Attention: Healers, Visionary Activists, Educators, Clergy, Creative Social Artists, Change Agents, and Social Entrepreneurs who are READY to learn exactly what it takes to harness the transformative power of Peacemaking in your lives and become powerful agents for positive change.
You can now access step-by-step strategies for navigating conflict and building peace so you can heal yourself, your family and the world, NOW, when the world needs us most.
You can take an active role in being the change - and you can learn to do it effectively with tools and strategies from a world-renowned social healer and peacemaker. We’ll show you how with this 7-session course, which will:
- Provide profound tools for cultivating peace in your life, your family, and your community.
- Help you navigate conflict in more skilled and effective ways
- Empower you to release old wounds, navigate stress and clear barriers to intimate friendship
- Offer information, skills, and tools for you to be a better peacemaker in the world
- Teach you the state-of-the-art in planetary peacemaking, as well as the leading edge science.
- Help you develop the essential skills of the social healer
- Develop your skills to stand in the fire of hostility and aggression as an agent of transformation
From the Desk of James O’Dea
Dear friend in peacemaking,
You and I live in a world of complexity and conflict, stretching from the personal to the global. And we also live in a time of accelerating, evolutionary change, with great breakthroughs in fields like science, sacred activism, spirituality, and peacemaking.
You and I were born for this time, born to be catalysts for growth, healers of old wounds, leaders of a brighter tomorrow.
You know that you are part of this wave of awakening and change. Together, we’re here to make a profound difference for the future of human civilization. But we all need a state-of-the-art map and guidebook for how to navigate the complexity and conflict and to play our unique, sacred role.
I’m writing to invite you to share with me in a profound journey to the frontiers of human knowledge and to the innermost depths of the human heart - a journey of love, forgiveness, insight, and great joy. It’s a journey into peacemaking, which is the single most important skill for being the change - whether in schools, your home, your workplace or your neighborhood.
We're surrounded by festering wounds of conflict, misunderstanding, violence, and fear. And yet we have the opportunity to be healers, bridgebuilders, and peacemakers, which brings great benefits not only to the world but to our lives.
For the peacemaker does not just touch others - we touch our own innermost Self through the raw, naked power of the human heart. We shed layers of illusion and defense to live in a way that is lit by a powerful love. Life for the peacemaker is not "the easy way," it is what native peoples call the "beauty way.".
That’s why I’m offering this Course in The Path of the Peacemaker. It’s an offering to your heart AND the heart of the world, sharing the codes, strategies, and understandings that I’ve seen work in some of the worst conflicts around the world. These step-by-step strategies can transform the quality of your life and relationships.
If you are tired of estranged relatives, violent neighborhoods, or squabbling children, or you are tired of hearing of death and destruction on the evening news, this course will help you to no longer feel helpless in the face of conflict. I will help you learn how to transform tension into peace, discord into love, violence into understanding.
This course is for you if:
- You long to be a true peacemaker during this confusing time - but know you could be more effective if you had the right skills and practices to manifest your work.
- You hunger for a map for peacemaking that draws upon the spiritual, scientific and socio-political knowledge - the best knowledge in the world.
- You want to dissolve personal and collective wounds - and are open to learning exactly how to heal such wounds.
- You strive to communicate in a healthy way that brings people, families and organizations together to work and collaborate more effectively.
- You want to develop techniques for cultivating inner peace and spaciousness, lowering the walls in your own heart so you can come to forgiveness and healing around past wounds.
- You know there is great good happening around the world - and you want to learn from the most hopeful programs and people.
It all comes down to one thing - the path you take towards peacemaking. When you take the path created by spiritual pioneers and social healers who have honed their techniques - then you can master the skills and practices to be a peacemaker for the rest of your life. You’ll see through to the roots of conflict and learn the most effective strategies for repairing the wounds conflict has caused, within yourself, your community and our world.
Remember, peacemaking is not just the domain of international. It’s one of the most practical skills for transforming the quality of our lives, our families, and our society. It’s the foundation for turning conflict into friendship, stress into creativity, and discord into collaboration. There are few skills that can more dramatically improve the quality of your relationships. And our world.
