Coaching Collapse and Evolution – Matthew Painton
Conceptually Mapping Collapse, Transformation and Conscious Evolution for Coaches.
There seems to be a rapidly developing, necessary response to supporting and processing ‘grief for the world in collapse’. Grief – as an umbrella term for fear, anger, despair and meaninglessness might be seen as the internal collapse that accompanies and mirrors awareness of external collapse.
On my own journey, having come to terms with living with grief, I have had to search harder for initiatives, ideas, and coaching practices which take me beyond grief. By ‘beyond grief’ I mean an existential place of acceptance, hope and meaning, where action and daily life are worthwhile even in the face of collapse. I have accepted that I will move in and out, and through grief for the rest of my life, but it is not where I choose to dwell.
Is it possible to dwell in a collapse-informed perspective which is not based on false hope, but which make our lives not only meaningful, purposeful and bearable, but also potentially useful and of service? As a coach I see my role as holding space where that question can be endlessly re-posed and answered again and again.
Our souls seek hope like a compass needle facing north, in order to navigate our existence. When that orientation is lost, the human spirit is lost. Hope arises when we have a sense that something that I am/ we are a part of, is moving towards something better, or less bad, even across the most terrible terrain. We are now moving into the terrain of collapse, what hope is there that we can honestly, truthfully navigate ourselves by, and help others to find and navigate themselves with? How do we connect with a transcendent hope that is not merely contemplative, delusional or hopium?
For me, this hope comes from understanding collapse as a precursor to transformation. Global collapse and transformation is a multidimensional ‘fractal’ process. It is both personal and inter- personal, particular and universal, specific and imprecise, physical and mental, cultural and environmental. As coaches, we are being called to assist and support the internal collapse which mirrors the unfolding recognition of external collapse. The artificial separation of inner and outer worlds, of them and us, of it and me, upon which our modern self-identity is based, is fundamentally undermined by the prospect of environmental and social collapse.
Transcendent hope comes from considering the process at large scale, beyond the personal.
We might all agree that Global Collapse has been triggered by a deep misalignment between humanity and the way that the universe, and life on earth actually work. We have been exercising delusion – individually and as a species, and vigorously projecting that delusion upon the earth and each other, beyond the point where it can be accommodated or tolerated by transcendant reality any longer. Currently, ‘reality’s’ capacity to tolerate our delusion is all used up, and greater orders of truth are crashing into our awareness and being reasserted, as a ‘correction’. We all embody, and make our way within this tragic misalignment, to greater or lesser degree, and as the correction causes our world to collapse, our sense of self is also liable to collapse.
There is an option, an invitation not to descend into ever greater separation, fear and survivalism but to learn, embody and exercise greater truths about self, life and the universe, which we can glimpse and align with even, as our artificial constructs painfully dissolve. This is surely where hope for something better than mere survival or endurance lies?
So, one way to describe the Collapse we are beginning to experience, is as the collapse of the artificial constructs and boundaries of self. It is occurring at several levels of scale, from the organismic, individuated bodily self, through to species and planetary scales. Beyond these levels of
scale, the universe and the atom may be somewhat unaffected and indifferent to human induced planetary collapse. But what collapse draws our attention to, is that ‘self’ is far larger, and more highly structured, integrated and unboundaried than we are conditioned to experience . We begin to learn that there is no ‘other’ to whom this is happening, or by whom it was caused, it is all happening to me, by me, in me and because of me. It is the prospect of the death or suffering of the family-self, species-self and earth-self that often generates greater grief and anxiety than the prospect of the death or suffering of the individuated, bodily defined ‘me’.
How do we tend to this process of collapse in others, so that it fosters greater self-integration and expansion, rather than fragmentation and ever stronger, individualistic, survivalist competition? It is my experience that in holding compassionate space, and directing conscious enquiry, the ‘spiritus mundi’, the greater self, can find ways to speak through us and offer wisdom, action pathways, and islands of integration. What follows are some brief descriptions of ways to conceptualise and begin to navigate collapse, which have helped me to hold such spaces. These ideas are offered here in the hope that they might be useful to others learning and innovating to hold such spaces.
Collapse precedes transformation, it is normal, it is part of evolutionary process, it happens everywhere in the universe, to all the structures, systems and innovations the universe constructs, at every level of scale. There is a creative blackhole at the centre of every galaxy. We don’t need to have advanced understanding of physics to grasp this. Humans have been contemplating such things for ever, and mythologising them – as Kali and Siva for example. Collapse is actually more creative than it is destructive, the evidence shows that the universe ‘composts’ and re-uses all of its creations innovations and artefacts. The essential patterns of collapse and transformation are not unfamiliar to us, they are everywhere in our experience, it is the scale and inclusivity of global collapse that is shocking.
