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Another World is still Possible. The old system was never fit for purpose and now it has gone- and it's never coming back.
We have the power of gods to destroy our home. But we also have the chance to become something we cannot yet imagine,
and by doing so, lay the foundations for a future we would be proud to leave to the generations yet unborn.
What happens if we commit to a world based on generative values: compassion, courage, integrity?
What happens if we let go of the race for meaningless money and commit instead to the things that matter: clean air, clean water, clean soil - and clean, clear, courageous connections between all parts of ourselves (so we have to do the inner work of healing individually and collectively), between ourselves and each other (so we have to do the outer work of relearning how to build generative communities) and between ourselves and the Web of Life (so we have to reclaim our birthright as conscious nodes in the web of life)?
We can do this - and every week on Accidental Gods we speak with the people who are living this world into being. We have all the answers, we just (so far) lack the visions and collective will to weave them into a future that works. We can make this happen. We will. Join us.
Accidental Gods is a podcast and membership program devoted to exploring the ways we can create a future that we would be proud to leave to the generations yet to come.
If we're going to emerge into a just, equitable - and above all regenerative - future, we need to get to know the people who are already living, working, thinking and believing at the leading edge of inter-becoming transformation.
Accidental Gods exists to bring these voices to the world so that we can work together to lay the foundations of a world we'd be proud to leave to the generations that come after us.
We have the choice now - we can choose to transform…or we can face the chaos of a failing system.
Our Choice. Our Chance. Our Future.
Find the membership and the podcast pages here: https://accidentalgods.life
Find Manda's Thrutopian novel, Any Human Power here: https://mandascott.co.uk
Find Manda on BlueSky @mandascott.bsky.social
On LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/mandascottauthor/
On FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/MandaScottAuthor
Manda: Hey people, welcome to Accidental Gods, to the podcast where we do still believe that another world is possible and that if we all work together, there is still time to lay the foundations for that future that we would all be proud to leave to the generations that come after us. I'm Manda Scott, your host and fellow traveller in this journey into possibility, and having spent last week talking to Jonas Søvik, who is quite a bit younger than me, this week we're talking to Alain Gauthier, who is not that much older than me, but still significantly enough that when he really delves into what it is to be an elder, I listen to what he's saying. Because we have a culture where age is at best ignored. And the question of how we rebuild a cohort of genuine elders fit for the rapid transitions of the 21st century is key to our time. How do we find people, or build people, or make people, or help people grow into, those who can combine the wisdom of wide boundary perspectives with the humility that allows flexibility of thinking, of feeling, and of being. Alain is someone who spends his entire life thinking about these things. He's co-founder and coordinator of the Regenerative Elder Process at the Elders Action Network. With John Izzo, who is a friend of the podcast, he is co-host of The Way Forward Regenerative Conversations podcast. And over his long life, he has been an international consultant, facilitator, coach, researcher, educator, and author. His book, Actualising Evolutionary Co-leadership to Evolve a Creative and Responsible Society, was published in 2014. It's only available on Kindle, I'm sorry, but even so, it is nonetheless a fascinating and inspiring read. And if everybody had bought it and read it and done what it said when it first came out, we would not be where we are now.
Manda: Anyway, Alain tried his best. To tell you more about him. He is a graduate from the HEC in Paris. He has an MBA from Stanford University, and he was once a senior consultant at McKinsey. As you will hear, a life changing experience led him to co-found Core Leadership Development in Oakland in California, and to focus his entire professional life on developing Co-leadership, partnering and coaching capabilities. Now in his 80s and as an elder, he devotes his time to co-creating conditions for other elders to explore how they can live a regenerative life and collaborate with younger generations in transforming education and community life. And as you'll hear, these are absolutely where he thinks the focus needs to be. Over the last seven years, he's been an active member of the Elders Action Network, where he initially led a visionary planning process. And now, as we said, co-leads the Regenerative Elder process, which this April (we're recording this in 2026), is offering for the seventh time, an in-depth exploration called Embodying Regenerative Worldviews. So if this speaks to you at all, whatever your age, you can sign up with the link in the show notes. In the meantime, people of the podcast, please welcome Alain Gauthier, elder and thought leader and all round wise person.
Manda: Alain Gauthier, welcome to the Accidental Gods podcast. How are you and where are you on this early March morning?
Alain: Well, I will say good morning, Manda. I am in Portland, Oregon, where I have been for eight years now and I am well today. I feel actually very energised. I think this is a fabulous period to be alive.
Manda: Yes, particularly when Portland is full of people who dress up as frogs and then go and stand in front of men with assault rifles, which is an incredibly brave thing to do. I was very impressed. Where were you before Portland? You were in California somewhere?
Alain: Yes, I was in the Bay area. San Francisco Bay area, living actually in Oakland in the Oakland Hills. And that for 32 years.
Manda: Goodness. And what made you move to Oregon? It doesn't really matter, I'm just curious.
Alain: Two things. My second wife, Joan, got dementia, and we could not live in our home anymore together. And so I decided to follow my son, who had moved to Portland 15 years before. And that worked out very well. I feel at home in Portland for the first time that I have moved to the States. I really feel at home here.
