Integral Peacemaker Training: Transforming Systems with Fleet Maull

January 9-11
in Boulder, Colorado

Transforming Systems addresses the Outer/Collective or Lower Right Quadrant in Ken Wilber’s AQAL Integral Model. This training is designed to provide participants with the knowledge and tools to enter the often daunting world of systems change with vision, confidence and the ability to create and sustain significant positive change. This workshop is part of the Integral Peacemaker Training (components do not need to be taken in any particular order).

Click here for more information or to register.

"Integral Peacemaker Training has provided me with effective methods for building bridges between my contemplative spiritual practice and the secular realm of social engagement and activity. It's integrative approach has expanded my awareness of the interconnectedness of self and other in interpersonal relationships, and also, in a wider, more expansive view, in societal and political manifestations as a part of groups and systems of all kinds. I consider this training one of the most important I have ever undertaken." —Cindy Cochran, Portland Shambhala Center member

The Prison Dharma Network Online Auction 2008 is open for bidding November 14 through December 1st!

Click here to browse our catalogue.

Our goal this year is to raise $20,000 to support our work of transforming lives in prisons, jails and juvenile facilities. We need your support!
This is an exciting and fun way to help us, and at the same time have a chance to win cool items that will make great gifts for holiday giving!

So what are you waiting for?...Bid Now!

"BUY NOW"...many items are listed at the 'buy now' price...so don't miss out on some great items...buy now!

We have over 130 fabulous items including:

• A Relax and Renew Weekend for Two at Shambhala Mountain Center
• A Zen Sesshin with Roshi Joan Halifax at Upaya
• Unlimited monthly pass at Core Power Yoga (national)
• “Mini” Facial Acupuncture session

And many others great items ranging from Dharma Art, yoga retreats, dinners at fabulous restaurants, inspiring audio, great bodywork/healing sessions, and much much more....

Every bid helps support our cause. Check back often to see what's new as we will be adding to the catalogue throughout the 3 week auction. Feel free to place a Watch on your favorites, so that you'll know if the bid changes.

IMPORTANT: HELP US SPREAD THE WORD!
Tell Your Friends. The success of this online auction depends on spreading the word to as many people as possible. We need your help. Please Refer a Friend and encourage them to participate so they don't miss a single moment of this great opportunity to support this worthy cause.


Prison Dharma Network is a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization, winning bidders will receive a donation receipt for the amount of the bid exceeding the listed market value of the item.

Auchwitz Bearing Witness Retreat 2008 -Day 3

This year we are primarily focused on re-visioning the Auschwitz-Birkenau Bearing Witness retreat; so after two days of following our tradition retreat from at Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II (Birkenau), we began our re-visioning process on Wednesday.

After our early morning small council groups and breakfast, our group of thirty, past retreat staff and invited guests from Israel, Palestine and Rwanda, gathered in a large meeting room at the Center for Dialog and Prayer. I lead the group in a basic introduction to our Integral Peacemaker Training, which now forms the basis for our Bearing Witness Retreat Facilitator Training Program. The morning included basic mindfulness and meditation training, presencing, deep listening, lymbic re-patterning, and an introduction the the Drama Triangle and our Above The Line/Below The Line model of shifting from denial and blame to ownership and relationship.

Then in the afternoon we began our re-visioning process using the Open Space Technology process. Six different groups were convened working on: how to involved more young people in the retreat, bringing the retreat to Rwanda, how to better market the bearing witness retreats, bringing opinion makers/leaders from Palestine and Israel to the Auschwitz retreat next year seeding the possibility of a special Auschwitz retreat for Israeli-Palestinian dialog and conflict transformation; providing a container in the retreat for even deeper grieving process for the participants, incorporating more body and breath work into the retreat, and creating workshops in parallel with the retreat in dream work, acting, music, creative writing, etc.

The groups worked all afternoon with a lot of cross pollination from bumble bees and butterflies (people moving from group to group and others who just float around) and then reported out their progress before dinner. After dinner, we enjoyed an evening of traditional and modern African dancing lead by our friends from Rwanda. An incredibly rich day. Tomorrow morning, instead of holding our small council groups, we plan to gather as one group before breakfast to bear witness and two of our Rwanda friends, survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, tell their stories.

Auchwitz Bearing Witness Retreat 2008 - Day 2

Tuesday, November 4th.
We held our first small group councils this morning before breakfast, 7 - 8:30 am. We have four small groups each faciltated by two experience Auschwitz retreat staff and council facilitators and each with 7 or 8 participants including the facilitators. The groups varies but all reported deep sharing from our experiences at Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II (Birkenau) yesterday. After breakfast we returned to Birkenau of a day of our traditional bearing witness retreat schedule:

10 am: Sitting Meditation and reading the names of the death camp victims at the infamous Selection Site

11:30 am: Optional religious services at various locations around Birkenau — Buddhist, Christian, Jewish and Muslim services.

1:00 pm: Lunch (a bowl of soup and piece of bread) served just outside the gates of Birkenau from a van.

