Simon Cohen exemplifies the essence of the new compassionate male and shares his views on the suffering of women, from childbirth to the ancestral and the strategic suppression of women by the patriarchy. Simon shares from his own profound journey and his awakening to a greater purpose.
Faculty for the Amani Institute, teaching and training social entrepreneurs from around the world in ‘Marketing and Open Leadership,’ in Sao Paolo, Nairobi, Bangalore
Host, Chief Storyteller and Facilitator at the Just Peace Summit – a global mentorship programme – with Nile Rodgers and the We Are Family Foundation
Keynote speaker on leadership and entrepreneurship for various national and international organisations, including Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, United Nations, Worldwide
Meeting on Human Values, and many others
Devised and led global communications campaigns for TED, HH the Dalai Lama, UNESCO, HRH The Prince of Wales, Gandhi’s grandson, and many others – reaching hundreds of millions of people with positive social stories
At the age of 24, set up Global Tolerance – an international communications agency that only worked with people committed to positive social change. Built it over the next decade to be a global leader in social change communication
‘Pause for Thought’ contributor on the Chris Evans Breakfast Show on BBC Radio 2, the most popular broadcast show in the UK, for two years
Multi award winning entrepreneur and leader; Fellow for the Royal Society of Arts; Global Brain Trust, Boma; Senior Advisor, Purpose; writer for Harvard Business Review, Entrepreneur, Huffington Post; voted one of the most influential people in the PR industry; voted Interfaith Visionary by the Temple of Understanding; UnLtd level 1 and level 2 funding
First person in the UK to place an entire company on a one year sabbatical; first to give away his £1m company through a new exit strategy, the Open Leadership Exercise, to reflect the value of non-material values
Manage the global communications for a Buddhist master (lineage holder) based in India, and an Indigenous leader in Australia
Dennis Patrick Slattery, Ph.D., is Distinguished Emeritus Professor in Mythological Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute. In this episode Dennis and I have a deep and soulful conversation about his study of Carl Jung’s inner work in his creation of mandalas,...
CLARA FRANCESCA is a multi-lingual, international touring “philosopher of the heart making art”, as a playwright, actor, director, musician, producer, speech consultant and teaching artist. She holds a double Bachelors Degree in Laws & Biomedical Sciences as a graduate of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. An inaugural alumni member of New York City’s SITI Company’s Conservatory she has worked with Anne Bogart, Roger Hendricks Simon, Tony Greco, Mary Overlie, Bill T. Jones, Laura Sheedy, Tom Nelis, Barney O’Hanlon, Darron West, Robert Woodruff, Tina Landau, Chuck Mee, Belinda Mello, Moises Kaufman, and the Martha Graham Studio, specializing in Suzuki, Viewpoints, and Alexander Technique. Teaching Artist credits include NY TownHall, East Village Phoenix Ensemble fr. Jean Cocteau Rep, Acting Antics, Australian Shakespeare Company. Clara has been a two-time guest adjudicator for the Mildura Eisteddfod Speech & Drama Festival, and Victorian Debating Association. Awards include Best Actress Fairfax Melbourne Arts Centre for self-devised solo play, Best Performance SaraSolo International Festival, Best Actress two-time nominee Independent New York Theater Awards, Dante Alighieri Society three-time winner, Alliance Francaise Poetry two-time winner, recipient of the Dame Joan Sutherland Australian American Association Scholarship for Artistic Excellence and co-lead in multiple films, including Cannes Film Festival Distribution Market recipient. She is a former Victorian Actors’ Benevolent Trust Committee Member. Clara has parlayed these experiences into a successful speech coaching business with an impressive client portfolio over fourteen years from C-suite executives to UN interns, from five year olds to seventy. Clara specializes in speech-anxiety reduction and fostering people with the confidence to walk into any room and share their authentic voice. Clara continues to act in all mediums, notable IMDBcredits and is a featured voiceover artist with household names Salvatore Ferragamo, Audible Books, Pokémon and Shiseido www.clarafrancesca.com
I am grateful to each of my guests who joined us this first year of the Podcast. Together, with my Producer, Dennis Tardan, we published over 70 podcast episodes. Our guests joined us from: U.S., Kenya, Australia, Canada, Rwanda, Tasmania, Malawi, U.K., and Sardinia....
