or her awareness lifted into expanded and subtler perceptions that illuminate and manifest new ways of being. In this work we do not modify our behavior as much as we witness our own transformation in the form of spontaneous changes that show up in the way that we are.

The nature of this work is poetic in that it is always aimed at that which lies beyond what can be known exactly. This group in its unique way is leaning toward the next stage of human consciousness – a stage that is yet to be realized and cannot be fully known or captured in any existing language. For this reason we give ourselves poetic license to explore and create ways to communicate and practice what we discover together. There is an emphasis on results that manifest real change and at the same time there is room to discover new methods and new pathways that will lead to change. A great poet’s words contain an intentional ambiguity because he or she is pointing beyond the words to something that could never be fully captured in words. In the same way the Evolutionary Collective leaves a degree of fluidity in concepts and definitions in order to leave room for the novel, the unexpected and the miraculous.

The Evolutionary Collective is dedicated to generating a beautiful and spacious field of relatedness that is simultaneously open and focused, flowing and driven. The results are profound and many who enter into this work transform dramatically in this powerful space of relatedness.

Let’s start this inquiry by thinking about our identity – our self-concept. Think of your name. What does that name stand for? It stands for you. It is a word that stands for the person that you are — the person who was born on your birthday, has lived your life, currently experiences him/herself as you and will die on the day that you die.

In the great mystical traditions it has commonly been said that spiritual ignorance is a result of misplaced identity. In other words, we have wrongly identified ourselves with what is often referred to as a small ‘s’ self and not the large ‘S’ Self that we truly are. But what does this mean?

To understand what this means we should start by looking closely into how we identify ourselves in the first place — go ahead, find yourself. The first place you will look might be your body. You will look at your body in the mirror and say this body is me. Of course it is not. It is your body, but you are not the body, you are the one who has that body. You might then look at your history and say this history is me – I am the life that I have lived. Again if you look closely it may be your life and your history, but that life and that history is not you. You are the one that has that life and that history.

If you keep going this way – examining all of the things that you might identify with you will find that in each case what might at first appear to be you, or at least an aspect of you, is not. In the end you will find that they all morph into just another object that you have and you are always the one who has them. If you keep doing this you will discover a sense of frustration as you realize that trying to find yourself is like trying to see the corner of your own eye. Every time you try to look for it, it moves away from your gaze.  Your identity – your self – is like a greased pig; every time you seem to have it in hand it slips away.

In some schools of enlightened mysticism exercises of this type are called ‘pointing out’ exercises because by using them you keep pointing out that you are not what you think you are. If done over and over again these exercises can lead to an experience of awakening – you give up trying to find yourself and you realize that you do not exist as an object that can be seen. You recognize that you are pure subject without substance. In certain mystical schools this is called the experience of no-self, or emptiness. Those who are lucky enough to experience this kind of emptiness will discover a profound liberation. They will see that they are not a limited entity bounded by a body, history and a set of behaviors. You are not a thing in the way that a table, a rabbit or even a body is a thing.

The relief experienced in this realization is so dramatic that it will bring you to tears. It will take the world that you have known and flip it upside down and shake it all loose. It is like you have been wearing a heavy metal straight jacket since the day you were born and it finally fell off. You see that you are full of ideas about who  you are, about what you can and can not do, who you should and should not be. You discover that you have never made an authentic choice in your life because you had been acting out a script dictated to you by the ideas that you had about yourself. You will realize that you had never achieved true autonomous selfhood because you had simply been a self-concept propagating through time and space. You may in that moment look at your life and see that it looks like someone else’s. As you scan through your history it will be clear that although it had always seemed that you were making choices about what you wanted to do and who you wanted to be, in actuality it was only ideas about yourself acting themselves out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk5GLqf1LXw

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