Suffering occurs when we separate ourself from what is – when we hold that what is shouldn’t be happening. We fear to accept ‘what is’, in the hope that by not accepting it we can exercise control over how it will unfold. But acceptance is not necessarily passive; alignment with ‘what is’ can give us far greater power to affect things. This is an age old mystery. Here are some conceptual notions which point towards a transcendent understanding that may be of use in accepting collapse, and so reduce suffering, and the possibility of unleashing the power of greater alignment with what is.
The Biosphere
Is the sum total of all life; organisms, genes, species, their relationships, and the adapted physical environment – modified by life, for life. The biosphere is subject to both a constant process of steady evolution, and a series of disruptive transformations (e.g. the Jurassic – Cretaceous).
The biosphere can be understood as an iterative process, which tends towards temporary, but extended periods, eras and epochs of ever more complex geo-biological consensus. This sequential, periodic consensus is established and maintained through the interaction of every living being, species and ecosystem with every other, mediated through the co-created environment, at many concentric and interpenetrating levels of scale and time. Periodic transformation, punctuation, or systemic phase shift, where the prevailing planetary consensus breaks down, or is disrupted by external perturbation, is ‘normal’ for the biosphere over vast timescales. In such upheavals, mass extinction is the norm, ahead of a period of rapid evolution and ‘opportunity’, which then establishes a new steady phase state, era, aeon, or consensus of life.
Understanding that the biosphere is a transformational process and that collapse is ‘normal’, even desirable at geological scale, locates what is happening now, in deep time, and it gives us eyes to see beyond the many disasters now unfolding. It allows us to peer into a meta process that is not
ending now, and will extend far beyond the tragedies of this current transition. There is potentially great comfort and power to be found in embracing this truth. There are many, many barriers to experiencing it as a lived, somatic, embodied wisdom, just as there are many paths to greater alignment. As a practitioner – where do you stand in relation to this perspective so that you can guide others? Are you predominantly transmitting grief and fear – or joy and wisdom? Which frequency better serves life and your clients? How do we become more agile at moving between perspectives, so that we can facilitate both grief hope?
The World
The sum total of all humanity. This includes every human alive, and all our ancestors, as well as our cultures, religions, relationships, economics, languages, industry, homes and media. The World is both the dominant, globalised cultural/economic ‘consensus’, and all the other human realities/worlds that have been subsumed within globalisation. The World is what we have imposed upon the biosphere, it is both the physical niche of modernity in which we live, and the linguistic/cultural operating system that runs and perpetuates it. The world is the ‘matrix’ reality we had been conditioned to see as normal, inevitable and eternal. The world is heading for free fall collapse.
Civilisation, like the biosphere is an iterative, transformative process. The end of the World is a re- occurring norm, having happened many times before at lesser, regional, non-global scales (Roman, Ottoman, Pharoahonic etc). The current World is actually a dependant sub-system of the Biosphere, but one which has self-defined, and thus come to behave, as though it were an autonomous and independent rival. The consensus of the World has spectacularly failed to integrate with the underlying consensus of the Biosphere. The current World consensus is, tragically for us, a self- terminating endeavour, being based on assumptions and behaviours which turn out to be fundamentally incompatible with the pre-existing consensus of the biosphere. It is absolutely necessary and inevitable that this World should collapse; it does not, it is not, fit. This is simultaneously an unbearable tragedy of immense suffering, and an opportunity for conscious planetary life to adapt and establish a more integrated iteration. The emergence of conscious biology out of complex living planets is always likely to be risky venture for the host entity.
As coaches we are used to the practise of generating perspectives which our clients can entertain, try out, and select. What happens if we stand in, and exercise a more positive perspective on collapse? This world is not fit for survival; can we learn to extend unbearable compassion for suffering, whilst simultaneously holding hope for what lies beyond, whether or not ‘we’ will be participants? Standing in a transcendent perspective does not necessarily lead only to contemplative inaction, or a lack of compassion (although it can and does lead there for some).
The end of the world will be/is painful, traumatising, violent – but can how do we transmit light and joy within that darkness? One way would be to accept that it is necessary and inevitable, and directing as much attention and energy as possible to that which is still possible within it?
