State of the Shift 2018 Speech

By New President Stephen Dinan
Presented May 1, 2018
 

 
First of all, I just want to start by saying how blessed I feel to be in the role that I'm in. I really offer particular gratitude to my wife, Devaa, who's amazing; the family, the team here at Shift Network, so generous and hardworking. There's really quite an extraordinary group of people that have assembled to help to empower this larger shift on the planet. It's going to take all of us.

For all of you who are customers, allies, friends, or faculties, thank you for putting your trust in us to this point and for helping us to build this amazing network globally. So we are deeply grateful for your presence, your allyship, and for this opportunity to serve at a really critical
moment in history. So despite the appearances from the relentless negative news cycles out there, the facts are that we are actually, in many ways, living in the best times we've ever hard and that we are truly on the edge of a shift to a new global culture, one that is based on peace, sustainability, and opportunity for all.

If we can accelerate things by freeing ourselves from the past, visioning a better future, and working collaboratively to create it, we are so close to an unprecedented era for humanity. Just think, in 1900, worldwide life expectancy was 31. Today, by contrast, it's 71, with far less suffering in those years. The number of people in extreme poverty falls by 137,000 every day. The number of war deaths per 100,000 people has declined precipitously since 1945. Harvard Professor Steven Pinker says that we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence.

At the beginning of the 20th century, only about 10 percent of the world's population lived in a democracy; now it is more than 50 percent. We've had massive improvements in global literacy rates, even with climate change, which is perhaps our most difficult challenge. We are making more progress than it sometimes seems. Last year, 94.7 percent of the net new electricity generation in the United States came from renewable sources and we actually reduced our carbon dioxide output by 1 percent.

Now that's not to say that there isn't very real suffering in the world. There are an estimated 30 million people enslaved worldwide and we need to address that. Many people are sliding backwards into poverty, health rates are worsening in parts of the world, addiction rates are soaring, and mass shootings plague our country. So there are some really important things that we have to address, but it's also important we don't take an overly gloomy view of this moment because while there are great problems to resolve, humanity is on the cusp of reaching a new era of peace, health, and prosperity. I'm actually very optimistic that we will make the shift in time to avert the kinds of planetary catastrophes that frankly frighten us right now.

The most important variable that we need to address now, that we haven't put enough time and space in addressing, is our own consciousness. We have to shift our human psychology, the software that runs ourselves and our lives. We have to shift it rapidly to what you can think of as a new operating system, one that is holistic, global, inclusive, and wise. One that is built on reverence, and recognizes that we have one human family and that we can really live in a way that respects each other, respects the planet. We can be stewards of environment and we can embrace diversity in a way that offers friendship rather that fear.

Ultimately, we don't have a real choice as to whether to choose this alternative because the alternative of not coming together as one planet is not good. As French President Emmanuel Macron said recently, "There is no Planet B. So as we advance this collective shift in consciousness, we can really propel ourselves over the edge into living in a world that is a beautiful demonstration of the best in us, a true global village where we live within the limits of our ecosystems and we work collaboratively to create opportunity for all. So that is ultimately what we mean by the shift. It's a shift of consciousness, but also a shift of culture to one that is based, not on our separation, it's one that's based on our unity and that we really fulfill our individual potential and our potential as a species.

So the larger question is, how do we collectively make this shift in time before we hit the limits on our resources and before we hit somebody's declines that are on the horizon? How do we rapidly evolve beyond the waste and destruction of war and beyond the oppression of other races and the fear mongering of the other? How do we build a world on the bedrocks of liberty, equality, and justice? It's ultimately sourced in an awakening of consciousness to a new understanding of ourselves and our society, and we pair that with real actions that make a difference. We need to move from a selfish and short-term focus on our personal gratification to a recognition that by creating a world in which all thrive, we thrive as well.

With the simple redirection of resources that are now perpetuating these old systems, we can ensure everyone has healthy food, clean water, and safe shelter. We can eradicate many diseases. We can banish war to the dustbin of history. That's where The Shift Network comes in. We're making the most important approaches for evolving our consciousness, including every spiritual tradition in the world from ancient Indigenous practices to yoga to qigong, or making them all available at a distance to people around the word, or bringing the world's wisdom lineages online, from Peruvian shamans to Indian gurus to Christian mystics to Kabbalah experts to leading-edge psychologists, and then we're pairing those teachings with inspiration from those who are making a difference in realms from peacebuilding to women's empowerment.

