What Can We Do In These Powerful Times?
What Can We Do In These Powerful Times?
Robin Alfred
Robin is an executive coach, facilitator, a mediator, an organisational consultant, works in leadership development and sometimes known as a mystic (Twitter, LinkedIn, Website).
Our conversation concentrates on the importance of feeling present, and being fully open to what is happening in that moment. Only then can we integrate the past, and not be unconsciously driven by it. Only then can we hear the calling of the future, and act courageously towards something different. Only then can we act in alignment with a deeper ethics.
This is all very much at the spiritual end of acting in these powerful times. You can read about my own experience on a previous version of Robin's course, Leading from the Future, is in this blog 'Facing the Future'. Here is the current one (as at Jan 2023) Leading from the Future programme (starts 14 Feb 2023).
Links
Findhorn Foundation (and on wikipedia here).
Robin's course on The Art of Facilitating Transformational Fields.
Otto Scharmer on wikipedia
When Robin talks of 'the bottom of the U' he's referring to Scharmer's Theory U.
Timings
0:58 - Q1 What are you doing now? And how did you get there?
21:19 - Q2. What is the future you are trying to create, and why?
25:45 -- BONUS QUESTION: What values are embedded in taking the next evolutionary step?
27:46 - Q3. What are your priorities for the next few years, and why?
30:02 - Q4. If someone was inspired to follow those priorities, what should they do next?
34:02 - Q5. If your younger self was starting their career now, what advice would you give them?
36:11 - Q6. Who would you nominate to answer these questions, because you admire their approach?
37:33 - Q7. Is there anything else important you feel you have to say?
More here
Twitter: Powerful_Times
Website hub: here.
Please do like and subscribe, to help others find the podcast.
Thank you for listening! -- David
Welcome to What can we do in these powerful times? I'm your host, David bent, and I've been working in the field of sustainability and climate change for some 20 years, feels like the need for change is growing faster than the impact we're delivering. So I'm wondering what I, what can I do next that's useful. Speaking with others, they have that same challenge, which is why I'm doing this interview series in 30 minute bites, I asked some brilliant people what they're doing now and why all to inspire and enable the audience which may just turn out to be me through stories grounded in experience. And today, I'm delighted to say we're joined by Robin Alford, who is very hard to describe, but a list of things he's currently up to include, but is not limited to executive coach, facilitator, working leadership development mediator, organisational consultant, and sometimes known as a mystic. Hello, Robin.
Robin Alfred:Hi, David. It's see.
David Bent-Hazelwood:So what are you doing now? And how did you get here?
Robin Alfred:Well, I noticed that in your description of me, the thing I'm happiest about is being called a mystic. So in a way, that's what I'm trying to do, I'm trying to bring timeless wisdom and mysticism, which in my experience, and understanding is really a search for truth, the deepest levels of truth into the arenas that I'm working in, whether it's coaching or facilitation, or leadership development, or organisational consulting, there's different levels that we can address those at. So we can address them at a kind of problem solution. Level two is not so interesting and generally doesn't work. Or we can go into deeper levels and actually try to sense what's really going on underneath the surface, like what are the things that we don't either dare to look at, or want to look at, and surface, the deeper rivers that are running in our lives, and then pay attention to those. And out of that comes a movement. So that's what I'm attempting to facilitate, and all the different environments that I'm privileged to work in.
David Bent-Hazelwood:Wonderful. And we'll come back to those arenas and environments. But can you tell us a little bit about how you got to where you're working now what you're doing there other?
Robin Alfred:Yeah, I was originally a criminal justice, social worker and East End of London. So I spent most of my formative working life, both studying and working in the field of crime. And then I came to Findhorn 27 years ago, full time as a spiritual community and an eco village in the north of Scotland. As you know, that's where I met you. And I've been here for 27 years. And in this community, here, we are attempting to build a model of sustainable human settlement. And we would look at sustainability in terms of, for sure environmental sustainability, economic sustainability, cultural sustainability, social sustainability, and spiritual sustainability. And as soon as I arrived here, I knew that part of my purpose was to build bridges between the community here and the world outside. So one of the first things I did was was contact that local prison because I thought that'll make me feel at home. There's a jail in Inverness, and I ended up teaching Tai Chi to sex offenders and mainstream offenders in Inverness prison as part of my work for the community here. And I've always been a bridge builder. So very early on, I set up a consultancy service event and consultancy service, which is now morphed into my own business, open circle consulting, and really kind of fell into what I'm now doing step by step. So people started to notice that we ran a consulting business, people started to ask for that. They said, There's something about how you build community here and how you understand how people work and vision and purpose and values and leadership and conflict facilitation and all the social aspect, as I would call it of the ecovillage paradigm that people wanted. And fortunately, we had somebody very early on who was visiting from PwC big consultancy, who employed us for two years to do this work in Eastern Europe, which gave us some mainstream credibility. So very early on, we were kind of working across different sectors, from some of the world's poorest in India to some of the world's wealthiest in Qatar, and feel very fortunate to have been able to work in many different environments.
