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News, Visionaries | 2 Comments | May 2nd, 2007

At one of our Boot Camps for world changers in 2004, a young Turkish man realized he stood for social justice. He would go on to describe it as far more than an intellectual insight–it was a deeply emotional, physical and spiritual realization for him. Through his being, he felt called to stand for social justice, and a vision was born.

Within months after that event, he founded 20/20 MultiMedia and began sharing his vision for giving a voice to conscious hip hop artists, who could use their medium for positive change. A few years later, a feature-length documentary starring some of the biggest names in hip hop is about to be released internationally–it’s a visionary film with a powerful message and a call for hip hop artists to stand and own their power to bring about positive change.

This man’s name is Emjed Hammas, his company is 20/20 MultiMedia, and his film is Business As Usual: The Exploitation of Hip Hop. Check out his web site here: www.2020multimedia.net The trailer for the documentary can be found under ‘Projects.’

Positive revolutionaries, authors, musicians, change agents, educators, artists, activists, entrepreneurs, parents, students, CEOs–those who attend Boot Camp tend to become so deeply connected to their values, that they take a stand for what matters most. And a vision is born–a vision, which calls them into heroic action, a vision which demands their personal evolution. They become shaped by their stand and their vision, and their relationships, companies and communities are transformed.

The world needs visionaries now. VisionForce, through our One Million Visionaries campaign, is searching for the most impassioned, conscious agents of change we can find to attend our upcoming “boot camp for world changers” in Austin, TX, July 18-22. Those who are ready to face everything and avoid nothing to stand for humanity for 5 days should apply.

Scholarships are available through our portal on Zaadz.

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News, Visionaries | No Comments | April 27th, 2007

Here is the first of several videos we’ll be sharing from the March 2007 VisionForce Boot Camp.

The application process for the July 18-22 VisionForce Boot Camp has just opened. Those whose complete applications are accepted by the Early Application Deadline of May 14 may save $300 on registration.

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News, Visionaries | No Comments | April 23rd, 2007

Moderates in the Middle East are standing for peace with the OneVoice Movement. Watch the video.

Rather than OV just uniting moderates to stand together, I imagine they are also reaching out to individuals in extremist movements. The VisionForce work is especially applicable in situations that call for strategies beyond compromise, and this is one such situation.

So deeply are we inspired by the OneVoice movement, that VisionForce has committed to make 12 VisionForce Boot Camp Scholarships available to active OneVoice participants from Israel and Palestine over the course of the next year.

The VisionForce trainings are perfect for individuals and groups looking for the expanded levels of courage, compassion and vision needed to create a world that works for everyone. VisionForce’s simple, powerful diagrams and processes provide access to the levels of vision that make deep communication, collaboration and creation possible.

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News, Visionaries | No Comments | April 9th, 2007

Vision Force Boot Camp March 2007 Day 4

Many visionary Zaadzsters showed up to our March 2007 Vision Force Boot Camp for visionary change agents to kick start our One Million Visionaries campaign!  Pictured above are some of the crew.  (notice the Zaadz Tees being sported by Keith, Mary and Ronin

Other Zaadzsters pictured are Deborah, Joseph, Jordan, Shawn, Audrey, Carl, Brandi, Michael, John, Jim, Tom, Koray, Margalo, OT, myself, and… who am I missing?

Zaadzsters in attendance not pictured include Michael, …

For more photos from this Boot Camp, go here.

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News | No Comments | April 5th, 2007

by a recent Boot Camp participant

For many people, the word “Boot Camp” evokes images of some military officer barking orders to a military recruit, forcing him or her to submit to grueling and even demeaning demonstrations of strength and submission to authority. This is NOT what the Vision Force Boot Camp is about. The Vision Force Boot Camp is a committed journey through the jungle that surrounds and has overgrown our inner light and direction, so that we may recover true, impassioned and powerful inner authority, and reawaken and recognize it in others.

The 4-day Vision Force Boot Camp is a demanding and transformative experience that brings us back into realignment with our inner vision and re-establishes the Visionary Core at the center of our being, energizing bold, inspired action. With an exercise program starting at 5:20 a.m., an hour-long yoga session, superlative food, and day-long transformative sessions, the Boot Camp experience is one that brings participants into profound and physical recognition of what it feels like to live in honor of one’s vision. Evenings and/or mornings spent in silence allow us to integrate each day’s learning and transformation profoundly,