Manda: Wow. Wow. And it's 40 years since you moved. Am I right?
Alain: Yes.
Manda: Wow. Gosh, that must be an interesting sensation. We might look back to that. Well done your son. All right. In the meantime, you are co-founder and coordinator of the Regenerative Elder Process at the Elders Action Network, which is how I came to know you. And in a document that introduces that, you say, and you're talking to prospective people who might want to undertake this process and we will definitely link to that later on. "As a dedicated environmental, sound democracy or social justice activist, you know that we are living in uncharted territory and turbulent times. The way we have done things in the past are no longer working at our REP (Regenerative Elder Process) we ask a question that we think is at the heart of our predicament, and it is: to what extent is our own worldview contributing to our inability to deal effectively with the poly crisis we are in? If you are willing to challenge your worldview and find a way to reground yourself in your deepest authenticity in community with other learning elders, you might choose to experience the Regenerative Elder Process". And frankly, that sounds like a recipe for the whole of humanity. Whether we consider ourselves to be elders or not. This: if we don't change our worldview, the bus is going over the edge of the cliff. And so really, Alain, you wrote this, I'm hoping and assuming that a lot of people are resonating with it, but I'm also aware that for a lot of people, a worldview is such a deeply embedded thing that challenging it is almost beyond cognitive capacity. Because we don't know to what extent the things that we believe to be true shape our understanding of the world. Because we believe them to be set in stone, and we don't even consider them. How have you, Alain, got to the point where you understand that this is key to our survival, and a way of helping people to become less cast in stone than is the normal human situation? That's a big question. It could take at least an hour just to unpick that, but let's go with it.
Alain: Thank you for the question. Yes, worldview for me is like water to the fish. We don't see it unless we have a way to possibly compare it to another worldview. And I was immersed in the system myself for many years. I was with McKinsey and company, a business school graduate, immersed, working initially for very large corporations in Europe, mostly. And I could see, yes, this system works in a way. Until I moved to a spiritual community in the south of France at age 40. And I spent five years there.
Manda: Was that plum village?
Alain: No, not Plum Village. It was called La Bonne Fin. And it was part of the Universal White Brotherhood. White in a symbolic sense, of course.
Manda: Not the skin colour.
Alain: Not skin colour. And I started opening my heart to another reality; that we are all interconnected. I felt interconnected with the sun when we watched to see the sun rise in the morning over the Mediterranean, and that also let me to see that I needed to move to another country, and particularly to California, to really challenge some of my ways of working as a consultant, as a coach. And when I met Peter Senge, actually before I even moved to the States, he was then just a professor at MIT and beginning to create what he called the MIT Learning Centre, which then became the society for Organisational Learning. And then Peter and I and a few others started teaching a course called Leadership and Mastery, in which we started examining some of the limitations of the current worldview.
Alain: And that was very important for me to start looking at my current activity. I was still a consultant, I was still doing some work with executive teams, but from a slightly different perspective. And particularly the learning perspective is we are lifelong learners. What can we discover that we haven't seen yet? And that would be on the track of trying to look at what was essential if we were going to possibly challenge and change the existing system. But it took me a longer while to do that work, probably about 30 years, until I came upon some other sources. Including Jeff Carreira, who is a spiritual leader, who heads what's called a mystery School in Philadelphia. And with him, and I hope this is not too long winded answer, I started opening my heart and my soul even more to what is trying to happen. And so that was the second step, if you like, in my, we could say, if it's not too bold a term, awakening.
Manda: And I just found Jeff, I will put a link in the show notes. So let's unpick a little bit, let's just go back a bit. 40 years ago ish, so in the 80's you were in the heart of what we would now consider to be the giant vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity. But we didn't call it that then, we thought it was progress. And you left everything and went to a community in the south of France. Can you say a little bit about what kind of, I'm guessing a life crisis of some sort, lead you to let go of the business world and move into a spiritual setting. What happened? Can you tell us?
Alain: Yes. Well, it was very much under the influence of my first wife, and current wife, because we married three times. Because she met Omraam Michael Ivanhov, the founder of this centre, who was a Bulgarian, moved to France right before the war. And the moment I met him and met the people around him, I felt that I had something to learn and offer in that context. And I actually became the publisher of the books and both was responsible for the printing shop we had and the team of voluntary people who were offering the books in different bookstores and health food stores. What is interesting though, I didn't stop my activity otherwise. I became more of a professor, a teacher in a business school in Lyon. So I commuted every week, and I also continued my consulting work with firms in Europe, not just France. So I was living in both worlds.
Manda: Interesting. Right. You had a foot in each camp. How did that feel internally? Did you feel split or were you feeling as if you were integrating both lives?
Alain: I was beginning to integrate, but there were still moments where I was just in my skin as a product of a Stanford business school, and McKinsey and I had learned the Boston Consulting Group theories, etc. So what I was teaching was still a reflection of the dominant system, however, I think the way I was teaching it, I was slowly opening my heart and seeing that there was a larger picture that we could be aware of as we were still working within the system as it existed.