It takes courage and practise to offer positive perspectives through tragedy, it requires us to reach for and stand in broader, deeper, transcendant truth than our World usually allows for.
Divestment and Investment
Originally meaning financially de-investing, especially from the oil industry, ‘divestment’ can take on a much broader meaning in the context of deep adaptation – i.e. de-investing from the World, the prevailing reality of harm, in order to free up resources (time, money, thought, relationship etc) to invest in new alternative realities and/or resilience at the end of the current reality. It is to be hoped that any future World (if your client/group believe in it) will be better aligned with what we now
know about how life on earth, and the universe, actually work. What kind of world would you and your clients prefer to invest in now?
Many people are traumatised by the necessity to continue operating in the world as it is, by its terrible momentum, and by the perceived lack of choice about having to continue to invest and survive in such a destructive, insecure World. I have found the concept of divestment a useful terminology to explore with people. What does divestment mean to them, what aspects of the World would they most like to divest from, and alternatively, where would they most like to invest time, energy, ideas, effort? Everyone can find at least some small ways to divest from the World, as well as ways to invest in new economy, new ideas, new community, new paradigms which might be better aligned, more fitting, with the values and behaviours which they would like to see prevail, or which will offer increased resilience (relationship) in the time to come.
Divesting from the dysfunctional reality, from the World, can be a deeply existential, lonely and uncertain process, and alternatives can be fragile. But it can also be a path to greater meaning, connection, community, vitality, joy, commitment, resilience, hope and truth. Many people have internally and privately divested from the insane World in terminal decline, but have not yet found the practical ways to externalise and make practical that divestment by investing in viable alternatives, they are still afraid to ‘jump ship’. This is the zone of cognitive dissonance, the world as it is, versus the world we would like to create. By having one foot in each of two worlds we place ourselves under unbearable existential strain and fragmentation, ordive into distraction, complacency, self harm and unconsciousness. We can help people t o explore both worlds, the tragedy and dysfunction of the world as it is, from which they want to divest, and the world as it could be, in which we are all longing to invest.
The current World is already over, the diagnosis is terminal, it is just the dreadful symptoms of that morbidity which are playing out across the global body. By adapting to that fact deeply, beautifully, compassionately, and by first imagining and then acting upon that which we would love to invest in, we lay foundations for something better, which will never emerge if we do not reach for it. For those of us that are privileged within this process, who are still relatively safe, there is a whole complex of guilt and entitlement, and an obligation towards those less fortunate to explore.
By entertaining and exercising the concepts of divestment and investment we can facilitate people to acknowledge and so dissipate the cognitive dissonance of having one foot in each of two worlds, and help them to decide which foot to trust and move forward upon.
Gaia
Is the biosphere understood to be a living singularity, or super organism, which evolves, maintains homeostasis, and has needs, purposes, subjectivity, a self, a history and a future which is independent of humanity. Gaia is ‘the meta-self’ of the biosphere, the experience and capacity of being a complex planetary super-organism. Assigning subjectivity or subject-hood to the biosphere has become heretical and beyond the pale in recent times, but it has been a blindingly obvious, common sense, observable, lived-in reality to many previous human cultures.
In the right space, anyone can imaginatively explore Gaia/mother earth regardless of their profile of ‘rational’ belief. It is a deeply ingrained, archetypal, mythological reality as well as a scientific truth. Our attention is urgently being drawn to the planetary self, and our relation to it. Each client will have a preferred framing and vocabulary and quite likely be turned-off or repelled by the wrong terminology. Whether our client chooses to linguistically frame it as ‘mother earth’, ‘the web of life’, ‘nodes in the biological matrix’ or as ‘complex system dynamics’ – as coaches we can adopt, refine, and help clarify and extend the clients own authentic conceptualisation, using their own preferred vocabulary, terminology and inner wisdom.
Can we help people dramatise, visualise, explore and cultivate their relationship to Gaia/Mother earth/nature/biosphere and the sacred, and its destructive transformation at this time? Our job is to draw out our clients own depth of understanding and wisdom, as well as their grief, and to validate this wisdom, intuition and feeling. But we have to do the work ourselves first. Do you pay any attention to the sacred dimensions of life, to higher orders of life, intelligence and consciousness? When was the last time you interacted with plant medicine? The traditional shamans say that Gaia can speak with clarity, an intentional and purposeful voice if we remember how to tune in and listen. They say the earth is sick and we need to learn how to listen.