2:00 pm: Sitting Meditation and reading the names of the victims at the Selection Site

3:30 pm: Silent pilgrimage walk to Crematoria I, circumnambulation of the crematoria, and the saying of Kaddish in Hebrew/Aramaic, Polish, English, French, German, Arabic, and Turkish.

4:30: Silent walk through Birkenau to front gate and bus back to the dialog center.

Then after dinner, we held a very powerful spiral council with the whole group. Seven chairs in the inner circle surrounded by 24 chairs in the outer bearing witness circle. Once people share in the inner circle they can return to the bearing witness circle and someone else can joint the inner/council circle. This was definitely one of the most powerful spiral councils I’ve had the opportunity to participate in. The spiral council form some times works better than other times. This time the inner/council circle was almost always full and people went right into depth and essense sharing the experiences of these two days bearing witness in the death camps. Some of our Rwandan friends shared both their experience here at Auschwitz and something of their experience in Rwanda. I experience our group moving into deep community. It feels like and incredible privilege and precious opportunity to be sharing so deeply with and international group of such diversity.

Tomorrow we begin our re-visioning work … our goal this year is to revision the Auschwitz Bearing Witness Retreat in a larger conteact of reconcilation work and genocide prevention, and also to plant the seeds for launching other bearing witness retreats around the world, like the one we are planning in Rwanda next year.

Auchwitz Bearing Witness Retreat 2008

Yesterday was our first full day at the camps. We spent the morning at Auschwitz I after beginning our plunge into Not Knowing as we do each year watching two films in the Auschwitz museum theater, two film depicting horrors beyond imagination. We spent the afternoon at Birkenau, the immense death factory also known as Auschwitz II.
This is a unique year for the retreat. It is a closed retreat this year for former bearing witness retreat staff and a few invited guests, 30 of us altogether. We also have a small film crew with us.

Our purpose to to revision the retreat and give it new life as not only a bearing witness retreat but a vehicle for doing reconciliation work with persons involved in major regional conflicts around the world. We are also working on bringing the retreat to other parts of the world, other tragedies and horrors that need remembrance, truth and reconciliation, and healing. Our invited guests include five peacemaker friends from Rwanda, where we will run a pilot bearing witness retreat and staff training in 2009 and a public bearing witness retreat in 2010. Our Rwandan friends are accompanied by a German man who works for a German agency involved in peace building projects in Rwanda. We also have two friends from the middle east, both experienced peacemakers, one an Israeli from Jerusalem and the other a Palestinian from Bethlehem. The rest of us, all former staff of the Auschwitz retreat, hail from many places, including Poland, Germany, Italy, Turkey, United States and Switzerland.

After a full day in the camps, we had our first large council dialog last night, with each person introducing themselves and sharing what brought them here to Auschwitz this year. Everyone dropped right into essence and shared the depth of the hearts with each other. I found myself filled with awe and joy as I listened to the pain and beauty in each or our sharing.

It’s early in the morning now. I’ve been up for awhile, unable to sleep. It will be time for our early morning small council groups soon, each of us meets with the small council group (about 8 participants each) for next four mornings. Then after breakfast we will head back to Birkenau for a full day of our traditional retreat form, meditating and reading the names of holocaust victims at the infamous Selection Site, wandering and bearing witness in the camp, participating in various optional religious services, saying Kaddish togehter and lighting candles at the crematoria.

Wednesday through Friday we will remain her at the Center for Dialog and Prayer where we are staying, just across the street from Auschwitz I, and begin our work of re-visioning the Auschwitz retreat.
We will light candles today for all the forgotten names. Please know that for those of you with family ties to the holocaust, you and your families are included in our bearing witness, meditations and prayers.

Many blessings to you you all,
Fleet Maull

Warrior Mind Training

“What you focus on, you will become.”

One of our peacemaker training grads David Lauer, before his accidental death, was working in military facilities here in Colorado with training military personal in peacemaking skills: mindfulness, council, deep listening, stress management, and reported to us that he was very inspired to work with the military and saw great promise in bringing peacemaker skills into this arena.

Recently I ran across this website “Warrior Mind Training” and am not quite sure what to make of this. It looks to be some sort of mindfulness and PTSD stress reduction training on the one hand and on the other hand, it looks to be a training in how how to as the site says “strengthen and forge their minds into the ultimate fighting weapon.” What do you make of this site? Is this using mindfulness practices to train people how to achieve better ‘victories’ over the enemy or to create more peace, clarity and stablity in their minds?

Check it out here.

Intended Consequences

This is one of the most powerful videos I’ve ever viewed . Please take a moment to bear witness to this tragedy of Rwandan women who suffered from sexual violence during the 1994 genocide. These women bore children from the rapes and were then rejected by their families. It’s estimated that 20,000 children were conceived during the genocide and many of the woman contracted HIV.

Click here to visit Media Storm’s website and view “Intended Consequences.”

How Wars End

Found a link for an interesting audio series entitled “How War’s End”…In this 5 part series “The World’s” Jeb Sharp examines how war’s don’t always end the way we think they do and sometimes they don’t end at all. Why? Listen to this interesting series of talks (the Civil War one is particularly interesting) to discover clues about how we might end wars now.
Listen to the series here...