We are ultimately empowering the creation of true global citizens who are compassionate and wise. That's why we sponsored an online World Peace Library that's the largest that's ever been done, a global Indigenous Wisdom summit, events on enlightened business and the future of psychology. We've had shamanism and frontiers of energy medicines. The truth is that every system that we have is going through an upleveling, a shift to a higher level, to one that is more holistic and inclusive and based on respect and reverence that we really recognize our unity and express that in new systems.

So during this upgrade, we are best served to integrate the most important innovations from around the world and marry ancient wisdom with modern science. When I reflect on the more than 1,000 thought leaders that we have featured already in The Shift Network, it is clear that we actually have all the solutions we need to create a real heaven on earth now. We are simply stuck in some old conceptions of ourselves and outdated fears and a sense of hopelessness that things will ever change. If we do continue to believe those old stories of who we are, there is a real danger that we may go backwards with the rise of nationalism, the horrors of war, polluting our future beyond repair, it's easy to see these things and become despondent and hopeless rather than raising our vision to the next level.

This year's #peaceday celebrates the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “The Right to Peace - The Universal Declaration of Human Rights at 70.”

So I see the time from now until 2020 in particular as a crucial time to build momentum to the next most beautiful potential on the horizon. 2020 speaks to perfect vision, so it's the perfect time to reset the vision of humanity to reflect the best in us and see a better future more clearly. So that's why we're laying the groundwork for collective events in 2020 that showcase that better future, culminating with a September 21 event on the International Day of Peace. Our goal is to really say, "What if humanity made a huge collective commitment that day to have a year of peace to follow? And what if we had real game plans in place for how do we make that reality?"

I believe this is very much possible and if we were to accomplish this, we would come to see that we can transcend our divisive past and really create a unified future on the planet. I believe that some of the horror stories in the news are essentially like a collective flaring forth of the old ways in dramatic fashion, like the flaring forth of a supernova before there's a collapse into a black hole. Racism, nationalism, sexism, these are all symptoms of an old pattern that is built on what divides us rather than what unites us. It's built on systems of dominance, oppression, and exploitation rooted in fear, that there's not enough and we have to take away from someone else to get what we need.

Instead, we're shifting to a new paradigm that is based in love and interconnectedness and filled with reverence and a sense of generosity and really abundance. So instead of consumers in this new paradigm, we become stewards. Instead of enemies, we become allies. But rather than fight the old systems, it's really better to focus our time and attention on the creation of the new and hold the torch of this new possibility higher, demonstrating that we can live happier and more fulfilling lives. When we do this, we inspire others. We don't just hate the old paradigms into the dustbin of history, we actually love them. There's a kind of a hospicing of the old and the midwifing of the new, to use a phrase that some have used. So we want to harvest the wisdom and the best of the last systems while we're also building this new system, a new paradigm, that we're standing on a new ground and offering a new vision for humanity.

So each of us is capable of doing this. Each of us is a little light that we can shine in the world with this new possibility by how we show up, how open-hearted we are with our friends and allies, how open-hearted we are with people that may have been adversaries before. Ultimately, that's the best way for this change to happen. It's not going to happen by forcing the changes down people's throats. It's really about magnetically creating the future that we want to see and drawing more people to it. So I'll share a little bit more about that.

Part of what this shift is all about on the planet is really a shift from what's been known as the patriarchal era to one that I call the partnership era. This is where the feminine comes into balance with the masculine. It's really at the heart of how we heal our world. To make this shift means championing the rise of women into positions of power and influence in all levels. And it also means helping men to heal from their wounds from the patriarchal pattern and to create new, more sacred versions of masculinity and partnership. It means using moments like #MeToo to purge ourselves of the abuse and exploitation of the last era and to reconnect as men and women and transgender people in new ways. It means recognize that masculine and feminine are two complementary halves, really divine halves of a larger whole, and that if either is diminished or disrespected, we undermine our creative potential.

