The Birth of Organic Intelligence

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Over the past year and a half, with the help of many people around the world, I’ve been assembling a learning portal and brand new Organic Intelligence^® training program at organicintelligence.org.

This process has been one like birth, and if you know me, it’s not just a professional thing, it’s the forum for engaging in the trial and error process we call personal and spiritual development.

My training and teaching continues to evolve, arising fresh in the moment-to-moment dialogue that is each person, each group, workshop and seminar. I have received such consistent feedback that this Organic Intelligence approach had reached a kind of ‘threshold’ of development. The clinical theory and protocol had come to such a level of distinction from the traditional SE™ model that it had breached a point of possible integration. 

I began to devote my attention fully to the articulation of Organic Intelligence as a complete theory of development, a new clinical approach and deepened training experience. This development, like any individuation in systems, like family or organizational systems, is of course met with a variety of responses. However, the impulse of my own nature and of Organic Intelligence is collaborative and inclusive. I continue to teach for the Somatic Experiencing^® Trauma Institute [note: this ended May 2016], and deeply value the evolving relationships with the mission, staff and my teaching colleagues. For systems of all kinds, the ability to hold a differentiated and inclusive container is a major marker of system functionality. Now as one of the elders of the SE family, it is my pleasure to continue the dialogue of cooperative endeavor and growth.

So, along with the unique clinical protocol that is Organic Intelligence, I’ve built an entire structure for learning, with all the things a person could want in order to learn as deeply as they care to about Organic Intelligence. There are many open-to-the-public resources, affordable entry level memberships, and a 3-year Residential and at-home professional training, which features the OI Virtual Classroom. The next membership level builds expertise with 7 Master Classes which include a multitude of demo-sessions (fully commented & explained) and monthly online Q&A and consultation sessions which are viewed live by OI members around the world. And more levels of membership (like the Organic Intelligence Mentor level) so as skilled practitioners advance in their skills they can receive mentoring not only in the Organic Intelligence clinical protocols, but also learn the Organic Intelligence teaching process, learn the trajectory of development of a group who’s working in Organic Intelligence, small group intensives with me, learn the technical side of this up-to-date training and teaching platform, gain eligibility to join the teacher training program, etc. Along the way I’ve learned more than one could imagine about online platforms, teaching-video production, online streaming, membership sites, website optimization, etc. And all with one aim: to achieve consistent results in the personal and professional development of people who care about the planet and this life on it. (I hope that is you!)

However, I want to share with you not so much the ‘what’ of Organic Intelligence, but the ‘why’. And this is a much more personal reflection. It’s about a personal transition in the development of organicintelligence.org, its training memberships, and international professional training program. I have been blessed with ongoing family-of-origin support, and my father in particular had a knack for attuned support, both overt and subtle. Our connection was warm, constant, mutual and had the depth of spiritual communion. After a courageous battle against cancer, on November 8, 2013, and with my hand in his, he breathed his last. If you have lost a parent and have been blessed with minimal ambivalence in the relationship, you may have some idea of the blessing and travail of the grief and readjustment that ensues. After allowing months for the waves of grief and stillness to move through, I emerged with a renewed clarity for the preciousness of life, and each moment. And, buoyed with the sense of my father’s support, I began the endeavor of a fuller expression of my own life in relationships and work.  In particular, work, and Organic Intelligence has become a reflection of familial lineage, joining in my ancestry  lineage with those faithful in serving others as spiritual practice. 

So, these blogs, the teaching, the community, the social outreach — has everything to do with ancestral connection, and familial unfolding. If you, like many, observe in my teaching something of the tradition of the ‘rascal sages’ — this is inherited. And, if you see in Organic Intelligence the HEART for service to those who have been disempowered and marginalized, you’ll see why my title at Organic Intelligence is CCO — Chief Compassion Officer. It is a deep bow to my ancestors’ egalitarian and inclusive instinct for justice and fairness, and specifically to my father, who was President of his own company, yet described his job as ‘Chief Cook & Bottlewasher’ In my stories, the humor, and the quiet joy of affiliation — in each of these is the echo of ancestors, generations born in Kentucky as farmers, ministers and ‘country folk.’ Organic Intelligence is for those who, like me, appreciate being down-to-earth, who enjoy a good “methodist” approach to their nonduality, and are like organic gardeners who love nothing more than to watch things grow. 

In my home town of Brandenburg Kentucky there was the ‘rural electric cooperative’ which was a cooperative to bring power and a better life to the community of the region. Now our region is the planet, but we still need the cooperative to build community “islands of coherence.”  From the mutual support that can arise from self-organized collectives of coherence, we support the notion of Nishkam Karma: to be practical and responsible for life as spiritual practice without attachment to outcome. If this sounds good to you, I hope you’ll read on and find out what Organic Intelligence is, how it works, and where you might like to be involved and delve deeper into the Organic Intelligence resources available to support you as a person, and as a skilled, caring professional.

Learn more about the Organic Intelligence clinical protocol, HEARTraining®, OI Expert for somatically trained professionals and OI Basics membership.