Entrepreneur, Visionary, Social Activist, Healer, Parent, Spouse, Sibling, Son and Daughter–How many roles do we engage in and how many do we live out wholeheartedly? Many of us, as we approach our thirties, and then advance into our forties, fifties, and onwards, feel so compromised that our connection to the passion, vision, and connection that drove us during our younger years seems all but lost. We attribute this to “age” and fail to recognize that it is this very compromise that ages us. We forget those elders whom we have known, seen or heard who stayed vital and inspiring to the end. We indulge the fantasy and justification that they somehow were made of “different stuff” than that which we are made of. We slowly, but surely, begin compromising our vision, our passion, and our honor. Our culture does not simply justify this compromise, so do many of our families. The very nature of our institutions of education, governance, and employment require it of us. Parents, teachers, and mentors encourage us to “be realistic,” “to grow up,” and welcome us into the fellowship of those who have turned their backs on exceptional excellence, to settle for life in a milling, mumbling, grumbling herd of those who decided to fit in, find their place (without that place ever really being theirs), adapt – and who eventually find themselves leading familiar, comfortable but-not-quite-cozy lives in that “quiet desperation” that Henry David Thoreau so pointedly spoke of from the shores of Walden Pond. Our lives become enfolded in a narrative that justifies our compromise. We disconnect us from the passion and vision which resides at our core.

Participants in the Vision Force Boot Camp repeatedly describe this event and the subsequent unfolding as “the most powerful event in their life.” What happens in Vision Force that changes people’s lives?

One does not just pay for Boot Camp and show up. There is an application process which screens applicants to see if they are suitable candidates for the experience – and to determine whether the Boot Camp experience can truly benefit them. The commitment and excellence of the candidates is as crucial as the high-level tools and transformative trainings that the Vision Force staff provide. Once accepted, there are teleconference calls where introductory concepts and their influence in our day-to-day lives are introduced. As I participated in the preparatory calls, I was impressed by the level of insight and compassion that was communicated by Michael Skye, Vision Force founder.

Eventually the day comes and we travel to Boot Camp, an experience whose richness defies description. Rather than one of those workshops where you join hundreds or thousands of other people in a huge room and then “partner off” to work on some abstract concepts, the Boot Camp is a direct, personal paradigm for growth. First of all, the group is comprised of up to 30 people and support staff. Every single application has been reviewed by the Boot Camp leader and an assigned Boot Camp ambassador. Every participant is embraced in his or her present circumstances, as well as in the vision and contribution that that person is standing for in the world. I remember my first evening at Boot Camp: the manner in which support staff welcomed me, alone, let me know that this was an extraordinary event.

The Boot Camp is a sacred space. There is safety, mutual respect, compassion, and confidentiality. There is also a call to excellence and being ready to step forward, at our choosing, to face how we hinder our own progress in wholehearted living and the feelings, thoughts and compromises that surround that. With awareness we discover and implement a new way of moving forward. Although the concepts presented are brilliant and profound, Boot Camp is not about learning brilliant theory. It is a step within, not only for the purpose of realization, but leading promptly to bold action. We learn about honor, not as some external criteria or conformity to an external moral code. We rediscover honor as a relationship to self, to this “I Am” that indwells beyond all of our self-descriptions and imagery. We experience honor as the essence of our nature and vitality, as that inner beingness which calls us to stand and step into our true nature and vision. We learn to recognize honor bodily, as the clear, physical sensation of vision embodied, literally, and through the senses. We learn about how the breakdown with this inner essence occurs, through compromise, through inner conflict, and the layers of narrative webs that the mind spins to protect itself from the truth of our compromise.

We embark on a transformative journey together, and deepen it day-by-day. We nurture our bodies through exercise, excellent nourishment and rest. We nurture our minds and our hearts through learning, through openness, through realization, readiness and courage, along with periods of silence. With every day of Boot Camp, we reconnect more fully with that inner luminosity that many of us left behind years and decades ago. Our vitality comes back into fullness. There are no doctrines to subscribe to, no leaders to follow – there is a knowing that reawakens as we realign with our true nature and rejoin Being.

On the fourth day, after the Boot Camp portion of our journey is completed, we integrate our learning in anticipation of reconnecting with loved ones, coworkers and the projects which we left behind just a few days before our amazing journey together. We realize the depths and heights to which we have journeyed together with the thirty-some other people in the room. Incredible, open-hearted and full friendships have been started. We recognize the amazing gift within that has been ours all along and which we have rediscovered – and learned to keep vital. It now lives fully within us, and shines as a bright beacon, guiding our steps forward in the face of any and all circumstances, towards our most brilliant and generous living adventure. As I step back into the world and a life of inspired engagement, I now know full well that I am the one that I have been waiting for my entire life – and that there is no other.

Following Boot Camp, there is support for integrating the work, for taking bold action to healing relationships and seeing our loved ones in honor of their unique adventures. Day by day the work unfolds, impediments are faced, vision grows from within and empowers that generative Will which is our key to transforming a culture of denial and compromise. Friendships grow with our fellow travelers. Lifelong relationships are restored, liberated and brought into fullness again.

We look back at the Vision Force Boot Camp experience with profound gratitude, not only to the Vision Force leaders, but to ourselves – for finally finding and then using the key which unlocks all of our gifts from the core of our being. What more can we wish, but to desire this same gift for others?

