6. BAJA: THE BIRTH OF
THE GLOBAL LEADERSHIP
INITIATIVE

TOGETHER – WORKING FROM THAT “PLACE OF DEEPER KNOWING” – WE CAN BEGIN TO ADDRESS THE MAJOR PROBLEMS OF OUR TIME.

The first four days and the final two days of the Sacred Passage with John Milton were spent in awareness training at the base camp with a half-dozen other participants, including Brian. We would begin early every morning and work through until dinner time, alternating between formal teaching sessions sitting around a beautifully carved log table under a large palm hut, or palapa, and practice sessions in the garden next to the palapa.

The focus of the training was on six core sacred principles John had learned over decades of study with Taoist masters and refined by subsequent study with teachers and mentors from many different traditions representing the world’s most respected ancient lineages. John possessed a remarkable capacity to translate this wisdom into highly accessible language and daily practices.

By this time, Brian had studied with John about ten years and had participated in over twenty such passages, some lasting a month or more. Brian acted as my personal coach and guide during the days of training.

The work in the garden consisted of learning to cultivate universal energy through the ancient Chinese practice of qigong. This practice is based on the ancient Chinese medical theory of qi (pronounced “chee”), which is seen as the life force (core energy) that animates all living beings. We learned core energy practices which, combined with meditation and other practices in nature, are designed to help prepare us to gain access to the “deeper knowing” Brian spoke to us about at Xerox PARC. In John’s words, these disciplines, practiced with commitment and high intention, release the immense possibilities we each hold as human beings.

At the conclusion of the awareness training, as I was departing for the trailhead with my backpack, John put his hand around my forearm, looked me straight in the eye, and said, “Remember, Joe, give your deepest appreciation to nature, and you will be amazed what she will teach you.”

I followed all of John’s instructions, and during the seven-day solo had a profound encounter with two gray whales. In January and February each year, Baja is teeming with pods of grays. They migrate south every winter from the Bering Sea to the warm lagoons of Baja to breed and calve, a journey of six thousand miles – one of the most extraordinary animal achievements on record.

The area John had designated for our solos was the southernmost extension of the Sonoran desert. A desert mountain range is nearby, extending from the interior right up to the coast. I pitched my tent on a cliff about fifty feet above the ocean on a stretch of vast, unsettled coastline. This place has the striking quality of mountains, desert, and ocean, all merging together. There the beachfront drops abruptly and steeply to the ocean floor – over a hundred meters deep. The configuration creates massive and powerful waves that hammer the coast so fiercely that you can feel the reverberations up to a mile inland. There the whales can come and play in the sea, close to the shore. During my solo, they came within twenty-five meters of my solo site.

On the sixth day of my solo, as I stood on the end of a nearby high bluff facing the ocean, just in front of me, two enormous whales rose into the air seventeen times in perfect unison, their bodies arching completely out of the water, like porpoises, and diving back into the water headfirst.

Then, moments later, from the depths of the ocean, like missiles going straight up into the air, the whales shot up out of the water. Their tails cleared the water, and they hung in the air momentarily, then slipped back straight into the water, seemingly without a ripple. They did this three times.

I was in profound communion with those whales. I had a sense that their state of being surpassed anything I had experienced before. From that moment, my life was different. I was left with a memory of having been in the presence of the divine. The foundations of my identity were shifting again, just as they had when I was in the back of the auditorium at the Woodlands. Sitting on that high bluff, a sudden impulse arose within me. A thought cascaded out of me in an instant: “We need to test the efficacy of the U-process at scale.” I realized that just as with the Alliance, we could use the process to develop leaders – only this time, not only from business, but also from government and nongovernmental organizations, who could learn to work together to resolve the most pressing regional and global issues facing humanity. None of these sectors alone can resolve such major issues, but together, working from that “place of deeper knowing,” we can begin to address the major problems of our time.

This sudden intuition set me on a path that led to the founding of the Global Leadership Initiative whose purpose was to launch demonstration projects designed to test the U-process at significant scale.