Blog Post

The last 9 months have been a dramatic shift in our social and economic structures, impacting our private and public lives in ways like we never experienced before. Cultural blindspots have been exposed everywhere, communal bonds are breaking under the weight of conflicts and increasing polarisation, families and deep friendships get divided over disagreements around political, ethical, and social values, or sometimes just over raw science or the way how to interpret it. This is the case for Covid-19 just as much as it is about global politics and ideas of justice.

I've stayed mostly silent about these issues and about the state of the boiling global community that is ready to burst and break into pieces any moment. Not because I don't have opinions on many of the issues being discussed, quite the opposite is true, but because I had a deep intuition that my contribution to this crisis won't be made through joining the polarized war of values and in-group-out-group culture by taking a side, but through diving deeper into the underlying processes that are driving the polarization. To create an offering based on my work around collective trauma, shadow, developmental psychology, and evolution of consciousness that has the potential to make a meaningful impact on the way we relate to ourselves, each other, and our developmental journey amidst this decisive global crisis.

My take on what is going on is that our global community is approaching a developmental tipping point of value systems and ways of responding to more and more complex challenges and rising uncertainty. The nature of developmental paradigm shifts, individually and collectively, is that they happen through crisis, because of crisis, not before. Here the inadequacy of the old values and strategies for addressing the rising complexity becomes brutally apparent. Now it’s developmental and cultural D-Day: breakthrough or breakdown. Without insight, courage, consciousness, and a deep sense of trust and safety, the breakdown is unavoidable, as a breakthrough into a higher order of values, consciousness, and complexity requires us to step into the unknown, into the darkness, and surrender to the truth that we actually don’t know what’s waitng on the other side. It literally requires us to face death, to let our old sense of self die, together with our old answers and our old knowing, to enter the dark kosmic womb of evolution and rebirth on the other side. This step, time and time again, is fucking scary, individually and collectively, and demands all our resources, trust, and commitment. We’ve gone through this many times, we can do it again, we will do it again, and it is not comfortable. It will take everything we have, everything we are attached to keeping. To collectively enter this process we need to develop a new relationship to safety, generating it inside instead of looking for it on the outside, we need to deal with our collective trauma, and we need to face our cultural shadows.

Another thing that is going on in parallel, which is very much related to this, is that we are in a deep crisis of sense-making. We have withdrawn so far down into the cave of survival, that we lost the ancient art of dialectics that has single-handedly fueled our cultural enlightenment in the past: actively looking for thesis and antithesis, engaging in dialog, and finding the synthesis on a higher dimensional order, by simply holding the contradictions and being deeply humble and curious, actively engaging to disprove our very own convictions. Instead, our fears drive us into more and more polarization, seduce us into joining an in-group and engage in a righteous war over the sovereignty of truth, rather than collectively exploring the unknown and joining forces towards more inclusion, a sustainable ecology, and a deeper understanding of the whole inner and outer Kosmos.

So for me, the crisis we are in is a massive opportunity, a necessary step towards growth. An opportunity to slow down, stop the automatic reactive patterns, take a deep breath, and pay attention to what is really going on. To start doing our work deeper than ever before, integrate our fragmentation into a more whole sense of self, and really show up. For our brothers and sisters, our communities, our ecosystems, and the whole planetary ecology as one living organism. It is indeed the moment of truth for a mass awakening into self-responsibility, and a call to collectively grow up, to start listening to the stirring of the planetary soul that is waiting to descend into our bodies and fill us with purpose, power, and guidance.

I’ve spent the last 9 months connecting the dots between the work I do with individuals around trauma, shadow, and intimacy, the work I do with organizations around leadership, purpose, and self-management, and my passion for developmental psychology, culture, transformation, systems theory, and integral theory. What has been birthed through this slow-cooking process is what feels like my personal contribution to this sacred moment in our collective journey: a 12-week long online masterclass that is a total synthesis of everything my work touches and everything I care about. A combination of insights, resources, and tools to support everyone who is willing to consciously engage with their developmental journey, ignite their inner leadership, and become an agent of change in this world. A guide through the crisis for the global community.

This masterclass integrates embodiment, a deep understanding of safety, basics of interpersonal neurobiology, trauma awareness, shadow work, authentic relating, the wisdom of desire, deep intimacy, community, sense-making, dialectics, culture, integral transformation, leadership, co-creation, mindfulness, and purpose work into a coherent, community-based, interactive and vulnerable learning experience. In these 12 weeks of diving deep, I want to support courageous pioneers to become part of our collective transition into a future where intimacy, community, and trust replace money, status, and material goods as the most important currencies. Where power is directly connected to commitment, devotion, insight, competency, integrity, and purpose. Where conflicts and contradictions are acknowledged and celebrated as the most precious sources of growth, evolution, and renewal. Pioneers who contribute to increasing our collective currency of consciousness, insight, and safety, so we can together make the breakthrough possible, instead of regressing into separation and polarization as the result of a global breakdown.

If you want to step out of the dynamic of fear, despair, and mass hysteria to take a deep breath, slow down, and take responsibility for your journey of growth, consider joining me on this adventure.

In case this message resonates with you, and you know others who are ready for this step, I’d be deeply honored and grateful for your support in sharing this invitation with the right people.