Manda: Right. And you've talked about opening your heart several times in the beginning here, and then more with Jeff Carreira. And also, you mentioned connecting to the sun. So I've listened to a lot of podcasts with you and also read some of your work, and you talk a lot about connecting with other people and slightly less about connecting with the rest of the web of life. But I'm guessing that's not that you don't know that it's necessary, it's that it hasn't been a focus of what you're doing. Can you say a little bit more? If this is too personal, then we won't go there. But heart opening feels to me, actually, this is the core. This is the answer to your question of how we change how we believe. If our hearts are open and we're coming from a space of what in my teaching we would call heart mind, then our belief system can become incredibly fluid. If we're coming to a head mind, then almost by definition, there's a degree of sclerosis in there that we can't see. For you, what does heart mind opening feel like?
Alain: Well, I can mention a couple of entry points for me which are very important. One is nature. I was born in a valley in the Vosges mountains on the northeastern part of France, right at the edge of a forest. And my parents were wise enough to let me go in that forest, even when I was seven or 8 or 9 years old, by myself, because they knew I would come back. I just had to go down the slope and I would find the house again. And there was a discovery of trees as my great brother's, protective brothers. And there was a mystery because the forest was very dense and dark. And so that opened me to both the natural world, in my own way, and also to beauty. I think beauty has always been a door for me to spirituality of the heart. That's what I can say. And when I moved to the spiritual community in the south of France, which was on a campus with a lot of trees and fields, etc., I was there, I lived in a mobile home for five years. So in a fairly basic, simple life. And I think that also helped me open up.
Manda: Right.
Alain: And then when I moved to California, Peter Senge, he's a spiritual man. He may not say it himself, but he was obviously in contact with something larger. So I was surrounded with people who were trying to bring in spirit and heart in the world as it exists. So that was contagious, fortunately. And I started deepening my path. My second wife, Joan, was very much into exploring how we can find some more truth in ourselves as we meditate, as we go into dialogue with others. So it was a gradual opening, I would say. And we lived also in Oakland on the edge of a natural park, so I spent a lot of time in that park. Very wide open. And that played a role. And here in Portland, I go on my bike every day and my bike is a meditation, because I go through the quietest street in Portland, surrounded by beautiful trees and flowers in the spring and summer. And then the aim of my bicycle ride is to have a look at a golf course, which is below, and then Mount Hood, the very high volcano that we have, which is huge. And that is for me, the mountain which also represents the connection with the unseen.
Manda: Fantastic. Alrighty. We could go down a spiritual path here. And I think we might come back to this because I find this totally fascinating. But I think because I spoke last week to Jonas Sovik, and he was that much younger than me, and you're that much older than me, and it feels as if we're exploring not either end, but a broader field of generational experience at the moment. And you explicitly work with people who identify as elders, or at least who are older. And I am very aware of Bill Plotkin's assertion that our culture is locked in early adolescence and that very few of our old people get to be elders. And and that doesn't mean there aren't any, definitely. But it means that the lineage of young people growing, in a community where the elders explicit role is to help them to evolve as humans, isn't there. And I have a belief that one of the reasons for being a human is to help create the ground in which the next generation of humans can thrive. Which we're doing exceptionally badly at the moment. And yet, as you said at the beginning, we are in the time of total transformation; it is an astonishing time to be alive. With the people who come and work with you within the Regenerative Elder Process, how do they get to grips with the fact that our culture isn't really designed to help people flower as elders? And yet, if we're going to turn the bus from the edge of the cliff of extinction, we have to find a way of eldering ourselves. How does that work in your group or in your opinion?
Alain: Well, I want to credit a friend, a close friend called Lloyd Hansen. When I still was in the Bay area, I had a number of sessions with two people who had been initiated in Lakota tradition. To being in a circle, the way of the council, But it had not permeated me as much as it did when we started talking about working with elders, with Lloyd. He is himself very involved in ceremonies, water ceremonies in the area of Minneapolis, and has a very deep understanding of, uh, what indigenous wisdom traditions bring. And we felt that indeed, for us Westerners, the way to start seeing our worldview in a certain light, was to contrast it with the indigenous worldview. And the main aspect of it is the sense of All My Relations. I am related to everything.
Manda: Aho Mitakuye Oyasin.
Alain: Yes. Yes. And so gradually I immersed myself into some of the readings, we found some videos too, so that we could put in front of people who were interested in going on a journey of exploration. And we called them explorations. Where they could see some aspects that they could resonate with and which were quite different from the things they might have resonated with most of their life. So for me, what is fascinating about the indigenous perspective is indeed that anchoring in the local aspect. Local landscape, local rivers, and the sense that yes I am nature. I'm not just part of nature, I am nature.
Manda: Yeah, right.
Alain: So I could say I am the sun, too. And that's what was the trigger and the enabler as we gathered a small group of us. We also went, to define what we wanted to offer, we also went through the U Process, Otto Scharmer's U Process.
Manda: Right. Nice. So for people who aren't familiar with that, can you describe what that is?
