Dr. Elizabeth Debold and Mary Adams – The Ten Agreements for Evolving Women

Your Own Transformation Must Come First

Many of us long for deeper transformation. This longing is not only personal; it’s a call from the future.

Evolution itself is compelling us towards a new womanhood. And at this extraordinary crossroads, we feel the pull of destiny, the desire to contribute in deeper and more meaningful ways at work, in our relationships, and to our world.

We often hear these days that women are going to change the world and that we are the ones we’ve been waiting for! But Elizabeth and Mary are saying something a bit different – that we women have to change ourselves in order to change the world.

Entrenched patterns in our psyches and culture that go back generations too often dog our attempts to move beyond the status quo. Even with the breakthroughs of the last fifty years, old impulses, desires and beliefs still largely dictate our identities as women.

While each one of us bears the weight of history, we also hold the potential to transform it.

Through actualizing higher values, developing deep trust in Life and unleashing your innate creativity, you can actually birth a new culture.

All of this becomes possible through the The Ten Agreements for Evolving Women.

With this course, you will realize how your own transformation is not separate from the evolution of all women. You will learn how to evolve the very structures that make up your self to release greater capacities for liberated action, awakened clarity, and profound communion with others. And you will discover how to find within yourself a deeper and higher motivation for your own development – a motive that opens the door to discovering true purpose and new capacities as a human being.

How You Will Benefit From This Course

This course will test, inspire and invigorate your journey in unfathomable new ways. If you’re seeking profound change in yourself and your relationships, the 10 Agreements is one of the most powerful programs ever created by and for women.

It is a course whose time has come.

Join us and make powerful changes that will permanently up-level your life! Specific benefits of taking this course include:

• Make a profound shift in your fundamental motivation for life from the fears and desires of the ego to the evolutionary impulse which gives you conviction, direction, and an unlimited source of energy to fulfill your purpose.
• See your life in a larger, evolutionary context that will enable you to depersonalize the challenges that you face so that you can stay on mission.
• Discover the deepest dimension of your self that frees you from existential insecurity and enables you to contribute fully to the life process now.
• Understand how we are made up of the living history of all the women who have come before us which frees us to make conscious choices in alignment with our highest aspirations for the future.
• Step beyond the subtle and often unconscious ways that women defer and pull back from creative responsibility so that you can become the driver of our collective destiny.
• Develop new capacities for emotional rationality and discernment that liberate you from getting lost in the drama and distractions of the ups and downs of life.
• Meet other women in a new sisterhood based on a shared commitment to creating the future.

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Experience True, Soul-Level Liberation

Conceived by two top transformational leaders and activists – Dr. Elizabeth Debold and Mary Adams – The 10 Agreements for Evolving Women provides an enlightened context in which to discover who you have been, who you are now, and who you can become.

When you internalize the Ten Agreements you can change, profoundly. This is true liberation. And it is absolutely essential if you are to become a catalyst for profound change within your relationships, communities and our culture.

Radical Change Will Require Radical, New Agreements

Imagine a culture and a world based on these radical and deeply spiritual agreements that we will make in this 10-week journey together:

1. To awaken to and embody an Evolutionary Perspective
2. To trust the timeless depth of the Self Absolute
3. To accept sole responsibility for creating the future
4. To own women’s collective history
5. To liberate my identity from sexual roles
6. To cultivate higher rationality and perspective
7. To engage in perpetual development
8. To relinquish the need for affirmation
9. To cultivate integrity of self
10. To forge an enlightened sisterhood

Be The Transformation You Yearn For

The course provides you with a context in which to shift how you think about your life in order to reveal a higher motivation and intelligence. Each week, you will make a new agreement to live to a new standard that enables you to “be the transformation” you – and the life force within – yearn for.

Together, we will begin to see each of our lives in a larger, evolutionary context that will alter our choices and relationships.

You will realize that you are in charge of a new destiny – for yourself and our world.

An Invitation From Elizabeth…

Dear Friend,

All of my life, I’ve believed that women have the potential to change the world.

