Advertise on podcast: Art of Dynamic Competence: Creating Success in Changing Times

Will Roger returns to the show to talk about his new book, Habitat Annihilation: Humans Have Changed the Earth, and Now the Earth Will Change Humans. This book is a collection of twelve essays, curated and framed by Will, that looks at the climate crisis not as a policy problem but as a crisis of perception. We talk about the overview effect and what astronauts see when the borders disappear. We talk about colonial capitalism as a kind of collective hallucination, and what it might take to wake up from it. We talk about rematriation, flow states, ritual, and the strange realization Will had about his own vocabulary: that the more precise his words got, the further they sometimes took him from what was actually true. This is a conversation about the gap between belief and fact, between who we think we are and who we actually are, and about what it might take to see our home planet clearly again, before it changes us on its own terms.

In Episode 44, we're building on this background and talking about Deborah Nielsen's new book, Breaking Whole; Holding On, and Letting Go. We'll dive into the inspiration behind the title and what it means to us as we explore our own Dynamic Competence Most importantly, we'll talk about her concept of integrative bridging. It's a way to identify and acknowledge three universal aspects to all of us the adult, the little child, and the wise one.

In Episode 43, we'll explore the power of the divine feminine, not in how she steps into the openings within the dominant culture, but rather what happens when these openings close. Listen for the ways Alison talks about how these dialogs mirrors our own personal work. At first, openings, and then the closings as our ego structures and our instinctual ways of being rise up and try to re-establish the homeostasis of cultural norms.

Episode 42 is the first part of our interview with Alison Hine on her new book, "A Journey of Inquiry through the Gospel of Mary Magdalene." We explore how Alison is able to enliven and intensify our understanding of Mary Magdalene in the first two dialogs of the Gospel. She provides an opening to   a new understanding of the archetype of the divine feminine, weaving cultural context and her own musing with the translation of the Gospel.

In Episode 41, we continue our conversations with Dr. Kerri Welch, we're utilizing these quantum mechanical concepts to explore our sense of the past, present, and future experiences and how they manifest within us. As we oscillate between satisfaction and desire, we also have the potential to feel different manifestations of time. And from this, we can begin to explore the differences between life as a separation from things and life as a journey that is unfolding.

In Episode 40, we are joined by Dr. Kerri Welch who guides us through a conversation about the quantum mechanical concepts of fractals, wave function collapse, and entropy and how they relate to different qualities of time.  If you are not interested in exploring the podcast from a scientific perspectives, we would like to encourage you to sense into the stories that we're telling. See what arises for you as you're listening to the back and forth of the discussion.   See how we dance with these quantum mechanical concepts as they play with our notions of experience, awareness, and self awareness.  Dr. Welch got her degree from California Institute of Integral Studies, and her work considers the philosophy of temporal perception, physics, and time. Kerri continues to teach at CIIS in the Department of Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness and resides much of the year on the Washington State Peninsula. Kerri has an incredible way of explaining quantum mechanical concepts that lets us explore different ways of experiencing time. Especially as we move across different dimensions of scales and different structures of consciousness.

In Episode 39, we are exploring a really interesting book that Susan found, A Demon Haunted Land: Witches, Wonder Doctors, and the Ghosts of the Past in Post WWII Germany. Written by Dr. Monica Black (Univ Tenn), the book explores the impacts and trauma of the German's WWII defeat on its people. In the podcast, we will explore ways that the trauma expressed itself and how ordinary Germans cope with this trauma.   What we found fascinating about Dr. Black's research was the applicability of the German's issues and outcomes in today's tumultuous world. Combined with Carl Jung's essay, After the Catastrophe, we gain insight into our own "moral inferiority" and how transformation requires this deeper understanding before we can begin again anew.  At University of Tennessee, Dr. Black is a historian of Modern Europe. As such, she provides us with deep, rich insights into her historical research process, actually providing us with ways to explore the history within our own lives.

In Episode 38, we are joined by Steve Goyer and Dennis Whittle, a minister and an entrepreneur, who walk regularly, contemplating what is working and not working in today’s religious organizations. We wanted to talk with them about their walks and explore what has arisen from their conversations. As we interviewed them, it was clear that Steve and Dennis were giving us a peek at their own dynamic competence as they wrestled with this question of what a new church might look like for them, both internally and externally.  Steve Goyer is the current interim Pastor at Riverside Presbyterian Church in Jax, Fl.  He has been a Senior pastor at Presbyterian Churches in Charlotte, NC, Atlanta Ga, and Jacksonville Fl. Steve retired in 2019 and was asked to stay on the interim Paster and is retiring again this year…we’ll see how that goes.  We know many of his congregational members and Steve is a beloved figure in the church. His humbleness and devotion to his community, combined with his porousness to new ideas and approaches provides the vessel for a rich connection to the spiritual. Dennis Whittle is a very successful entrepreneur who has spent many years focusing on entrepreneurship for good. He is the founder and president of The Whittle Group and facilitates a number of wide ranging networks that focus on global issues of change to local citizen feedback loops. Steve has worked globally as Economist, including a stint at the world bank and continues to share his knowledge as a visiting lecturer and fellow at top universities and non-profits, like the Center for Global development.  A funny story, while we were working on the podcast, Dennis took a week off and sent a photo to us of him sitting with Yo Yo Ma, discussing social entrepreneurism, I perfect way to capture the seriousness and influence of Dennis as well as the fun he has with life.

