Read About the Program Below
CHAOS… IMPASSE…GROWING DIVISIONS
A Nation in Search of Its Soul
Can we respond as persons committed to…
Contemplation as a transformative practice
Social justice in all its dimensions
Belief on our interconnectedness as a global community
ICCD Believes We Can!
ICCD believes many people are ready to approach this time of chaos from a deeper place but who may not be as familiar with contemplation. It is our desire if participants know of others–their colleagues at work, in organizations or in positions of influence who would resonate with the goals of the program and are open to the contemplative dimension in their life–to invite them to participate. Since its beginning in 2002, the Institute for Communal Contemplation and Dialogue (ICCD) has had extensive experience inviting people to engage the impasse in their lives through processes of communal contemplation and dialogue.
Why So Many Days?
This program requires a commitment of time. It is designed to deepen one’s interior life through contemplative processes and from this contemplative perspective to integrate the skills learned. The time is needed to achieve the outcome which is to learn to engage persons with different worldviews including family, friends, and colleagues in hopes of healing the negative effects of the polarization we experience.
The program draws on:
Including:
• the transformative power of contemplation
• conscious intent of the values we want to embody
• capacity to exercise contemplative power
• understanding our role in the evolutionary process
• willingness to welcome our own ongoing personal
transformation
• communal contemplative practice
• contextualization of our work sourced from a
contemplative heart
• understanding the evolutionary development of consciousness
• learning the specifics of the integral theory of spiral dynamics
• learning the skillful means to engage in transformative change
• applying what we learn to real situations which are
characterized by tension among different stages of
consciousness and seemingly opposing value systems
Since its beginning in 2002, the Institute for Communal Contemplation and Dialogue (ICCD) has had extensive experience inviting people to engage the impasse in their lives through processes of communal contemplation and dialogue. ICCD believes many people are ready to approach this time of chaos from a deeper place but may not be as familiar with contemplation. It is our desire if participants know of others–their colleagues at work, in organizations or in positions of influence who would resonate with the goals of the program and are open to the contemplative dimension in their life–to invite them to participate.
To register for the 2024 program, click HERE
Program Guides
Nancy Sylvester, IHM
Nancy Sylvester, IHM founded the Institute for Communal Contemplation and Dialogue in 2002. This work reflects her commitment to dialogue and her belief that the impasse being experienced currently in the work of transformation requires a contemplative response and an expanded consciousness. Nancy served in the Presidency of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious; as vice president of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Monroe, MI; fifteen years on the staff of NETWORK, a national Catholic social justice lobby, ten years as National Coordinator; and board member to numerous organizations. She is an author and a known speaker nationally and internationally.
Nancy can be reached at nsylvester@aol.com or www.iccdinstitute.org
Dr. Vernice Solimar
Dr. Vernice Solimar was founder and chair of the Integral Psychology M.A. program, and former chair of Consciousness and Transformative Studies at John F. Kennedy University, (JFKU). With Dr. Monica Sharma, former Director of Leadership Training for Developing Countries at the United Nations, Vernice founded and directed the Leadership for Personal and Social Transformation certificate at JFKU. Vernice is a Founding Member of Ken Wilber’s Integral Institute and collaborated with Don Beck in teaching Spiral Dynamics at JFKU. She has taught courses on World Religions, Evolutionary Spiritualty and Transpersonal and Integral Psychology, given presentations in El Salvador, Ecuador and Peru and facilitated programs in Taiwan, Istanbul, Puerto Rico and Uganda among others.
We draw on the power of God’s call from the future to summon the strength needed to engage in this transformative process in the service of the whole.