When I was much younger, I thought change was right around the corner. Between the beginning of the 70s and the end of the 80s, so much did change. As a result, today, women have opportunities that were unimaginable to my grandmother’s generation.

And yet most of us continue to feel an acute lack – of real power, conviction and the freedom to be our boldest, most creative selves.

We’ve pointed the finger outside ourselves at men, the “system,” and the media. But ultimately, we’re getting in our own way.

The same old conflicts that women have struggled with for decades – between being “good women” and expressing deeper autonomy, authority and authenticity continue to hold us back.

You won’t find a program for women’s development like this anywhere else.

I’ve spent more than three decades wrestling with the question of transformation. I was a feminist activist, led women’s consciousness raising, spent years in a woman-oriented psychotherapy, explored Eastern techniques for mind-body integration, sat long hours in Buddhist meditation, and spent a decade working at Harvard University with the world-renowned psychologist Dr. Carol Gilligan.

But none of this touched the depths that I knew I needed to reach to fundamentally change myself.

Until I met spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen and became familiar with his teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment. For over fifteen years, I have been at the epicenter of a group of women working with this teaching who were giving their lives to evolve, together, at the level of Spirit or consciousness.

One of these women, Mary Adams, is now my teaching partner in the Ten Agreements for Evolving Women course.

Born in Australia, Mary studied eastern philosophy before heading to India in search of spiritual enlightenment. Over the next seven years, Mary engaged with spiritual masters such as Nisargardatta and J. Krishnamurti. Returning to the West, she became a psychotherapist and led a meditation center.

But like me, Mary realized that for all her learning and spiritual work, deep personal change eluded her. Meeting Andrew Cohen, Mary discovered the transformative teaching she’d been looking for.

For the past 15 years, Mary and I have uncovered core structures in women’s consciousness that keep us from becoming a force for radical, deep change in our culture.

The next step for women is profound, spiritual transformation that would fundamentally change the structures of our selves and our society. The Ten Agreements for Evolving Women provides a framework for accomplishing this.

If you’re seriously committed to creating change at the level of consciousness and culture, Mary and I invite you to go with us on this powerful, ten-week journey.

To our collective evolution,

Dr. Elizabeth Debold
Senior Editor, EnlightenNext

Course Overview: What You Will Learn

Each week of this potent ten-week program, you will commit to your individual evolution, by living one Agreement after another to the best of your ability.

Here is a breakdown of what you will learn:

MODULE 1

Agreement 1: To Awaken to and Embody an Enlightened Perspective

I wholeheartedly embrace a philosophical and moral reference point for my life based in the truth that we are all the product of a process that has been evolving for 14 billion years. From this perspective, I live in the awareness that the evolutionary impulse that emerged from Nothing to create the entire universe is not separate from my deepest motivation to develop and I strive to align with it to consciously create the future.

In this session you will:

• Awaken to a perspective that frees you from who you have been, and opens new potentials for your life.
• Differentiate between a psychological and evolutionary perspective.
• Experience a deeper motivation that is both personal and aligned with the cosmic process.

MODULE 2

Agreement 2: To Trust the Timeless Depth of the Self Absolute

Before time, thought, feeling, gender, and relatedness, I exist as the Self Absolute. This doubtless knowledge of the truth of Spirit as the foundation of who I am liberates me from the existential fear and desire for security that have shaped women’s self-sense from the beginning of civilization.

In this session you will:

• Discover the timeless, genderless dimension of self that is the foundation of all of existence.
• Experience the freedom that is your fundamental birthright, and discover deep trust in life itself.
• Learn a simple but profound meditation that enables you to experience the timeless dimension of self essential to deep transformation.

MODULE 3

Agreement 3: To Accept Sole Responsibility for Creating the Future

This entire cosmic process is One, and I am that One – as we each are – upon whom the future depends. Realizing that my transformation is the transformation of consciousness and culture, I take responsibility to consciously evolve so that, for the first time, women can deliberately define our co-creative role in culture.

In this session you will:

• Discover you are One with the cosmic evolutionary process, with which your consciousness is now aligning itself.
• Realize the importance of evolving your own consciousness, not only for yourself, but also for our future.
• Identify ways your sense of self has been shaped by being the “Other,” especially to men, and learn to step beyond this pattern.