David Bent-Hazelwood:And across their journey, you also know I forget the exact name for it. Chief Executive of Findhorn was
Robin Alfred:We called it we called it the chair of there also. management. I was the chair of management for several years, and I was also the Chair of the Board of Trustees for several years. So I had a leadership position at Findhorn for quite a long time.
David Bent-Hazelwood:Yes. And you mentioned Findhorn as a spiritual community that's trying to be sustainable human settlement. And if think, if people know of intone they may know of it in that spiritual terms. And I suppose was the things I tried to listen on behalf of the audience maybe thinking of this in terms of very sort of fluffy in a way, which I've been having been through and what I think under serves it. So how would you describe Finland to someone who's not been there, which gives conveys the reality of it?
Robin Alfred:Well, it's a work in progress. I mean, we have a high dream of creating, as I say, a sustainable community. And if you were to visit it, you would see some of the things that you would expect to see in an eco village like wind turbines and solar panels and you know, ecological housing and carpooling systems, and organic food production and all of that. And then the see that my sister in law came, which is a lot, it's a bit like a university campus worker with an ecological bent to it. So it has a little bit that flavour and then when you kind of dig deeper you go, but how does it work? Like how's the governance work? How does decision making work? How do you resolve conflicts and differences, and that's where I've been more involved. And then you start to say, Oh, we have a currency that circulates for the ICO and Ico equals one pound, it stimulates local trading, you can get paid in Ico as you can redeem it in the local shops. So you start to kind of dig a little deeper, and you start to see the underpinnings of also what attempts to be a kind of participatory democracy in terms of how we make decisions about what we want to build, grow develop here. That gives a bit more of a flavour for people who maybe don't really know what an eco village might feel like.
David Bent-Hazelwood:It gives more of that flavour. So and you said about what you're doing now that bring truth into these different arenas a deeper truth than just, here's a problem. Here's a solution. And can you say a little bit about what the arenas you're working in are?
Robin Alfred:Yeah, and I also want to say something about another piece about how I really got to do this, what I would call more kind of contemporary applied mysticism, I'd say, which is really through the blessings of three spiritual teachers that I've had over my life. So one was Eileen caddy, who was the fount one of the founders of Findhorn who was like a grandmother slash teacher to me when I was here. And this is passed on now, quite a few years ago. But she really modelled the practice of inner listening, like how do we really listen to the deeper truth that can appear in the silent spaces. Then I had a Sufi teacher for six and a half years in the States, who also which was more a kind of warrior path of not quite ego annihilation, but almost. And that was kind of tough and strong and good. And he had a challenging question that orientated me, which was really what is at the centre of your life? Like, is it me? Or is it something beyond me? Service, or we might call it the divine or God or depends on languages or nature or creation. As soon as we talk about spirituality, it gets tricky, because language doesn't really serve us so well. And then I've had for the last 12 years, another teacher, Michel, Thomas hubo, who is Austrian by birth lives in Israel married to an Israeli artist, and he really has taken my understanding of contemporary mysticism to another level. So I just want to name those influences, because they're very strong for me. And that has allowed me to answer it really, really in a way I follow. I follow both where I'm asked to go but also what I feel called to do. So in the arenas that I work in, I did spend a lot of time doing corporate work, also through a company called Olivier method drama, where I worked with Richard Olivier and others doing working with to experience stories as a kind of case studies and metaphors for leadership. That took me into the boardrooms and the kind of C suites of a lot of corporates. And then more recently, I've decided to move away from that. And my work more now is with NGOs, SMEs, individually, individuals through coaching practices, I don't really differentiate between life coaching and executive coaching. It's like a person is a person and they have lots of different facets to them. But I'm increasingly building a coaching practice. And I'm also increasingly teaching. So I teach, I teach a programme around what I call the art of facilitating transformational fields, which is one of the things that I'm really interested in developing now, which is working as a facilitator through being rather than doing where the the essence of the facilitation is, through practising enough in a presence and coherence to build group coherence in the group that is assembled, which builds a field let's say, we often talk about systemic thinking, but the system itself is embedded in a field. The field is more of a kind of holding environment for a system, we might call it the atmosphere, or the air that we breathe and away is the field that field can be charged with presence and clarity of intention, and then becomes kind of quite magnetic and potent. And within that charged field which I would call a transformational field, magic happens. That's where kind of aha moments drop in. And extraordinary things happen. And people start to resolve conflicts and I'm increasingly interested in, in how unpacking the science, we might call it the energetic science of how you create a field like that. And also, another thing that I'm passionate about at the moment is what I'm calling leading from the future, which builds on the work of Otto Sharma, also, and Thomas Hubel, and others, about listening to our future calling, which may be very different from what our planning mind thinks the future needs from us. Yeah,
