The Heart of Spiritual Peacemaking With James O’Dea

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The Heart of Spiritual Peacemaking With James O’Dea

with Renowned Global Peacebuilder
James O’Dea
New 7-Week Live Training Starts
Tuesday, November 4, 2013

Receive leading-edge teachings and practices that marry spiritual transformation, scientific rigor, psychology and social change know-how in one powerful pathway that liberates your heart’s deepest truth for healing yourself and the world around you.
Since you have come to this page, you are clearly called by something that we’ll call the spirit of peace.

This spirit of peace is calling not just you but millions of us around the world to come together and commit ourselves to co-creating a peaceful world.

It is an evolutionary impulse towards healing humanity’s tangled knots of suffering, and birthing the world our hearts know is possible.

This healing will not happen overnight but it most certainly can within our lifetime – IF enough of us take the journey of spiritual peacemaking, which means becoming truly skilled at dissolving, transforming, healing and transmuting the patterns that drive so much aggression, conflict, violence and destruction.

And the reason that this has to be a spiritual journey is that the ultimate transformation comes from grounding ourselves in a wider identity in which we are not fundamentally separate. Why would we wage war against an aspect of our very Self?

That’s why the journey of the spiritual peacemaker cannot just be about changing the world – pointing a finger at the radicals, revolutionaries, criminals, terrorists and abusers out there. No. It must begin within each of us, deep in the parts of ourselves that are hurt, judgemental, angry and suffering.

Even if we’ve spent a lifetime on a path of spiritual growth, we all still have areas of sensitivity and self-protection, many of which harbor residue from past transgression, and can be like land mines ready to explode if touched insensitively.

As we learn to transform the roots of this history in ourselves, we become more skilled and compassionate at doing so in the circles around us. We learn to “aikido” anger rather than fight it. We learn to transmute old wounds rather than avoid them. The inner and outer work go hand in hand.

So the journey of spiritual peacemaking is at once a journey into personal wholeness and a journey into transforming the pain, anger and reactivity of our world.

It is, at the core, about creating a world we can truly feel at home in.

Dare to Imagine a Peaceful World
So we invite you to do a visualization now. First, picture yourself with your entire extended family laughing together, playing in a park, telling stories, and beaming with unconditional love.

Then picture your work environment filled with compassionate and respectful communication and a real spirit of creative joy. And then your city stepping beyond racial, cultural, economic and political labels to find an authentic sense of shared community.

Finally, now picture our world shifting towards peace as we learn to live with our differences compassionately and constructively. Wars between countries are ending. More and more people are traveling to places that were once enemy territories and discovering their shared humanity.

As you allow this vision of peace to come over you, sense into how you would feel knowing that crime rates are plummeting, wars are winding down, all the ugly ‘-isms’ are in decline, and more and more homes are filled with a spirit of peace (including yours!).

If you are moved, expanded and opened by this visualization, you are already a peacemaker at the core. You do not buy the story that a world torn apart by violence and polarization represents the best in us.

You know that we CAN do better and that you, in whatever small but important ways, are part of the solution for building a world powered by harmony, joy and love.

In that world, you can envision Palestinians and Israelis celebrating together, Democrats and Republicans working together, and the bullying coming to an end in your local schools.

On the deepest level, you KNOW that there is a deeper story for humanity, one in which we remember that to live the truth is to view the world as one sacred family.

As you look inside yourself, we encourage you to honor this part of you that knows you are here to create a wave of peace that permeates your own body and mind and then spreads to your loved ones, your allies and your community.

The truth is that you are far more powerful as a peacemaker than you probably believed possible.

To liberate this power though, it takes much more than just well-intentioned thoughts.

It takes real transformational practices married with a grounded, scientific understanding of how to navigate the suffering in yourself and others in a way that heals and transforms it.

We are raised to fear negative, attacking, judgmental or grieving emotions and recoil from them. We may try quick-fix Band-Aid words when someone touches long-held wounds.

But the real solution comes from leaning in, with ALL of our being, meeting people in their challenges and their pain and learning how to liberate those stuck places from the old shackles.

In an ideal world, we would receive training from a young age about how to transform aggression, disarm negativity and diffuse tensions. These skills are, after all, at the foundation of great relationships, happy families and community cohesion.

And we would go still further, learning how to transform our society, both through deep healing work as well as with the levers of political power.

Fortunately, it’s not too late to learn these skills. You can receive training in the deep understandings of how to marry psychological insight, communication skills, spiritual practices and navigating challenging worldly situations.