Alain: Yes. So the U Process is actually a process that we go by being aware of what we are in the middle of, but beginning to listen deeply as to how are we identified with it, and what are the major things we may want to possibly let go, or at least be not so attached to. To go to the bottom of the U, which is a sense of being one with reality. Immerse oneself in reality and let's see what kind of new reality wants to emerge out of that state. And then crystallise it in some form of a vision. But very quickly go to prototyping it.
Manda: Test it.
Alain: It means making it work and with the view of other people coming in. And then possibly changing the structures that this prototype can lead to. So it's a very organic process that Otto Sharmer discovered himself when he was talking to a number of innovators in all sorts of domains, economics. And they followed some process of that kind, and then he formalised it as a good academic that he is. And there is a process that a group of people can follow. And I have led that process myself in a number of organisations, and it's best if you can do it in a context of a very quiet environment. Nature. So I've done it mostly in the form of retreats. So we actually put ourselves in some form of retreat, a group of 7 or 8 of us, and out of that came the prototype that we call now REP Regenerative Elder Process.
Manda: Fantastic.
Alain: And out of that came also our podcast, which is The Way Forward, regenerative conversations. So it was a very pregnant time for us to be through that. And we have now led that process with about 50 to 60 people altogether, but classes of ten, 12, 15, 20 people maximum. And there is an opportunity to see parts of our life which have sometimes pointed us, like I mentioned in my youth. We are pointed at some other reality that we did not necessarily investigate in much, and we got distracted by the modern way of life. So elders have a rich experience.
Alain: Many of us have periods like mine, where we can go back to and say, oh, yes, there was a sense there that there was something else to be discovered. And one of my friends, Jack Zimmerman, said there is a symmetry between being a very young child and being an elder. A young child is still close to the mystery that he or she comes from.
Manda: So is the Elder.
Alain: And the Elder is preparing himself to enter, or herself, the Mystery that is coming up. And that's one thing that is fascinating for me about an Elder's role in education, but we can come back to that later. So, back to the process. It actually is made of reflections. We invite people to reflect and meditate on some texts and videos that we send them ahead of time, and then we meet up the following week and discuss not so much with they've read or seen, but what kind of impression did it make on them? What awakened in them as they were looking at that? And of course, the conversation in the form of a dialogue where people very carefully listen and speak as much as possible from their heart, that also provokes some very interesting discoveries.
Manda: I can imagine. Goodness, I love that you've gone through the process to create the process, the iterative nature of that. The fractal nature is lovely. Let me take a step back. There's so much of this. Again, this is like three podcasts worth, but take a step back to when you were using Theory U. So for people listening, this is U as in the letter U. So you've got a downward arm, which is the letting go. And then you've got the curve at the bottom, which is the letting be. And you've got the up arm on the other side, which is the let come. So one of the things that I feel is changing politics is not impossible, but it's slow, because we have a system that was deliberately designed to have a lot of inertia built into it. Changing business could happen overnight. If everybody on the planet decided that, let's say, for instance, clean air, clean water, clean soil were the priorities; capitalism would be over by tomorrow night. However, on a smaller scale, if you were to go into a company and take people on a retreat to somewhere totally beautiful, that opens up their heart. And they are capable of speaking from the heart, which is in itself a skill set that our culture doesn't really foster and has to be relearned, I feel. But anyway, if that is a thing and they open, and they are able to feel themselves to be an integral part of the web of life. To be, as you said, I am the sun. I'm not looking at the sun, the sun and I are one thing. And then on Monday morning they go back to work. It feels to me that if it were possible for them to change the system, the system would not be where it is just now. That we'd already be in a different world. How do people find the agency, when they've had a transformative experience, to transmit that transformative experience within their workplaces?
Alain: So I have used that process, particularly in the very last part of my consulting work, with organisations such as NAACP, with some start-ups in the Silicon Valley when I was still there. Usually smaller groups, smaller firms, smaller companies. And when there is the maturity in the president or the executive director, that says, yes, there is something for us there to discover, it has produced some very interesting results. But there are exceptions in my work, because it took me a long time to get to that level of relationship. With a CEO or an executive director I'd say, what are you ready to open up in yourself and in your executive team that would possibly begin to transform or make even more real who you are? This is one of the reasons I turned to elders, is that as an elder, I can see that it's more possible to talk to some aspects of one's life where there was an opening, and it may have been followed by a closing, going back to regular life.
Alain: I find that elders have a an appetite for opening up. Especially if they are lifelong learners, their heart is still open, their curiosity is very strong. So it's a mixture of the heart mind, as you said. So I haven't given myself that many chances to make it work in a company, because my realisation was also more toward the end of my consulting and coaching career. But I believe it can work, provided the level of maturity of reflection on one's life; what has worked? What hasn't worked? Is there. That's what I can say at this time.