David Bent-Hazelwood:so let's take those two and unpack them a little bit more on the transformative field, I think. So I'm currently listening with my physics head, as well as my first degree. And there's always this sort of sceptical, modern thinker in me that goes, what does it mean by field? Does it mean that by energetic science, what can that possibly there's a very sceptical voice, but at the same time, I know I've been to music concerts or rugby matches where you can feel the crowd, and you can feel a sense of something's about to happen, or there's some amazing release of joy, or whatever else it might be or disappointment in the case of England rugby at the moment. And and, and so I think it's, it's interesting, what can't be expressed within the language and thinking that is serve that has been the dominant orthodoxy for the last period, and in which I've been trained. As a physicist, and then accountant, there's only so much that can be said, with and unfelt within those languages. So, and you're talking about being a part of your role as being a bridge, when it comes to the transformative field? How is there? How do you? How do you bring that to people who perhaps haven't been Findhorn? Haven't had that background? Coming more with that sceptical, modern starting point? And how do you bring that to them?
Robin Alfred:Well, the first thing is, you're right. I mean, words, words are clumsy, sometimes. My sense, which is building on what you just said, is that we know it, when we feel it. You walk into a cathedral, for example. And sometimes you feel it feels different. And I would say that's the field, the field that has been created, let's say in a particular cathedral by people going and praying there for hundreds of years, I creates an atmosphere, which I would call the field, which is charged with something with intention, because there's a kind of humbling intention or a prayerful intention that's been amplified for many people going there for many, many years. Practising in a particular way. So I think everybody will have experiences of that, or like you say, you go to a concert, and you suddenly feel like, wow, the whole place feels electric, it's kind of alive, there's something very, very vibrant in the space. So that's the field. And, and, and we can then, if we noticed that that exists, we can then look at how do we then practice in a way as facilitators, for example, in this particular training, to help to create that in our group. And we also noticed that we can walk into a group one morning, and it feels like, Oh, it's lovely, and it feels coherent, I would say I would work with a term group coherence, the group feels coherent, it doesn't mean there's not disagreements. Disagreements can be held within a coherent field. And they're just disagreements. Disagreements can be held within an incoherent field. And they create fragmentation, hostility, people fall out with each other, they turn away from each other, that's different. So congruent, we don't want to confuse group coherence with agreement. But we can create coherence and the training that I ran here, for example, last October, so I'm running again, actually, this year in September. It's a three and a half day training, where we where we look at how do you create that. And of course, we don't just talk about it, we do it in the moment. So as we're talking about creating a transformational field, we are trying to create a transformational field. And what I noticed last year when we did that, because I'm also going to study it as we explore it together is that things like practising presence. So that's about those small moments of meditation or quiet or stillness and noticing how my body is how am I feeling state is what's happening in my mind. Just just even noticing those things. If everybody's doing that together, creates us more still. Say atmosphere environment, we could say field that su ingredient presents clarity of intention sharing a common intention also brings about a degree of coherence. Vulnerability also brings about a degree of coherence, the more we dare to share what's really going on inside me, which is a level of vulnerability and emotional literacy, let's say that we want to bring, that also supports the creation of this field play. And creativity also supports the creation of this field. So we have a number of ingredients. And when we blend those together, and you kind of go through a sequences of, of opening up to each other vulnerably, playing games, whatever it might be different ways of connecting to that to begin with different ways of connecting beyond the kind of normal alignment this or that Nice to meet you. It goes a little bit deeper than that, we start to create a field. And and you can feel it. So I was also say on the second morning, and the third morning, we would reflect on how do we experience this group feel now. And those are some of the ways that I would, I would say there is there is some degree of language that helps. And then the experience itself is of course more helpful. And one metaphor that I work with is to take, if you take the word field, F I E, L, D, you could say there's five individuals in that the F, the eye, the E, the L, the D, right, those individuals together, they make up a system field. So that's often how we think of things we think about where individuals we often think systemically. So that's the system that creates a word field, but the word field is on paper. And the paper is that is the field. Paper is what we're talking about, what is the system embedded in? And that's a metaphor that sometimes supports the understanding what a field is, what my sense bison because you're this whole thing is about what to do in challenging times. My sense is that one of the things that leaders will need to be doing. And that's also why I do the work that I do is becoming field thinkers and field sensors. So we've moved a long way in the last 10 or 20 years around systemic understanding. And I think there's another level, which is about field thinking, and field sensing, which is what I find very exciting at the moment.