So this larger shift on planet earth is already happening. It's not something we have to create. It's something we’re simply amplifying and accelerating. It's happening in hundreds of millions of lives. It's reflected in millions of organizations and communities. We were recently at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women and more than 5,000 grassroots change leaders from around the world revealed to us just how widespread this new arising is. What I believe remains is for us to link together, to really recognize our allies in the work of shifting our world and to activate our most authentic contribution, our higher purpose, really. That means it's time for us to each wake up to our unique role, to our higher purpose, to our greatest gift into the shift.

In the year 2000, I got my big access. This was 18 years ago now but what my task was, and it took three days of a vast vision of all of these hubs around the world and awakening of consciousness and multimedia and education. It was very daunting. Frankly, I didn't have the background to pull it off. I didn't have a background in business or media or much of anything, but it took a lot of tenacity and some false starts and some failures to get it off the ground. But now we're really at the point where this larger network that I was gifted with seeing in 2000 is starting to activate. We have over 530,000 who are active in The Shift Network and over a million and a half who have participated in something. We're gradually stringing together all of our good work and our evolutionary possibilities into this new pattern.

So when we do that, it helps us not only give our best, but it also helps us to synergize with other people because, ultimately, we all have complementary missions. Competition isn't really part of this new paradigm. We are synergistic in what we are here to truly create. So The Shift Network has already reached all these lives and we have customers in 170 countries. So one of the takeaways for me was even though when I sat at this meditation retreat in 2000, I really didn't have what it took to pull off The Shift Network. I just had to keep putting one foot in front of the other and trust the guidance that, yes, this was mine to do. You have your own thing that is yours to do and it might feel daunting at times, but I encourage you to just go for it. Put one foot in front of the other and trust that the resources and the capacities and the skills will come in time for you to grow into the role that you are ordained to play.

So that's part of why we created this shift for me into president. It was through inner guidance yet again, like I had in 2000, that the CEO hat is important and I will keep holding that. But the president role is actually more significant because my focus and attention and commitment goes to the larger whole, to you and our allies and also the larger world. It's about reaching a critical mass of change agents so that we can get to where we have hundreds of millions of people who are working on the birth of this new era for humanity and that we are each adding our own wisdom, heart, and service into the larger whole.

As we do that, we touch so many more lives than we ever dreamed possible. I mean, just following this vision of The Shift Network has led me to be able to touch a million and a half lives, and I fully expect that we'll touch a billion before it's all done and we're fully retired. You, too, have your divine gift that you are here to give. So the great thing about what we're all working on is that this new pattern is more attractive… it's more alive… it's more fulfilling. So as we shift, awaken, and evolve, we inspire those around us to do the same.

So I encourage you to just now or later, you can put it down below this video stream, reflect a little, what is your highest role in the shift? What is your true purpose? If you wanted to share it with me directly, you can send an email to president@theshiftnetwork.com and that will forward to me. I want to know more about who's activating what and what's your divine role. So I'll share more about my role and The Shift Network and we also want to connect with yours. So a little bit about what this new role, president, is all about.

So, first of all, it's consciously serving the deepest needs of people in our network and ultimately our world. It's about going beyond growing a business to healing our society and empowering positive changes in our world. It's about being an advisor to key change leaders. It's about creating media that really touches and inspires people to make shifts. So my inner guidance is about… part of the best way to do that is to actually create a system that templates a representative planetary democracy, which is where the title “president” comes in.

So we have customers in 170 countries, but we want to start shifting to thinking of ourselves more as citizens of the shift and my goal then is to act as the representative for the aspirations of people from around the world and focus our attention on the most important things to resolve and the most game-changing solutions to things like climate change and poverty and sex trafficking as well as what are the contours and opportunities in the new systems that we're birthing, from socially responsible businesses to holistic education.

So it's a big project and that's why we've decided that this is going… It's not just about me, it's about me focalizing a certain kind of attention and then calling upon the genius of many others. So we're going to have women's wisdom councils and men's wisdom councils. So there's a unique wisdom that women and men can bring to this. We're going to create solutions councils that focus on major areas of change that need to be addressed and to really amplify those game-changing solutions. We're going to create some sort of representative body that advances ideas for the larger Shift Network that people can actually be elected into. We'll have an ethics council, sort of like a judiciary that addresses areas of abuse within our larger movement. This is something that has been sorely needed.

