I’m just back from a short trip to Beirut to help launch the Awakening the Dreamer work in the beautiful country of Lebanon. I’m moved, delighted and so, so happy to have seen Beirut for myself and felt the incredible warmth of its people.

Beirut has such a tortured history, over centuries of occupation, through a civil war between 1975 and 1990 and bombarded by its southern neighbour, Israel, as recently as 2006. Its difficult for me to imagine what mindset is needed to live within this sense of insecurity. Before I visited, as I skyped with my Lebanese host, the wonderful Rony Mecattaf, there were some loud bangs in the background at his end, “Just fireworks Jon” he quickly interjected.

So last Wednesday Rony had organised a symposium for over one hundred folks, running immediately after a short conference to bring awareness to the environmental movement in Lebanon. This was hosted by BankMed, a local organisation already running a series of projects in their own Happy Planet campaign.  I shared a stage with the Minister for the Environment in Lebanon, just 2 weeks in office and with a budget no larger than the Pachamama Alliance for all that needs to be done in a country where the famous cedars are disappearing and the view of the Mediterranean reveals a yellow haze and unregulated development has allowed an ugly sprawl of buildings out into the countryside.

Some peple had reservations about how ready Lebanon was for the message of change carried in the symposium – and once again the event worked.  I’ve had the privilege now to take this into a whole range of cultures, different countries, varying levels of education and awareness and the symposium continues to do the job, reacing people’s hearts and helping them to choose response-ability and action over denial and distraction.  Rony and myself, plus our wonderful  sister Aline Wauters, a facilitator from Belgium, had the fun of leading the symposium, the first public outing of V-2 anywherein the world.

Over 40 of the 100+ people present want to be further trained by us to help spread the message and of these a dozen beautiful souls were able to join us the very next day for a one-day training.  Outside Beirut, up in the mountains, we were able to help this new group, Dream Green, to step even more fully into an active role as change agents in the world.

And we met wonderful people elsewhere too.  A local Sufi group organised a zikr and invited us to join them.  Here we were introduced to this powerful and very beautiful prayer ceremony in which the word of God is repeated over and over aloud as a means of experiencing the presence of that which is called God, Allah, the Source or Creator. Thank you to Sheikh Wassim and to my new friends, Sirine amongst them, for tis beautiful invitation to see that the divine connects and unites us accross traditions rather than divides.

The Name of Allah

The hospitality I enjoyed, the welcome I felt and the warm hearts of the Lebanese are all saying “come see our country, see our culture, see we are your brothers and sisters.”  I am delighted to do what I can from now to help to bridge these two world, the Anglo-Saxon and the Arab, to overcome and set aside the misunderstandings and division which have bedevilled us and to awaken together into a world which needs us all to collaborate as never before.

Once again its my pleasure to announce that the symposium has arrived in a new country, this time South Korea. This is our last morning in Seoul before heading home having been here an intense, enjoyable and ultimately hugely successful 6 days.

Day One saw the team assemble, Hide Enomoto arrived from Japan, Sand and I had flown in from the USA, and we were helped enormously by the very professional team at the venue, the Korea Leadership Resort in Anseoung. We ran a symposium for 15 people in a mixture of English and Korean – you can guess that HIde and I contributed the English bit and Helen, one of the participants translated for her compatriots. This pushed the 4 hours version out to 5 but the extra time made for a complete experience for all and the symposium worked its magic once again. How do we know? Because 4 people who hadn’t planned to decided there and then that they wanted to stay for the subsequent Facilitator Training.

That evening and over the next two days we ran a Basic Training for the same 15 people, and by the end of Day Three “Hosanyaksu” had completed the training and named themselves [there is no simple translation for this word, it means a combination of Healing Spring and Hospice Hands, I think].
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqZ6ZnfcOdU&hl=en&fs=1&]
This wonderful new group includes Kayeon and her two sons Ben and Brian, 16 and 17 respectively and then a large group who work together in the Korea Leadership Center and its associated companies. This last grouping particularly gives the Korean facilitator community a powerful capacity to organise and deliver events, that is their day job with programs like 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Indeed it was Ken Gimm, CEO of this company who had the vision to bring the Symposium to Korea after he attended it at the Montreal meeting of the International Coaching Federation last November. Now he envisages the Symposium reaching 15% of Korean’s 48 million population by 2015, so we can expect to hear more from this ambitious new community very soon.

The last couple of days have included press briefings, a company-wide Q & A event, other meetings and time for some sight-seeing, hosted by a number of the wonderful young people from Ken’s companies; thanks particularly to Jun, Eunice, Jay, Jessie and Karen. How we ended up in Korean national dress banging the big drum outside the palace at Deoksugung is another story . . . . .