Episode Description: “For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.” – Margaret MeadIn my prior Dialogue 81 with my friend Angeles Arrien, leading cross-cultural anthropologist of our time, we gave examples of our collective ability to ignite and energize liberating transformational shifts – co-creating mutually empowering and sustaining event stories and planetary understandings through dialogue and cultivating an open-minded appreciation, curiosity, respect, and practicality. These examples of transformational “miracles” that have occurred in our time included the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, the freeing of Nelson Mandela and the end of apartheid in South Africa, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the elimination of other barriers that were assumed to be permanent polarizing aspects of our world.In this dialogue with Joseph Ellis, the “Founders’ historian”, I add the example of the evolutionary shift in planetary consciousness that has occurred in many aspects with the campaign of Barack Obama, and his election and Inauguration as President of the United States – an event celebrated throughout the world. Joe and I describe the “electro-magnetic field” that manifested and resulted in the unprecedented and miraculous gathering of over 2 million people (myself among them) on the Mall in Washington, D.C., without a single arrest or act of violence. We also put President Obama’s Inaugural Address in historical perspective, illuminating the links to ancestral heritage and present healings and inspiration, expressing the foundation for a realistic and practical hope for our future. In his own words: “What the cynics fail to understand it that the ground has shifted beneath them – that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply….We cannot help but believe that the old hatreds will someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that, as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself.”See also my prior Programs 38 and 39 on this site with Joseph Ellis -- in which our dialogue reveals new historical insights and perspective of Barack’s role during the campaign exemplifying the lineage of Washington, Lincoln, FDR, and JFK, in whose presidencies “out of the many we are one” was paramount.“Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation”™.Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ”. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)Among others, programs you will find of interest on these themes are my Dialogues on this site with Ted Sorensen, David Boren, David Mendell, and Angeles Arrien, among others [click on their name(s) in green on right hand column of the Living Dialogues Home Page on this site]. After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.

Episode Description: “For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.” – Margaret Mead After reading Barack Obama's two intimate autobiographies, “Dreams From My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope”, it came to me that our new President's personal life story telling his inner quest and outer challenges in his own voice so revealingly is itself a prototypical example of a new, 21st century, collaborative inner and outer initiation into a planetary consciousness beyond tribe and nation. This new larger self awareness goes further than the cultural comfort zone of our modern mind's historical individualistic, adolescent self-empowerment into the emerging mature co-creative and dialogue-based consciousness foreseen and portrayed in Living Dialogues since its inception. The combative stance of the argument culture (see Program 72 with Deborah Tannen) gives way to a dialogue consciousness opening to expanded possibilities of harmony and enrichment in facing the accelerating diversity, uncertainty, and changes of our life experience. This new template contains all the elements of the traditional Hero's Journey archetype across cultures so well described by Joseph Campbell in mid-20th century in his classic "Hero of a Thousand Faces" -- but goes further in uniting the best of the indigenous rites of passage and the modern mind's conceptual breakthroughs into a new collaborative midwifing I describe as our 21st century collective Heroes' Journey. While remaining responsible to show up on our own horse, we effectively “ride into the dark part of the forest” together on our larger Grail quest. From that perspective of what we can see reflected in Barack's life story, I invited my friend and consciousness work colleague Dr. Stanslav Grof (see also Program 30 on this site) to join me in a dialogic exploration of this idea, to contextualize and encourage you to read Barack's two autobiographies from this understanding as a contemporary exemplar of each of our journeys in this transformational time. "Together we can do anything." Yes We Can. In Part 1 (Program 83) of this Dialogue, I largely set out this template and perspective, with examples from Joseph Campbell's work and the self-described experiences of our fellow sojourner and planetary citizen named Barack ("blessed one") Obama. Stan and I dialogue together, elaborating this context, from Stan’s experience of transpersonal psychology and mine that "Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation". In Part 2 (Program 84) we go further in delving into the role of ritual and initiation, including vision quest in various forms of personal inner journey beyond our accustomed comfort zone and back into service to the larger community, local and global. We conclude by reprising the theme of my Dialogue 81 with Angeles Arrien on how we can go beyond our polarizing and depressing modern tendency to resist, pathologize, and dismiss our often emotionally intense experience of mystical belonging as something wrong and abnormal – to having “the audacity of hope”, able to recognize with gratitude such experience as having a profound, healing, reality and mythological resonance, connecting us to our ancestors and an alive and beneficent universe, in which we are all "blessed ones". (See, as an illustration, the last few paragraphs at the end of Part Two of “Dreams From My Father”.) "We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth….and we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself....For the world has changed, and we must change with it." -- Barack Obama Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009 See also my prior Program 30 with Stanislav Grof exploring in dialogue a selection of his own autobiographical experiences of transformations told in his book “When the Impossible Happens”.

“Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation”™.Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ”. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)

Among others, programs you will find of interest on these themes are my Dialogues on this site with Ted Sorensen, David Boren, David Mendell, Deborah Tannen, Angeles Arrien, and Joseph Ellis, among others [click on their name(s) in green on right hand column of the Living Dialogues Home Page on this site].

After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.

See the Description and Introduction to program 83 (Part 1 of this two Part Program).

Episode Description:“For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.” – Margaret MeadJoseph Campbell on the contemporary relevance to each of us anywhere on the planet of knowing and appreciating Heroes’ Journeys from different cultures (all of which are part of our human heritage), from the Introduction to the third edition of his “The Hero With a Thousand Faces”: “There are of course differences between the numerous mythologies and religions of mankind, but this is a book about similarities. And once these mythologies of human and collective development, focused on the hero, are understood, the differences will be found to be much less great than is popularly and politically supposed.My hope is that a comparative elucidation of these mythological stories, some of which have endured for thousands of years, may contribute to those forces that are working in the present world for unification, not in the name of some Ecclesiastical or political empire, but in the sense of human mutual understanding. As we are told in the ancient Vedas from India: Truth is one; the sages speak of it by many names.”“My name is Joseph Marshall, and I'm the author of “The Lakota Way”, and most recently “The Power of Four: Leadership Lessons of Crazy Horse”, and I've enjoyed this session with Duncan Campbell because it's more than an interview show; it's an opportunity to share insights with someone else who has views of the world, views of our culture and to examine more deeply the common things that bind us together, no matter who we are, and share insights from the past as well as the present, I appreciate that.And it all reminds me of Crazy Horse being in dialogue with his own community, with his own family, with his own people. No matter whatever the opportunity, or the time was good or bad, he was always talking with people one on one, sharing his insights and listening to other people, to their insights. Because he was a young man and he listened to his Elders and so he was having those dialogues all of his life, and all these dialogues that he had were really part of who he was as a leader. He was embodying the values that he had, certainly as a Lakota person. But he had the traits of humility and generosity as a leader as well. And dialogues are important, and that was important to him and it's absolutely important to all of us who want to be or have an opinion about leaders and being a leader; having a dialogue is critically necessary to all of us.” – Joseph M. Marshall IIIAs I said in the description of my prior dialogue with Stanislav Grof in Episode 83-84, which I entitled: Barack Obama and Our 21st Century Collective Heroes’ Journey: “This new template contains all the elements of the traditional Hero's Journey archetype across cultures so well described by Joseph Campbell in mid-20th century in his classic "The Hero With a Thousand Faces" -- but goes further in uniting the best of the indigenous rites of passage and the modern mind's conceptual breakthroughs into a new collaborative midwifing I describe as our 21st century collective Heroes' Journey. While remaining responsible to show up on our own horse, we effectively “ride into the dark part of the forest” together on our larger Grail quest.” "We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth….and we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself....For the world has changed, and we must change with it." -- Barack Obama Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009 In this 2-part Dialogue with Lakota historian, storyteller, craftsman, and educator Joseph M. Marshall III, we explore the universal heritage of the Hero’s Journey of Crazy Horse as an exemplary indigenous leader in the bridge period in mid-nineteenth century America when the Euroamerican culture battled the Native American culture. Our contemporary culture contains both influences as part of the American heritage – but the modern culture has until recently told this history from the distorted point of view of the “victor”, ignoring the traits of integrity, accountability, and generosity cultivated in tribal, village life as quaintly irrelevant to the culture of transnational corporate greed, commercialization, militarization, and endemic political lying and self-seeking that have come – until just these past few months – to be accepted as givens of our contemporary anonymous urban industrial culture. This dialogue is in some ways reminiscent of the early work of unification by writers such as Native American Ohiyesa (Charles Alexander Eastman) in “The Soul of an Indian”, and shows in this huge moment of 21st century transition how the very indigenous values that characterized Crazy Horse have relevance and can be reflected in our modern contemporary political transformations. As Joseph Marshall says in his introductory comments above – consonant with Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address -- dialogue plays a central role in this new “third consciousness” of unification going beyond prior polarizations and cultural limitations. And as I say continuously on Living Dialogues: “Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation”™.Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ”. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)