Manda: Yes. And older people, I think have the freedom. So if you were working with people in their 40s or their 50s even, and maybe they are a CEO of somewhere in Silicon Valley, but probably they're owned by Vulture Capital, because that's the nature of start-ups in Silicon Valley. And it doesn't matter how beautiful your company aims are, the bottom line is, if you're not making the capital 20% or whatever it is that they want, they're going to shut you down. So let's move to people who have the agency. Because it does seem to me we need a multigenerational response to the poly crisis. And you and I are both people who are closer to the mystery on the far side than we were. And this again, all of my indigenous elders are friends. In every what we would call an initiation culture, after Francis Weller, in every indigenous culture that is healed and whole, the older people mentor the younger people because they're both still close to the mystery. The young people, because they've just arrived and the older people because they're about to go, and the people in the middle are busy making life work. They're doing the foraging and the hunting and the co-creating with the land. And the older people have the pattern matching capacity. We've been on the planet long enough to see the repeating patterns that might have quite a large scale, that it's harder to see when you've got your nose to the grind wheel or whatever is the slightly more healed initiation culture equivalent. So, you're working now with elders. You're working with people who have the spaciousness of thought and feeling. My experience of certainly growing up in in the 60's and Particularly watching the men around me, was the absolute closure of feeling.
Manda: If I ask most of the men of my age group, how do you feel? They will answer, 'I think'. And it's really hard to help them to a point where they're actually feeling, and it often feels like a form of sadism, because they're not happy feeling. Because not feeling is the only thing that's got them through thus far. How do you help people to come into heart mind? Or, you live in California and Portland, are people much more switched on there? Are you working with people on Zoom so you've got a broader demographic or are you working locally? That would be the first question. And then, if you have people who've been brought up; and it's not anybody's fault that we were taught to cut ourselves off at the neck from very young; feelings are the things that you ignore. I saw a tweet somebody posted; I'm not on Twitter anymore and I'm not going to call it anything else. Some bloke in the States had said that women should not be allowed to vote, because anyone who was having a thousand uncontrolled feelings a day was obviously not safe to be around. Oh boy! Could we do a little bit of education on cognitive neuroscience, and then could you go away and rethink that one? But we are feeling. We're feeling all the time. The question is whether we're aware of it or not. But opening up people's awareness, you've got to help them to ground and root a lot first, because otherwise it's going to be really destabilising. How do you do that, Alain?
Alain: So first, for the moment the Regenerative Elder Process is done online. So we are using Zoom. And as I mentioned we have classes of 10 to 15 people. So it's propitious to have deep exchanges. The people, I think, who are attracted by this, are people who may have tried the leisure route before, and seen that it's not quite satisfactory, just that. It's important, but it's not sufficient. So there is something that is taking advantage of their freedom, to invest time wherever they want to. There's probably something in the material. That's why we have an introductory exploration, which only takes two hours to explore and then two hours to see with others, well, am I ready for that? Am I? Is this the kind of thing? And then we plunge into the nine week process. And I think we give enough opportunities through the diverse sources that we use, for people to reconnect to a part of themselves in the past, sometimes in the very early past, when they said yes, there was this curiosity, there was this love for life, this deep trust in life that is still within me now, even though I have gone through a lot of things. And if I am in the right context and talking about it, thinking about it, writing about it with the other people who are so predisposed; something is going to happen. And they sense that possibility, as I sensed it myself.
Alain: So the secret source is actually the capacity to open up to something; to memories, to conversation, to a video, to a writing, where I feel that inner vibration. Because for me, that's why I describe now, when I say, am I in touch enough with what is trying to happen within me, in my heart mind? I feel that very slight vibration in my heart. And that for me is an indication that actually my soul is present, not just me as an earth bound creature, but my soul is present. There is something that vibrates in me that puts me in resonance with the larger whole. So if we can create these moments where that connection is possible, then curiosity, the willingness to go deeper, will do the rest. That's what I would say. And interestingly, we are now setting up a group which we call the kinship circle within the community. It's a small group of about 10 to 15 people, and we are exploring together the circle process. Using the way of council as one possible. Or the heart circle, which is another way. To say, let's see how we can create the conditions ourselves to do that locally where we are, with the people that we interact.
Alain: Because I believe very much in in-person communities as a way to rebuild the democracy from the bottom up. And rebuild possibly even companies from the bottom up. And so we are trying to equip them, equip us, because I'm part of that, to have different kind of conversations based on this very attentive place. And from the beginning we've said, in our relational agreements, you know, listen from the heart. With an open mind, an open heart, an open will. That's what Otto Sharmer says, too. I believe that practising and possibly coming up with prototypes locally that will enable us to attract even more people is a good way to go, at least for me. And that's where it is possible, not just to work with others, but work with multiple generations. Interestingly, I'm going to offer a course at the University of Oregon in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, which they have there. For elders in the neighbourhood who want to, for probably five weeks, an hour and a half each week, come and hear me talk and converse with me about the possibility of challenging our worldview. So this is a brand new experiment, and I hope that it can also be extended to other settings, like the Portland Community College, where younger people would be immersed in that process.
Manda: Wow. If the US was not quite so unsafe at the moment, it would make me want to come. I've always wanted to live in Oregon anyway, so gosh, that would be worth coming for. So let me have a think, because there's again, many, many avenues. Very briefly, just so that people know who are listening. I'm pretty sure that I saw that it's from 9:00 in the morning to 11:00 Pacific time. So actually, if people in the UK or Europe or South Africa or anywhere in those time zones were interested, it's quite accessible. Because it's 9:00 in the morning for you, when we started, and it was 5 p.m. over here; there's an eight hour time difference. So technically you could have really quite a wide demographic joining in this.