MODULE 4

Agreement 4: To Own Women’s Collective History

I recognize that I am indelibly shaped by history and bear the cellular and psychic imprint of the thousands of years in which women were dependent, subordinate, and too often subjected to violence. While embracing the complex reality of history, I reject the easy excuse of victimization. I vow to make conscious the effects of this history on the ways I act and relate, thereby liberating my capacity to choose and cutting a new path forward for all women.

In this session you will:

• Discover true liberation by understanding our history as women and the roles we’ve played in co-creating civilization with men.
• Learn the four most significant stages of cultural history that have shaped your identity.
• Develop the capacity to objectify and navigate unconscious motives and impulses conditioned by women’s history.
• Recognize the incredible power of choice we now have to become real change-makers as a result of the freedoms women have won over time.

MODULE 5

Agreement 5: To Liberate My Identity from Sexual Roles

While for thousands of years, the identity of woman has been inseparable from being mother or lover, I no longer build my fundamental sense of self and confidence on these roles that spring from woman’s biological function. While I may consciously choose to take on these roles or not, I am actively cultivating a self-confidence that comes from a deeper dimension of my self.

In this session you will:

• Learn how procreation has shaped women’s psyche throughout history and continues to define our choices.
• Realize how we seek our self-confidence in the roles of mother and lover, despite the enormous freedom women enjoy in progressive cultures.
• Discover the difference between self-worth that comes from being wanted or needed by another and a deep self-confidence rooted in a fullness of self.

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MODULE 6

Agreement 6: To Cultivate Higher Rationality and Perspective

No matter how compelling my emotional experience may be, I strive for clarity and objectivity so that I can align my capacity for choice with a higher perspective. In this way, I am becoming aware of and transcending the often unconscious survival fears and impulses that undermine my autonomy, dignity, and spiritual strength.

In this session you will:

• Explore what it means to cultivate a higher perspective, beyond emotions and feelings.
• Value and embody higher rational and creative capacities that have been historically discouraged in women.
• Learn how to catalyze your own evolutionary development by refusing to take things personally, and instead seeking clarity and objectivity through engagement with others.

MODULE 7

Agreement 7: To Engage in Perpetual Development

Recognizing that I am the evolutionary process incarnate, I consciously act against the universal force of inertia that manifests in matter and exists in me as a deep tendency toward passivity. By doing so, I not only liberate spiritual energy, but create new positive habits or tendencies through ongoing and noble effort to transform myself physically, intellectually, and spiritually; thereby cultivating a deep self-respect for the privilege of being an evolving human.

In this session you will:

• Learn to differentiate between self-improvement and self-transformation in the context of perpetual development.
• Realize the power of reinterpreting – through an evolutionary perspective – how you relate to yourself, your life’s purpose, and your current capacities and potential.
• From an evolutionary perspective, identify and engage with the inertia that holds you back.

MODULE 8

Agreement 8: To Relinquish the Need for Affirmation

I stand alone, transparent and unselfconscious, without seeking to find my identity reflected in the eyes of others. Because I am not trying to uphold a self-image, I can fearlessly examine the core structures that have historically created the feminine personality and be free to relate in ways that are undistorted by them.

In this session you will:

• Learn about the structures in our psyche created by our desire to please and be affirmed by others.
• Recognize patterns of dependency that keep us from realizing our own self worth.
• Discover the freedom to relate in ways undistorted by historically conditioned patterns in the female psyche.

MODULE 9

Agreement 9: To Cultivate Integrity of Self

Because I do not fear the range of motivations and impulses within me and am not interested in upholding an inauthentic, culturally constructed feminine persona, I act with honesty, directness and consistency and therefore, I strive to always be an expression of the fundamental wholeness that is the ground of all things.

In this session you will:

• Become fearless in the face of conflicting emotions and motivations.
• Explore the part of yourself that longs for relationships based on honesty, directness and consistency.
• Awaken to a desire to express wholeness rooted in the profoundest depth of being.
• Identify a deeper purpose by recognizing that the future is in our hands and that we must live with moral integrity.

