Newsletter July-August 2011

The Transformer

Inspiration and News from the Center for Transformational Presence 

July - August 2011

Feature: Yimei Chen Interviews Alan Seale on the Meaning of Transformation
and Transformational Leadership

Soul Mission Profile: Patricia Koster—Walking Together, One Step at a Time

Video of the Month: Jim Gilliam—The Internet is My Religion

Yimei Chen Interviews Alan Seale on the Meaning of Transformation
and Transformational Leadership

Photo - Jos Rovers

Last month, transformational leadership coach Yimei Chen from Beijing interviewed Alan for her Awareness Elevation program. They had a fantastic conversation about what transformation and transformational leadership means today and the essential paradigm shifts that can lead us toward a world that works. A graduate of Transformational Presence Coach Training, Yimei asked powerful questions to get to the heart of Alan's work and the potential that is unfolding through it for transformation in our world.

Please listen to the audio interview below:

You can learn more about Yimei and her work in personal and leadership mastery at www.AwarenessElevation.com.

Soul Mission Profile: Patricia Koster—Walking Together, One Step at a Time

by Johnathon Pape

Patricia Koster leads a fascinating and meaningful life. She left home in the Netherlands the week she turned 18 to discover the world. “I wanted to see what was outside my own experience. I was especially interested in what Dutch development projects had done around the world,” she states. “So I lived and worked with people in villages to get the real sense of their lives. I was picking coffee, weaving towels, working alongside them.” Patricia’s adventures confirmed that her future was working in the social sciences, so she returned to the Netherlands to get a degree in Developmental Studies, focusing on the Third World.

“It was 1992 and the International AIDS Awareness Conference was being held in Amsterdam. It was very empowering and consciousness raising. I was particularly struck by a group of Dutch sero-positive women who organized for many African sero-positive women to come to the conference. I realized that this was what I really wanted to do—work with HIV/AIDS awareness.” She continued her studies with a newly focused passion and even went to Viet Nam to do her thesis on HIV/AIDS awareness in that country. Since then, she has also lived and worked in Togo, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, and various places in Indonesia. Her work has expanded to include women’s health and empowerment, youth, and reproductive health.

As Patricia continued her work at the frontline level—with both care givers and those who needed care—she increasingly found herself serving as a bridge between worlds. “I worked closely with the local people so I learned to express their actual needs, but I was also able to speak the language of the International NGOs that had the money to create programs. I eventually learned that there was a term for what I was already doing: chain collaboration.” This involves building strong coalitions around a clearly defined social assignment. For example, various groups might have to collaborate to deliver and/or improve health care in a particular area. This requires that the organizations committed to the assignment have to deal with complicated issues such as ownership and the empowerment of both individual and group dynamics. Patricia’s skill at fully understanding and balancing all the parts of the chain made a big difference in the outcome and sustainability of the systems she worked with.

It’s not surprising that Patricia excels in this role, since her soul mission is I create collective consciousness. She has an innate talent for bringing people together and empowering them on the most “grass roots” level, while still having an acute awareness of how they fit into the really big picture. She raises everyone’s awareness of the whole, even as she helps them consciously address the details of the many parts. Patricia identified and claimed her Soul Mission in October of 2010 at a Soul Mission * Life Vision workshop in the Netherlands. In doing so, she gained a new perspective on who she is (and has always been) and how she can best bring her gifts to the world

Johnathon Pape: You have such a fascinating life, Patricia!

Patricia Koster: Fascinating, yes, and sometimes quite intense.

JP: I’m sure. Tell us more about your work in Africa and Asia. How did your path lead you to those places?

PK: In 1996, as I was finishing my studies I was in a relationship with a Togolese man. There wasn’t much future for our relationship in the Netherlands, so off we went to Togo. This is where I started working with NGOs on HIV/AIDS. We lived within the Togolese society and there was a war going on, which made it difficult as a non-Togolese person. It was frustrating, because the scale of my work had to be very small. I ran a school for about 25 “children from the street” in my garden, but the population in need was more like 3000 in the city. It was also difficult to find a balance in the relationship. He became a chief in the community and I was totally dependent on him to be safe. The relationship eventually ended and I went back to the Netherlands.

I decided to work with UNESCO in Zimbabwe on an HIV/AIDS education program for teachers and the elderly in the Southern Africa Region. Meanwhile, I had married and moved to Indonesia with my husband. In Jakarta I worked for the United Nations Population Fund on youth and reproductive health issues. And, I gave birth to two healthy daughters. They are now almost 11 and 7.