Welcome to the Art of Dynamic Competence. I’m Susan Clark. Join me and my       brother Thomas May for season four of our podcast as we apply what we have been exploring over the last three seasons.   We hope to dive deep into Dynamic Competence and allow it to expand into new ways of living our daily lives. This work is not always easy, but can be truly fulfilling, allowing us to better relate to the situations we find ourselves in and encouraging us to take on the hard work we all need to do.  Based on the great feedback we have been getting from our listeners, we’re shifting our format a bit. This season, both Tom and I are inviting you into our prep for these sessions, sharing how we learn from each other, seeing how to bring new felt senses, new insights into our conversations. We have been really exploring the porosity, the openness, of our mental maps, also our left brains, our conceptual world, as we feel into these fluid stories that we are sharing with you. This approach has had a profound impact on both of us over the last years and we now understand how much you are sensing that in your comments to us.  So, let’s see what arises!

In this podcast we are sharing an introduction to the new 3x3 matrix that he is calling "I'm Where?" We have been exploring how Tom has been merging our work in Dynamic Competence, with this wonderful, light way that Jean Gebser’s writings are exploring the worlds that we live in. This podcast came together as an amazing intro to why Tom created this matrix and the impact of Gerber’s writing on this life and work. For all you exploring new ways to live into this world, this is an amazing example of the impact of all this work. As a highly successful Corporate Executive overseeing multiple billions of dollars of assets and thousands of employees, Tom has huge influence over the transitions that our corporations and culture are currently undergoing. Listen to how Tom is exploring new ways of engaging people and his work and how his view of the world and our place in it is changing.

Welcome back to the next podcast in a series where we are asking the question, “I’m Where?” This week my cohost Tom May takes us on a deeper journey into the matrix that he created, linking metacognitive principles developed by Mary May (Instinctual, Intentional, and Integral). With three of Geber’s structures of consciousness., Magic, Mythic, and Mental. If you want a visional aid, go to our website at dynamiccompetence.com and look under podcasts 34 or 35. You can also download a copy there.

In Episode 34,  we’re doing something a little different. From the last sessions, Tom May has pulled together a matrix that he is now using in his work and life. We thought that we might share it with you and see how you might refine it with us.  Tom was inspired to combine the original metacognitive work by our mother Mary May with the new work that I have been doing with Jeremy Johnson on Jean Gebser’s book, Ever Present Origin.  You can download Tom’s matrix from our website at dynamic competence.com under Season 3 podcasts, Session 34 if you want to look at it. Think of a box with 3 columns and 3 rows. At the top of the columns three of Gebser’s structures of consciousness, Magic, Mythic, and Mental are listed. At the end of the rows three metacognitive perspectives, Instinctive, Intentional, and Integral are arranged top to bottom.  For this podcast, Tom is presenting these structures of consciousness and perspectives from the unique way that he processes this information. Of course, this is only one way of looking at it. Next time, we will dive deeper into what is inside of this matrix. Take a listen and see what you get from it.

In this episode, we’re talking with Fred Sigman. Fred is an acclaimed photographer who also worked with Will Roger on his Handbook for a Burning Age and contributed several essays to the book. Fred currently resides in Cambodia teaching remotely, hosting tours, and writing a book on Angkor Wat the largest temple structure in the world. I recorded a long interview with Fred that ranged from Asian religious history, core understandings about photography and the focus of his work, as well as other personal experiences. If you are interested in more information, we will provide links to the rather impressive range of his work from our website.  For this podcast, we narrowed down the discussion I had with Fred to emphasize our current  exploration of what we call “integral” or “spiritual”, or the integration of multiple perspectives, especially our latent understandings of magic and mythic with our predominate mental structure of today. What Fred allows us to talk about is how the huge historical context of Angkor Wat might relate to the integral and spiritual in our everyday lives.

In Part 2 of Will's Podcast. As I have alluded to, I am working a lot in understanding how deeper, latent knowledge that we have (magic and mythic) can help us function from a more integrated whole.  In a class that I am hosting, we are exploring how our magic and mythic perspectives/cultural structures dance with our mental conceptual world to create this integral understanding and being. Many philosophers, religions, and practices incorporate aspects of this dance, but Jean Gebser drives right to it.  He states that there are four differentiated cultural structures, magic, mythic, mental, and integral.  We live in the magic, you experience the mythic, and each of us creates our own conceptual understanding in the mental. And the integral is the efficient interweaving, backleaping, blending, oscillation, etc. between these structures/perspectives.  Gebser, along with many other thinkers and writers, then states that our current over emphasis on the power of the mental to structure our lives and solve our problems is deficient and failing us. It is this integral approach that will help us reimagine our world and help us move through this pinch point, over this threshold, and better survive and thrive in the coming times. In Will's second part of his podcast, we can tease out those magic and mythic elements that are so important in waking up to new ways of seeing the world and ourselves in it.

Will Roger Peterson is a co-founder of Burning Man and current is a Senior Advisor to the Fly Ranch Project. His life journey has been to understand this thing we call "integral; a way of being in the world that integrates multiple perspectives and frees us up to be, as Will says, "who we really are." We were introduced to some of the basic concepts that Will lives by in Episode 9. In Part 1 of this current podcast, we return to our conversations with Will to talk about some images and thoughts he presents in his new "Handbook." Ways of being that can help us live in what Will calls, "this Burning Age."