Korean Visions

Once again its my pleasure to announce that the symposium has arrived in a new country, this time South Korea. This is our last morning in Seoul before heading home having been here an intense, enjoyable and ultimately hugely successful 6 days.

Day One saw the team assemble, Hide Enomoto arrived from Japan, Sand and I had flown in from the USA, and we were helped enormously by the very professional team at the venue, the Korea Leadership Resort in Anseoung. We ran a symposium for 15 people in a mixture of English and Korean – you can guess that HIde and I contributed the English bit and Helen, one of the participants translated for her compatriots. This pushed the 4 hours version out to 5 but the extra time made for a complete experience for all and the symposium worked its magic once again. How do we know? Because 4 people who hadn’t planned to decided there and then that they wanted to stay for the subsequent Facilitator Training.

That evening and over the next two days we ran a Basic Training for the same 15 people, and by the end of Day Three “Hosanyaksu” had completed the training and named themselves [there is no simple translation for this word, it means a combination of Healing Spring and Hospice Hands, I think].

This wonderful new group includes Kayeon and her two sons Ben and Brian, 16 and 17 respectively and then a large group who work together in the Korea Leadership Center and its associated companies. This last grouping particularly gives the Korean facilitator community a powerful capacity to organise and deliver events, that is their day job with programs like 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Indeed it was Ken Gimm, CEO of this company who had the vision to bring the Symposium to Korea after he attended it at the Montreal meeting of the International Coaching Federation last November. Now he envisages the Symposium reaching 15% of Korean’s 48 million population by 2015, so we can expect to hear more from this ambitious new community very soon.

The last couple of days have included press briefings, a company-wide Q & A event, other meetings and time for some sight-seeing, hosted by a number of the wonderful young people from Ken’s companies; thanks particularly to Jun, Eunice, Jay, Jessie and Karen. How we ended up in Korean national dress banging the big drum outside the palace at Deoksugung is another story . . . . .

Ordinary People, Extraordinary Results

As some of my recent posts show, I’ve just spent a remarkable month in South East Asia, conceived and organised for the largest part by Jo Fok.  Here’s my conversation with her and hubby Paul as I’m about to head for home.

Jo, I acknowledge you for the fantastic results you’ve achieved; thank you for being you.

Awakening Rings Loud in Manila

What a joy it was to visit Manila and witness the birth of another new community of soul brothers and sisters committed to help ring in a new dream for the human family.

And what a pity to visit the Philippines for the first time and be there but 72 hours.  I arrived to a wonderful greeting from the Philippines Tourist Board and was promptly escorted by the helpful and gracious Jo-Jo to a waiting car, and whisked safely off (thanks Vic) to Tagaytay, a volcano within a volcano just south of Manila.  Although an afternoon of site-seeing was on offer all I could do was fall into the hotel bed for a long-postponed sleep.  Hours later I woke up, enjoyed a massage and went back to sleep for another 10 hours.  That was my chance to see something of the country.

Returning the next day to Manila I met with some of Earthwards, stewards for a sustainable world, a newly formed group in Manila who had organised my entire visit: hotel rooms, symposium venues, professional A/V and meeting production staff were all arranged, and funded, so my thanks go to this group for their vision and their generosity.  You can find out more if you find the Earthwards page on Facebook.

The symposium on Saturday afternoon was quite a blast.  There was a full and enthusiastic crowd, lots to eat (remind me never to mix food and symposiums again) and a brown-out half-way through (yep, a black-out in that part of the world is called a brown-out!)  So the second half of the symposium was delivered by yours truly into a gloomy room as our A/V team worked to restore power.  And by a mix of means we got to the desired end-point, a crowd of folk awake and inspired to see what (more) they can do through their own lives to bring about an environmentally sustainable, spiritually-fulfilling and socially just human presence on Earth.

The very next day 18 enthusiastic souls gathered again to train as facilitators, here they are with their message to the world.

Traveler’s Dilemma

So I’ve just returned from a month long,4-country trip taking the Awakening the Dreamer message around South East Asia.  The results are new or enlarged communities of active citizens committed to amplifying this message in Hong Kong, China, Malaysia and the Philippines.  The further ripples from these same folk are already being felt in South Africa, India, Singapore and doubtless other places too.  In the context of our work, awakening the citizens of the world as a an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilled and socially just human presence, this seems quite a result.  But there is always a cost to consider in this, the cost of all this travel.

For the flights alone I have caused 4.41 tonnes of carbon dioxide to be emitted into the upper atmosphere through my 19 866 miles of flying. There are several ways to look at this; one is to consider what an annual carbon ration would be per person, and estimates here are mostly in the range 1.5 – 3.0 tonnes per person – yikes.  Another view posits that if we are to collectively emit no more than 250 billion tonnes of carbon in order to reduce the probability of a 2 °C warming to 25 per cent, then for today’s population we each have only 36 tonnes left that we can ever emit . . . ever!  So I’ve used up 12.25% of my lifetime’s carbon ration in just this one trip.

A couple of questions remain

Is this justifiable? There is no way to answer this objectively, we can only weigh the balance between the value to our long-term future of this process of awakening and linking active citizens and the environmental cost of so doing.  What do you reckon?

Can I offset this environmental damage? Yes is the answer.  In fact one of my flights has already been off-set as a generous donation by Gregers Reimann in Kuala Lumpur – thanks Gregers.  And the work of the Pachamama Alliance helps to preserve nearly 2 million acres of pristine tropical rainforest, a valuable carbon sink as well as the forest home to the Achuar people.

Today as we are ever more acutely aware of the health of our planet home any active that isn’t directly restorative to the environment can be called raise questions for which there are no easy answers. I’ll leave the last words to Seize the Day, a radical British folk band . . . . . and to you, what would you do?