Among others, programs you will find of interest on these themes are my Dialogues on this site with Vine DeLoria, Jr., Michael Meade, Sobonfu Some, Ted Sorensen, David Boren, David Mendell, Deborah Tannen, Angeles Arrien, and Joseph Ellis, among others [click on their name(s) in green on right hand column of the Living Dialogues Home Page on this site].

After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.

See overall Description and introduction accompanying Episode 85 (Part 1 of this 2-Part Dialogue).

Episode Description: “For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.” – Margaret Mead“My fears were always internal: the old fears of not belonging.” – Barack Obama reflecting in the midst of his life’s journey, from a passage in his 1995 autobiography “Dreams From My Father”

"As high over the mountains the eagle spreads its wings, may your perspective be larger than the view from the foothills. When the way is flat and dull in times of gray endurance, may your imagination continue to evoke horizons." – John O’Donohue’s blessing “For One Who Holds Power” from his collection “To Bless the Space Between Us” – offered by Maryland’s Governor Martin O’Malley on January 17, 2009 to Barack Obama when he stopped in Baltimore to greet a crowd of well-wishers as he made his way to Washington, D.C. for his inauguration. __________________ John O'Donohue, the Irish poet, philosopher and spiritual writer, passed away in his sleep at the age of 52 on the cusp of January 3-4, 2008 (following the close of the historic Iowa caucuses in the U.S. presidential primary). John was one of the great voices of our time, in many ways. His spirit and energy, his easy laughter, endure, touching and reminding me of Rumi’s phrase “we all know the taste of pure water.” On this the 10th anniversary of our dialogues, the timeless relevance of what was evoked in and between us and the virtual deep listeners can now be heard in an immediate reference and amplitude greater than at the time of the recording. At the time John and I did these dialogues together in March 1999, there were a number of crises already brewing in the global petri dish of our end of the millennium consumerist market and political culture, characterized by socially widely-accepted greed, lying, manipulation, and reliance on force in the public sphere, and thus inevitably in the private sphere. This was a time that literally prepared the ground for the dying embers of the last millennium to flare into a perfect storm of armed conflict and economic destruction in the next ten years, which has in turn prepared the way for the coming into being of a possible regeneration beginning now as we enter a new political and market era in 2009. In this two-part dialogue, a prophetic Voice is heard called forth in many areas, which are now being seen by many as they were seen by few at the time. As John said to the audience in the evening on that day in 1999 in his rich Irish brogue: “Ah, this afternoon, Duncan and I had the faather and mother of all conversations!”Listening to it again now after 10 years, this exclamation – at once light-hearted and serious, as John could be so well – has also proven uncannily prophetic, as can be seen even from the following brief collage of excerpts from our dialogues: __________________ Duncan Campbell: Reading your most recent book, “Eternal Echoes”, John, I tell you was like balm for the soul….It is one of the most beautiful poetic prose books I’ve ever read. I felt a sense of belonging and longing to renew our communication from when we first met two years ago, in anticipation of this dialogue, and I think that kind of appreciation of the mystery illuminated by inner and outer dialogue really is at the heart of your book….In our “post modern era” [at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century, the end of the adolescent “modern” mind era, what some have called an “era between eras before a Second Renaissance”] many of us find ourselves often with this deep feeling of alienation of not belonging, of somehow not being embraced or understood by the culture around us, not finding a shelter that can take us in -- whether it be a relationship or a book by Meister Eckhart or Saint John of the Cross -- a place where we can be understood and deeply seen by another. And what we are looking for is a sense of dialogue, of responsive relationship, to feel not a lonely isolated echo coming back to us but something deeper from the mystery of our interconnectedness that confirms and reaffirms the reality of our experience. This desire for authentic dialogue is the same concept of echo that informs the title of your book. John O’Donohue. That’s very well articulated and described. Post-modern culture is kind of arrested. And there are hugely vital conversations that are just not taking place, ands one of them is a conversation that should be taking place between the custodians of the Christian tradition, and those who are seeking nakedly and desperately [and being repulsed or refused by those traditions]. Another conversation that’s not taking place, and the absence of this event really frightens and troubles me deeply because I think it’s going to have amazingly dangerous repercussions for us if we don’t begin it -- and that’s a conversation that’s not taking place between Christianity and