Being Gathered When So Much is Unravelling

Guidance for Summer Reflection

I’ll be taking a short break from Substack after today as I’m off to Sweden to attend the Transformational Presence Global Gathering and bask in the midnight sun. I’ll see you back here the first week of July. In the meantime, Happy Solstice!

Midnight Sun over the island of Resö in Sweden (Photo: Alan Seale)

It was fifteen years ago that I took this midnight sun photograph just before Midsummer (Summer Solstice) on the island of Resö in Kosterhavet National Park on the west coast of Sweden. Earlier that evening I had spoken with my parents back in the U.S. That day, my father had entered hospice. He left this world just over a week later; I was by his side. My father was a great man. Together, we had been walking with his cancer for sixteen years. That midsummer night on the island of Resö brought me a beautifully tender sense of peace for which I was incredibly grateful. Gifts of the midnight sun.

As I write this post, I’m about I’m about to travel to the Swedish island of Utö in the Stockholm archipelago. There I’ll join Transformational Presence graduates from ten countries for our tenth Transformational Presence Global Gathering. The first one was in 2013 in The Netherlands. Participants describe the Global Gatherings as “a place to come home to yourself in the presence of others.”

Although the formal proceedings of the Gathering take place over three days, half of the attendees will be on Utö already two days before to bask in the midnight sun and be in the profound heart connection, joy, and love we share as a community. Having experienced that incredible midsummer light fifteen years ago, I know how magical and life-giving it can be—a welcome medicine in these rapidly changing and turbulent times. Being together with this community will no doubt bring its own powerful medicine as well.

A couple of days before the Gathering starts, I will lead a full-day masterclass on the island for about 80 leaders and coaches from across Europe and the U.S.. And I’ll lead a plenary session on the opening day of the Gathering. In preparation, I’ve been sitting with all that’s unfolding in our world as we approach the half-way point of 2025. My guiding questions: What difference can Transformational Presence make by how we show up as a global community? What can we bring to the world? And what are this Gathering and this summer asking for from me?

Coming into this year, many of us were already navigating an undercurrent of unease, doubt, and uncertainty. In my first two Substack posts for 2025, I wrote about a guiding mantra that had come to me in meditation and six guiding verbs that I believe capture the essence of what it means to embody Transformational Presence—to be a transformational presence in the world now. The mantra:

The first four lines showed up in the days crossing from 2024 to 2025; the final line showed up in late February. The six guiding “Back to Basics” verbs feel like a pathway to live into that mantra.

Together, the mantra and six verbs will be the centerpiece of my plenary session at the Gathering as well as inspire the masterclass a few days before. Yet as I prepare for both of these sessions, six more themes and longings are now emerging within me—themes and longings that feel like extensions or further expressions of the mantra and the verbs. Invitations for my summer reflection.

Spaciousness
Open Heart
Deep Peace
Stillness
Emergence
Being Gathered

As I open each of them briefly today, perhaps one or more will resonate with you as invitations as well.

Spaciousness

I’ve sought out spaciousness my whole life. Spaciousness for time to myself with no agenda. Spaciousness to write and create without interruption. Spaciousness to let life talk to me. Spaciousness to be who I am without judgment—to explore, experiment, discover, and try things out. Spaciousness in which I can breathe deeply without question or doubt—the spaciousness to soar in an open sky, to dance with abandon as if no one is watching. Spaciousness where it feels safe to be and do all those things. And spaciousness within myself that nurtures a sense of inner security and settledness. A spaciousness within that I can call home.

My inner and outer worlds tend to mirror one another—the conditions and qualities of one drift into the other. As the outer world order changes and evolves, so does my inner world order in response. And the other way around. Sometimes that feels great; other times, not so much. And so, I remind myself that I can be intentional in my choices in both worlds. Spaciousness.

Open Heart

Sometimes my heart feels like it needs a rest. Not that I want to close it down; it’s just that these days it often feels like my heart is working overtime in response to all that is happening. Heart intelligence is the center point of the intuitive mind, and the heart chakra is the center for compassion, non-judgement, unconditional love. It’s the higher vibrational frequency of energetic connection to both the physical and non-physical worlds. And there’s a lot going on in those worlds right now! Staying open and engaged without becoming emotionally and intellectually entangled or attached to a particular outcome is not always easy.

When my heart gets weary, I’m realizing it’s usually because I’m getting entangled in other people’s emotions and experiences. And when that happens, I lose the sense of spaciousness in my heart. My own fears or attachments get in the way, and I’m not as good at holding myself or others in unconditional love and compassion. An open heart is also a spacious heart.

Deep Peace

Long ago, I accepted that deep inner peace is one of my life-long lessons. It’s never been a one-time deal—learn the lesson once and it’s done. It feels like I’ve been longing for deep peace forever. I can get close, yet there’s still often some fighting going on inside—some questioning, some doubt.

That said, I have, in fact, experienced moments of profound deep inner peace, and I long to live there more. I long for my thoughts, feelings, and actions to be fully sourced in every moment from that place. It may or may not ever happen fully in this lifetime, yet I hold that intention. For sure, I’ve learned that deep peace requires inner spaciousness and an open heart.

Stillness

Even when deep peace evades me, I can still usually find stillness in the heart of my being. My longing today is for more stillness in my outer life. As I write, it comes to me that stillness can actually be a response-ability. I can choose stillness, both within myself and in my day-to-day life. I have agency to design my life in such a way that there is more stillness. And that feels increasingly important to me. Because stillness nurtures spaciousness, open heartedness, and deep peace.

Emergence

I’m sometimes surprised at the continuing ongoing emergence of deeper parts of my being. I keep discovering more about myself every day. And what’s important to me shifts and evolves as I create more spaciousness and stillness. Lately, I’m finding even deeper love and appreciation and even more tender compassion for my parents and grandparents and other important figures from my early life. They gave me gifts that I carry with me today. And I keep discovering ways that I’m carrying their legacy forward, sometimes into new directions and dimensions. With this theme of emergence comes a more complete sense of who I am in the whole of my being.

Being Gathered

When U.S. Senator and civil rights activist John Lewis died, another great civil rights leader from his generation, James Lawson, described him as a man who was “so gathered.” That was a new term for me as a way of describing someone, yet it’s so powerful. It brings a whole other awareness of what it means to live in the fullness of who we are—to walk in the world in complete alignment and congruence with ourselves and a Greater Intelligence. To be “gathered” in heart, soul, mind, body, and spirit as we meet whatever life brings.

So, I continue to “gather” my own life. The mantra continues to guide me:

The six guiding verbs—choose, love, live, learn, serve, bless—continue to show me how.

And now, these six themes invite me deeper into who I am deep within as the center source of who I am out in the world.

I leave you with words from Ai-jen Poo (b. 1974), American labor activist and president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance:

It’s precisely the people who are considered the least ‘likely’ leaders who end up inspiring others the most. Everyday people and everyday acts of courage eventually change everything.

—Ai-jen Poo

In times like these, it can be easy to question how any one of us alone could possibly make a difference. Yet as more of us remain “gathered” in who we are and how we live, even as so much in our world seems to be unravelling, together we do make a difference.

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Invitations

• Free recorded Meditations for Changing Times led by Alan. More than 50 guided meditations. Choose the title that speaks to you and listen. Available for free to you anytime.

• Visit The Center for Transformational Presence website

• Consider reading one of Alan’s Books

• Explore Coaching and Mentoring with Alan

• Invite Alan to Speak to your organization or conference

• Explore Upcoming Programs in Transformational Presence

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