Transcendent Leadership Cohort Experience

We cultivate relationships with ourselves and with each other in our exploration of transcendent leadership.

The DSS Program in Transcendent Leadership beautifully explores the relationship between the physical and spiritual through three dimensions designed to support us in our awareness of Spirit in our daily lives: Transcendence; Leadership, and Inquiry. These three areas of focus offer support for our demonstration of our highest expression of being the divine and seeing the divine. Students navigate the DSS journey in relationship with a cohort of co-learners dedicated to supporting each other in upliftment, learning, and growth.

The doctoral committee structure connects the cohort of learners/leaders throughout the semester, in between the live Gathering weekends. This continual connection beautifully opens the space for an integrative experience, for experiencing and practicing choosing living love, and for coming together as a dedicated cohort of initiates and ministers. The cohort experience and relationships serve to integrate and strengthen the learning that is inspired during the program courses and gatherings.

Transcendent leadership, like other spiritually and personally transformational journeys offered under the guidance and direction of the Traveler, is about recognizing that there is a master choice on this planet: That choice is how to be with our authentic loving self and witness our own and each others’ divinity in any interaction, communication, or situation. Together as a cohort we explore the integration of spirituality and knowledge in daily life, and support each other in practicing what we are learning. The TL cohort is designed to be responsive to the integral and authentic learning and growth of the individuals and the cohort as we intentionally walk the path to mastership.

The cohort process serves as a container for the Transcendent Leadership Program and each member’s emergent expansion into transcendent leadership consciousness—or leading a life of soul transcendence.

DSS IN transcendent leadership program components

• Live Gatherings: Our TL live Gatherings, or class weekends, take place over a two-day weekend once each month (8 per year) and include time to connect directly with John Morton, the TL students and faculty, and practice expanding into our greatest attunement and expression.

• The Three Dimensions of the DSS TL Coursework: Each 15-week semester includes a focus on three key dimensions: Transcendence, Leadership, and Inquiry. The DSS Program in Transcendent Leadership is co-facilitated by the team of TL faculty.

• Cohort Relationship(s): The program uses a cohort-based experience to maximize mutually meaningful, loving, and supportive relationships among a small group of students and faculty.

• The Doctoral Committee and Transcendent Leader Circle (TLC): Each student has ongoing support of a small and intimate committee that includes faculty and peers.

• Group SEs: Students and faculty connect during and in between the live gatherings to do SEs together—where two or more are gathered.

• Transcendent Leadership Presentation: Students present on a personally chosen topic once each semester at one of our live TL Gathering weekends.

Optional Components following the completion of dss tl year three

• Practical Treatise: Leading a Life of Soul Transcendence: Students who successfully complete years one through three have the option of documenting their journey through a Practical Treatise. John-Roger created the term Practical Treatise to describe the final documentation of the DSS journey. He wanted PTS spiritual scientists to go beyond documenting facts and information, to a lived experience of creating positive change in their lives and documenting that in a personally meaningful way. Upon the successful completion of a Practical Treatise and all other program requirements, students will earn the Doctor of Spiritual Science degree in Transcendent Leadership.

• Advanced Ministerial Studies: The Transcendent Leader as Scholar: Following completion of years one through three, students may choose to dive deeper into consideration of John Morton’s invitation to the scholarly pursuit and explore with the cohort, under John’s and Leigh’s guidance, what it means to be a spiritual scientist and transcendent learner, integrating their learning from a variety of teachings with one’s own lived experience and inner wisdom. We will explore what it means to be a scholar, devoting one's leisure to learning—the word scholar came from the Greek word for leisure and referred to conversations and the knowledge gained through them during free time. As Spiritual Scientists who are invited to use everything for our learning, growth, and expansion, we will consider the call to observe, to learn (together and individually), and to expand under the direct guidance of our living Traveler.

TRANSCENDENCE

To be an initiate of the Traveler is to devote yourself to the God within you, to devote yourself to Spirit, to returning to your home, the Soul Realm, from which you originally came before you incarnated onto this Earth.

— John-Roger, DSS

Regardless of what it is, you will endure. Have the willingness to endure and clear what you are here to clear in this lifetime as an initiate.

— John Morton, DSS

You already are what you wish to be. You are already Light. You are already the divine perfection in your Soul. You are already love. You are already peace. There is a place prepared for you in Heaven. Let's go.

— John-Roger, DSS

Transcendence will focus on the inner spiritual experience of who we are as a transcendent leader and what it means to be an initiate of the Traveler and the Sound Current.

