Ep 20 - Wisdom Dialogue #1 — Awakening Together

Episode 20: Wisdom Dialogue # 1
with **Alan Briskin**

“If our capacity for wisdom arises from influences and practices at a relatively small scale, but our biggest problems arise from underlying delusions within system dynamics at a planetary scale, what follows for how we should educate ourselves?” ~ Jonathan Rowson
With this next conversation, I’m officially launching my Wisdom Dialogue Series. If I only had time to tell you how this is a culmination of my life up to this moment, and how this is the result of a flow of synchronicities in my life that have been growing and growing so powerfully. Without further adieu, the first episode is with my guest Alan Briskin. He’s so perfect to be the first guest and let me share about him and you’ll see why.
*Alan Briskin, Ph.D.* is the author and co-author of multiple books on the workplace, health care, and collective wisdom, including *The Stirring of Soul in the Workplace, Daily Miracles,* and *The Power of Collective Wisdom*. He has been working with groups and organizations for 40 years as an executive coach and consultant.
Co-founder of The Collective Wisdom Initiative, sponsored by the Fetzer Institute, Dr. Briskin’s long-term clients have included Kaiser Permanente, George Lucas Educational Foundation, and the Goi Peace Foundation in Tokyo. He has held positions as Executive Advisor at the Institute of Noetic Sciences and Senior Advisor to the One Humanity Institute. His work has sought to integrate the interior experience of individuals and groups with the realities of external power, privilege, and institutional history. He is currently working on a forthcoming book with Mary Gelinas, Space is Not Empty: Harnessing the Power of Relational Fields to Impact Our World.
That is just the tip of the iceberg of who Alan is because we are infinite people who are more than our bios. Nonetheless, it’s inspiring to hear part of his story. I hope that this wisdom dialogue supports you, my listener and viewer and Awakening Together community member, in discovering more of your own capacity, your own deep longing for meaningful conversation and more of the wisdom in your own life.
I believe that the world needs more wisdom and we need more dialogue and we also need spaces and containers for dialogue beyond just the normal meeting kind of conversations. Of course you might want to know “What is a wisdom dialogue?” What is wisdom and what then is dialogue? Listen in and find out.
This first Wisdom Dialogue emerged out of what was going to be our ‘prep’ call for the formal interview I was going to have with Alan. It wanted to be a Wisdom Dialogue. We were quickly in a deep connected (communitas) space that was guiding us as much as we were guiding it through the flow of our conversation. There was a delightful exploration. Many of my listeners and viewers are familiar I am sure with the aboriginal scholar and author Tyson Yunkaporta, and if not please check out his work. In his book Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Will Change The World (which I highly recommend), he speaks generously about the difference between having an ordinary conversation and having a ‘yarn’. Yarning is simply put the Aboriginal approach to group dialogue, knowledge creation, sharing and decision making; it’s also about “the creation of a space without a stage to share experiences, to draw on the ground and sketch ideas out to illustrate a point.” Doesn’t that sound like what a Wisdom Dialogue might be? I hope so. So this wonderful yarn was inspiring, nurturing, insightful, and invited each of us into deeper parts of ourselves together, as we care about each other and the earth and these times we are in. Let us learn as members of this global family different ways of learning and sharing in language - letting the heart lead with the head following - mastery and the emissary.
Perhaps another point of this wisdom series is to explore what it means to embody wisdom in conversation and what capacities can emerge from this kind of generative dialogue and exploration. And maybe there is no ‘point’ at all but the delight in going deep with another human without some big agenda. We are playing with emergence and our ways of being with each other that inspire innovation and revelation and insight.
Wisdom is beyond ordinary intelligence, thinking and understanding and meaning making only with the left hemisphere, with our mental capacities. Wisdom comes through the somatic lived experience, from our deep intuitive knowings, our clairgnosis. And we need places to practice. We need spaces where we can develop new capacities for sense-making and choice-making. I hope as you listen you can feel how you are a part of this, because you are, you are IN the conversation, the dialogue, the yarn!
For me these dialogues feel like they demonstrate the kind of deep insights and bright wisdom that can emerge through a way of being with each other. This was unplanned. This was beautifully emergent. Something clearly wanted to unfold. Out of wisdom comes freedom culture and a wisdom driven culture and civilization. I can feel this potential. From the micro to the macro, there is a trajectory. The future is in need of wise action.
WATCH
LISTEN
READ
CONNECT

Bios

Alan Briskin, Ph.D. is author and co-author of multiple books on the workplace, health care, and collective wisdom, including The Stirring of Soul in the Workplace, Daily Miracles, and The Power of Collective Wisdom. He has been working with groups and organizations for 40 years as an executive coach and consultant.

Co-founder of The Collective Wisdom Initiative, sponsored by the Fetzer Institute, Dr. Briskin’s long-term clients have included Kaiser Permanente, George Lucas Educational Foundation, and the Goi Peace Foundation in Tokyo. He has held positions as Executive Advisor at the Institute of Noetic Sciences and Senior Advisor to the One Humanity Institute. His work has sought to integrate the interior experience of individuals and groups with the realities of external power, privilege, and institutional history. He is currently working on a forthcoming book with Mary Gelinas, Space is Not Empty: Harnessing the Power of Relational Fields to Impact Our World.

LINKS:

Alan Briskin website

His book on Collective Wisdom

Blog Post on Cultivating Awareness