So while all these structures are parallel to some of the structures of conventional democracy, the concept is that they're really going to the next level; that we're trying to bring a higher level of consciousness, care, and commitment, more synergy versus competition that we often see in our political system. I will serve in the role of president for a decade. It came to me it's enough time to do some real good and it's also enough time to bring in somebody else afterwards who can then take the work further and template the healthy transition of power and leadership, which is also key.

So that is part of what it is that we're going to do, and as the councils form and advance their work, our goal is to create more media around them and help to advocate for them in cities and states and nations... and cultural and political and business leaders. This helps us to illuminate a whole new pattern for culture and influence those who are making the significant decisions in our world, all of which helps us to accelerate the larger shift. So it starts with individuals but ultimately it ends with shifting systems. So we're going to showcase these in our new media channels and I'm going to really focus my attention on getting more engaged with the political leaders and decision makers of the world, and really being a conduit for the best solutions and ideas from our network to help shift the larger world.

So there's a lot to be done and we won't get it all done. We'll make mistakes. I'll make mistakes and there'll be ways that I'll go off track. I want to hear about your ideas so we can really create this as a "we," that we are creating a larger shift together. There's 530,000 of us right now and I fully expect in 10 years, there'll be hundreds of millions of us because we are really committed and it's time for this larger shift to happen.

A few more things about what The Shift Network itself is going to be doing in our next phase of these 10 years and my vision for what that looks like. So we've already built a platform for education and we're going to keep doing that because it's really at the core of how do we keep inspiring ourselves to open, deepen, awaken further. We're going to go into certifications for people who are leading the shift in different ways, and we're going to continue bringing the wisest teachers of the world into your hearts and homes so that you can become your best self and live a life that is healthy, conscious, and prosperous. We've got great new teachers on the horizon. My favorite, Michael Bernard Beckwith, is going to be with us soon, but also in other areas as well. So we want to be holistic in how we do our growth. There's a spiritual awakening, there's increasing health, there's empowerment, there's peacebuilding, there's business building. A lot of these different aspects of how we do our lives are important.

We're also in this next phase which connects to the new branding that we had. We're going to be going into media. We're going to be creating talk shows. We'll share a little bit about one of those today. We're also going to be showcasing more about the stories of positive shifts that are happening around the world. The reason is that it's when we see somebody else make a shift, we're inspired to do so ourself, so we want to start having more viral shifts propagating out from what we're doing. So we're going to be sharing more from spiritual teachers, grassroots leaders, and from you. We want to catalyze more inspired media that helps us all to shift.

Another key part of these next 10 years is going to be to grow a network of local hubs. This is something I saw in my original 2000 vision access, and this is going to happen in a couple of phases. One is we're going to look at seeding Shift salons where you come together in discussion groups, people who were sparked by the work we're doing both for the personal growth and the societal impact. We're also going to start building out and templating Shift seminars that you can do at a distance.

So instead of just at home, to actually join in your local yoga studio or church or bookstore, and then be able to take a workshop where you engage people locally, because it's important that we find our allies locally and that we have a circle of support for us to shine and do our best. Beyond that, it will evolve into Shift centers which are actually branded businesses that serve as hubs for the new culture. All this was what I was originally given in this access in 2000, so it's taken a while. So you have to be patient sometimes with the visions you get in your role.

Then the final element that feels really important is to showcase new paradigms of community. We just recently got back from a trip to Costa Rica and we're so excited by several different centers that are doing breakthroughs in terms of a healing center and also a new paradigm community. There's one called Synergida, which really aims to template the most conscious community in the world and a place of exquisite natural beauty. We also opened a connection with one called Rythmia, which is a retreat center that works with shamanic practices. So these are good examples of centers that are offering leading-edge templates that can be replicated, not just in Costa Rica but around the world. So we're going to partner with these kinds of leading-edge communities and help to activate more of them in the world so that they weave together into a larger network of allies that are working on the larger shift.