Dennis Patrick Slattery, Ph.D., is Distinguished Emeritus Professor in Mythological Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, California. He has taught there for the last 26 of his 52 years in the classroom. He offers riting retreats and workshops in the United States and Europe on exploring one’s personal myth through the works of Joseph Campbell and C.G. Jung’s Red Book.
He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of 30 volumes, including seven volumes of poetry: Casting the Shadows: Selected Poems; Just Below the Water Line: Selected Poems; Twisted Sky: Selected Poems; The Beauty Between Words: Selected Poems of Dennis Patrick Slattery and Chris Paris; Feathered Ladder: Selected Poems with Brian Landis; Road, Frame Window: A Poetics of Seeing. Selected Poetry of Timothy J. Donohue, Donald Carlson and Dennis Patrick Slattery; and Leaves from the World Tree: Selected Poems of Craig Deininger and Dennis Patrick Slattery. He has co-authored one novel, Simon’s Crossing with Charles Asher. Other titles include The Idiot: Dostoevsky’s Fantastic Prince. A Phenomenological Approach; The Wounded Body: Remembering the Markings of Flesh; Creases in Culture: Essays Toward a Poetics of Depth; and Bridge Work: Essays on Mythology, Literature and Psychology.
With Lionel Corbett he has co-edited and contributed to Psychology at the Threshold and Depth Psychology: Meditations in the Field; with Glen Slater he has Myth and Metaphor. His more recent books include Our Daily Breach: Exploring Your Personal Myth through Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick; Day-to-Day Dante: Exploring Personal Myth Through the Divine Comedy; and Riting Myth, Mythic Writing: Plotting Your Personal Story. With Jennifer Leigh Selig, he has coedited and contributed to Re-Ensouling Education: Essays on the Importance of the Humanities in Schooling the Soul and Reimagining Education: Essays on Reviving the Soul of Learning. With Deborah Anne Quibell and Jennifer Leigh Selig he has co-authored Deep Creativity: Seven Ways to Spark Your Creative Spirit; with Evans Lansing Smith he has co-edited Correspondence: 1927-1987 on the letters of Joseph Campbell. His most current book is a series of essays: An Obscure Order: Reflections on Cultural Mythology published by Mandorla Books. He has also authored over 200 essays and reviews in books, magazines, newspapers, and on-line journals.
For recreation he takes classes painting mythic themes in both watercolor and acrylic. He also enjoys riding his Harley-Davidson motorcycle with his two sons, Matt and Steve, through the Hill Country roads of Texas.
***
Continued from home page: Through the publication of over thirty books that I have authored, co-authored, edited or co-edited—as well as hundreds of articles and book reviews in journals, newspapers, books and on-line venues—I have given shape to many of my ideas on this subject. Through the dozens of workshops, writing retreats, and presentations in the United States, Canada, Ireland, Italy and Switzerland, I continue to explore the relationship of narrative, mythology, and the shaping of personal identity more deeply.
But what are these arenas of exploration in service of? I think that their fundamental goals include: a deepening of self-consciousness; cultivation of a coherent life of meaning; compassion for the suffering and struggles of others; a deepening practice of contemplation and meditation to enrich one’s spiritual life; and a further understanding of the mysteries and miracles of the human imagination.
I invite you to explore my writings and future plans as well as to consider joining me in one of my programs that will allow you to explore your own myth, including an awareness of the webbing that relates all of us to one another and to the suffering earth that yearns for our constructive intervention to restore her exhausted body.
I thank you in advance for your interest and attention to my life projects.
“…Grace shows up in the portal of not knowing. When the heart is clenched tight, whether in anger or certitude, in fear or in grief, grace coaxes the fist open, looks into the palm and reads there a lifeline of a larger possibility. Grace is an open hand, extended to the stranger, to the loved one, to the wounded one within. It is the open hand of relationship, of kindness, of blessing.” – Karen Hering
Few words have stirred as much theological debate and division over the centuries while still arriving in the current millennium as untarnished, as frequently and comfortably spoken and as difficult to define.