The bridge back to the Netherlands was actually 9/11. My husband worked for an American organization whose home office was located close to the World Trade Center and was destroyed. So he was sent back to the Netherlands. At that time there was a great deal of political unrest in Indonesia and tension about al Qaida. It really raised the ethical question of where you wanted to be, where you could do the most good. Was it working at the local level, speaking the language of the locals and making that kind of impact? And if so, what were the risks of doing that? The whole business of peace and war and depending on others to be safe is very complicated. And of course I also had to consider the health and safety of my family, including my parents back in the Netherlands, who were getting older.

JP: And what is the focus of your work now that you’re back in the Netherlands?

PK: In one of my current projects I work with midwives—the people that are actually helping new life thrive. They have to be careful that their profession on the primary health care level is not put aside within the larger context of the health care system. The individual midwife may not be aware of this, but we help them understand their power as a group to deal with government, insurance providers, and so on. We see pioneers in the group taking space for leadership and standing up for what they believe is needed in a natural process of giving birth. From here they can build equal partnerships with other partners in the field.

I also work with other frontline workers, including police, general practitioners, community health nurses, and other healthcare professionals. It is most important for me to work with holding that energy of passion that the professionals have on the ground, the front lines. Then I can help organizations that may have rather rigid management structures feel and respond to that passion. With this energy of “what can work” we inspire politicians to prioritize the political agenda. This opens the floor for dialogue about ownership and responsibility in social assignments. Step by step we can build community health programs and organizational structures that support innovations contributing to improved health for everyone.

JP: What is the biggest difference you notice between your international experiences and your life and work in the Netherlands?

PK: I miss the international context. That will never go away. I think when I look back, things were just so much clearer there. In order to survive, particularly in rural areas, you had to understand how to find your position in the community. You had to ask what you can contribute, what you can and cannot do. Even if the conditions were really rough, like having no water or electricity, it made it so much easier to stay connected to myself. I experienced more flow. All the time there is a mirror—what am I doing and does it serve any purpose other than for myself? When it is a matter of life and death, it puts things in perspective. How do you survive in an environment where you are the stranger? Here in The Netherlands there are so many choices that it creates pressure. There the choices are fewer and therefore clearer.

JP: How did you come to the Soul Mission work?

PK: Three years ago my life was one big roller coaster. I realized I was surviving by keeping up with ongoing events both in my private life and in business. I had been practicing a form of meditation in dance—the 5Rhythms devised by Gabrielle Roth. In doing that, I experienced the big gap in energy by listening and dancing “what was present,” letting go of drama and chaos to find peace and a different Patricia (one I had known before) in a totally different energy. She was mild, vulnerable, and trusted that she was enough. However, I was unable to hold that energy from the dance meditation in my “normal life.” It was shocking to realize that I fell back into survival mode and away from my inner self as soon as I crossed the doorstep out of the dance studio. It was in this regular dance meditation that I realized I could no longer ignore the inner call to find open space, simplify, and trust “what wants to happen.”

I met Alan in October 2008 in an introduction workshop in Diemen, the Netherlands. The simple exercises he used of stepping into energy and developing an awareness of horizontal and vertical orientations were a confirmation of what I experienced in the dance meditation work. He somehow has language for those non-verbal experiences. I knew instantly he could assist me in my transformation. I read three of his books and used the exercises in Intuitive Living. They helped me realize that I had a choice to not step into my habit of “just doing the job” and that I needed to accept that I didn’t have a new life script yet. This was a very uncomfortable place to be in! But what I found in Alan’s work and his meditation cd was trust in the process of letting soul guide me as I follow the “unknown/invisible.”

A year later, I was ready to step out of the systems in my life where I was unable to stay in relationship with my soul energy. I went through a divorce and reorganized my work to prioritize coming home to myself and creating a new home with my 2 daughters. Although it was a completely different way of survival, I felt I could open up to the soul work. Then, in October 2010, I was ready to focus on my soul mission and did the Soul Mission * Life Vision 4-day intensive course here in the Netherlands.

Claiming my Soul Mission has been a powerful experience. It helps me to be in the present and step into the energy and connection with what I am called for. I can tune into my Soul Mission and feel how opportunities relate to it.

JP: What has been the greatest challenge to living your Soul Mission?

PK: Accepting that I do not need to travel far away to live my Soul Mission. I saw very clear pictures of places where my Soul Mission/Life Vision would take me—working with women, small enterprises in developing countries, community work and partnerships in the world.