Finally, I would say that, as I've mentioned it, in this next phase, we envision influencing more leaders of our culture — political leaders, business leaders, cultural leaders — and I started to do that with my book, Sacred America, Sacred World. We're continuing that with the California Vision 2020 event, which is bringing together amazing change leaders from spiritual leaders to grassroots change leaders to political leaders that's going to be at CaliforniaVision2020.com. This is ultimately about evolving our policies and our politics. I know a lot of people have some aversion to this because, "Oh, spirituality and politics don't mix," but ultimately, in order for us to create a larger shift on the planet, we have to bring our deepest wisdom into how we govern this planet and the kinds of changes and policies that we see.

So it's actually foundational for all of us, and I think each state, each city, each country has a unique gift, just like individuals do. So I'm going to be going to China, for instance, this year and speak at the world cultural forum about what is China's unique gift to the larger shift to the world and how can it play a leadership role? So I encourage you wherever you are to be thinking about what is it that your particular state or country has to give? We were just in Costa Rica and we saw that Costa Rica was the first to demilitarize, so it's got a gift of demonstrating the pathway there.

So there are a lot of ways that we can all harness our unique contribution and then work together collectively on the larger shifts. So ultimately, that's why we say and Devaa said, "The Shit Network is not just a business; it's ultimately about a movement to shift our world," and that comes from us joining together in a deeper way. As part of this new phase, we're also formalizing an area of Shift called Shift Impact, which we're really excited about, very proud of, and it's going to be led by my beautiful partner, Devaa, and she's got a whole background with philanthropy. This marriage of philanthropy and action and business is very rich — can we come up with scalable solutions to the major problems of the world? Can we have a greater impact than has been achieved by marrying a lot of different elements that haven't all been in the same room together?

So we're going to see what we can do in these particular areas that feel very core to us. The first Shift Impact area that we are formally committing to is gender equality. We mentioned this before. It's part of why we're doing this on May 1, because there is this need to bring the feminine into a rightful place of honor and balance and leadership with the masculine at all levels in the world. So gender equality is the fifth UN Millennium Development Goal, and this impact area involves women's empowerment. It also involves evolving men to a more enlightened expression.

So it's really at the heart of a new paradigm for our world, and there's relationship work that goes into that and women awakening to a more full-spectrum femininity — and likewise on the male side. So we're going to be looking at ways that we can do that both with education, but also in partnership with groups like the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women where we have a vision of how we can bring more of a consciousness movement to help serve those women grass leaders around the world. We also envision championing things like goals of having 50 percent representation of women at every level of politics, which is a key part of shifting the cultural politics globally. So that's our first impact area.

Our second impact area that we’ve put a lot of time into already, is peacebuilding. Our goal there is world peace. I think it's important that we open the possibility that we truly can create world peace in our generation and we do it by looking at the full spectrum — as our Director of Peace, Philip Hellmich, says: "From inner to international." So it's all of the things that help us work out the tangled knots internally so that we really are at peace with ourselves and we create peace between us and ultimately our communities and our world. We've advanced this with a Summer of Peace every year, which has led to the largest online World Peace Library. It's led to building networks around the world. We've convened conferences with neuroscientists and military leaders and grassroots activists and conflict transformation specialists to really create peace. It's a big project. That's why we've trained over a thousand peace ambassadors in the latest soft technologies for creating peace, but also, as I said, assembled the largest online peace library. We see in the future partnering of groups such as Rotary International, which has a strong momentum to create… They're going to be creating their largest peace conference ever in 2020 and hopefully we'll be coming with a more coherent game plan for how do we create world peace?

This is really at the core of our DNA and we want to partner with people who are moving that forward. We're particularly seeing September 21, 2020 as an auspicious moment to launch this larger peace commitment. It's the International Day of Peace and 2020 is perfect vision. So let's create a perfect vision for how we create peace on this planet, or at least a better vision.

Our third area of impact is sacred democracy. So we often have a sense of democracy is a good thing, but it's a little bit messy, it's a little bit competitive and often antagonistic and sometimes even violent. So we want to kind of lift our aspirations to create a more conscious kind of democracy which is built on a kind of transpartisanship, seeing complementarity in different political positions rather than antagonism. So we want to focus on solutions and how we make collective decisions in a way that truly are for the good of all. We've worked some with Friends Committee on National Legislation. They've done a beautiful job of bringing the Quaker spiritual lineage into public advocacy and working within political circles to create change.