Depending on who you ask and when, grace might be equated with salvation or with sacraments, with the presence of God, or with beauty or life itself. Grace is resilience. Grace is forgiveness. It is sin’s opposite. It is healing. It is revelation, the oneness of all being. It is enlightenment. It is light. It comes before faith. It comes after faith. Some say it is faith.
Mostly, it seems, what we know about grace is that it’s largely a matter of not knowing.
One of my favorite confessions of Augustine’s is about grace. “What is grace?” he asked, right away admitting in a nearly palindromic puzzle, “I know until you ask me; when you ask me, I do not know.” I concur. When I woke up this morning I knew exactly what to write about grace. It’s when I got out of bed and put my fingers to the keyboard that things got a little difficult.
Perhaps this is as it should be. Grace, after all, begins with beyond. Grace shows up in the portal of not knowing. When the heart is clenched tight, whether in anger or certitude, in fear or in grief, grace coaxes the fist open, looks into the palm and reads there a lifeline of a larger possibility.
Grace is an open hand, extended to the stranger, to the loved one, to the wounded one within. It is the open hand of relationship, of kindness, of blessing.
Grace moves. Grace heals. Grace dances. Grace is the sigh we release on the last note of a song or when the end of the poem becomes clear.
When a room is closed and stuffy, it is grace that opens the window and grace that then blows in.
“Grace fills empty spaces,” wrote Simone Weil in her journal. “But it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void.”
Grace can knock us off our feet when we stand on the shore looking out. Then it’s grace that catches us before we are washed out to sea.
Grace is given, and grace is received. It cannot be stolen, even by the best of thieves.
Grace is an opening. Just when we think we know exactly what’s going on, who we are, who everyone else is and what can and cannot happen next, grace draws back the bolt of our knowing, flings wide a new view.
Grace is the guest of humility. Rumi said it plainly but not unkindly:
You are so weak. Give up to grace. The ocean takes care of each wave till it gets to shore.
You need more help than you know.
Grace never comes to the fully self- sufficient. But then, which of us really are? Grace comes to each of us in turn and to all of us unmerited.
Grace points to the possibility of more. At the end of the sentence, at the bottom of the page, in the heart held wide open, there is always more.
***
Salt of Grace
“Spill my tears into this sacred space,
and with a sip of compassion,
I taste the salt of grace.”
c.boykin-2013
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exemplifies the essence of the new compassionate male and shares his views on the suffering of women, from childbirth to the ancestral and the strategic suppression of women by the patriarchy. Simon shares from his own profound journey and his awakening to a greater purpose.
Devised and led global communications campaigns for TED, HH the Dalai Lama, UNESCO, HRH The Prince of Wales, Gandhi’s grandson, and many others – reaching hundreds of millions of people with positive social stories
With Lionel Corbett he has co-edited and contributed to Psychology at the Threshold and Depth Psychology: Meditations in the Field; with Glen Slater he has Myth and Metaphor. His more recent books include Our Daily Breach: Exploring Your Personal Myth through Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick; Day-to-Day Dante: Exploring Personal Myth Through the Divine Comedy; and Riting Myth, Mythic Writing: Plotting Your Personal Story. With Jennifer Leigh Selig, he has coedited and contributed to Re-Ensouling Education: Essays on the Importance of the Humanities in Schooling the Soul and Reimagining Education: Essays on Reviving the Soul of Learning. With Deborah Anne Quibell and Jennifer Leigh Selig he has co-authored Deep Creativity: Seven Ways to Spark Your Creative Spirit; with Evans Lansing Smith he has co-edited Correspondence: 1927-1987 on the letters of Joseph Campbell. His most current book is a series of essays: An Obscure Order: Reflections on Cultural Mythology published by Mandorla Books. He has also authored over 200 essays and reviews in books, magazines, newspapers, and on-line journals.