You will leave this course powerfully informed with a vision of personal and planetary peacemaking and the skills and practices to manifest your work as a peacemaker. Finally, you will engage and activate an energy in the core of your being and draw it out into the world to be a skillful and embodied peacemaker.
In service,
James O’Dea
More About this Course
We at The Shift Network believe that each and every one of us must learn to become a skillful peacemaker at this critical time on planet earth. It’s a foundational set of skills to not only help our world shift but also to improve our personal lives, families, and communities.
As peacemakers we work at the inner core of our own being, engage in healing wounds in family, community and in the larger social body, learn new maps and models from theory and practice so that we can find our own unique contribution to global transformation.
The transformation that comes from peacemaking also liberates our hearts, minds and souls from negative patterns, resistance, and fear, allowing us to become more radiant lights in the world. Our journey into peacemaking is thus a journey into our deepest selves, helping us to heal old wounds, remove barriers to intimacy and trust, and make powerful friendships in the world.
This state-of-the-art virtual course features one of the world’s most respected peacebuilders and social healers - James O’Dea. James combines a career in which he was Director of the Washington Office of Amnesty International and President of The Institute of Noetic Sciences: frontline activism and deep knowledge of consciousness and conscious evolution. He has been engaged in groundbreaking international social healing dialogues for over a decade and is currently engaged with practitioners and projects in Rwanda, Israel/ Palestine and Northern Ireland.
In short, James is the perfect person to initiate you into the next level of your peacemaking, helping you ignite your deepest gifts.
Join us for a transformational personal journey in service to the most important shifts in our world!
What Leaders Say About James
“James O'Dea penetrates to the soul level where the Source of Love lives. By recognizing and loving that universal essence of being within us, no matter who we are, he reveals and heals the violence. He provides us with a path that each of us can follow to heal ourselves and the world. I find that every moment I spend with him is precious and brings peace to my soul.”
“James O'Dea is a modern-day Bard and is deeply engaged in the Great Turning of our times. He draws on his well of wisdom and history of ages in speaking to our times. James is a wise soul and lover of life.”
“James brings a spirit of peace and reconciliation into life with his very being. He is a wise global citizen whose compassionate heart has emerged from the fire of a lifetime of sacred activism. I highly recommend James and the many gifts he brings to our world in transition.”
Curriculum Details
Session One: Peace and Security: From the Inner Core Out into the World
- Illuminating the emergence of mature human beings capable of holding their center in conflict and crisis.
- Learning how we transmute corrosive negative stress, and hostility.
- Confronting false positives, distraction and denial and remaining centered in positive and visionary truth
- Cultivating the stance of the authentic peacemaker
Session Two: The Inner Capacities of the Peacemaker
- Integrating spiritual vision, spiritual practice with engagement in social justice, social healing and political realities.
- Experiencing the wounded healer in action
- Learning the art and science of forgiveness
- Studying the role of empathy, compassion, emotional spaciousness
- Developing ongoing clarity and conviction around intentions
Session Three: The Communication Skills of the Peacemaker
- Building dialogic skills, types of dialogue and when/where to practice dialogue
- Practicing non-violent communication
- Mastering the use of different modalities of communication in specific contexts
- Cultivating the science and practice of deep listening
- Using media and messaging: the range of tools at your disposal
- Activating track two diplomacy
Session Four: Translating the Science of Health and Healing into Social and Global Contexts
- Review of key concepts in mind body health and how they relate to the social body
- Learning approaches to healing collective wounds of the past; specific case studies
- Understanding victim perpetrator entanglement in ongoing conflicts
Session Five: Developing a Systems Perspective on War, Violent Conflict and Oppression
- Using systems theory to illuminate the interrelatedness of issues leading to violence
- Analyzing specific contexts from a systems perspective
- Engaging “simple rules” as a peacemaker from a systems perspective
Session Six: Reframing Beliefs and Worldviews for a Peaceful World
- Understanding core international treaties and documents with regard to human rights and peace; special attention to the Earth Charter.
- Learning about key concepts that are changing international law and practice and continuing impediments to ending massive levels of violence
- Understanding how worldview and belief are affecting the transformation of societies across the planet and giving birth to a more peaceful future.