Alain: And we've had some people from Europe, some of my friends from France have signed up for the process, and that has been very interesting. Yeah.
Manda: Yeah, yeah. Because what people take for granted is different culturally. Oscar Wilde said a long time ago that the US and the UK were two cultures separated by a common language. He was always very smart. Okay, so that's one thing you mentioned. The way of council and the heart circles; just very briefly for people, can you outline one or both of those?
Alain: Yes. A few words about each. So the way of council is about speaking one's truth in a time that I need, but hopefully in a somewhat succinct way, at least that's my bent. And then have the next person, and you know, we use the talking stick. So then one person can either grab the talking stick or you can hand it to the other. And whether they are saying anything about what you said or saying something that is in them. So it encourages genuine expression of what is vibrating within me that I feel the need to express? And put it in the circle and see if it has some resonance. And there is much more to that in the way of council. But so everyone has a chance to say something.
Alain: And you have to be patient. And it's not about ping pong, ping pong game between two people. It's about really listening as openly as possible to what I say and what other people say. And the heart circles is very much in the same way, except there is an emphasis on what's the heart direction that I have? What is my heart asking for, begging me to look at? And so the relational agreements all go in that direction. To really listen to your heart, listen to other people's hearts, so that we can bring something out in the middle of a circle that I have never heard myself say, or I have never heard another person say. So it's the joy of discovery and the joy of the connection, the deep connection. So we are just starting this, we've had a couple of sessions on this, but they both have been very good, very helpful. I will just mention in the last one, the last heart circle that we did, with about ten, 12 people. We asked, can you tell a story of a moment or an event in your life that has changed your life, that has influenced your life for a deep change? And there was a level of authenticity and intimacy that was created out of that that was quite remarkable.
Manda: That sounds glorious. And yes, I can imagine, or I'm feeling even now with you recounting it, in my heart space. The fact that we as humans. Pay attention to so little of what's actually happening, partly because we haven't been trained. And that the energetic reality of any space is by far the most important. But our hearts respond to that. And if you can create an authentic heart held space, the resonances there will help people who are not used to authentic, heart held spaces to sink into the heart space. I say a lot in the podcast, Dick Schwartz's statement that almost all of us, almost all of the time, are walking around in a state of internal civil war. And one of the things that can make these kind of spaces fall apart, is if everybody is speaking from a part and the parts start clashing, then you end up with a very large family argument, basically. But if everybody can sink into heart space and speak heart authentic words, then it can be absolutely beautiful. And I think the other thing that comes up for me at these points is often Gandhi's statement, which was: 'God knows the truth. My truth changes from day to day. My commitment is to the truth, not to consistency'
Manda: And that is what I speak now is what my heart believes to be true in this moment. And making an agreement not to weaponise each other's vulnerabilities and not to say, 'but last time you said that and now you're saying something different and that's bad'. We just don't do that. Don't get into that space. Allow everybody's heart to be open and vulnerable and wide and deep and strong and clear, and it can be amazing. I'm so, so happy you're doing this. And it's going to be very interesting if you do get to Portland College, to feel the generational differences. Because one of the things that I feel, if we look at all of the initiation cultures in past history or that are on the earth now, the elders were valued so much more than our culture values elders. Because they held the pattern matching of the people, they held the wisdom. I had a friend who lived for a while with one of the indigenous tribes in Africa, and she said that if a child died, it was quite sad, but nobody mourned for very long because you kind of know where they come from and you can make another. But if one of the old people died, everybody went into mourning for a year, because you'd lost that reservoir of my grandfather's grandfather told me that when the birds flew like this, it meant this kind of weather pattern was coming. Whatever. And we don't value our elders like that because we think we can get everything off the internet.
Manda: But also, one of the things that strikes me now, and that I am enquiring within myself, and I'm interested to know how it lands with you. If you and I had been alive 20,000 years ago, fundamentally the world didn't change from century to century. Somebody might slightly change the design of a handheld stone axe, and it might be slightly more efficient. Or, you know, some people discovered how to temper iron into steel 7 or 8 times before it finally stayed. And so somebody might have the amazing skill to make your iron a bit harder in the Iron Age, but it didn't last for very long. And we're talking about Bronze Age and before. For many, many, many millennia, nothing changed much. And the elders did hold patterning that was very important. We are now in the uptick of the singularity. Tomorrow is not like yesterday, and next week will not be like last week. And next year is totally unknowable. And yet I feel there's an enormous value, there's an intergenerational value in understanding that our neurophysiology is different, and we have the space, in a culture that is frankly insane, to do the heart work that you just described. It's a different valuing of elderhood. In your conversations about Eldering, within the Elders Action Network, how do you see the value of Elderhood?
