This is an early heads-up about Bright Future Now, a new experiential learning program we’re developing. It takes the content from the Foundation Stones presentations (What Time Is It?, Human Operating System Literacy and Systems Literacy) and deepens that conceptual material into felt experience, practical skills and embodied behavior so that you can begin to live the Planetary Era now.
To be aligned with the Planetary Era, you need these capabilities:
- be adept with complexity
- treat diversity as an asset
- be skilled at collaboration
- be at home with high levels of interconnection
- foster sustainability
These five capabilities all depend on three basic skills, which are at the heart of Bright Future Now:
- learning to inhabit your Optimal Zone so you are less likely to get triggered into fight, flight or freeze and are skillful at getting yourself and others back from such triggering. In the process, you will deepen your understanding of the drivers for much of human dysfunction and what to do about them.
- going beyond the polarizing limitations of linear and categorical thinking and becoming adept at such things as proportional thinking, continuum thinking, layered thinking, visual thinking and kinesthetic thinking. Through Bright Future Now, you’ll come to know how and when to use each of these, for yourself and in groups, to make the seemingly-complex much more understandable, for problem solving, design and communications.
- using a systems perspective – for greater understanding, for shared design and for resolving/minimizing conflict.
These three are my distillation from decades of involvement in cultural change. You can find many programs that focus on one of these or another, but I know of no other program that weaves together the emotional and the cognitive, the personal and the group, all in the context of the Empire to Planetary transition – and it’s the synergy among these threads that creates the real magic in Bright Future Now.
Who Is It For?
Bright Future Now is for those who want to know themselves and the world more deeply, to expand their capacity for love and creativity, and to engage more fully with the great historical transformation of our times.
Timing
We hope to have Bright Future Now ready to offer as a course some time this year. As currently envisioned, it will be an eight-week course requiring 6 to 8 hours per week, both on your own and through video conference calls. It can be woven into your daily life and available wherever you live.
Process
- Combines
- individual study and activities for conceptual and experiential learning
- online interaction for reflection and connection
- Overall timeframe is eight weeks
- Starts with two introductory weeks
- meet your mentor and fellow participants
- watch videos and read preparatory material
- clear any logistic issues with video conferencing, etc.
- Moves to six intensive experiential weeks
- each week has a theme
- a sequence of assignments will be emailed during the week
- assignments include
- video and written material to study
- experiential activities
- interactive components
- one-on-one mentoring via video conferencing
- peer triads for mutual support
- a weekly 21-person cohort video meeting to reflect on the theme
- private online forum for all participants and graduates
- trainers run the weekly cohort meeting and support the mentors
- Starts with two introductory weeks
Cost
The cost for this eight-week program is still begin worked out. Our current expectation is that it will be comparable to similar online and interactive programs, likely around $400.
Bright Future Network
This course will also be the gateway to the Bright Future Network, an ongoing home for Bright Future Now graduates to connect and collaborate as they journey still further into the Planetary Era.
Final Thoughts
Bright Future Now and the Bright Future Network are designed to catalyze a more rapid and graceful transition to the Planetary Era. It’s a hugely ambitious goal but the times require no less. I’ll be doing all I can and so will others. If you would like to join in and/or help support this joyful work, please get in touch.
Robert Gilman
2 February 2016