Session Seven: You are the Peacemaker We Have Been Waiting For: How to Identify and Engage in Your Work as a Peacemaker
- Synthesizing course work
- Sharing information and key resources
- Making a sacred commitment
Bonus Session #1 with Frances Moore Lappé
Frances Moore Lappé is author of Diet for a Small Planet, founder of the Small Planet Institute, and co-founder of Food First: Institute for Food and Development Policy. She has written 17 books, is the recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, and was named the 2008 James Beard Foundation’s Humanitarian of the Year. Her most recent book is Getting A Grip 2: Clarity, Creativity and Courage for the World We Really Want. This bonus helps you:
- Understand the predominant mental map that begins with lack (from energy to food to goodness) and how that spreads conditions of violence
- Shift beyond this mental map and connect with the deep sources of empathy that humans are "soft-wired" with.
- See the promise of living democracies for creating peace
- Cultivate courage to create conditions that bring out the best in us
Bonus Session #2 with Sequoyah Trueblood.
Sequoyah is a remarkable, pipe-carrying Choctaw elder who has contributed selflessly for many years around the world as a role model for healthy leadership, bringing peace and joy to the hearts of many. In this bonus workshop, you’ll receive genuine guidance from a profoundly inspired and diversely experienced Elder. You’ll:
- Learn how the earth was made for peace
- Understand how the path of peace is easy for those who have no preference / no judgments / expectations
- Receive the teachings of Great Thanks, Great Peace, Great Love
- Gain awareness of the natural law of impermanence
- Learn how to honor children and the feminine
What Students Say...
"In addressing our evolution into the "mature human," I can think of no better leader than James O’Dea to light the way on our collective path to becoming confident, connected and joyous peacemakers in this time of planetary transition. I highly recommend this course."
- Maura Conlon-McIvor, Ph.D., Author, Depth Psychologist, Educator/Mentor
"James provided deep awareness of avoidance patterns that have kept me from being full present to challenging situations and conflict. I was able to apply the tools from our homework and am already using these new insights in spiritual counseling and in my Sunday messages at Unity."
- Rev. Patricia Keel
"James O’Dea has experienced both war and peace first-hand, and has devoted his life to mending our individual and collective hearts. He knows how to melt the most viscous barriers in hate’s heart, and provides us, both directly and indirectly, the tools we need for our own transformation."
"I’ve participated in a number of James’ workshops. He has a unique and brilliant way of blending core wisdoms and tools with a mythical-size ability to weave a story that opens you up to your own inner core, and preps you for the a-ha’s necessary in taking the next grateful step in learning and growth."
"My perceptions and communications are changing from self to spirit, from intellect to heart as I am applying the material from my notes. I have been consciously trying to achieve this for years, and am finally making real progress. THANK YOU!"
- Kelly Zif
"Never before did I feel called to a course the way I felt called to the Path of the Peacemaker. Living in the Netherlands, I was fully conscious, that would necessitate me to stay up during the night for the duration of the call. As it turns out, not only do I stay up, fully awake, eager to hear all that James is sharing with us, but also do I stay up, to join in communicating about it afterwards in the ning option. This is not a course of once a week, it is a life experience 24/7."
- Gertrude van Voorden from the Netherlands
What You'll Receive From This Course:
- Seven 90-minute class sessions with James O’Dea
- Bonus training with Frances Moore Lappe
- Bonus training with Sequoyah Trueblood
- PDF transcripts for each class session
Title: |
The Path of the Peacemaker |
Satisfaction 100% guaranteed!
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is a virtual course?
A: It’s a great way to engage teachings and practices from the comfort of your home. We give you transcripts and recordings that you can download and keep.
Q: What is your refund policy?
A: Your satisfaction is 100% guaranteed! If you feel that the Course does not meet your expectations, you may request that your payment be refunded in full within two weeks of purchase. Submit refund requests at support.theshiftnetwork.com.
Q: How can I reach Customer Support?
support@theshiftnetwork.com or 415-223-7565.
Q: What are the benefits of telling my friends to join the program?
A: You can sign up as an Affiliate of The Shift Network and receive 20% for anyone that you introduce who registers for the Course. If you refer five friends into the Course, you can cover your own! Register at www.theshiftnetwork.com/affiliate and you’ll receive a promotional link to use.