Alain: Elders have some similar roles as they used to have, which is to help particularly in setting up rites of passage for adolescents. That is a very important role that they played, more so than the parents directly. The elders were responsible for that. And yes, things have changed tremendously. There is a flux and at the same time they point to what Dick Schwartz, since you mentioned him, for our capacity to move from our parts to the self. And see indeed, yes, that all these parts have a role to play. And at the same time, when I move to a level of connection with the larger whole, with nature, etc., there is something in me that will enable us to take in the very fast pace of change that is going on. But at the same time, there are some deeper patterns that are still very important to keep, almost as a counterweight to the very fast pace. That's for me. And I'm part of two groups that are focusing on what could be the role of elders in the future or now, in education. Not to replace the teachers, not to replace the parents, of course, but as an addition by telling stories, by walking in the woods with younger people, etc.
Alain: and to let their own heart open to this younger heart, which is with them, and see what comes. Not coming from 'I have this wisdom' etc. No, from a deep humility, but also a deep receptivity to what may come, because my circle of reference is wider than just the life I lead right now. That's my sense. And we actually published a vision for education. We made it available; it's still a draft, but in which this role of elders as an input into education, is quite important. And there are apparently a few programs, we are just trying to understand now, where this is already practised. That there is that complementarity. The elders, for me, wisdom and humility go very well hand in hand. If elders come with humility and a sense of deep connection to what is, they have something to offer.
Manda: Yes. Partly it's easier to have the humility if you're not trying to prove something in a workspace, I suspect. But also, as we said earlier, the energy of being connected is a transmissible thing. If one person is grounded in a circle, it's much easier for the rest of the circle to ground. And children feel that, I'm sure they do. I don't know if you've looked at The School In the Cloud? Sugata Mitra put a computer in the wall of his university building, adjacent to the slum, because someone had said, you know, the slum kids will never be able to do anything. And within a couple of weeks they'd taught themselves English and they'd managed to work out how to use the mouse. And someone went, oh, well, one of your students obviously taught them. So he said, okay, and he took his computer and installed it under a tree in a very remote village miles from anywhere. And he loaded up genetic engineering modules. And he went back a month later, and the kids had taught themselves English again, and they'd gone through everything. And he got them all together and he said, what do you know? And they said, no, we don't know anything. And he said, well, tell me something. And this little girl at the back of the room, in a mixture of English and her own language, said 'all we learned was that improper replication of the DNA molecule leads to disease'.
Manda: And he's like, oh, okay! And he set them the exam. And because it was an English thing, 70% was the pass rate, and they didn't quite get that. So the reason I'm telling you this story, is he went to the elders and he said, we need the pedagogy of the grandmother. And he got all the grandmothers and he said, you need to teach these kids. And they said, we don't know genetic engineering! We don't even know how to use this computer. And he said, no, no, no, you don't need to. You just look over their shoulder and you go, oh, wow, that's amazing. I couldn't do that at your age! What else can you show me? And the next month, he went back and they all aced the exam, way over 70%. So look up School in the Cloud. It's great. It's on YouTube and it's really, really inspiring. Of just how much young people are so willing to learn and want to learn. And we design a school system that just crushes all that creativity. But the more elders can be genuine elders, the more that we can begin to get that flow back again and have that sense of mutual respect, that is what feeds our soul. When yet another box from Amazon is not going to do it. I interrupted something you were going to say. Please go on, Alain. I'm sorry.
Alain: Oh no, I interrupted. For me, what Elders bring too is a deep trust in life.
Manda: Sometimes. Can bring.
Alain: Not always. I saw in the film The Love for Life. For me, the trust in life which came to me when I had a liver transplant 11 years ago, and which could have been the end for me because it was just just a question of weeks. But out of that came a sense, which probably was there before, but I can trust that life presents me with what I need when I need it. And a sense of broader service came out of that experience for me. And my sense is that elders who reflect on their life and some events in their life that may have been difficult, painful, etc. but see, what has it done to my sense of my relationship to life? Do I trust life even more because of that? And I think to instil that, to help young people approach life from that perspective, that I love this life as it is now, and I trust that life will - and some people might use different words like Providence or, you know - but life will offer me what I need when I need it. I think from the mouth of a person that has lived a long life, I think it has possibly some weight, especially if it's done in a very humble way.
Manda: Yes. And being in love with life. Just that. And how many people are? And if we can get a critical mass of people who are in love with life, connect them to the young people. The world, I think, would be a different place overnight. We're heading towards the end of our time, but you said on the way through that that it used to be the role in indigenous cultures for the elders to set up the initiation, the rites of passage right through adolescence for young people. And I believe we need that again and I think you probably do too. How does one do that if one did not have an elder setting up a rite of passage in one's own adolescence? That feels to me one of the absolute crucial questions of our time, is how do we build authentic, relevant, useful rites of passage in a changing world for the young people? When that was not modelled for us. I don't think it's impossible, but I'm really interested to know how your group and you are approaching that.
Alain: Well, frankly, we haven't discussed that deeply.
Manda: That's podcast number two then.
