the
mcd Guides
community
vision and purpose
The MCD Guides Community is a community of people who are ready and inspired to share and embody the consciousness and skills of gratitude economy, antiracism, and MCD.
Our intention is to build a mutually supportive community in which we learn to attune ever more subtly and consistently to the heart– the truth– of who we are.
Together we strengthen our capacity to identify oppression in all its forms, to be agents of change and to see through superficial differences to the commonalities that unite us.
We strive to embody love, authenticity, acceptance, forgiveness, trust, and care. We practice translating this consciousness into specific and practical skills that support connection and positive change.
Broadly, we identify three dimensions for learning, cultivation and transformation:
COMMUNITY: building a deeply supportive and sustainable community.
PERSONHOOD: supporting personal healing, liberation, and growth.
LEADERSHIP & FACILITATION: learning and growing into the capacity to support systemic change through developing our skills as facilitators and leaders.
As a community, in our personhood, and as facilitators or leaders, from MCD consciousness we consistently reflect upon the following key points of mindfulness and inquiry:
PRESENT MOMENT AWARENESS: We seek to cultivate presence and attune to the aliveness in each moment so that we can consistently access wisdom and compassion.
QUALITY OF CONNECTION: As a foundation, we hold the question: “Are we living and prioritizing a quality of connection that is satisfying, supportive, and calls us into our wholeness?”
AWAKENING: We ask ourselves: “How can we identify and transform conditioning from family of origin, capitalism, racism, or any form of marginalization and oppression? Together, how can we realize and dissolve that which blocks our capacity to embody love and acceptance?”
We seek to consistently apply the consciousness and skills of MCD to that which arises in the present moment, and to give special attention to acute and chronic reactivity, trauma, racism, marginalization, and money as mechanisms of separation within and among us.
In ever more freedom from conditioning, we ground ourselves in our true nature – which is unity in love and connection.
Who are we?
We are a living organism that is co-creating. We are a group of dedicated individuals who believe in the power of MCD to help us live our values and strengthen our Guides community.
We are leaving behind the word “certification” and developing an empowering model of mentoring, leadership, community, and collaboration. The Guides community is an ongoing process that continues to evolve and flow in multiple directions, responding to needs as they arise.
While the majority of us live in Portland, we also have Guides in New York, California, Washington, Portugal, South Africa and Bolivia. We are currently a community of 28 MCD Guides.
What are we doing and how are we doing it?
To support and inspire bringing MCD into the world, we have formed small pods of Guides, with focus areas such as MCD in the Workplace and MCD for Coaches. We also have a pod that offers curriculum and practice opportunities for developing facilitation skills. Guides have also started spontaneous study groups focusing on curriculum they would like to personally integrate more fully.
The Guides are active in offering workshops to the general public, as well as to organizations. For example, “Tea and Empathy” is a volunteer offering from a small group of Guides.
We are in the process of creating a Guides Community library which we hope will provide ease of access to the vast array of MCD materials and curriculum already available as well as offer a way to collaborate as we create new resources.
We communicate and interact as a community in many ways, for example: attending or leading workshops together, participating in pods, attending Zoom meetings, taking walks in the park, getting together for play and movement, and engaging via the Slack app.
Scheduled Gatherings:
The first Saturday of every month we meet for 90 minutes online to check in about and celebrate what’s alive and growing in our community.
We meet quarterly for weekend-long retreats led by Elia Paz Lowe-Chardé, the founder of MCD. The retreats help us deepen our connection with each other, as well as our practice in MCD.
January is an online retreat to allow for all to attend, regardless of time zones and weather.
May is an in-person retreat in Portland, OR designed to ground ourselves in the guiding principles of MCD.
July is a retreat focused on learning to play together, and covering specific curriculum topics most alive at the time. The location of this retreat may vary.
September is an in-person retreat in Portland, OR for which we ask all Guides to prioritize attendance. This retreat has the primary focus of creating community cohesion and living into the consciousness of gratitude economy, anti-racism, and MCD.
Joining:
If what you have read so far inspires you, the first step is to invest in learning the MCD curriculum. You can do this by joining live offerings and by signing up for the online Wise Heart Learning Community to access Wise Heart's library of self-paced courses. On this membership space you can also find others who are engaging in this type of asynchronous learning to find study buddies or practice groups.
If you have been a long-time student of MCD you can write to us at info@wiseheartpdx.org to schedule a call, in which we can dialogue about what you are looking for, what we have to offer, and our Guides Community agreements.
If you decide to join, we request that you sign up for our Online Learning Community membership as a way of supporting Wise Heart’s staff as we organize technology and create curriculum for ongoing exploration.