PAGASA created this workshop after we took to the streets during the Garci scandal and realized that People Power, as we knew it, was dead. People were apathetic and were no longer moved to action. There was hopelessness everywhere. We asked ourselves how we could really help the country transform and realized that change had to begin at the level of the individual.  Below is an overview of the workshop’s content:

The PAGASA workshop nurtures hope in six unique ways. The workshop may also be the first of its kind in the world combining unique approaches into an inspiring integration and synthesis leading to massive outpourings of hope.

First is the introduction of a new kind of societal diagnosis that goes three layers deeper than the structural analysis prevalent in capitalist (neo-liberal) and Marxist approaches to social change. This quickly brings participants to the recognition that the mortal crisis of the country can no longer be solved by traditional approaches, including the usual forms of people power or constitutional change alone.

The new, in-depth societal diagnosis leads to the recognition that wide-ranging societal change can only come on the basis of profound inner change. This is the second innovation of PAGASA’s workshops of hope. The workshops develop a clear appreciation of the deep truth that lies in Gandhi’s challenge: “We need to be the change we want to see in the world.”

The inner journey then introduces participants to a surprising discovery and often profound experience: the non-dual and unified world of individual and societal creativity. This third unique aspect of the workshops, when experienced properly, totally shatters the chains of apathy and hopelessness that have shackled individuals for months or even years.

The workshop further intensifies this new-found power and hopes to create new worlds by taking participants into an exhilarating, albeit sometimes mind-boggling, journey to the nature, evolution and laws of the universe as told by modern astrophysics and what these mean for self and societal transformation. This fourth unique aspect of PAGASA’s workshops of hope introduces participants to a deeper understanding of their own nature and how this relates to the purpose and meaning not only of Philippine society but of humanity as a whole. This perspective creates a powerful foundation, albeit surprising, for engaging in refreshing acts of resistance to a dying societal and world order as well as inspiring and encouraging acts of societal innovation.

With this as a background, participants are geared up to appreciate and be further inspired by the many different ways of creating large-scale societal change by engaging in small acts of creativity. This fifth aspect of PAGASA’s workshops of hope introduces participants to such new societal innovations such as: prototyping strategic microcosms; inducing the “butterfly effect” thru the networks and the science of complexity; harnessing the intelligence of natural (quantum) and societal fields; societal threefolding which transforms potential conflict (where appropriate) inherent between culture, politics and economics into a common vision of change; leveraging the substance and dynamics of the creative process to produce impacts that instantaneously ripple throughout the country and planet, now and into the future.

PAGASA’s workshops of hope then introduce a dynamic framework, the Lemniscate Process, which integrates all the five unique aspects of the workshop into an even higher level of synthesis. The five unique aspects then take on a new meaning, one that especially leads to an ethic of addressing complex problems and realizing seemingly impossible approaches to creating a better world.

The PAGASA initiative is timely, for the first defense against massive apathy is to find that ever-creative part of ourselves, the spirit, which never surrenders no matter what the odds are.   The unconquerable and creative spirit ultimately finds a solution to even the seemingly insolvable problems of humanity.

Click to view our invitation.

Check the bulletin board for the workshop schedule.