George Leonard, icon of the Human Potential movement, award-winning journalist, author, and Aikido master, posits that the purpose of life is to consciously engage in our own evolution until we express spiritual awakening in every action. Of course, evolving ourselves isn't always that easy. Human beings, Leonard is quick to point out, are typically moved to change only in response to extreme stress or crises, and even then the tendency to slip back into resistance or inertia remains an ever-present foe.
In this conversation with EnlightenNext founder Andrew Cohen and journalist Craig Hamilton, Leonard ventures far beyond any Darwinian concept of evolution, defining a model for our future development that includes higher consciousness, thoughts, and most important of all: intentionality. It is this unique human ability to act of free will that Leonard believes is ultimately "the most powerful force in the world" and the source of humanity's future.
BIO
George Leonard, a pioneer in the field of human potentialities, is author of twelve books, including The Transformation, Education and Ecstasy, The Silent Pulse, the Ultimate Athlete, and Mastery.
During his seventeen years as senior editor for Look Magazine, he covered the Civil Rights Movement, politics, foreign affairs, and social change, while winning an unprecedented number of national awards for education writing. Later, he produced annual Ultimate Fitness sections for Esquire as well as numerous articles on a wide variety of subjects in such magazines as Esquire, Harper's, The Atlantic, New York, Saturday Review, and The Nation.
Leonard holds a fifth-degree black belt in aikido and is co-founder of a martial arts school. He is founder of Leonard Energy Training (LET), a transformative practice inspired by aikido, which he has introduced to some 50,000 people in the U.S. and abroad. He is past-president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology, president emeritus of Esalen Institute, and President of ITP International.
A native of Georgia, Leonard received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of North Carolina and Doctor of Humanities degrees from John F. Kennedy University, Lewis and Clark College, and Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center. His adventures along the human frontiers of the 1960s are described in a memoir, Walking on the Edge of the World.