Alain: And that is a very good opportunity. Because we are focusing on elders, what can be our role? But many of us have actually acknowledged that there was not such a structure in our early life. And it took us sometimes a long, long process in order to see, yes, you can have a rite of passage at any age in your life. And sometimes circumstances, sudden deaths, etc. can provoke it. In my case, for instance, I didn't have such influence. However, I lost my father when I was nine years old, so as an orphan, I was confronted with life and the insecurity of life, the survival issues, early on. That's why I relied so much on my intellect, on my mind, to survive. And so my rite of passage was later on. But it's not enough. So we can compensate by being, the kind of people we connect with, the sources we open to, can be a very important source of influence in setting up or learning from the events that follow in the rest of your life. That's more the way we approach it at this time, if you like. But it's a very valid question. A circle of young people where they can open their heart and their questions, would be very helpful. I'm sure they exist. I know that there are some movements where adults can help nurture the spirituality that is there at the beginning in every child, and open up and support that. But I can't offer a very satisfactory answer to your question. How do we do it?
Manda: Okay. No, no, it sounds to me like we'll give you a year and we'll come back and have this conversation again, because I think it is critical. But you're right. And I think also there are quite a lot of people looking into this. It's not just you and me, there's a lot of people who recognised that this is something that needs to happen. We just need to keep the world on an even keel until they can make it happen. We're pretty much at the hour. There are so many other things I could talk to you about, but definitely feels like we need podcast number two at some point. Is there anything we haven't covered that you would have liked to have covered?
Alain: One thing that I find important for young people and for elders, is to immerse themselves in the the beauty that is perceptible to them. For me, beauty, as I mentioned earlier, has always been the door to spirituality, to emotion, and probably to sensing that vibration in my heart that I mentioned. And this is why I'm such a militant for protecting the natural beauty that exists. But also, of course, the beauty that we create as humans. And when I see efforts to industrialise even more, you know, our agriculture, the way we handle forests, etc., I say this is a crime. You know, Oregon is threatened to have many of its beautiful public forests given out to companies that will cut all the trees. And that for me is challenging. So that's one thing I find myself sending a lot of notes to senators and so on, saying, yes, do that, protect whatever beauty is still left. And not everybody responds really the way I do or the way other people do. But it's a very important entry door into the sacred, into what can open up our lives to something wider than what we see.
Manda: And old growth forests are millennia in the making. Just because the oldest tree is only 500 years old, it grew in a forest with trees that were much older than that when it was young. And cutting down old growth forest is, you're right, it's utterly criminal. So I hope your letters to your senators succeed. I'm not convinced the political system is designed such that people like you and me sending letters makes any difference at all. But I have a friend who's an MP who says that they do listen, so maybe they listen in your country too. All right, we will wrap up at that. This has been lovely. Thank you so much, Alain. It feels so inspiring. And I will put a link in the show notes to your introductory exploration and to everything else that you're doing and to your podcast, which is beautiful. Everybody, you should listen to that. The Way Forward Regenerative Conversations. And let's definitely come back in about a year and see where we've got to. That would be grand.
Alain: And our next explorations is in April.
Manda: All right. So we're recording this 2nd of March. It'll go out middle of March. So people have got time to sign up. Yay. Fantastic. Excellent. In that case, thank you so much for coming on to the Accidental Gods podcast.
Alain: Yes. Thank you so much.
Manda: There we go. That's it for another week. Enormous thanks to Alain for his tireless energy, for bringing his wisdom and his humility to all that we do. For really feeling the heartfelt changes that come when we're authentic. When we sit in circle, or when we sit alone on the Land. We so badly need to build a cross-generational coalition that's going to take us forward into something that is not predicated on violence, on hurling weapons at each other, on standing up and beating our chests and being such hollow individuals. And in the midst of the chaos of the world, engaging with the depth of Alain's integrity, with his capacity really to build heartfelt connection, feels like the antidote to everything else that's going on around us. One person, fully grounded, can change the whole energy of a circle. One circle, fully grounded, can change the energy of a community. One community fully grounded, fully heart connected, to all parts of themselves, themselves and each other, themselves and the web of life, can change a whole nation. And this is what we need to do. Whatever we do in the outer world, we need to do the inner work. So if this speaks to you, if you feel you want to go and explore, there are absolutely links in the show notes and I would wholeheartedly encourage you to do it, whatever your age. We need people who can evolve into elders.
Manda: And if that means letting go of our certainties, then we have to let them go. And yes, I know this is hard. And yes, I know I am full of certainties. I am nonetheless do my very best to be flexible and to see where that takes us. I genuinely think that if we can connect full heartedly, open heartedly, strong heartedly, clear heartedly to the web of life. If we can ask for its help in being what we need to be, then the flexibility arises in the moment. It's not easy. Nobody said it was easy, but if we're going to get through this time, we have to do the not easy stuff. So there we go. Links in the show notes. Go and explore.
Manda: And we will be back next week with another conversation. In the meantime, huge thanks to Caro C for the music at the head and Foot and for this week's production. Thanks to Lou Mayor for managing all of the videos. To Anne Thomas for the transcripts. To Faith Tilleray for all of the work behind the scenes that keeps us going. And as ever, an enormous thanks to you for listening. If you know of anybody else who wants to know how we can grow into being elders, please do send them this link. And that's it for now. See you next week. Thank you and goodbye.