You can learn to use your “spiritual compass” to sense what is beneath surface stories, illuminating the patterns of energy and even karma that have formed deep and debilitating grooves in our lives. You can open to levels of consciousness that allow you to see (and shift) long-held stories.

And as you learn to work with destructive patterns on these levels, you discover that you can stand in your full loving power, as well as call others into that state as well.

The Path to Peace
This is where the new field “spiritual peacemaking” comes in, and especially The Heart of Spiritual Peacemaking program with James O’Dea.

Never before have so many essential threads for understanding and practicing spiritual peacemaking been brought together in a single seven-week program with a true master teacher of peace.

It’s becoming clear that this new discipline, which blends the latest research from psychology, neuroscience and transformational practices, has important gifts that can help heal your own heart and the hearts of those around you.

When you enroll in the program, you will enter into a living laboratory of peacebuilding and embark upon deep shifts in your own being as you learn to identify, meet, heal and transform the very roots of the patterns that cause the most pain, both in yourself and others.

Spiritual peacemaking empowers you to create real and lasting change in your everyday life as well as the larger world. We all face aggressive polarizations, raw anger and festering hatreds in some form, from our politics to wounds in our families.

The Heart of Spiritual Peacemaking facilitates profound shifts by going to the deepest level of our beings – our souls, our karma, even the subtle energy fields that connect us. It draws upon spiritual practice, psychology, social science and activism to address some of our world’s deepest wounds in a holistic way.

It teaches us how to navigate anger, grief, polarization and fear in ourselves and others in a way that, at last, frees us from these cycles.

The Importance of a Skilled Guide

As in most important endeavors, it is vitally important to have a masterful guide, one who truly knows the terrain and can help you develop the skills and capacities to step into your own mastery.

That guide for The Heart of Spiritual Peacemaking is James O’Dea, a fascinating teacher and peacebuilder who blends insights from decades of spiritual practice with lineages from the Sufis to the Kogis, to his time at the forefront of social and scientific evolution at Amnesty International and the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

He has been on the frontlines in the Middle East, facilitated healing dialogues in Rwanda, worked with the gnarliest issues of race, and sat with many great spiritual teachers and scientists.

From this remarkable life journey, he has become a great teacher of peace, having trained more than 900 Peace Ambassadors in a premiere 16-week program that weaves together the work of the world’s top peacebuilders.

Now, for the first time, you get access to the leading edge of his teachings – including ones he has never shared before! – – in one comprehensive package during only seven weeks.

James is skilled, wise and compassionate, with vast knowledge about how to help you shift from someone who cares about peace to someone who KNOWS how to make it happen at every level. He will go to the depths of consciousness, karma and inherited patterns to show you how to address the issues at your very core.

He’ll illuminate the 21st century path of peacemaking in a way that you haven’t ever heard before and that can bring profound healing to your heart, your family and our world. The Heart of Spiritual Peacemaking will be a spiritually enriching, intellectually fascinating and eminently practical journey into the heart and soul of peacemaking.

Here’s what you’ll learn in the next 7 weeks
Course sessions are on Tuesdays at 5:00pm Pacific.

In this seven-week transformational program, James will guide you through a proven skill set that includes practices that you can tailor to your own life and efforts. He’ll carefully weave science, activism, spirituality, psychology and systems theory together with skill-building work in a way that will give you knowledge, understanding and expanded capacities to be a peacemaker from your home to our world.

Each weekly, LIVE contemplation and training session will build harmoniously upon the next, so that you’ll develop a complete, holistic understanding of the practices, tools and principles you’ll need to become a more evolved leader of peace and make a significant impact on spreading peace in our world.

Module 1: The Leading Edge of Peace Work: Spiritual Peacemaking (November 4)

You’ll receive a mind-expanding introduction to Spiritual Peacemaking as a map of peace. This will catalyze your development of a spiritually aligned vision along with knowledge, processes and skill that will move you beyond piecemeal conflict resolution efforts into deep personal and social transformation.

In this module, you will:

Learn how we bring the convergence of separate and diverse disciplines such as law, science, psychology, social theory, conscious evolution and spiritual insight into a breakthrough vision of peace.
Align with a higher consciousness, upgrading your vision and skills, to create a field where inner and outer are synchronized and synergized with your fullest potential.
Learn how to articulate a hopeful evolutionary perspective on violent conflict: how we got here and where we are going.
Learn how to create an integral peace map to use for personal alignment with spiritual work and visionary service.
Module 2: States of Consciousness and Spiritual Peace Work (November 11)

In this module, you will deepen your understanding of different states of consciousness and how they activate positive or negative emotions and entrain behavioral patterns that uplift self and others. You’ll understand how emotionality triggers reactivity and find out why certain states, though not violent in themselves, end up destroying peace, sabotage relationships and lead to antagonism.