So there' are a lot of shifts that we really need. Corporations and wealthy people control too much of the process and leave us to be disenchanted, and yet, ultimately, this political arena, sacred democracy, is about expressing our highest aspirations for humanity. So we need to get better at it and we're committing to do that. I have a book out on this with Sacred America, Sacred World. The California Vision 2020 is one of our contributions. More in the years ahead but recognizing that this is actually part of our spiritual practice — to be engaged citizens and to do so in a way with real respect for differences and about creating a new kind of public culture.

So those are our three main areas. We've worked in other areas but we're going to focus on those three in particular for moving forward right now, and we'll gradually add in others over time so we feel like we're getting enough traction on them. You don't have to be into all of those. It's really our commitment and our recognition that those three things can shift a lot, and so we see them as foundational.

So a few other things I want to mention. There are some areas for real expansion in the years ahead, and without going into it, these are a little more speculative but something we want to do. We want to create a Shift social venture incubator because we recognize that no single company can shift the world. So in our next phase, we aim to develop, empower, and help to hatch many new businesses that aspire to change the world. We've started this year with a mentorship program for conscious entrepreneurs. We're mentoring 10 of those with their own businesses and initiatives, and then we aim to create a venture incubator that goes still further.

So as an example of something that we're working on, coming out of the California Vision 2020 last year, there's an idea to have a “schools of love” company that basically is bringing best practices for social and emotional intelligence together and showing how we can shift and give the skills to kids from kindergarten all the way through end of high school to really become loving adults and loving citizens, and to be able to navigate conflict and reduce violence and bullying. So there are a lot of great programs out there, but what if we apply them all in one district and chronicled it, studied it, and then scaled it up and helped other school districts do it? So that's the concept behind schools of love.

The final thing that has a lot of traction that we want to move forward is a lot of people really want to make sure that we're touching and empowering and working with the next generation. So at the next California Vision 2020, we're going to have a whole youth leadership track from around the state with delegates, but more importantly, in the education and other realms it's something that we want to build into so that we're not just serving the elders and the seasoned adults but really the next generation because they are the ones who are going to be creating this future that we know is possible.

So that's just a bit of broad overview of all of this. Again, as I said, we're building now... between 2018 we're going to be raising money and scaling up where there's going to be… We're seeing this as a longer cycle building towards 2020 as a larger collective activation of a commitment to creating a culture of peace and a world that truly works for all. In the time ahead, in alignment with the media, we're going to launch a TV channel with our staff member Nadirah. It's called “What the Bliss.”

We're doing an online summit with #MeToo dialogues, with remarkable women like Tonya Pinkins. All this is really talking about how did the #MeToo movement turn into a cultural change moment — and actually a healing between men and women as well. So we’re aiming to emulate The Vagina Monologues and help to activate local templates of that as well with the #MeToo dialogue, so we’ll have people like Tarana Burke and Eve Ensler and Marisa Tomei. We're going to be doing more on the media and developing media channels. We're going to be raising a round of investment to accelerate more channels of content and new distance-learning hubs.

So there's a lot that's coming. We're going to be prototyping the Shift seminars and Shift salons — and also the California Vision 2020 is going to be a great way to take some of this work and focus it on how we evolve our political system to the next level and really have our states fulfill their function. So there's a lot that we could share, more we could share but I feel like that's enough for now. So what I want to just close with is that I want to encourage you to really tune in and own your role. That you know that you are a source of the shift, that you are a source of light in this world, that you're a source of evolution, that you have the power to dispel some of the darkness that we face and really help bring a new dawn for humanity.

So we want to work together with you and we want to… let's awaken, heal, and evolve ourselves, grow in our leadership; let's engage in small but important actions; and, really, let's spread the good news that a new possibility for humanity can be just around the corner. Let's share the stories of who's doing the great stuff that's demonstrating the path forward, not dwell on what's not working, but focus on how this shift can happen. So if you are called to work with us, send me an email at president@theshiftnetwork.com. Love to hear from you and particularly creators, healers, teachers, grassroots leaders, investors, business professionals, cultural changers, whatever your particular gift is, it'd be great to hear about it. I can't respond to everybody but it will be great to just get a feeling of what people are enthusiastic about moving forward. And as we do that, I know that we can create the shift together.