David Bent-Hazelwood:And that would be about saying, sensing what is available in the moment and what's going on in the group, which could be a group in the room, it could be a group in a wider sense, in the Where's their coherence, whereas the need for greater coherence and then addressing incoherence. And then out of that group coherence will come the being and actions that are needed by that group in that moment that takes them wherever they need to go. But somewhere that is, I was gonna say better still wants us to not learn the language if it fails me, but it's like, that helps them to address these powerful times.
Unknown:Yeah, I think what Yeah, broadly speaking, yes. And I would say that in the in the space that we create, this becomes even more bizarre from a physicist point of view is that we start to collapse time. We tend to think in very simple terms, I would say about the linear nature of time, but time actually really isn't so linear. And when we're when we're really full of presence in the field is for the presence. Two things happen. The past and the past is not yesterday, the past is what is unintegrated from yesterday, yesterday that the experiences we had yesterday, let's say the traumas or the joys that we had yesterday that we fully integrated, we don't think about anymore. And they're not really there's not really past that past has been on boarded into presence. So what we call the past is what's the residual, which hasn't been integrated yet. So one thing that happens in presence, if we then focus our awareness on, let's say, the Holocaust, we do a lot of work in Germany. I'm from a Jewish background Holocaust is one of the things I'm also really interested in. The Holocaust didn't happen. During the Second World War, the Holocaust is happening now. Because it's unintegrated. And probably it'll never be integrated, because it's such a huge ethical violation of everything. But the more we onboard pieces of that the less that past runs us. And that happens in presence. So we created a field of presence we can onboard the past. What also happens in presence is that the future, which isn't tomorrow, because tomorrow is often a recasting and yesterday, not so interesting. It's like yesterday's newspaper. We read it tomorrow. We say it's fresh, and it's the future, but it isn't. It's just the same as yesterday. The future is actually fresh. The future is original. The future has those aha genius moments, and that we can also sense in presence so we can sense the future arriving Now, as well. So a lot happens in prescence! Prescence is actually, yeah, can onboard the past, we can listen to the future and recalling of the future, and then we know the path that we meant to play. So what I would call, it's not necessarily that we move to something better, as you were saying, like, it's maybe that's the most precise way to talk about it. But it's more than in those moments where we feel imbued with a lot of presence. And we can, we can feel like the future is calling us. And we know what our contribution is, we know what the Movement is that arises in me and in us, and we play that part. Or at least we know what we're meant to play, then we need to have the courage to act on what we hear. Because there's at least a twofold movement, we can't we want to listen. Like Otto Sharma talks about listening to the emerging future, like at the bottom of the EU, in theory, you would say we spend time at the bottom of the EU and we listen. And then we receive information about what we need to do up the right hand side of the EU. And then we need the action confidence to actually do it. Because that will often take us into unfamiliar places, maybe away from our comfort zones, etc, etc. So a lot happens in presence. And one thing that happens is a collapsing of the linear nature of time.
David Bent-Hazelwood:Well, and that also speaks to the second of the two things you spoke about, or doing a moment, which is the leading from the future, which I think you've I mean, in fact, you just explained a lot of what that leads me for the future work is is listen to that calling, while you hear calling and then acting on it. And that nicely leads to my second sort of formal question, which is, what is the future you're trying to create? And why?