Islam. When we think of Islam, we think fundamentalists. When they think of us, they think Western capitalists. And, I think there could be an immensely exciting conversation there between the beautiful symbolic mysticism and depth of theology in Islamic tradition and culture and our own kind of culture…. Duncan Campbell: We can see the coldness and mutual isolation as we look across the cultural landscape. Not only in America. But also Ireland, in India, in South America, in Asia, around the world. Our global landscape is now become littered with the lifeless souls, the “dead souls” of Gogol’s great phrase, of people who have become products themselves, in the thrall of unregulated transnational corporations. Who have been turned into targets for producers. Targets of consumerism...We had a man come through Boulder on book tour not long ago who specializes in childhood education, who told us about a young girl, nine years old, in the Mid-West, who answered his question at a previous stop on his tour: ‘What would you like to be when you grow up?’. And her answer was, ‘a consumer’.John O’Donohue: My goodness!Duncan Campbell: And so we really are in that mode. For instance, just this month (March 1999), Harvey Cox of the Harvard Divinity School wrote a brilliant article for the “Atlantic Monthly” about the Market, with a capital “M”, as “the new religion”. Many people don’t recognize it, but this is seen in the whole sense of the commodification of human experience, creating a certain kind of end of innocence that is taking the life from people rather than opening up deeper vistas….Instead of awakening people to the mystery, this “new religion of the Market” actually closes us down. It makes people more alienated. It makes them feel even more the hole in their soul, but not in an inspirational way. Instead of that yearning being directed to what you call “the sense of the great belonging”, the all embracing divinity that is ever present, it gets directed through the daily barrage of all-embracing advertising towards the market for Gap uniform-like clothing or to the local supermarket. It keeps our society functioning in a way, but it never ever gets satisfied, the desire for “more” continues, to try to fill that hole in the soul….John O’Donohue: And, I also think there’s a crisis of politics that has now become synonymous with economics and the crudest forms of strategy and one up-manship and “pragmatism”, and.. (Duncan interjects: “vulgarism”.) “Vulgarism”, yes. And I think this leaves us, you know? Leaves us with a flat landscape -- with no mountains in sight, and a total distrust of ideals. Because those who are supposed to be presenting those ideals have either betrayed them through their “pragmatism” -- and I’m not even talking about morality here -- or else, those who present the ideas are right-wing fundamentalists who seem singularly unburdened by any sense of complexity or uncertainty. And who present a cold exclusivist view which is inherently callous and naively nostalgic and very dangerous and destructive. And what’s missing is someone who can call us and invite us to ideals that call our deepest potential alive. Confront the negativity and the selfishness of our egoism. And somehow addresses what is gracious and elegant within us. So that we can inhabit the planet together in a way that is creative and good…I think everybody needs that and that happens naturally all the time, in friendship, and in partnerships between people that have not compromised and are still willing to grow. And that people actually come down below their own image into a depth with each other…where big thresholds can be crossed together.”__________________And so that “someone” who is missing turns out to be ourselves. To paraphrase Pogo: “We have met the redeemer and s/he is us.” We are the hero each of us of our own life’s adventure -- called to “engage our own kind of latent complexity and diversity, our own hidden divinity” -- and together we are the heroes of our “21st century collective heroes’ journey”. “We are the change we have been waiting for” – a phrase with many layers, much-maligned and mocked by those who do not hear that call.These dialogues with John call us over the span of a decade to the very contemporary experience and challenges of today as described in my Introduction to previous Dialogues 83 and 84 reprised below: After reading Barack Obama's two intimate autobiographies, “Dreams From My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope”, it came to me that our new President's personal life story telling his inner quest and outer challenges in his own voice so revealingly is itself a prototypical example of a new, 21st century, collaborative inner and outer initiation into a planetary consciousness beyond tribe and nation. This new larger self awareness goes further than the cultural comfort zone of our modern mind's historical individualistic, adolescent self-empowerment into the emerging mature co-creative and dialogue-based consciousness foreseen and portrayed in Living Dialogues since its inception.The combative stance of the argument culture (see Program 72 with Deborah Tannen) gives way to a dialogue consciousness opening to expanded possibilities of harmony and enrichment in facing the accelerating diversity, uncertainty, and changes of our life experience.

