Man on Purpose: A New Roadmap of Success for Men in an Evolving World

Guest Presenter: Chris Kyle
Creator of Power of Purpose Online Summit

Date: Saturday, July 20th
Time: 2 - 4pm
Venue: Brahma Kumaris Meditation Center

"We are at an important juncture in our culture today where more and more men are asking themselves the key BIG questions like these: What does it really mean to be a man; What does success look like for me now; Is there more for me to give to the world. . .
to make a real difference; and How do I create a happier and more fulfilled life? More than ever it's critical that men answer these questions for themselves and consciously grow and adapt to meet the challenges and opportunities of our day. The old models of masculinity no longer serve in a rapidly evolving world that now needs more conscious and purposeful men who are committed to bringing forth their gifts to serve the higher good. We will explore this new emerging terrain that men are navigating through, and Chris will provide some personal insights as to where he
believes we are heading as men."

Chris Kyle is a speaker, teacher, business coach and founder of The Ascendant Company, an eLearning consulting firm that helps authors, teachers and organizations build online learning programs and highly-engaged global learning communities that unite and inspire people across cultures.

Chris also walks-his-talk by developing and teaching his own public online learning programs in the areas of purpose, success and authentic leadership. He recently created the Power of Purpose Online Summit, which drew 5000 participants from 85 countries; and the Man On Purpose 7-week Online Course for men. He is also the co-creator of the ongoing New Man, New Woman, New Life Tele-Series with Amy Ahlers, where he co-teaches with notable best-selling authors/speakers such as Neale Donald Walsch, Gay and Katie Hendricks and Barbara Marx Hubbard.

Chris is the former Chief Development Officer and Chief Marketing Officer at Evolving Wisdom, a fast-growing online learning company that produces virtual courses with leading personal development luminaries. He guided the launches of new online courses for Neale Donald Walsch, Jean Houston, Arielle Ford, Terry Patten and others. At Evolving Wisdom he also co-developed The Way of the Evolutionary Man Tele-Summit with co-host Craig Hamilton. Chris is an expert facilitator of large and small groups and has been leading personal development workshops for over 14 years including with the global non-profit The ManKind Project® where he is a certified Co-Leader for their flagship 3-day training.

Chris has spent nearly 25 years as an executive, entrepreneur, consultant and business coach. In addition to his eLearning experience, he worked in Fortune 500 companies and owned his own eco-adventure travel company for 6 years. Chris graduated from Stanford University where he studied Political Science and Economics.

Wisdom in the Digital Age

Soren Gordhamer
Founder of Wisdom 2.0 Conference, Author
Date: Saturday, June 15, 2013
Time: 10am - 3pm
Venue: Anubhuti Retreat Center

We will spend the day exploring the context of wisdom in our modern digital lives - what does this mean and how can we bring ancient wisdom in the context of a digital age. We will explore what it means to live with greater awareness and purpose in a culture moving faster and faster. This will be a day of deep exploration on how our lives are wanting to unfold, and each of our particular paths. We will investigate the challenges and opportunities of our times, and what this means for each of us as we move from a focus on information and knowledge to a wisdom-based culture.

Soren Gordhamer works with individuals and groups on living with greater mindfulness and purpose in our technology-rich age. He is founder and host of the Wisdom 2.0 Conference, and the author of Wisdom 2.0: Ancient Secrets for the Creative and Constantly Connected (HarperOne, 2009), one of the first books to explore living with mindfulness and wisdom within the context of our modern technology age.

As project director for Richard Gere's public charity, Healing the Divide, he organized The Healing through Great Difficulty conference with his Holiness, the Dalai Lama. He has been featured in various media, including GQ Magazine and Newsweek.com, and has taught mindfulness programs everywhere from youth in New York City juvenile halls, to trauma workers in Rwanda, teachers in Nigeria, and to staff at US technology companies.

He spent a year walking through parts of the United States, India, Pakistan, and Japan as a part of the Global Walk for a Livable World. He later founded the New York City-based non-profit, The Lineage Project, which offers awareness-based practices to at-risk and incarcerated teens.

At the Intersection of Money and Spirit

John Bloom

Author, Artist, Philanthropic Program Innovator

Date: Saturday, May 18th

Time: 2 - 4pm

Venue: Brahma Kumaris Meditation Center

Money is the threshold experience of the 21st century. Understanding it and our relationship to it is key to our capacity to transform the world around us, and to living in compassionate interdependence. Based upon his experiences working in social finance and the social and spiritual insights of Rudolf Steiner, Bloom will share some leading thoughts and engage the group in a collaborative inquiry of how to stand in spiritual integrity while being an engaged economic citizen.

John Bloom is Senior Director of Organizational Culture at RSF Social Finance in San Francisco, where he has developed innovative philanthropic programs and contributed to the organization's thought leadership in the field of social finance. As part of his work at RSF, he has been developing and facilitating conversations and programs that address the intersection of money and spirit in personal and social transformation. He writes frequently for RSF's Reimagine Money blog on aspects of the new economy. He has worked with over 100 non-profits over the last seven years in the areas of capacity building and culture change. He has led many workshops, lectured, and written about aspects of money, development, and governance for non-profits. John has founded two non-profits, served as a trustee on several, including Yggdrasil Land Foundation, an agricultural land trust, and worked as the administrator at San Francisco Waldorf School for eight years before joining RSF. He was part of founding the Live Power Community Farm CSA twenty-three years ago and is still an active member. He has been a frequent contributor to the Biodynamic Journal on topics such as the economics of CSAs and the cultural life of vegetables. He holds an MFA (UNM) in painting and photography, has work in major collections, and sees the integration of the arts as essential to healthy organizational life.