As ‘professionals’ how do we begin to speak to other ‘professionals’ about the sacred, the mysterious, the spiritual? In the right space, with the apropriate language, anyone can imaginatively explore their relation to the cosmos, and to Gaia/Mother Earth and higher orders of being regardless of their profile of ‘rational’ belief. Any conversation that does not extend to the full depth and breadth of understanding risks leading to action which is habitual and counter-productive.
The Holocene/Anthropocene Transition
This process is so large, so fractally complex, that we do not have eyes nor mind to see it as individuals any more than a slug can ‘see’ the foot, or comprehend the human that steps on it, or the dinosaurs could comprehend the implications of that fiery light in the sky. It is an event of such vast scale that only a global size mind could fully comprehend it. Our lifespans are far too short to know what the outcomes will be. All we can do is intuit and deduce that something vast is actually happening, through the science and through the signs and symptoms of the things that are happening to ‘me’, in my personal experience.
There is much benefit in providing skilled space, to explore that which is beyond the boundaries of current knowledge and individual experience, where together we can speculate to the utmost of our soul’s capacity and group mind, to try and understand, deduce and comprehend greater truths by which to live and navigate our way through collapse. Humans have always been doing this, creating listening spaces, where the tribe, the village, the council can try and come to comprehension of change, arrive at deeper wisdom, and learn to adapt. The tools for such wise process are available.
We need to tell the story as best we can, but in ways that open and invite fresh wisdom and intuition. The Holocene is the most recent consensus, or steady, homoeostatic phase-state of the Biosphere/Gaia, out of which humanity emerged and from which we de-integrated. It is debatably the Holocene condition which is ending – which is now in deep transformation or collapse, rather than the death of Gaia itself (although that might happen). The Holocene consensus was mostly benign and accommodating to the life forms that created, maintained and adapted to it, as the majority of species that could not adapt to, or learn to fit the prevailing consensus necessarily went extinct. We have triggered what seems to be a phase-state transition and we have to deeply, deeply adapt. Humanity is breaking/has broken the current consensus of all life, known as the Holocene. What would a new, global consensus of life, where cultural consciousness was fully integrated look like?
The new iteration/consensus/phase-state of the biosphere/Gaia, which may theoretically emerge long after the Holocene breaks down, we are naming the Anthropocene. We have provoked and are in the earliest stages of the transition state – we may call it collapse. Calling the next iteration of global consensus the Anthropocene is deeply ironic as ‘we’ will most likely not be here to enjoy it, any existing future hominids or intelligent organisms will probably be so far adapted (culturally, consciously, physically) from what we are now, as to be unrecognisable. In this speculative version of the story, the Anthropocene will presumably stabilise through a fresh bio-geological consensus achieved in the far future, and life will have accommodated and adapted to the current
anthropological disturbance in the same way we have accommodated the end of the dinosaurs. In the meantime, present and near-future humans will suffer profound disruption and tragedy, and will be required to become something different to what we are now, in order not to go extinct.
As a coach and facilitator, where I get really curious, is to speculate about the capacity for near- instant species transformation when consciously faced with extinction. How do we best elicit that capacity, how do I best align with that potential, how do we bring it about if there is any chance for it? Is there anything that coaching is better able to serve in each and everyone of our clients and groups than this question – and shouldn’t we be asking it of everyone and every conscious space we participate in? What’s waiting to emerge, what does our shared being, our conjoined heart and mind space, begin to glimpse beyond what any of us can know or imagine by ourself? What could an Anthropocene age bring about? How might such speculation inform our actions and modify our will to survive?
Materialism/Physicalism
Materialism is the belief system which has come to dominate, construct and maintain the World. It masquerades as self-evident, scientific truth, as common sense, it underpins the education system and we are all socially conditioned into its assumptions, even if we reject them. Materialist assumptions have been underpinning the dominant discourse and practice of economics, science, politics and philosophy for several generations. Materialism seeks to place itself beyond question or doubt as an authoritative, fundamental and unquestionable truth of the universe, despite its inherent contradictions and much evidence to the contrary. There are many alternatives to materialism in many different discourses; academic, social, political, scientific, religious and spiritual, but materialism dominates the field.
Materialism joins forces with individualism and reductivism (the belief the whole can be explained/defined by the parts) to make a powerful and pervasive, but ultimately self-terminating social ideology.