This new template contains all the elements of the traditional Hero's Journey archetype across cultures so well described by Joseph Campbell in mid-20th century in his classic "Hero With a Thousand Faces" -- but goes further in uniting the best of the indigenous rites of passage and the modern mind's conceptual breakthroughs into a new collaborative midwifing I describe as our 21st century collective Heroes' Journey. While remaining responsible to show up on our own horse, we effectively “ride into the dark part of the forest” together on our larger Grail quest."We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth….and we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself....For the world has changed, and we must change with it." -- Barack Obama Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009__________________ See also my prior Program 82 with Angeles Arrien where she quotes John O’Donohue’s poem Fluent in the context of the open and confidently courageous spirit of dialogue in these times of uncertainty and widespread anxiety and fear: “I would love to live / Like a river / Carried by the surprise / Of its own unfolding”.

“Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation”™ - Duncan CampbellContact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ”. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)

Among others, programs you will find of interest on these themes are my Dialogues on this site with Stanislav Grof, Angeles Arrien, Coleman Barks, Michael Meade, Sobonfu Some, Ted Sorensen, David Boren, David Mendell, Deborah Tannen, and Joseph Ellis, among others [click on their name(s) in green on right hand column of the Living Dialogues Home Page on this site].

After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.

See Description and introduction for Episode 87 (Part 1 of this 2-Part Dialogue)

