Dear friend,
In a world drowning in "information" and "knowledge," where do you go to find, and deepen, understanding? Exploring how to live systemic understanding, becoming more fully and humanly alive in the process, is Crazy Tiger Institute’s delight. Above all, if you are among those whose hearts have found nourishment in the wisdom of the two most comprehensive systemic thinkers of our time, Gregory Bateson and Humberto Maturana, and if you are interested in taking their work further by exploring how to live nondualistically and live systemic understanding, you may have found a home.
For over 25 years now, I have been helping people understand the work of Bateson and Maturana (through teaching and through editing their works), and as time has gone by, their work has grown in me and blossomed into a series of courses which, in combination, offer a thorough training in what I call Living Systemic Understanding & Design. This training is useful in a wide variety of domains, but perhaps most important of all, it tremendously enriches the daily living of the human beings who experience it, as well as the lives of those who interact with them. As you will quickly perceive if you find yourself participating, teaching these understandings is for me an undertaking of enormous joy. I have been truly blessed to have these two rare human beings as mentors and friends, and I delight in passing on what I have learned through interacting with them, as well as expanding their work into new domains, including the domains of design and daily life experience. For me, systemic understanding is to be lived; one mark of someone’s living it lies in finding oneself being treated like a human being.
Over time, it has become clear to me that people genuinely learn these lived understandings only through extended and regular interaction with them, and I therefore regard my series of courses as the bedrock of the training I offer. These courses are described more fully in the "classes" and "certificate" sections of this site, but, briefly, they include "Systemic Understanding" (an intensive introduction to the work of Bateson and Maturana), "Explorations in Systemic Understanding" (which provides a deepening of the understandings gained in the first course, through exploring them in our daily living), "Reading Circles" (in which we read selected essays, especially those of Bateson and Maturana, and discuss them together line by line for deeper understanding), "Art as a Manner of Living" (an exploration of the art of triggering integrative experience in oneself and others, as well as the art of living diversity and generating imaginative space), "Living Systemic Design" (a laboratory for hands-on practice in nondualistic design, both individual and collaborative), "Emotion, Eternity, and the Implicit" (an intensive in the experience of nondualistic Freedom, in which, as the Tibetans say, every thing spontaneously ‘self-liberates’), and a culminating multidimensional "Seminar Integrating All Aspects of Living Systemic Understanding & Design." These courses, which become increasingly more deeply experiential, constitute the core of Crazy Tiger Institute’s Certificate Program. Classes are kept small (ten or less) to ensure a relaxed learning experience of the highest possible quality.
Crazy Tiger Institute also offers one-on-one mentoring in Living Systemic Understanding & Design. For me, the key to mentoring is Listening—deeply and in order to understand—with the result that people find their own Wisdom blossoming. As time goes by, Crazy Tiger will also offer workshops (watch this site for further details).
Comments from previous participants may be found in the classes, mentoring, and about sections of this site, so that you can see what others have thought and felt about these experiences. If what they say strikes a responsive chord in you, please feel free to call me and find out more (I’m easiest to reach in the afternoons), or come to our Open House, 4 - 6 p.m., Sunday, April 19 (with a presentation at 4:30 offering a taste of the kinds of things we explore at Crazy Tiger). (We are easy to find: Just go to the corner of McGraw and 35th in the Magnolia neighborhood of Seattle, look north up 35th, and you will see our little white picket fence and our sign.) (We also now offer learning events at our branch in Port Angeles.)
Having seen over the years how much people bloom in the face of the opportunities presented in my courses, I decided to forsake the sterility and politics of academia and take a glorious wild leap into creating an institute devoted to the cultivation of living systemic understanding & design. If you are interested in substantive and genuinely transformative systemic learning, or if you simply want to learn how to be more human—with understanding—Crazy Tiger invites you to play.
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