In Module 2, you will learn how to:

Release suppressed grief to prevent antagonism and violence.
Channel the energy of raw anger in ways that are morally enlightening rather than damaging to others.
Cultivate a state of peace that can positively affect thousands of other lives.
Explore your role in holding states of consciousness that catalyze a tipping point in shifting consciousness.
Module 3: The Science of Empathy, Heart-centered Awareness and Compassion in Peace Practice (November 18)

Discoveries in neuroscience, heart science, human biochemistry and mind-body science offer new approaches to creating a culture of peace and give us specific peace practices to develop and master peacemaking at every level of relationship. During this module, you will learn to understand the frequencies of thought and emotion; speaking and listening; intuition and inner guidance; meditation and action.

In Module 3, you will:

Learn to apply these frequencies in tense encounters and for advanced peace work.
Learn to recognize and correct fragmentation and triggers and reach heart/mind coherence.
Review communication strategies that get to the heart of spiritual peacemaking and guide us to experiencing a state of communion and oneness with others.
Attain the spiritual high of altruism, visionary service and collaboration.
Review the science of holarchy and wholeness, which help us understand both limiting blind spots and the wider perspective that leads to compassion.
Module 4: Understanding Karma and the Transmission of Gifts and Wounds for Personal and Social Healing (November 25)

Karma is the law of cause and effect deriving from sanskaras, which are accumulated impressions or psychic imprints. Spiritually advanced peacemakers learn how impressions are cleared through specific insight and knowledge; this knowledge is gained through understanding both sides of the coin – victim/perpetrator, rich/poor, male/female.

Receive guidance on how to create a map of your personal Karmic profile, which contains all imprints and how they were dealt with – where we have learned and achieved insight and where we are stuck.

In Module 4, you will:

Explore individual, family and societal karmic profiles to create context for personal and collective healing.
Forge pathways to higher principles to choose forgiveness over perpetual resentment and partnership over domination, which create good karma.
Learn why releasing negative karma is not about being good as much as being true.
Receive the latest scientific research on the continuity of consciousness beyond the brain and after death – including near death experiences and reincarnation – and why this science is key to spiritual peacemaking.
Module 5: Working with Polarities and Transcending Them (December 2)

Duality serves us in very functional ways, but when ego takes over opposites get polarized and create chaos, injustice and enmity. Learning to work with opposites as complementary while defusing rigid polarities is the heart of peacemaking – as is understanding nonduality as the basis for unity.

In Module 5, you will:

Learn how to remove the charge of otherness while celebrating diversity and clarifying values.
Learn the high art of practicing crucial deep discernment while also practicing non-judgment.
Recognize how ego operates at the center of polarizing conflict and the psychological states it uses for cover.
Exercise personal power to embody peace at home, in the office and in your community.
Module 6: Skills and Qualities of
Spiritual Peacemakers (December 9)

This module moves you towards mastery of dialogue and truth process to reach the highest truth beyond accommodation or compromise. You will also explore energy mastery and how to recognize the structure of wounds and triggers in yourself and others and how to deal with them in a transformational way.

In Module 6, you will:

Commit to universal servanthood; making your vows as a transformational peacemaker.
Learn to nurture your own gifts, holy names and creative predisposition.
Understand how to embody passion without ego – – cultivating equipoise.
Activate power with humility.
Expand your capacity for love and self-actualization.
Module 7: Manifesting the Vision of the Spiritual Peacemaker (December 16)

In this final module, you will learn about six elements for manifesting your vision and how you can uniquely organize them in your life to share the gift of peace with others. We will also summarize and integrate the course work, laying the groundwork for practices you can move forward with for years to come.

In Module 7, you will work with six key elements:

Vision: Embodying the vision that you have acquired in the course.
Relational Field: Taking the spiritual peacemaking practices into the world and into all of your relationships.
Intuition: Continuously fine-tuning your intuition and energy-reading capacities so that you are spiritually informed in every conflict.
Timing: From learning to work on the subtle planes to cultivating master timing in ways that will bring spiritual healing and transformation in your work.
Great Mystery: Surrendering to the great mystery as a dynamic engagement with the deepest guidance for your peacemaking work.
Passion: Awakening the passion of the conscious activist and spiritual peacemaker to create a new template for social transformation.
The The Heart of Spiritual Peacemaking
Bonus Collection
In addition to James’ transformative seven-week virtual course, you’ll receive these powerful training sessions with the world’s leading visionaries and teachers. These bonus sessions are being offered to further complement what you’ll learn in the course – and take your understanding and practice to an even deeper level.