Robin Alfred:Yeah, maybe we just add something to the needy from the future peace, because part of part of what we want. And I refer to this, but I want to name that maybe more explicitly, part of what we want to do in leading from the future is also integrate the traumas of the past. So it's not just a kind of aspirational move forward. We also so there's, there's what we might call top down innovation, which comes from this kind of opening, listening, receiving inspiration. How do we do that? What are the conditions and practices that support that and there's bottom up innovation, when we release the wisdom, the experience, the knowledge, the insights are a frozen in the trauma fields that have been created in the past. So the more we thought those out, the more we also release energy, which carries insight information. So there's bottom up innovation, also, just to add that into the picture. So in a way, we'd say the full title of that is something like leading from the future with a trauma informed perspective. Because we want to, we want to pay attention to both top down and bottom up innovation. So what is the future that I'm trying to create? I'm not trying to create a future that's also really interesting. Yeah. What I what I what I feel, because if I try to create a future, I already have an image picture concept of what the future ought to look like. Yeah, it means I was pleased that I'm actually in the driving seat of this, I have the brilliant capacity to somehow imagine and even know, what the world needs, and it looks like this. And so that's what I'm gonna do. So that feels a bit grandiose to me. And what I'm trying to do is say, Okay, can I be still enough and present enough to know, what does the future what is not even really the future? What is the next step that I need to take? That's all I really need to know. The next step, the one step that I need to take from this place, the journey of 1000 miles starts with a single footstep, it's like, I just need to know the next event, the next step will reveal itself and the next step will reveal itself. So in myself and in the groups and in the coaching work that I do, I'm trying to support people to not so much have like five years strategies. Because you know, the one thing you know, the five year strategy is never going to be that because the world is changing so rapidly. It's more how do we sense and respond like in Frederick revenues terms? How do we send some response and some response sensitive constantly, like course, correct. Sense. Next movement. So what is the evolutionary movement that I want to bring that I need to bring in myself and in the groups and the people that I'm coaching? What's the evolutionary movement, calling for? And that that's the future and the way the future then arises? through step by step by step by step paying attention to that?
David Bent-Hazelwood:Sure. And essentially, there is in how people respond to this question. There are some people who have definite future futures that they're trying to contribute to, they may not claim they can control that future. Some people talk in terms of not so much a future they're trying to create as a pocket of the present they're trying to create which then informs and becomes the future. And then there's also which is sort of where your assets are, but also your In a way, saying the question is, you're sort of challenging the nature of the question, which is perfectly fine. And to be honest, it's one of the ones which I'm wondering about changing, because it's one I constantly ask. And I suppose there's an error. I wonder if there's an extra aspect of your practice, which is, or whatever that call and response between the centre and response, evolutionary kind of response you're talking about? It is, is it fair to say it's also embedded with a series of with with some values as well? Because it's not, you wouldn't just do anything, I suppose is the is? Or would you perhaps just do anything? There's, there's something. There's something more than just a random walk which of evolution, I think, in what you're doing, so I just want to give you a chance to talk about what is going on that helps you decide?
Robin Alfred:Yeah, lovely. I like that question a lot. Because I think there is an ethical orientation to it all. If, as you as you ask the question, I had all these shivers down my spine, because that's where it lies, it lies in the spine. And I think, which is which we could call it the higher law. And say, I mean, I, again, I don't want to get to kind of woowoo and spiritual. But you know, there is there is, I think, a kind of higher law, like we know it, like when we lie, we feel a bit kind of, we're a bit off. So there's some places where we're kind of online, let's say where we're aligned with some higher ethical principles. And there's places where we're off. So, you know, gossiping about people behind their backs, telling lies, you know, extreme violence, there are many things that we would all probably recognise like, well, this is a bit off, you know, this is not ethically aligned. So my sense is a part of what we do in prisons is we also notice, where we are a bit off, and where we are aligned. Because we're, we're aligned, and that's a, that's a, it's like, our central nervous system knows that feeling. It's like there's a feeling of kind of wellness, well being often energy, sometimes joy, flow in athletics, we talk about being in the zone, it's the flow state and all those things different people talk about it in different ways, but it's the same thing. It's being really aligned with with purpose. And that comes from somewhere. And the more we're aligned to that, the more we then also know what it is that we're meant to do next, so that it's not just what pops into me, but what pops into me from a place of alignment that carries the kind of ethical charge, if you like, or the ethical orientation. So what I'm called to do next. Great,
David Bent-Hazelwood:thank you. And notwithstanding the idea that five year plans don't survive contact with reality, do you have priorities for the next few years? Are there are there steps that you're wanting to take?
