|
|
|
Presentations, Seminars and Retreats
A story
It was 1978 and my wife, Pamela, was
gravely ill. She was 23, talented and loved—especially by the children
of friends. Some of them called her "PamPhil"—a hybrid
of her name and mine, because we were an inseparable pair, together
24/7.
Life was basic, in those days. We lived in an old travel trailer, in
a small southern town, deep in the Bible belt. We moved there to promote
social change and racial integration activities in a volunteer ministry
work. To eat, we worked nights as janitors.
Life was stressful. The physical and emotional needs of the people,
our newfound friends, were extensive. There was extreme poverty, frequent
deaths and abuses of all kinds.
Then my wife's health failed. The body aches,
the numbness, weakened limbs, immobility, exhaustion followed by depression.
A weeklong visit to a hospital in another state provided few answers.
Did she have Multiple Sclerosis like her mother, who died of the illness
when Pamela was young? A bevy of doctor's tests found no connection.
But they had no other explanations, either.
Desperate, we called an acquaintance who
had once spoke of an unconventional doctor he knew in the South East
who took hard-to-solve cases and people with little resources to pay
him.
Now explainable coincidences
We scraped together gas money and drove an old beater 750 miles to the
doctor's doorstep. When we arrived we were linked with a solitary stranger
who paid our hotel bill for two weeks in exchange for companionship.
He was afraid to be alone with his own difficult illness.
The confined quarters of that doctor's office proved to be a synchronistic
vortex for the people who lined that room; who came from other states
and countries in search of wellbeing from an unconventional man, by
medical standards, with a mixed-bag of skill sets.
But it was this doctor who healed my wife over the course of two years
from a virus that frequently paralyzes its victims.
It was this doctor who drew a circle on a piece of paper one day—a
mere diagram of the parts that make up a whole vitamin—that changed
the way I viewed my world. The full explanation of what he said is too
lengthy to report here, but it ultimately sent us on a different life
journey. My future was planned, my goals set, until this
doctor inadvertently exposed the missing pieces of our lives that, despite
the sacrifices and rewards, had proved insufficient to complete us.
Connecting the dots with research and writings
It would be many years, and require many more life experiences before
I crossed paths with a talented writer and we fully researched the concepts
of what we called spherical thinking. We recorded those discoveries
in a book released in 2004. We named it, Being Spherical: Reshaping
Our Lives and World for the 21st Century.
In the process, I also created a visualization tool (patent-pending)
to serve as a guide for individuals and organizations on their journey
to a more whol-istic existence. I designed the specs for the technology
and, as these things go, crossed paths with a rare and gifted man who
was once a programmer for space stations. He wrote the critical data
that would later be translated by a technology firm into a practical
application for my clients.
It would take me three more years to accumulate
studies using the tool in various industries to validate it—from
healthcare to marriage counselors, colleges, workforce, the financial
industry, education and more.
I believe you will find the results of these
validations enlightening.
Information to share
I have discovered, on my spherical journey that centuries of mechanistic,
compartmentalized thinking—ingrained into our daily activities,
our vocabulary and our perspectives—has made it impossible to see
the whole world right in front of our eyes.
If you would you like to learn more about
the inter workings of our interconnected world, I would be happy to
speak to you or your organization. I am available for brief presentations,
keynote addresses and half-day, full day or two day retreats. I speak
free, time permitting, at schools and civic fuctions.
Over the years, I have given presentations
and conducted retreats on various topics, throughout the U.S. and abroad.
Note the speakers list in the right column of this web page.
It’s natural, simple, liberating
to be whole.
Copyright 2007 Phil Lawson
|
|
|
“Our
organization has become significantly more flexible and adaptable
as a result of our sphericity work. On an individual level, spherical
(thinking) has helped each member to understand leadership as attraction
versus position power. It helped reinforce the desirability of having
each member contribute their talents and take responsibility for making
things happen."
—Bonita Patterson
Partial
List of Presentations
|
|