Every Being, All of Nature is an Expression of God
Audio dialogue with James O’Dea and Matthew Fox

Matthew Fox has a cosmology where the individual and all of nature are expressions of God. When you tap into your oneness with God, you experience deep peace in your soul, which is the foundation for all peace. Many of the current paradigms and systems – church, education, military industry, politics – are based on separation and fear; therefore, they are out of alignment with cosmic law and are not reflective of our highest potential.

In this special session, Matthew explores the challenges and sacrifices of speaking your truth to power, including his experience with the Catholic church. He also talks about the three brains – reptilian, mammalian and neocortex – and how we, as humans, can respond to the global crisis, such as climate change, selfishly, (each person and nation for him/itself) or with compassion for all.

Matthew Fox is the author of 28 books including Original Blessing:The Reinvention of Work; Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet; One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faiths; A Spirituality Named Compassion; A New Reformation!; andThe A.W.E. Project: Reinventing Education, Reinventing the Human. He was a member of the Dominican Order for 34 years and holds a doctorate (received summa cum laude) in the History and Theology of Spirituality from the Institut Catholique de Paris.

Spiritual Progressives
Audio dialogue with James O’Dea and Rabbi Michael Lerner

In this provocative dialogue, James and Rabbi Lerner discuss how the creative intelligence of Spirit is guiding the evolution of the entire physical universe. Suffering comes when people act from free will in a way that harms others – they then experience the karmic consequences of their actions. The Jewish tradition has periods of atonement where people come back into alignment with cosmic law. Rabbi Lerner also explores the transmission of pain from generation to generation and the need to overcome the patterns, especially in Israel and Palestine.

Rabbi Michael Lerner is an internationally renowned social theorist, theologian and psychotherapist. He is the founder and publisher of Tikkun, one of the most respected intellectual/cultural magazines in the Jewish world. He is the rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue, which meets in San Francisco and Berkeley. Lerner received a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the Wright Institute.

Global Trends in Spirituality and Peacemaking
Audio dialogue with James O’Dea and Dena Merriam

In this bonus dialogue, James and Dena discuss the idea that all religions come from one source. Each religion is a different path to the same goal – union with the Divine. In Dena’s work with the Global Initiative of Women (GPIW) she has seen several trends emerging around the world. One is that religions are moving away from competition – my religion is the only way – to understanding that each religion is a legitimate path. She is seeing more people drawn to “spirituality” and away from religious dogma – people wanting to be taught how to have their own experience with the Divine causing an increase in the practice of meditation and yoga. The growing trend of individual focus on spiritual growth is helping shift societal narratives of conflict and violence. Dena and the GPIW have worked extensively to raise awareness about the role of the Divine Feminine working harmoniously with masculine energies in peacemaking.

Dena Merriam recently received the 31st Niwano Peace Prize, one of the most prestigious global interfaith awards. Dena’s work in the interfaith movement began in the late 1990s. In 2000, she served as vice chair of Millennium World Peace Summit and Spiritual Leaders at the United Nations, and subsequently convened a group of women religious and spiritual leaders at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva to form the Global Peace Initiative of Women (GPIW). The GPIW’s mission is twofold: to empower women to facilitate healing and reconciliation globally and to initiate greater discourse between religions and initiatives in civil society addressing critical global problems. Merriam also serves on the boards of the Interfaith Center of New York, AIM for Seva and Dharma Drum Mountain Buddhist Association. She is a former member of the board of Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions and the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy. And, she is co-chair of the Millennium World Peace Summit, the first summit held at the United Nations General Assembly for more than 1,500 of the world’s religious leaders.

What Respected Leaders Say About James O’Dea. . .

James O’Dea penetrates to the soul level where the Source of Love lives. By recognizing and loving that universal essence of being within us, no matter who we are, he reveals and heals the violence. He provides us with a path that each of us can follow to heal the world and ourselves. I find that every moment I spend with him is precious and brings peace to my soul.
– Barbara Marx Hubbard, author of Conscious Evolution and Birth 2012 and Beyond

James O’Dea is a modern-day Bard and is deeply engaged in the Great Turning of our times. He draws on his well of wisdom and history of ages in speaking to our times. James is a wise soul and lover of life.
– Lynne Twist, author of The Soul of Money and founder, the Pachamama Alliance and The Soul of Money Institute

James brings a spirit of peace and reconciliation into life with his very being. He is a wise global citizen whose compassionate heart has emerged from the fire of a lifetime of sacred activism. I highly recommend James and the many gifts he brings to our world in transition.
– Duane Elgin, author of Voluntary Simplicity, The Living Universe