Episode Description: “For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.” – Margaret Mead Brant Secunda: “Hi! I’m Brant Secunda, and I’m really happy to be here with Living Dialogues. I think that it’s so valuable for us to come together in dialogue and to speak together and to communicate about these things, which are so important. We think that the book Fit Soul, Fit Body helps to bring alive these valuable ideas that are important for us all. By being here with Living Dialogues I feel it’s really helpful, also, for myself. So thank you.”Mark Allen: “I’m Mark Allen, co-author of Fit Soul, Fit Body with Brant Secunda. Living Dialogues with Duncan is a true, beautiful experience to be with somebody who talks from the heart and gets people to talk from their heart as well. Through that we’re all touched deep in the soul. Not just in our minds, but deep in our soul, deep in our bodies. It touches the genetics of who we are as human beings, as two-leggeds on this planet. This is a rare opportunity to have a dialogue with another human being on that level.” In the description of my prior dialogue with Stanislav Grof in Episodes 83-84, which I entitled: “Barack Obama and Our 21st Century Collective Heroes’ Journey”, I observed: “This new template [the “third consciousness” arising from the Sacred Marriage of our primal indigenous and adolescent modern mind heritages] contains all the elements of the traditional Hero's Journey archetype across cultures so well described by Joseph Campbell in mid-20th century in his classic "The Hero With a Thousand Faces" -- but goes further in uniting the best of the indigenous rites of passage and the modern mind's conceptual breakthroughs into a new collaborative midwifing I sometimes describe as “our 21st century Collective Heroes' Journey”. While remaining responsible and accountable to show up on our own horse, we effectively “ride into the dark part of the forest” together on our now larger Grail quest.” In Dialogues 85 and 86 with Lakota historian Joseph M. Marshall III on the Contemporary Relevance of Leadership Lessons from the Hero’s Journey of Crazy Horse, we revealed the how the modern “conquering” Euroamerican culture in North America has ignored the traits of integrity, accountability, generosity, and attention to the welfare of the collective cultivated in traditional tribal, village life, as quaintly irrelevant in this Second Gilded Age to the culture of de facto unregulated corporate and personal greed (warned about by Abraham Lincoln prior to the First Gilded Age at the end of the nineteenth century ), commercialization, militarization, and endemic political lying and self-seeking that have now come – until just these past few months – to be accepted as necessary evils characterizing our modern anonymous urban industrial culture. The time is now upon us to share the best of our indigenous and modern mind gifts, teaching and learning from the best of both traditions and from each other all over the planet. The latest excellent example of this Sacred Marriage’s ability to bear healthy fruit and happy mind-body-soul union is the recently published best-seller Fit Soul, Fit Body. In this 2-part Dialogue (Episodes 89 and 90) American-born Huichol shaman and healer, Brant Secunda, and his twenty-year friend, student, and collaborator, American Mark Allen – six-time Ironman Triathlon champion – join with me in a trialogue journey of shared exploration, with intimate stories from our own experiences illustrating the profound relevance and potential applicability in our modern lives of ancient, timeless daily honorings of the naturally alive universe in which we all live. These daily honorings and celebrations, often punctuated with the transformative power of good-hearted teasing laughter, still occur in the human-nature landscape of intact indigenous cultures such as that of the Huichol Indians in the High Sierra Madre in Mexico. It was there that as a young man Brant Secunda encountered his teacher the 100 year old Don Jose. It was the image of these two shamans, Don Jose and his adopted grandson Brant Secunda, seen in a magazine, that came into the mind of Mark Allen at a critical point near the final end game of the 1989 Ironman Triathlon race in Hawaii – still regarded by many as the greatest Ironman race of all time – resulting in an unprecedented surge which enabled Mark, after six previous losses, to defeat the reigning multi-year champion and win the first of what would become his epic six straight victories in the annual Ironman competition. Mark had always been intimidated by the sheer power of the surrounding volcanic landscape in Hawaii, but from that first victory forward he resolved to work with Brant and has done so in beautiful collaboration since then, learning the ways and power and ability to dialogue with our fully alive conscious universe which is our home. And to be joyfully and comfortably at home in that home. So when at age 37, the oldest person to attempt to win a 6th straight Ironman Triathlon, Mark felt near the end that he had given his all and needed more energy to continue and keep up, he asked the land around him he had come to relate to as a brother for help, and once again was able to surge seemingly miraculously to the front and finished first ahead of a much younger and able competitor. In our “trialogue”, I observed that while other runners trained in terms of measured “times” and “splits”, Mark had learned to enter the timeless realm of appreciative soul and celebrating body, joyful together in their unity and sense of well-being even before the race ever began, as he described his later experiences. This is the relaxed sense of our common humanity that we can all share even as we race and compete, free of attachment to the outcome. The many life lessons that Brant and Mark have learned apart and then together over the last decades have been organized and communicated in this, their first book together, in a very accessible and informed manner. In my view, this book heralds a paradigm shift in the genre of self-help and self-empowerment teachings and books, by bringing together in story, in exercises, in instructions (including diet), the fruits of this archetypal collaboration of our time – that we are called to awaken to the creative potential of both our indigenous heritage and DNA and our modern mind, in the celebratory power of their shared union, so as to generate evolutionary change to keep pace with our continuously evolving universe. "We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth….and as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself....For the world has changed, and we must change with it." -- Barack Obama Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009 And as I often say on Living Dialogues: “Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation”™.Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ”. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)

Among others, programs you will find of particular interest on these themes are my Dialogues on this site with Vine DeLoria, Jr., Michael Meade, Angeles Arrien, Sobonfu Some, Andrew Weil, Larry Dossey, Ted Sorensen, Marc Bekoff, John Gray, David Mendell, Deborah Tannen, Michael Dowd, Duane Elgin, and Joseph M. Marshall III, among others [click on their name(s) in green on right hand column of the Living Dialogues Home Page on this site].

