Healing the Planet (Steve Motenko - Life Coach, Leadership Coach)

Sustainability is but a doorway...

This page will tell you more about me than any other. This is about values, the stuff that matters ...

For as long as I can remember, and for reasons I can't trace, I've been into sustainability. I turned vegetarian 20 years ago; I didn't want animals dying to become my food. When I was a teacher, I focused kids on their responsibility to the planet that we adults are in the process of destroying. After becoming a professional coach, I served on the Board of Directors of the Northwest Environmental Education Council for five years.

It turned out that sustainability was for me not a destination, but a doorway into a deeper awareness and mission.

This deeper awareness – spawned through my study of integral theory and practice – is that the catastrophic degradation of the natural world (which – surprise, surprise – includes humans) is itself a symptom of a broader and deeper crisis. All these global issues:

environmental ruin

social and economic injustice

war, terrorism, and political strife, and

psychological/emotional/spiritual unease

are in fact not separate concerns, but four faces of a single "crisis of consciousness" – a crisis rooted in how we view the world and our place in it.

For a few hundred years, we in the "modern" world have seen ourselves as separate from nature, at odds with each other, and worthy to treat all life forms – including anyone not of our "tribe" – as "resources" for our exploitation. These assumptions constitute the engine that has driven exponential human progress – and is now driving us down a disastrous evolutionary dead-end. Somehow in our pursuit of progress (which, to be fair, has eased enormous human suffering), we've missed this essential truth: what we do to each other, and to the plants and animals who share Spaceship Earth with us, we do to ourselves.

The overarching challenge for all humanity at this historic juncture is two-fold:

to awaken to the truth of the interconnectedness of all life; and

to act in integrity with that truth – to accept our responsibility, as the most powerful species on the planet, to make sure the world works for all.

Given my background, my talents, and my passion for these ideas, I see two interrelated contributions I can make to the world:

to "be the change," living every day in ways that honor this interconnectedness (I'm on the road, and I have quite a ways to go – the damned horizon keeps moving), and

to foster the shift toward a global worldview of interconnectedness – and toward living in accordance with that worldview – through awareness-raising, coaching and group facilitation

The most inspiring vehicle I've discovered for bringing this latter intention to fruition is a nonprofit called The Pachamama Alliance. In addition to working with indigenous cultures in the Amazon rain forest to resist the encroachment of corporate clear-cutters, Pachamama has created a one-day multi-media event called The Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream Symposium. Its purpose: to bring forth an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, socially just human presence on this planet.

The Symposium, which I'm trained as a volunteer to facilitate, challenges participants to wake up to our interconnectedness and to live from that worldview. It does so with stunning video footage and thought-provoking, heart-opening interactive experiences.

Designed as a grassroots volunteer effort by some of the world’s finest scientific, indigenous, and activist minds and hearts, the Symposium digs deep into the enormous challenges we face, asking

Where are we?

How did we get here?

Where do we go from here?

How will we get there?

It takes participants deep into despair and then back out into profound hope and possibility. Almost no one leaves the Symposium unchanged. To learn more about it, watch this video. It's only 4 minutes. And then go to awakeningthedreamer.org to find a Symposium near you. Or contact me.

In 2009, in addition to facilitating Symposiums, I am creating "Living On Purpose" Coaching Circles for folks committed to living ever more justly and sustainably, so as to make their lives more meaningful.

This is truly my life's work; all the coaching and facilitation I do is in support of it. I invite you to join me in healing the planet – in whatever way feels right for you.