His book, The Genius of Money: Essays and Interviews Reimagining the Financial World (SteinerBooks) was published in October 2009. In 2012, he edited and introduced a collection of essays entitled Slow Investing: How Your Money Can Transform the World. He lives in San Francisco.

Rites Of Passage: The Right Of Every Child Born

Frederick Marx

Award-winning Film maker

Date: Saturday, April 20th

Time: 2 - 4pm

Venue: Brahma Kumaris Meditation Center

Everyone knows the African proverb "It takes a village to raise a child."  But few know Michael Meade's apt inversion: "It takes the struggles of youth to raise a village." Our functioning as a community can best be measured by how effective we are in offering our young people growthful rites of passage into adulthood - effective challenges that can positively define them as newly emergent adults. It's our job as elders to hold and contain the energy of young people during their time of furious transition. The implications of not doing so already surround us in the myriad forms of dysfunctional teen behavior.  What can we do to repair this breech in the generational chain? A long-time student of these issues, Frederick Marx has some inspiring ideas.

Frederick Marx is an internationally acclaimed, Oscar and Emmy nominated director/writer with 35 years in the film business. He was named a Chicago Tribune Artist of the Year for 1994, a 1995 Guggenheim Fellow, and a recipient of a Robert F. Kennedy Special Achievement Award. His film HOOP DREAMS played in hundreds of theatres nationwide after winning the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival and was the first documentary ever chosen to close the New York Film Festival. It was on over 100 "Ten Best" lists nationwide and was named Best Film of the Year by critics Roger Ebert, Gene Siskel, Gene Shalit, and Ken Turran and by the Chicago Film Critics Association. Ebert also named it Best Film of the Decade. It is one of the highest grossing non-musical documentaries in United States history.

Finding Sublime Peace and Exuberant Joy in Your Occupation

Guest Facilitator: Duane Light
Holistic lawyer, musician, meditator, and teacher


Date: January 26, 2013
Time: 2 - 4pm
Venue: San Francisco Meditation Center


Within each of us is our true essence, eternally holding for us profound peace, compassion, love, joy,healing and wisdom. Repeated focus on what brings us to stable tranquility opens the doorway to the divine, and this is accessible to all of us. Our work in the world, even something as inherently stressful as a law practice, is ripe with opportunities to surrender into peace, joy, life satisfaction, and enlightened service to others. Duane will share how he has come to experience these in his work, and offer suggestions for how you might more deeply enjoy your unique path to That.

Duane Light, J.D. is a licensed attorney, with four decades of spiritual study and practice including extensive meditation, yoga, tai chi and chi gung.  During his five years in Asia he developed an ability to reach Samadhi states, which he now accesses for daily peace and joy, physical and emotional healing, and guidance for his life and for his clients and cases.  

He is a "holistic" lawyer in the sense that he addresses the whole person and whole situation, counseling on emotional, psychological, spiritual, and practical aspects. For more information you can visit www.PeaceInTheLaw.com.

The Ease of Being

Guest Facilitator: Richard Miller, PhD.    

Founder, Executive Director & President of the Board of Directors, Integrative Restoration Institute

Date: December 15, 2012

Time: 10am - 3pm

Venue: Anubhuti Retreat Center

Well-Being and peace of mind are always knocking at the door of our awareness, from the inside, longing for expression. These natural expressions of our essential nature naturally blossom through meditation that nourishes our innate ground of Being.

We engage meditative teachings through periods of iRest Yoga Nidra meditation and spirited dialogue. iRest helps us relinquish limiting beliefs about who we think we are, so that we can recover what we truly are: timeless presence and unshakable peace.

Richard Miller, PhD., is a clinical psychologist, author, researcher, yogic scholar and spiritual teacher. He is author of Yoga Nidra: The Meditative Heart of Yoga, and the founding president of the Integrative Restoration Institute where he leads retreats in enlightened living, as well as conducts research with the yoga nidra meditation protocol he has developed (Integrative Restoration - iRest) with soldiers, veterans, students, children, the homeless, and people experiencing issues such as PTSD, chemical dependency, sleep disorders, and chronic pain. For more information on Richard's teachings please visit www.irest.us.

Enlighten Minds with Lightness

Guest Presenter Chade-Meng Tan (Meng)

Google pioneer & award-winning engineer,  NY Times bestselling author, a thought leader, philanthropist  

Date: September 15, 2012

Time: 10am - 3pm

Venue: Anubhuti Retreat Center

Chade-Meng Tan was one of Google's earliest engineers. Among many other things, Meng helped build Google's first mobile search service, and headed the team that kept a vigilant eye on Google's search quality. After an eight-year stint in Engineering, he now serves with GoogleEDU as the Head of Personal Growth. One of his main projects is Search Inside Yourself -- a mindfulness-based emotional intelligence course, which he hopes will eventually contribute to world peace in a meaningful way.
 
Outside of Google, Meng is the Founder and (Jolly Good) President of the Tan Teo Charitable Foundation, a small foundation dedicated to promoting peace, liberty and enlightenment in the world. He is a founding patron of Stanford University's Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE).  He is also a founding patron of the World Peace Festival, and adviser to a number of technology startups.

Chade-Meng Tan: Everyday compassion at Google

 

"To create the conditions for global compassion, all we have to do is to reframe compassion as something that is fun." - Chade-Meng Tan