Evolutionary Leadership
Transforming Spiritual Wisdom into Prophetic Vision and Inspired Action

 
A curriculum in spiritual consciousness,
social compassion and global communion

 The purpose of this course is:

• to encourage members of spiritual or faith-based communities to become more active, creative, and conscious agents of compassion in the communities in which they reside; and

• to awaken and release the untapped leadership potential and spiritual wisdom that is waiting to be expressed in diverse and dynamic ways through individuals in these faith communities

• to grow the church/community membership by inviting other community members to the leadership training

This course in Evolutionary Leadership will be a multi-sensory, multi-media curriculum that will

• dissolve obstacles to creative expression,
  
  
• connect the dots between spirituality, creativity and inspired activism
  
  
• provide tools for re-pairing the opposites (us and them, right and wrong, left-wing and right wing), transcending duality, and achieving unity consciousness

The course will be based on the book, The Art of Original Thinking-The Making of a Thought Leader, which supports people in releasing the past (emancipation from all discord), embracing the present (“Engage with joy in all the sorrows of the world.” Buddha), and creating the future (our thoughts and actions create our reality.)

The outcomes: 

Participants in this program will become skilled in observing how they think as well as what they think; they will learn to imagine beyond dualities and to unite opposites into a higher synthesis of thinking.

Individuals will learn to mine their own personal experiences for learned wisdom and to share this wisdom with efficiency and compassion.

By the end of the training, each person will have harvested their own inner resources and achieved the ability to evoke spirit, provoke thought, and inspire action in others.

They will have identified a spiritual practice that keeps them balanced in their daily lives and committed to a practice of service whereby they identify and respond to a social need in their community.

 The vision of this course: This is a course about transforming our lives, our communities, and our world one thought, one action, one day at a time. It is based on the premise that we are authors of our own experience and co-creators of the world we live in. As we inquire into the source of our beliefs, we begin the shift from illusion to illumination, from cultural conditioning to spiritual freedom.

 As we access and express the truth of our experience, we enter into a new milieu of awareness—of our power, our oneness with others, and our own divine dimensions. Fortified by the magnitude of our own souls and the support of a loving community, we open up to the possibility of authentic self-awareness and revelation.

The Indian mystic Ramana Maharshi taught that "our own self-realization is the greatest service we can render the world." Once we realize fully who we are and why we are here, we can make choices and commitments that are consistent with this knowing and build a world in which all barriers to full humanity for every person has been removed.  These are the choices that lead to a transformed life and a transformed world.

 The methodology for this curriculum incorporates the arts (music, poetry, photographs, video, movement) to ensure that the work is fully embodied and beyond the cerebral. It is neither yin nor yang, but a mix of the two, guiding each participant into the words of the spiritual masters who have gone before us,  into their own deeper spiritual recesses, then leading them back out again to share their wisdom with the community at large.

 The coursework will consist of seven two-hour modules and may be taught on a weekly basis (7 weeks/2 hours per session) or as an intensive weekend program. The instructional approach will incorporate prayer/meditation, lecture, group exercises, multimedia, and team projects. A full spectrum of learning styles will be addressed, including sensing and intuitive, visual and verbal,  active and reflective. The learning will be active and interactive, with much discussion, problem-solving, brainstorming (aka heartstorming), generating questions, collaboration, and trouble-shooting.

 Participants will keep journals for reflection. This will provide a forum for each person to  clarify their own thoughts, practice informal writing, develop independent critical thinking skills, and become aware of the learning process occurring.

 The course will be evaluated at the end through participants’ post-course responses to 4-5 reflective questions.

 The need for this curriculum is critical at this time because we have outgrown old modes of traditional leadership and are shifting in consciousness into a higher order of collaborative community-building and culture-making. This training is involved as much with the inner world as the outer world, enabling participants to retrain their thought processes, rewire their neural networks, and engage individuals from diverse networks to come together for the rebuilding of a society that meets the needs of all its citizens.

 Evolutionary Leadership courses will help communities surface the leaders in their midst who are ready to take the next step from spiritual insight to inspired action. It will also inspire individuals to reach out to other faith communities and co-create joint solutions to common challenges. This program will help disseminate empowering new ideas and exciting new methods for creating relationships of spiritual commitment and social consequence. Ultimately, it will cause a growth in the faith communities that sponsor it.