Robin Alfred:Not a lot. I would say I would say I have an intention. And the intention, my intention, well, it's gonna sound a bit circular, because my intention is to listen deeply enough to know what I need to do next. Yeah. But you know, what I can sense at the moment from my practice is that I'm being invited to teach more facilitate less and less kind of just holding space for other people to have interesting conversations, and more like bringing what I've accumulated in 65 years on the earth in this lifetime. You bring some of that out through teaching. I don't feel called to write a book about people saying when you're going to write your book, I don't feel like a book doesn't feel like what but I feel more like, like offering like, this is a great space for me to be in a podcast conversation with somebody like you who ask intelligent questions, and we get to unfold some things together. I like that. Yeah, more teaching more coaching more, more supporting others to find their voice their contribution, like what is the path that they need to play in the orchestra of life? And then I'm then I'm noticing where I'm being invited and and have a capacity I think now to really discern where do I have a full yes to what I'm being invited to and where do I not have a full yesterday invited because where I have a full Yes. I plug into some greater intelligence for those supports the work if I have a grudging Yes, I'm not fully present. And that doesn't really work so well. So I'm also noticing that and yeah, right now it looks like coaching work. It looks like teaching. It looks like facilitating some things like around climate change. I do an annual event for moving beyond. There's definitely some topics that I'm interested in. Yeah. But it's more The general movement that we've been talking about,
David Bent-Hazelwood:and is it fair also to say that one of those topics is the trauma informed? leadership as well? Yeah, which a little earlier. And so my next question, I'm gonna have to change a little bit. Because if, if someone was inspired to follow, I suppose it's not the priorities so much as the path, that path of sensing and that path of presencing and then acting in alignment with some higher ethical purpose, but nevertheless acting based on what they experience in the moment, like, what should they do next?
Robin Alfred:Well, firstly, you have to want to do it. So the first thing to notice is how strong is the longing, and the orientation to want to do that, because the the intention and the longing, and the more intense the longing, the more it will draw what it needs to draw will draw resources, people information, etc. Second thing I would say is to find your own practice, have what I would call inner listening stillness, whether it's meditation, whether it's presencing, practices of different sorts, whether it's yoga, tai chi, like different things that help create a in a space of listening, it can also be vision quests, or nature work or, you know, different people there in different ways. But to find out what is your way of being still enough to listen, to listen deeply, I would definitely suggest finding other people to do it with because it can be a bit tough to have it as a solitary practice, like we're, you know, we're creatures of habit and habits will sometimes support us and sometimes sabotage us. And the more we'd build collective habits where somebody kind of knocks on your door, and so it's time to go, wherever it's time to go running, or time to go meditate together, you're more likely to do that. So I would find a group of people that are also interested in that. And there are many, many ways to do that online and in person, for sure, depending on where in the world people find themselves have many opportunities for that. So I think I would notice those things. Journaling is a good thing to do, to kind of just building a sense of awareness of what's happening within oneself and bottoming out kind of deeper, deeper rivers that are that are flowing through us. And then noticing, where does courage sit? Because I think Otto Sharma really noticed this in his teachings, because he did a whole piece of action confidence, where we can spend a lot of time listening and go, Oh, I sense this is what I need to do. And then we don't do it, because it takes courage. So I would also, that's also where peer support can be super helpful. Well, you said that a month ago, I used about a year ago, you still haven't what's happening, if someone to kind of bounce those questions off and away hold you accountable for your insights, or for what your intention is around the insights that you receive. I think that can also be helpful.
David Bent-Hazelwood:And we remiss not to mention, you've hinted at them already. But there are certainly there's the the field. So in September, you've got a course you're running in Findhorn, which is on the transforming fields, facilitating transforming fields. And there is also a leading from the future online course I forget if it's already started, maybe a bit too late.
Robin Alfred:That starts on February the 14th. With an online course, leading from the future four months, nine sessions, September 19 to 22nd. I'm running the art of facilitating transformational fields programme. And I'm also looking at taking this to kind of intact teams or like people who also want that as I'm talking to some other consultancies about bringing some of those programmes into their workplaces. And the other thing I run into on just in case people are interested is something that you've come to, which is called the Federal international forum on sustainability, which is a kind of five day no agenda, meet yourself, meet friends on meet each other and have kind of interesting, insightful conversations that are running again in June. That'll be the 12th. Time we've run.