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News, Visionaries | 3 Comments | March 26th, 2007

There is so much to share from this most recent VisionForce Boot Camp, which we’ve used to jumpstart the One Million Visionaries campaign. We’ll start with a press release written by one of the 28 visionaries in attendance:

Healing Divisiveness: The Birth of a New Culture based on Honor and Vision, from the Heart of Texas.

Could a Born-Again Christian and a non-Christian embrace each other as brothers and sisters? Could a U.S. Soldier and a Peace Activist recognize one another as their most powerful and committed allies in life? Is it possible for a Liberal Environmentalist and a Conservative, Capitalist Republican to not only come to honor each other, but also each other’s values?

In a world increasingly divided by viewpoints emphasizing what we are against, the above question seem almost as absurd as expecting oil and water to just blend together, yet they may be the questions which determine our survival. Increasingly, we ask ourselves what kind of future awaits our children in a world of growing conflicts between groups armed with nuclear bombs, depleted uranium, altered genomes, viruses, etc. What could possibly heal, for example, the rifts between evangelical Christians and people who outrightly profess to earth-based “pagan” beliefs, much less have them actually relishing each other’s company? Could anything inspire a conservative Republican and a super-liberal environmentalist to see each other not only as “having some things in common,” but as intimate friends who profoundly trust each other to gaze deeply into each other’s heart, knowing full well that the other loves and cares deeply for them and their vision!?

“Impossible!,” you say? It’s happening right now in the heart of Texas and spreading to the world. This weekend, Michael Skye, an Austin cultural visionary and educator called 28 visionaries from around the world to show them the steps to building a new global culture based on honorable relationship and vision. Participants were selected for their desire to make a significant difference in other people’s lives and their firm commitment to facing everything, avoiding nothing and standing to BE the full, living manifestation of the vision they honor. Those accepted into the 4-day Vision Force Boot Camp experience came from a broad spectrum of religions, political persuasions, and ethnicities from around the world.

Michael Skye, founder of the Vision Force process and www.visionforce.com, leads a 4-day intensive that could be the seed of a global cultural transformation. With a profound understanding of our relationship to self and other, Michael Skye shows people how to use simple, powerful relationship models, to understand the process by which we create suffering in ourselves and separation from others, starting with those closest to us. Michael Skye shows visionaries how to transform the very process which generates pain and divisiveness in our personal and collective lives as the key to powerfully transforming, healing and empowering our vision and values in the world. How many of us have a tremendous vision for how to bring our gifts to humanity, yet have loved ones with whom a misunderstanding has festered for years? The Vision Force process leads to profound relationship healing and empowerment, starting with our relationship to ourselves and the inspiration that so many of us have turned our backs on, considering them the follies of youth, unrealistic, or unachievable.

In Kampala, Uganda, a young man named Clovis Ategeka overcame the apathy that leads to despair for so many young people worldwide after he and his family made tremendous sacrifices for him to complete university studies, only to face political and economic realities where opportunities are reserved for those in the power structure, and not for those most gifted to bring their talents to play. Clovis credits the Vision Force work in empowering him to transform his local economy by showing young people how to embrace their honor and vision first, and then to make it real. Ugandan visionaries are now embracing their life’s adventure boldly and linking to the world. The deep wounds that fester in many countries where corruption and economic exclusion shred the social fabric and generate endless wars are now being healed thanks to the power of vision. In Uganda, Clovis is weaving the threads of a colorful cloth of human culture. He credits Vision Force for showing him how.

The effectiveness of the Vision Force model derives from the simplicity and elegance of the tools which Michael Skye has evolved. There is no doctrine to subscribe to, no leader to follow. Only powerful robust models for understanding the pain we face in our homes, workplaces and for facing the challenges of our current planetary and cultural situation one relationship at a time. Vision Force imparts a living understanding which awakens the leader within and inspires us to rise in the morning nourished and inspired by vision, treating every human being we encounter with profound honor and dignity, while standing for the full actualization of our noblest human potential. What if people and communities who have defined themselves as standing at odds to one another could be totally transformed and freed from their enmity through a powerful 4-day educational process? What if we could learn how to heal wounds carried in our hearts for years, generations and even centuries?

Could learning how to face and understand ourselves really show us how to understand and honor others?

It’s happening now in Austin, Texas and moving out into the world. www.visionforce.com

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News | 3 Comments | March 13th, 2007

Lt. Ehren Watada Video

We post this video here, not to support the position that Bush is bad and the war is wrong. Rather we post it to honor this man for taking a stand for peace.

It is tempting to react with agreement or disagreement about someone’s position. Yet, it is this very conditioned propensity that keeps us from consciously evolving and standing together for a world that really works for all of us.

There shall come a day when it is easy to relate to each other as conscious beings. Those who step forward first to call humanity to rise to a higher level of consciousness are indeed visionary.

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