Jan Phillips

The OriginalThink™ Workshop

The Word, the Image, the Story: Tools of Transformation

We are on the verge of a new era, an epochal shift from the Age of Information to an Age of Transformation. Making peace is a matter of consciousness and creativity. It is a matter of intention, of vigilance, of bold and rebellious originality. Each of us is a contributor, a carrier of the light of new consciousness. The future is within us, like the oak in the acorn, and it is unfolding in the creation of our lives, our stories, and all our artistic expressions.
Like caterpillars dying to the old ways, we are readying ourselves for a quantum leap in the evolutionary journey-the realization and expression of our deepest potential. In this multi-sensory, multi-media workshop, we'll be using music, poetry, story and video to help us access our unique wisdom and find new ways to share it personally and professionally.

Divining the Body
Healing Ourselves from the Inside Out

How we feel about ourselves affects our emotional, spiritual, and physical health. If we dwell on what’s wrong instead of what’s right, we experience dis-ease. We set up conditions for a compromised immunity that can contribute to emotional and physical disease. This workshop explores our beliefs about the body—where they came from, how they affect us, and how we can free ourselves from their constraints.

Once we re-think our belief systems and understand how our attitudes have been shaped, we can let go of concepts that do not serve us and establish positive and supportive value systems. Being in dialogue with each other strengthens our ability to heal ourselves, understand our common experiences, and create a nurturing community. Through writing, video, storytelling, and interactive exercises, participants journey inward, discover our own wellspring of wisdom and power, and learn how to live from this source.

• Explore your belief systems about the body

• Engage in story-telling and creative exercises that liberate your thinking and expand your consciousness

• Reawaken your senses and open up to the power of creative alchemy

• Experience your body as a medium through which the Divine expresses Itself

• Choose and commit to beliefs that support your health and well-being

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Jan is now offering Facilitator Training Programs.

This is an intensive weekend workshop for people interested in facilitating creative groups. We work with the guidebook Circling (you can preview on the gift shop page), so you will have the tools you need to run a ten week group or weekend workshop. Once you complete the training, you will have all the resources, skills, and marketing/publicity tools to create and facilitate a Circling group or your own proprietary workshop.

This is a chance for you to
• Take your own creativity to the next level
• Learn how to make a living doing what you love
• Create a community of support and nourishment for yourself and others
• Contribute to planetary balance by becoming a midwife to your own and others' wisdom, voice and power

email jan@janphillips.com if you'd like to be notified of these workshops._


Jan's Facilitators Workshop was all that I had hoped it would be and more. Through Jan's keen guidance I was able to move past my road blocks. I left the weekend energized and with a concise plan and personal commitment. She challenged me to move to the next level and I lept.

– Sandy Wojtal-Weber

“Jan had the ability to adapt to the needs of the group and to work with the material that was most timely for each participant. The training went beyond my expectations in terms of usable work product for my future teaching endeavors.”

–Marcia Stroko

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From Creativity to Transformation
A Curriculum of Consciousness, Compassion and Communion

This is a course about transforming our lives and our world one thought, one action, one day at a time. It is based on the premise that we are authors of our own experience and co-creators of the world we live in, with powers beyond our knowing but within our reach.

Using music, ceremony, imagery, and storytelling, we forge new pathways into our deeper selves and creative centers. As we inquire into the source of our beliefs, we begin the shift from illusion to illumination, from cultural bondage to spiritual freedom. As we access and express the truth of our experience, we enter into a new milieu of awareness—of our power, our oneness with others, and our own divine dimensions. Fortified by the magnitude of our own souls and the support of a loving community, we open up to the possibility of authentic self-awareness and revelation.

The Indian mystic Ramana Maharshi taught that "our own self-realization is the greatest service we can render the world." Once we realize fully who we are and why we are here, we can make choices and commitments that are consistent with this knowing. These are the choices that lead to a transformed life and a transformed world.

This curriculum provides the map and means for the journey inward to the place of knowing. It is all you’ll need to find the source of your light and a way to share it joyfully, compassionately, and creatively with others on the path.