After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.

See Description and introduction for Episode 89 (Part 1 of this 2-part Dialogue).

Episode Description:“For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.” – Margaret Mead“I am Michael Beckwith, and it’s been my joy to be a part of Living Dialogues with my brother Duncan. Beautiful, and I appreciate the format and I appreciate your consciousness. I found it to not only be inspiring, but a continued regeneration of the soul. It is what’s happening now.” – Michael Beckwith, founder of the Agape International Spiritual Center and author of Spiritual Liberation: Fulfilling Your Soul’s Potential (with an Afterword by Robert Thurman – see Dialogue 59). From the beginning of Living Dialogues I have observed that we are all called to awaken to the creative potential and celebratory power of our true nature. We are meant to generate evolutionary change so as to keep pace with our continuously evolving universe. Another way I have expressed this is that our conscious, alive universe is permeated throughout with a self-revealing impulse that wants to express itself through us. This applies in all realms of inner and outer life, in our heartfelt dialogues within ourself and with the many realms, political, cultural, family, economic, and so on within which we live.In encountering each other, Michael Beckwith and I experienced ourselves from the beginning as brothers, whose similar views of life, arrived at independently, were those of “soul friends” (anam caras in John O’Donohue’s phrase – see Dialogues 87 and 88 and definition at the end of this description*). In the opening of our dialogue, I welcomed Michael as a powerful force for change, who combines – as we do in Living Dialogues -- spiritual, educational, scientific, governmental, economic, social, and political elements. He responded: “Duncan it is my joy to be with you to weigh in one the issues of the day, and to just speak from the heart with you”, and I continued in saying: “Beautiful, because that’s actually what we do here on Living Dialogues is speak from the heart, we weigh in on issues of the day, and we also talk about our deep consciousness and the importance of dialogue, both inner and outer”.And that is exactly what we did, allowing the dialogue to flow freely from the evocation of our own open, deep listening and that of yourselves. Whatever your background, you will find much of interest here on many topics, and enjoy the flow.*The Meaning of Anam Cara: Anam Cara refers to the Celtic spiritual belief of souls connecting and bonding. In Celtic spiritual tradition, it is believed that the soul radiates all about the physical body, what some refer to as an aura. When you connect with another person and become completely open and trusting with that individual, your two souls begin to flow together. Should such a deep bond be formed, it is said you have found an anam cara or “soul friend”.Your anam cara always accepts you as you truly are, holding you in beauty and light. In order to appreciate this relationship, you must first recognize your own inner light and beauty. This is not always easy to do. The Celts believed that forming an anam cara friendship would help you to awaken your awareness of your own nature and experience the joys of others.According to John O’Donohue, Irish poet, philosopher, and spiritual writer and author of Anam Cara – A Book of Celtic Wisdom: “We are joined in an ancient and eternal union with humanity that cuts across all barriers of time, convention, philosophy and definition. When you are blessed with an anam cara, the Irish believe, you have arrived at that most sacred place: home.”We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth…. and we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself....For the world has changed, and we must change with it…This is the source of our confidence – the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny. This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed – why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration…" -- Barack Obama Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009And as we say on Living Dialogues:“Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation”™.Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ”. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)

Among other heartful visionary conversations you will find of particular interest on these themes are my Dialogues on this site with John O’Donohue, Robert Thurman, Eckhart Tolle, Ted Sorensen, Stanislav Grof, Angeles Arrien, Sobonfu Some, Matthew Fox, David Mendell, Deborah Tannen, Gangaji, Caroline Myss, Michael Dowd, Duane Elgin, George Lakoff, and Joseph Ellis, among others [click on their name(s) in green on right hand column of the Living Dialogues Home Page on this site].

After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.