MODULE 10

Agreement 10: To Forge an Enlightened Sisterhood

Despite superficial differences, I recognize that my sisters are my self. Only together can we each individually find the fearlessness, freedom, strength, and purpose to change the momentum of culture and history. We are bonded in a profound allegiance to a goal of transformation in which I can trust and be trusted to create an intersubjective transparency as the foundation of a world in which women and men are liberated from our habitual cultural roles.

In this session you will:

• Distinguish between having “great girlfriends” and creating an evolutionary sisterhood.
• Understand and take responsibility for self-defeating impulses and motives that arise as we begin to step into a new future.
• Learn that engaging at this level of change and transformation requires us to be deeply identified with the universal, and therefore, beyond gender.

BONUS AUDIO SESSIONS

Opening to Big Heart: A Zen Experience of Compassion
A Bonus Audio Session with Diane Musho Hamilton

Join integral spirituality and Zen teacher Diane Musho Hamilton for a hands-on opening to Big Heart. Through her warmth, humor and clarity, you will experience first-hand how the doorway of meditation leads straight to an experience of compassionate embrace of your whole life.

You will discover:

• The role compassion plays at the heart of all your spiritual work
• How your fearlessness is a direct result of meditation practice
• How your human development naturally expands to wider and wider circles of care

Diane Musho Hamilton is a uniquely gifted, playful, and awake group facilitator and teacher of Integral Spirituality and Zen. She is a lineage holder in the Soto Zen tradition, and has collaborated with the Integral Institute and Ken Wilber since 2004, developing the Integral Life Practice seminars and the Integral Spiritual Experience.

She has studied and practiced Buddhadharma for over 25 years, beginning at Naropa Institute in 1984 with the teachings of Choygam Trungpa Rinpoche. She was ordained as a Zen priest in 2003 and received dharma transmission from Genpo Roshi in 2006. She is a facilitator of Big Mind Big Heart, a process developed by Roshi to bring the insights of Zen to Western audiences.

With her husband, Zen teacher and lawyer Michael Mugaku Zimmerman, she established the Boulder Mountain Zendo, a center for the study and practice of Zen. They maintain two facilities – an urban center in downtown Salt Lake City, and a rural retreat center in the red rocks of Southern Utah where traditional Zen meditation is joined with nature-based practices and shamanic disciplines.

DITCH THAT MYTH! An Evolutionary Guide to Intimacy
A Bonus Audio Session with Dalma Heyn

Love myths, those deeply felt ideas about successful relationships, get passed on and on for so many generations that we believe them simply because everyone always has. They’ve taken root in our consciousness the way all ancient tales, stories and legends do. In this hour, we will identify the myths of intimacy, sex and relationship we live by – and lose by – and learn why they are so toxic. Once we recognize, excavate and clear them away, we free our psyches to create our own unique stories, and to delight in our own idiosyncratic, quirky and imperfect personal relationships.

You will discover:

• Which passed-down love stories, relationship scripts and ideas about sexual intimacy live in your head and heart
• How to rid yourself of the inherited myths that inevitably leave you feeling confused, defective and shortchanged – as if you, or your partner(s), are “bad” at loving
• The radical act of creating your own unique and authentic script for intimacy, one that will assure the sexuality and connection you crave

Dalma Heyn’s nonfiction books, The Erotic Silence of The American Wife; Marriage Shock: The Transformation of Women into Wives; and Drama Kings: The Men Who Drive Strong Women Crazy, have been published in 34 languages and were bestsellers both here and abroad.

Dalma is a graduate of the University of Southern California and New York University (where she earned her Masters degree in Social Work). She is the former Editor-in-Chief of Health Magazine and Executive Editor of McCalls. Her monthly columns, “The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Sex,” and “Smart Sex” appeared in Mademoiselle Magazine and New Woman Magazine.

Her essays, articles and columns, many on women’s issues, but also on culture and travel, have appeared widely. She lives in Connecticut with her husband, Richard Marek, with whom she has co-authored a new book of fiction, A Godsend: A Love Story for Grownups, available on all ebook platforms.

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