• Discover your own personal myth and the mission of your soul

• Find the best medium of expression for who you are and what you know

• Experience the joy of finding and hearing your own wisdom

• Co-create a community of visionary consciousness and commitment

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Untying the (K)nots that Bind Us
Creating from the Center of our Power and Passion

Many of us are stopped in life by the negative voices in our heads which we’ve inherited from well-intentioned parents, teachers, coaches, clergy members—voices that say we’re not good enough, smart enough, imaginative enough to create anything really beautiful or meaningful. In Untying the (K)nots that Bind Us, we use that negativity, connect with its opposite, and experience the positive creative charge that results.

Much like a battery is charged from both the negative and positive terminals, or

new life emerges from the union of male and female, this workshop embraces those opposites as essential parts of the creative process and reframes them in a compelling way. As physicist Neils Bohr has discovered, "Opposite every profound truth is another profound truth."

Untying the (K)nots That Bind Us is a workshop for transforming old voices into new visions, an exercise in changing the obstacles to our creativity into openings to new awareness and new work. It is a wake-up call to the inner artist, a transformational experience incorporating personal stories, creative exercises, music, photographs, and video to stir your emotions and open your heart.

It is a journey that begins with finding your voice and ends with a commitment to expressing that voice, despite the obstacles you find in our path. Guaranteed to energize your creativity, bolster your confidence, and return you to the stillness and wisdom of your center.

• Find your unique voice and learn what it has to say

• Discover ways to reframe obstacles into creative opportunities

• Energize your creativity and bolster your self-confidence

• Explore new ways of sharing and marketing your creations

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Seeing Our Way Clear
Photography as a Healing Art

"The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, and thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, philosophy, and religion all in one." Eudora Welty

This workshop focuses on the power of photography to heal, to transform, to bridge gaps between people when language falls short. Whether one is making a photograph, being photographed, or observing a photograph, there is a potential for healing in that moment of seeing.

Photography is an act of looking that can lead to flashes of surprising insight and open doors to a deeper knowing. In the act of making or observing photographs, we are allowing ourselves to look beyond the surface, to feel for and with others, to find the spirit within, the source of our oneness and common strength.

This workshop, incorporating photographs and videos, poetry and music, makes a compelling case for the claim "a picture is worth a thousand words." It illustrates dramatically the power of images to alter our inner space, heal our brokenness, change our consciousness and state of being.

For the photographer and non-photographer alike, this experiential hands-on workshop opens door after door into the inner chambers, exploring the landscape of our wisdom, our passions, and our visions. Through a variety of creative exercises, each participant is coached in the art of looking, seeing, and sharing one’s insight in a way that adds light and beauty to the world around us.

• Experience for yourself the healing power of a photograph

• Tap into your creative potential through the use of images

• Discover the wealth of creative material in your family albums

• Learn new things about yourself through photos that others have taken

• Find more joy in your life by expanding your range of vision

"To make images can become a process of renewing connection. Photography can serve to break down the barriers between self and other; the camera is a link, a means of concentration, a channel for both communion and communication."– John Blakemore

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Creativity as Sacrament:
The Mystery, Grace, and Power of Self-Expression

This workshop addresses creativity as a sacred gesture—one that involves collaboration with the Divine as a primary element of self-expression. While we have been taught to see God as a force transcendent, above and beyond us, this workshops embraces the Divine as a force within us.

Imagine that God is seeking to create through us, to regenerate Divine Being into this culture, Spirit/Word waiting to be made flesh through our creative expressions. Imagine yourself the vessel of transmission, one chosen to birth the sacred in word, song, clay, image, dance. Imagine the power and the grace of the Divine moving up through your depths, clearing your cloudiness, lighting your life as it makes its way into the world.

In this workshop, through the use of music, imagery, poetry, and writing exercises, we will connect with our Muses, our own divine creative spirits, and collaborate in creating a unique and powerful work of art.

• Discover your inner voice and what it has to say

• Get clear on the holiness of your work and its contribution to the world

• Find new ways to honor your work and give it the time it deserves

• Experience the joy of surrendering your fears and allowing Spirit to be released through you

"This workshop is an opportunity for each of us to make contact with the Divine in ourselves and each other. We will learn to approach our creative work from a new angle and get past the forces that have kept us silent. The world needs our voices now-let us learn to send them out there with confidence, compassion, and courage." – Jan Phillips