I went to the desert in Morocco at the end of 2010 to literally bury the heavy load I had been carrying. In the silence of the desert and the stunningly beautiful nights under the stars, I reclaimed my Soul Mission. After that, things started to fall into place and a flow emerged. I was invited by a Foundation to undertake a field mission to South Africa to explore future activities on a nature reserve. The members of the Foundation are exploring business from the perspective of Quantum energy work. I knew this assignment was in tune with my Soul Mission and I felt very strong and grateful for the opportunity. My ongoing assignments were easily rearranged, my ex-husband agreed to take care of the children, and everything seemed to be in alignment.

Then the big challenge came. Ten days before my departure my ex-husband got seriously ill. It was clear my children needed me around, so I had to let go of this opportunity.

JP: How were you able to find the gift in that unfortunate turn of events and transform the energy around it?

PK: At first I really felt pulled back into the old system and patterns of survival. I knew “something wanted to happen” so I didn’t understand why this had happened. I had a coaching session with Alan. He simply invited me to step into the energy of my current situation as if I had undertaken a successful field mission. He asked me to imagine that I could live in that energy right now, here in the Netherlands. It was in that conversation that I really started to experience that for now, life is here in the Netherlands. Home is here and my challenge is to stay and fulfill my mission here too.

Despite the turmoil, I can now see the gift in this event. I am still on a bumpy road, but that bumpy road gives me lots of opportunities to keep learning. There are some days that I don’t know how to create collective consciousness. But even so, there is an energy shift, not only for me, but also for the people around me and the way I organize my work.

JP: How do you stay positive in your work with the sometimes precarious state of the world, particularly since you’ve experienced many global challenges first hand?

PK: I’ve learned that even a small contribution matters when you touch the passion of those people on the front lines. If it’s even only one patient that you have made a difference for, it’s important to celebrate that. It isn’t easy; every day is a challenge. This is a very dynamic field. Sometimes I get so excited because I can see the potential in something, and then I get frustrated when other people don’t see it. I am learning to work with what wants to happen and not being discouraged when it isn’t ready to happen yet, even if I see the potential there. The invitation to open space brings me hope. When you are stuck there is always a new place to move, however small it may be. When I can live in that energy then the fear goes away.

JP: Tell me more about your work with dance as a meditative practice.

PK: I’ve always done different kinds of dance, but this is much more like a meditation. It is about feeling what is in you and giving it expression in dance. This meditation was devised by Gabrielle Roth of the Moving Center School. There are five basic rhythms: flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical, and stillness. These patterns continuously repeat in a wave of motion. You can learn all about it at http://www.movingcenterschool.com/about-5rhythms. This is a wonderful way of getting to my point of stillness—really letting go and getting to myself, my soul. The non-verbal part really helps me get there and not get caught in drama or chatter.

JP: So what are some other ways that you are creating collective consciousness?

PK: Several things, actually. I participate in a Dutch organization initiating Mother’s Night (http://www.mdg5-meshwork.org/content/mothers-night-2011). This is a “Meshwork for Improving Maternal Health” that is a Dutch initiative to raise awareness among people about the importance of motherhood, respecting your own mother, respecting being a mother, and the difficulties that mothers face around the world. It’s also about helping educate young women about sex education, reproductive rights, and maternal care. Another project we put in the spotlight is Sign Of Life (http://www.signoflife.eu/) which is a European initiative to educate and raise awareness of reproductive rights for young women, particularly in Africa.

In my town I co-host meditation in my living room as part of the Cities of Light (http://citiesoflight.org/living_rooms) initiative to impact the cities in which we live through consciously meditating together. There have been several studies showing that when the individuals of a community combine their meditative power, it can significantly decrease crime and violence.

And I’m very much looking forward to taking the Transformational Presence Coach Training that Alan is offering in the Netherlands this October. I look forward to getting more practice and help in learning how to hold the space of inquiry, curiosity, and power with other people I work and live with. I know this will make my life lighter and more fulfilling.

JP: That’s wonderful. You really are creating collective consciousness! So what would you say to someone who is considering doing the Soul Mission work, either in a workshop or through one-on-one coaching?

PK: Working with Alan is a very empowering experience. Not only is he a very inspiring example of living his soul mission himself, but he also offers tools to invite you to meet your soul, and, hand-in-hand with your ego, guide you to what you are called for in this life. Accept his invitation and learn all about how to use energy.

Patricia in Morocco at the end of 2010

Video of the Month:  Jim Gilliam—The Internet is My Religion

Jim Gilliam, a self-described "geeky" activist building internet tools to shake up a broken political system, shares his journey with faith, cancer, the internet, and humanity. Alan's favorite quote from this inspiring and deeply moving video: "God is what happens when humanity is connected." This is a 12-minute talk not to be missed.