You have one of those friends where as soon as you open your mouths or sit down with each other you just go deep?
That, my friends, is Michael Stern for me.
With this month’s theme being about integration and maturity — the evolutionary draw towards social-spiritual maturity, and how that naturally moves us away from black and white approaches to… everything, and towards a more integrated, integral view and approach to the world — I knew he was who I wanted to talk to.
Michael Stern is on a mission to help humanity navigate The Great Transition and create The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible. He believes the key is to integrate evolutionary spirituality, relational coherence, and regenerative systems. He attempts to do that through being a father, partner, meditator, coach, facilitator, event organizer, and community builder.
In this conversation, we explore what the Great Transition is — one of the many meta-narratives used to make sense of the times we live in — and what it asks of us, in practice, as everyday people. Michael shares his vision of a "trans-lineage planetary spirituality" — the possibility of weaving humanity's wisdom traditions into something genuinely new — and why re-centering the sacred is at the heart of the big challenges we face.
We zoom out into big picture thinking, exploring things like healing collective bodies and why a transformation of consciousness may be our best chance to navigate all that’s going. And then we bring it down to Earth by getting personal: what does this initiatory threshold we're crossing as a species mean for the nuts and bolts of our daily lives? What does it mean for him, personally? Questions like: Where to live? How to invest? Healing childhood wounds? Raising a family?
Here are some quotes from our conversation:
"If we think of religions like languages — one language is not better or worse than another, but languages reveal different things about what it means to be human. Now we're living at a time where all of those streams are converging."
"I'm in a phase of strengthening the vessel — getting my home life in order, doing my therapy, healing those early childhood wounds, to be a channel for all of the goodness to come through me that I sense is possible."
"How does leveraging or investing in a kind of transformation of consciousness give us the best chance to navigate this great transition skillfully and successfully — to steward that process in a positive direction?"
00:00 — Welcome to this conversation with Michael Stern
01:02 - Defining the "Great Transition" and its various names
02:17 - The meta crisis and our unprecedented acceleration of change
05:12 — "The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed" — the spectrum from collapse to breakthrough
07:13 - Leveraging consciousness transformation to steward the transition
08:44 - The importance of inner practices for resilience and response
10:12 — Trans lineage planetary spirituality: religions as languages
14:45 - Re-centering the sacred: Post-secular spirituality and integrating diverse wisdom traditions
17:15 - The metaphor of spiritual and systemic birth and maturation
23:27 - The importance of collective, ritual spaces for grief and healing
25:04 — The expansive notion of social change work: breaking cycles, worldview shifts, inner work
29:28 — The nuts and bolts: where to live, how to invest, knowing your neighbors
32:08 — Finding the others: why community is non-negotiable
34:14 — Inside the Emerging Leaders Project: the three keys to intentional community
37:00 — Our relationship with the world as a living being; personal optimism vs. collective pessimism
48:58 — Hospicing the dying system while midwifing the new one
50:55 — Why collective experiences must be grieved in collectives: "It's too much for one body"
52:38 - Connecting with Michael and his current projects
Connect with Michael Stern:
Website & one-to-one coaching: integralalignment.com
Daniel Goleman Emotional Intelligence courses: danielgolemanemotionalintelligence.com
For information on six-day Mahamudra meditation retreats (online and in person), reach out through Michael's website
Teachers & Resources Referenced:
Duane Elgin (the great transition, the living universe) — https://duaneelgin.com and the Choosing Earth Project: https://choosingearth.org
Charles Eisenstein (Mother Earth to Lover Earth, "the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible") — https://charleseisenstein.org
Elisabet Sahtouris, evolutionary biologist — https://www.sahtouris.com
Valarie Kaur ("sometimes it's time to push and sometimes it's time to breathe") — https://valariekaur.com
bell hooks — https://bellhookscenter.berea.edu (the bell hooks center at Berea College)
Otto Scharmer — https://ottoscharmer.com and the Presencing Institute: https://presencinginstitute.org
Josh Schrei, The Emerald podcast ("everything that's alive is growing out of the decaying body of what came before") — https://www.themythicbody.com/podcast
Our World in Data (surveys on personal vs. collective optimism) — https://ourworldindata.org/optimism-and-pessimismConnect with me, Liz Moyer Benferhat:
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Website: www.wehealforall.com
IG: @wehealforall
Youtube: @wehealforall
Check out my new book, When the World Hurts