The transcendent component will provide space to consider what it means to lead a life as an initiate of the Traveler, as one who is aware of the Soul in oneself and others, and as one who is attuned to and guided by the divine presence. The program coursework and materials will focus on Be-ing, on building or strengthening one’s spiritual practice, and on expanding one’s spiritual attunement. Over the course of three years, participants will build on the work they did in the TL master’s program exploring the multidimensional self, spiritual awareness and attunement, Light in shadow, loving, creativity, understanding and expressing our stories, and demonstrating the greatest expression of our being. The transcendence component of the program will provide participants an opportunity to consider John’s invitation to be and live as God incarnate, and to explore what it means to expand to and reach the highest possible summit, knowing that you can expand further to yet another higher/highest summit.

LEADERSHIP

When we say "Take care of yourself so you can help take care of others," we also mean to take care of each other. That is what serving from the heart is about. We should not forget that when we minister to our spiritual family we are doing God's work too.

— John-Roger, DSS

Because we are Light bearers, we are called into this, as a choice, right up to our ability to minister. People really need to know we care. Caring can just be a walk around the block, or maybe it's two blocks, yet with the dedication: "Use me, Lord. Right now. I'm a battery. I'm an energy field."

— John Morton, DSS

I was learning to let go of the ego, to seek inner riches rather than the riches of the world. I was seeking inner strength rather than ego strength in the world. I knew that the inner strength and wisdom would, through a natural process of evolvement and awakening, move out into the world in its own timing. Intuitively, I knew that as I gave my strength back into myself, to my Soul, I came closer to God and to the peacefulness that is of God. I knew this was the path home to God.

— John-Roger, DSS

Leadership will focus on the outer demonstration of who we are as a transcendent leader and what it means to be a minister of God in His Love, Light, and Sound.

The leadership component will provide an opportunity for participants to consider what it means to minister and to serve our selves and others, as one who is living in a consciousness of service, and as one who asks for and is open to the higher guidance of the divine. The program coursework and materials will focus on Do-ing, as well as Be-ing. Participants will set an intention of deepening our relationship with our own ministerial blessing and expanding into a greater consciousness and practice of service and ministry. We will explore the idea that leadership is how we show up in the world and the program materials will provide opportunities to consider who we are as ministers, transcendent leaders, and how we are showing up in our many communities in service and loving. Over the three years, participants will build on the work they did in the TL master’s program exploring learning and scholarship, approaches to leadership, living within the laws of Spirit, expression and creativity, community, dialogue and collaboration, and living in the Upper Room through an experience of One Accord. This component of the program will provide an opportunity to consider John’s demonstration of what it means to show up in unconditional service.

Inquiry

I want your heart to come open because I have found that when your heart opens, you will have wisdom as a by-product of liking and loving. Then you get intelligence. Then the wisdom comes out, and from that comes the knowledge of how to do it again. It is what I call being a spiritual scientist. If you are really being religious—and "religious" means to be realigned with God—then you are being a scientist, because the only way you can realign yourself is to stop the belief in what you think or what you have heard or read from others and, instead, find out for yourself.

— John-Roger, DSS

I want what I call the scholarly pursuit, the focus where the life is dedicated on the teachings, the teachings that have been laid down here with John-Roger, coming forward with his wisdom, with his amazing demonstration of what is it to be a spiritual scientist. And it’s somebody who brings together knowledge and wisdom with the qualities of Spirit that are childlike, that are original innocence, that are the love regardless. That these are what we get measured by as the qualities of living in this world in the greatest ways possible.

— John Morton, DSS

A key aspect of Soul Transcendence is choosing. Life presents us with moments of opportunity. Choosing a different response and observing the results are elements of our learning. What in you is open to learn? What in you is curious to explore territory beyond the habitual and comfortable?

— John-Roger, DSS

Inquiry will focus on the practices of spiritual science to support students in designing and carrying out a personally meaningful appreciative inquiry approach to learning, growing, and expanding in their awareness of Soul in themselves and in others.

The inquiry component will provide students the opportunity to see inquiry and expansion as a spiritual practice. As Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said, “Research is the highest form of adoration.” We will explore John’s and Leigh’s invitation to consider what it means to be a PTS scholar or a scholar of the Traveler’s teachings. Through the inquiry component of the DSS TL, faculty will provide guidance to participants to use the basic methods of inquiry to design and carry out an individual inquiry that is intended to support the student to come into the greatest knowing and expression of who one already is, as a Soul living a life under the perfect guidance and protection of Spirit. In the doctoral program in TL, students will also carry out a community inquiry of their own design, where they explore what it means to be of service to a specific community of their choosing. Following the completion of the third year of the DSS TL Program, students can choose to document this inquiry in the form of a Practical Treatise, and upon completion can graduate with the DSS in Transcendent Leadership. Great learning, growth, and expansion are possible through participation in the TL doctoral program and carrying out a personal inquiry, whether or not one chooses to complete a PT and earn a doctorate.