Materialism is the belief that physicality; stuff, objects, particles, organisms are more fundamental, more enduring, more substantial, more explanatory and more intrinsic than relationships, processes and the whole, and that experience (consciousness) is only derived from complex arrangements of physical matter (human brains mainly). Materialism believes that an objective, substantive reality beyond consciousness is more real, and more ‘fundamentally existing’ than our experience of it, but this can never be proved because by definition it cannot be experienced. This ‘objective’ material reality is believed to be mechanical, random and purposeless. Materialism demotes experience and consciousness, relegating them to an extrinsic, ephemeral, inexplicable quirk of physical matter and its mechanical and random evolution.
The evidence of the harm of materialism is everywhere – it has effectively dethroned ‘awakening’ and well-being as the subject of history, and attempted to install material wealth-creation and money as the subject and process of history. Most humans are now effectively and practically relegated from the status of ‘sovereign subjects’ to the status of ‘objects’, which the historical process of material wealth creation mercilessly uses to further its own expansion. In such a world, GDP and wealth creation become the materialistic, objective measure of ‘human progress’ rather than the expansion of happiness, well being, planetary health, or the awakening of consciousness.
Materialism is inherently violent. We are all damaged and misshaped by this violence, for example the need to sacrifice time to earn money, or the ‘need’ to achieve ‘objective’ standards of beauty. The damage and harm of materialism is so ubiquitous, so pervasive that it has come to seem normal, inevitable and eternal.
Intellectually debating and de-constructing materialism will probably be beyond the scope of coaching and counselling. But humanity is undergoing a crisis of materialism, it is materialism that has fostered this collapse, as its inherent contradictions, its mis-alignment with how life on earth, consciousness and the universe actually work, bring us towards disaster. You and your clients will almost certainly both be in inner conflict with aspects and expressions of the materialist paradigm, and may be seeking alternative explanations and ways of seeing and understanding. The collapse of the materialist assumption shows up in a myriad of ways. A skilful practitioner may spot the fractures and contradictions, as the symptoms which point to conflicts between fundamental ways of seeing, as they manifest and show up as the fears, hopes and problems that are presented in the coaching space. As always, by simply getting curious we can help a client or a group explore different paradigms, different ways of seeing, so that they can be compared, evaluated and validated or rejected. Which version of reality looks and feels more instinctive, explanatory and truthful, and which lead towards positive action and hope?
Idealism/Transcendence
Idealism also takes many forms, it is the understanding that consciousness and subjective experience are intrinsic, fundamental, pervasive and entirely integrated with the universe at large. It is the understanding of unity, of a singular, indivisible process or existence beyond relativistic duality. That ‘I’ am a quality, an expression, an integrated fragment of something much greater than my organismic, particular, mortal body. There are many forms and religious and philosophic expressions of Idealism, it is the default, intuitive, self-affirming understanding of the Universe which has been normal to human history (the perennial philosophy). In the materialist world of modernity, idealism had become heretical, alternative and unscientific. The scientific method has been captured and is actively ‘policed’ by those that would vigorously seek to exclude any non- materialistic understanding from explanations about higher reality, deeper truth and how the universe works. The incredible facility to observe, predict and manipulate the material expression of the universe, or ‘stuff’, which materialist science has afforded us, has over-inflated materialism as a cosmological explanation of the universe and the self. But materialism fails over and over again to explain anything meaningful, rather it robs the entire universe of meaning and diminishes the self to an object.
Many individuals are necessarily rejecting aspects of materialism, and attempting to heal its self- effacing violence, but it persists, and is doubling down ever more violently at a species, and world level, in the death throws of the World. Most of us wander between materialist and idealist perspectives without even really consciously realising it, as we revert to our social conditioning – the prevailing social norms, and are forced to collaborate and make a living within its constructs and imperatives. We might make effort to cultivate non-materialistic awareness, practice, community and explanation but are constantly dragged back into the materialist paradigm as we have to earn/serve money and project our survival into materially defined and increasingly insecure futures.
What kind of Universe do we live in – is it a mechanical, purposeless, random and indifferent machine-space as materialism has taught us? Or, is the Universe a purposeful, directional, magical, benign, fractally structured yet indivisible, conscious, experiential, unfolding, self-assembling learning-event, which values us and our unique perspectives dearly? These are age old questions which we are required to urgently re-explore now. As coaches are we willing and able to lead an enquiry into our clients deepest values and beliefs, and able to explore the differing and conflicting spiritual/metaphysical/materialist perspectives that our clients may hold and stumble between, not for the purpose of ‘self development’ but so that the species mind, the Gaian mind, can evolve and tell new stories about the cosmos and life on earth which are better adapted and more fitting?