David Bent-Hazelwood:Yeah. And I'll put links to all of those. And I'll try to release the podcast in time for people to be able to join in with the online one. And the next question is, if your younger self was starting their career now, what advice would you give them?
Robin Alfred:I would say, notice the difference between what you're talking about and what you've actually experienced. Because I couldn't do what I do now, when I was starting out, because I didn't have experience of it. And and I fear sometimes, that my younger self would talk about a lot of things. Oh, I can talk about this. I could talk about that as if I know what I'm talking about, because but I actually don't experience it. So you know, I came from quite an academic background. I can kind of read papers and assimilate them, and then talk quite seemingly quite knowingly about it. But actually, there's not really a transmission of truth. If because it's not an embodied experience, so I think just to flag that, like I was talking to somebody the other day, who's who's setting out as a coach, right? Like 25, the, and they studied coaching loads, you know, every my master's degrees and papers and publications around coaching, and I say, how much coaching have you done? I haven't done any yet. But I understand all these kind of questions. And I thought, yeah, well, that's, that's fine. Like, that's a legitimate path. But then, let's be humble and honest about what do you actually have embodied experience of, which is not yet much coaching, but a lot of theoretical insight. And that's, I think, very, very important. And also for me now, like, if I talk about mysticism, for example, how much do I actually embody? What I'm talking about? And how much is it, you know, very interesting intellectual concept that I kind of understand. Because there's a very different transmission that happens if I'm embodying what I'm talking about, which increasingly with age, one of the great advantages of ageing, is I have more embodied experience to bring back not just theoretical knowledge.
David Bent-Hazelwood:Wonderful, thank you. Who would you nominate to answer these questions because you admire their approach?
Robin Alfred:I would differ at different levels of kind of experience. Exactly. We're talking about somebody like Michael Barber, I would definitely encourage and invite into this space. I don't know if this is part of the podcast, and you want me to describe who they are and what they do. You could just describe who they are. Yes, please. So Michael Barba and or actually, to give him his full title, Sir Michael Barber was one of my best friends at university and still is one of my best friends. And he ran Tony Blair's delivery unit in Downing Street for many years, and now set up something called delivery associates and advises governments on how to get things done around the world, particularly during a lot of work in Pakistan, Canada, Russia, different places. So he's brilliant. And I would definitely think he has a lot to offer. And then other kind of younger age range. I've been very impressed with the work of Ella saltmarshe. You also know, and maybe you've already talked to her? I don't know. But I think she would have a lot to say also about narrative and what she calls like long time narratives. And and I think it would also be very interesting to talk to those of the two names that kind of came to me first.
David Bent-Hazelwood:Wonderful, thank you. And then just finally, is there anything else important you feel you have to say?
Robin Alfred:Yeah, I would say, and there's something quite touched that you ask the question, but I would say notice what you avoid. And notice where you want to build a future because you don't like what's happening now. So there's an avoidance in the future that we want to build. And notice where you're looking away. Notice while you're looking away, notice where you have an intellectual or kind of mental registering of information, but you don't really want to feel it. And notice where we're looking away, because somebody once said, you know, all that evil needs is to thrive as good people to do nothing. We see a lot of evil, let's say thriving in the world, because we're not really doing much. And witnessing, which is very different from watching, witnessing, where we energetically are present to what's happening, whether it's in Ukraine, or in Cameroon, or in Brazil, or wherever, is a practice. So notice where we're looking away, notice where we're now notice where you want to build a future that isn't necessarily the evolving future, but as a future based on avoidance of what's happening now. And just noticed those things compassionately with a lot of compassion. And just see if you can lean more into fully connecting to the realities of our daily experiences as human beings on this planet, and maybe us as a species also on this planet. And then notice what arises, because there's a very different future that we build, if we're wanting to avoid what's the pain of the present, or we're wanting to build the future that is actually evolving through us.
David Bent-Hazelwood:And one that integrates and addresses that pains. The application. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, that's a wonderful note for us to finish on. Thank you very much, Robin. And you have been listening to powerful times with me David vent and Robin Alfred. And a chance for us to work in responding to these powerful times and engaging with them to listen deeply to what is going on and then acting with courage from what we hear, which is their main message. So thank you very much.
Robin Alfred:Thank you very much, David. You