James O’Dea’s life experience and skillful writing make peacebuilding personal and accessible. He shows us that ‘cultivating peace’ is not just what UN diplomats or professional mediators do. It’s a vital part of each of our lives.
– Mark Gerzon, author of Leading Through Conflict and Global Citizens

James O’Dea is indubitably one of the most evolved souls on this planet. He can advise others on how to become a global peace ambassador because he is one himself. The spread of his message worldwide is one of the key preconditions of creating a peaceful transformation worldwide-and in time.
– Ervin Laszlo, renowned systems theorist and founder of Global Shift University

O’Dea liberates our imagination about peace; his insights enrich the field of conflict transformation.
– Abdul Aziz Said, International Peace and Conflict Resolution Program

Here’s What You’ll Receive

Seven 60-Minute Class Sessions with James O’Dea

Experience a rare opportunity to be mentored and learn with renowned global peacebuilder James O’Dea – from the comfort of your own home. Each class session includes renowned guest faculty, and helps you create the specific skills and abilities to awaken your spiritual peacemaking potential.

Seven Audio Recordings of Each
Class Session

After each class, the audio will be available to you to download in high quality MP3 format. This way, you’ll never have to worry about missing a session, and you can listen anytime and anywhere – on your iPod, in your car, and at your convenience.

Seven PDF Transcripts of Each
Class Session

In addition to the high quality MP3 audios, you’ll also receive the entire class transcription in PDF format after each session is completed. This way you can review, print and highlight the most important insights and practices that you’ll learn.

Seven 30-Minute Interactive Group Practice Sessions

Following each class session there will be a live 30-minute interactive practice session, where you will be placed in an intimate group with several other participants on the conference call to interact, share and do additional practices to help further integrate the weekly lessons.

Interactive Exercises and Questions for Each Lesson

After each lesson, you will then have the option to do related exercises and answer questions in order to accelerate your learning and integrate each week’s lesson.

Online Community

Our exclusive, Facebook online community is the perfect place to continue your learning after each class. Here, you can ask additional questions, interact with your fellow students and get access to additional resources to take your learning experience to an even deeper level.

The Heart of Spiritual Peacemaking
Bonus Collection

Every Being, All of Nature is an Expression of God
Audio dialogue with James and Matthew Fox
Spiritual Progressives
Audio dialogue with James and Rabbi Michael Lerner
Global Trends in Spirituality and Peacemaking
Audio dialogue with James and Dena Merriam
An Unprecedented Opportunity to Join in The Heart of Spiritual Peacemaking Virtual Intensive
We at The Shift Network feel deeply honored that James O’Dea has chosen to partner with us on this exclusive online training. As you may know, this is a rare opportunity to learn directly from a world renowned peace builder dedicated to helping others find the perspectives, tools and wisdom needed to be true ambassadors of peace.

Through this powerful online format, you’ll not only save time and money on workshop costs (plus travel, accommodations and meals, which would cost thousands of dollars). But you’ll be able to benefit from James’ incredible teachings and exercises from the comfort of your home – at your own pace!

If you are serious about living a more peaceful life, then you owe it to yourself, your loved ones and our world to take this one-of-a-kind training with James O’Dea.

About James O’Dea . . .

James O’Dea is a well-known figure in international social healing who has conducted healing and reconciliation dialogues for 15 years. He is currently the co-director of The Social Healing Project, whose work has led him to Rwanda, Israel/Palestine and Northern Ireland. In addition to teaching the Path of the Peacemaker and Peace Ambassador Training programs at The Shift Network, he is also on the extended faculty of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and is its immediate past president.

The former Washington office director of Amnesty International and CEO of the Seva Foundation, O’Dea is a member of The Evolutionary Leaders Group founded by Deepak Chopra. His most recent book, Creative Stress: A Path for Evolving Souls Living through Personal and Planetary Upheaval (2010), was featured and reviewed in dozens of media outlets.

James is committed to dialogue as a practice and is engaged in dialogues at SEED Graduate Institute between native elders, physicists, and thought leaders; between Israeli and Palestinian psychologists and social workers; and contributes to dialogue on systems thinking and government policy making with the Washington, D.C.-based Global Systems Initiatives.

In August 2010, James was recognized with the honor of “Champion of Peace, Reconciliation and Forgiveness” by the Worldwide Forgiveness Alliance. James lectures and gives workshops all over the world and was a keynote speaker at the Berlin Peace Festival in August 2011. He is also an advisory board member of the Peace Alliance and just published a book called Cultivating Peace.

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