How do we develop our practise as coaches, to support people in existential/metaphysical/spiritual crisis, the crisis of materialism, but who still need to make their way and survive in a materialistic world going wrong?
Evolution – First conceived as an explanation for the adaptive diversity of biological species, evolutionary theory has since been expanded to explain universal dynamics of non-random change and development. The three factors of evolution – ‘variation’, ‘selection for fitness’ and ‘heritability/conservation/memory’, are now being observed throughout the known Universe at every level of scale, wherever we look. The concept of evolution has only just begun to reveal to science that we do not live in a fixed, completed, directionless, empty-space Universe, as physicalist/materialist/reductivist assumptions claim.
There is overwhelming evidence that the universal creative process is far from complete. Now we can glimpse not only with the intuitive mind, but also with the microscope and the telescope – a creative, inter-penetrating, evolving Universe, which appears to be purposefully aimed towards the emergence of life and consciousness. Life and biological evolution turn out to be a co-operative, unitary, singular, iterative, planetary process rather than an individualistic, organismic, competitive phenomena as materialist dogma supposes. Self consciousness can be experienced as an emergent, fragile and dependant capacity of highly complex planets, rather than the personal property of a particular, competitive species. There are transcendent truths to glimpse and explore even as our ignorance drives us to distraction and collapse.
Evolution ‘speeds up’ under stress. As a species we may never arrive at ‘ultimate’ truths – from an embodied perspective. However, we can arrive at truths which are better adpated to the evidence and which better fit us for survival.
Conscious Evolution – A spiritual/metaphysical/intellectual/scientific understanding which extends evolutionary theory to understand ‘the self’ as an integrated, emergent property or capacity of the Universe, through which complex planetary biology extends itself, and potentially comes to understand its own ongoing process of becoming, from the relativistic perspective of the particular, and thus awaken into deeper conscious participation and evolutionary traction with itself.
As the process of evolution itself becomes conscious, the individuated, organismic self and our communities can be calibrated into greater alignment, and its laws can be more deliberately/selectively/intentionally/purposefully applied. This can significantly speed up evolutionary processes, so that they no longer require such vast time scales in which to physically unfold through random, unconscious, variation and mutation. We are at an evolutionary pinch point, either the laws and processes of evolution will be consciously grasped and aligned with by our species – or we will go extinct.
The only significant/observable evolutionary pathway currently available on earth is conscious evolution, which has for now superseded physical/biological evolution because there is no longer enough time, space or stability for a physically adaptive, biological response to the human provocation to unfold.
Conscious evolution, at species level, represents the best hope that humanity can stay in the game and continue to participate. We are facing intense selection pressure to learn to ‘fit’, to adapt to what we have begun to understand about deeper reality, how planets, life and mind actually work, and thus self-select for survival through conservation of what remains of the Holocene consensus. Greater fitness means divesting from the World, and finding a more fitting alignment with what we now know about how life on earth, and the Universe actually work.
How can we serve our clients to consciously evolve? What spaces can we create for our communities to adapt and evolve?
Deep Adaptation Coaching
Deep Adaptation is a journey of profound grief, self-preservation, transformation, divestment, awakening and action, in the face of civilisational and/or biosphere collapse, with both internal (contemplative) and external (practical) aspects. Deep Adapatation invites us far beyond the usual, highly limited and partial definitions of self. Deep Adaptation Coaching occurs where both the practitioner and the subject (group or individual) are bravely processing the large-scale collapse of the self, and seeking to cope and respond. A large and immensely valuable part of DA coaching will necessarily be tending to grief, soothing anxiety, and responding to calamity. But the need is far greater than that. Deep Adaptation Coaching probably needs to reject the privileged ‘self development’ model, and seek to innovate in order to serve far greater, deeper, more complex human and global transformational processes. We also need to learn to act as the midwives to species level innovation, wisdom, transformation, as the space holders for a new humanity to emerge.
Resources
‘Journey of the Universe’ video series by Brian Swimme is a profound cosmological journey into Conscious Evolution and Universal embodiment.
The work of Joe Brewer addresses the principles and practise of cultural evolution, towards resilience and earth restoration.
The work of Andrew Harvey develops the practise of Spiritual Activism.
Mark Hamilton offers meditative practises towards integrated conscious evolution.
From our own group – Dean Spillane-Walker is Coaching collapse and holding profound spaces.