Brad Kershner on Co-Creating the Third Attractor

Brad Reynolds on Co-Creating the Third Attractor

In this deeply spiritual and philosophically rich conversation, Brad Reynolds argues that the real Third Attractor is ultimately an awakening attractor: a movement toward higher states of consciousness capable of integrating chaos and authoritarianism into a deeper civilizational coherence. Drawing on decades of work with Ken Wilber and the integral movement, Brad speaks passionately about the difference between “waking up” and true awakening, emphasizing that awakening cannot be reduced to meditation or transcendent states alone, but must include both Being and Becoming, spirit and evolutionary participation in the world. Together, we explore the metacrisis as fundamentally a spiritual crisis, the importance of devotional surrender, meditation, and embodied spiritual practice, and the need for a new integral culture that reconnects inner awakening with outer transformation. Again and again, Brad returns to the idea that genuine spiritual realization, not ideology alone, is what can become the deeper attractor guiding humanity toward a more coherent future. Brad Reynolds did graduate work at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) before leaving to work closely with Ken Wilber and the Integral Institute for nearly a decade (1995–2004). He is the author of two books on Integral metatheory (AQAL): Embracing Reality: The Integral Vision of Ken Wilber (Tarcher, 2004) and Where’s Wilber At? Ken Wilber’s Integral Vision in the New Millennium (Paragon House, 2006). A longtime devotee of Adi Da Samraj for more than 45 years, Brad has also written extensively on the world’s wisdom traditions, including two books on Adi Da and the Perennial Philosophy. His newest book, Meta-Perennial Philosophia: Integrating Evolution and Enlightenment (Bright Alliance, 2026), offers a synthesis of Integral Theory, the Perennial Philosophy, developmental spirituality, and the distinction between Becoming (evolution) and Being (Enlightenment). Brad is also a professional graphic designer and the founder of Integral Art & Studies in Marin County, California. Daniela Bomatter is a Swiss-born former software engineer and business leader who rose through various leadership positions to become CEO of SwissEnergy at the Federal Office of Energy in Switzerland. After a successful career in technology and public service, her life took a transformative turn through the encounter with spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen and his teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment. As a co-founder of Manifest Nirvana, Daniela has been a senior practitioner of Evolutionary Enlightenment, living, studying, and working closely with Andrew Cohen from 2008 until his passing in March 2025. Her work continues to carry forward the essence of his vision—an awakening that is not separate from evolution itself. She now lives in Tiruvannamalai, India, where she founded and runs the Manifest Nirvana Ashram, a vibrant hub for spiritual practice, dialogue, and conscious community within a small sustainable village. From there, she also facilitates the activities of the online ashram (manifest-nirvana.com [https://www.manifest-nirvana.com/]),  offering courses, dialogues, and retreats dedicated to evolutionary spirituality, collective awakening and cultural change. In 2025, Daniela published her first book, The Viratya Myth Begins [https://www.viratya.com/]—a mythic-visionary narrative exploring the next step of human evolution through a fusion of story, philosophy, and consciousness inquiry.

Indra Adnan on Co-Creating the Third Attractor

In this profound and wide-ranging conversation, Indra Adnan challenges the urgency and crisis framing often surrounding the idea of the Third Attractor, suggesting instead that the current chaos may itself be part of a deeper evolutionary process rather than something to simply overcome. Together, Daniela and Indra explore the tension between emergence and agency, soft power and hard power, and the need to build living, attractive alternatives to existing systems through community, embodiment, art, relationship, and participatory culture. Indra speaks passionately about the importance of women holding wider fields of emergence, the rise of decentralized “islands of coherence,” and the possibility that humanity is already slowly reorganizing itself through local initiatives, regenerative communities, and new forms of collective intelligence. Rather than imposing another ideology from the top down, the conversation points toward a more relational, life-centered future in which people are brought back to aliveness, agency, and meaningful participation in the co-creation of culture. Indra Adnan is a writer, political thinker, psycho-social therapist, and systems innovator whose work over the past two decades has explored future politics, conflict transformation, soft power, and integral approaches to cultural change. She is the co-founder of The Alternative UK, a political platform dedicated to reimagining democracy and collective life beyond the limitations of current systems, and has worked extensively with governments, international organizations, and global networks including the World Economic Forum and NATO. Through her writing, network-building, and community initiatives, Indra has consistently explored how personal transformation, relational intelligence, and cultural evolution intersect. She is also the author of the book The Politics of Waking Up: Power & Possibility in the Fractal Age, which articulates a deeply interconnected vision for the future of society. https://indraadnan.global/ Daniela Bomatter is a Swiss-born former software engineer and business leader who rose through various leadership positions to become CEO of SwissEnergy at the Federal Office of Energy in Switzerland. After a successful career in technology and public service, her life took a transformative turn through the encounter with spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen and his teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment. As a co-founder of Manifest Nirvana, Daniela has been a senior practitioner of Evolutionary Enlightenment, living, studying, and working closely with Andrew Cohen from 2008 until his passing in March 2025. Her work continues to carry forward the essence of his vision—an awakening that is not separate from evolution itself. She now lives in Tiruvannamalai, India, where she founded and runs the Manifest Nirvana Ashram, a vibrant hub for spiritual practice, dialogue, and conscious community within a small sustainable village. From there, she also facilitates the activities of the online ashram (manifest-nirvana.com [https://www.manifest-nirvana.com/]),  offering courses, dialogues, and retreats dedicated to evolutionary spirituality, collective awakening and cultural change. In 2025, Daniela published her first book, The Viratya Myth Begins [https://www.viratya.com/]—a mythic-visionary narrative exploring the next step of human evolution through a fusion of story, philosophy, and consciousness inquiry.

Samantha Sweetwater on Co-Creating the Third Attractor

In this rich and wide-ranging conversation, Samantha and Daniela explore the Third Attractor as an already-emerging field of coherence arising in response to both chaos and authoritarianism. Drawing from evolutionary spirituality, ecology, and systems thinking, she speaks about “islands of coherence” forming across the world through people who are learning to listen deeply, surrender certainty, and respond from a place of interconnectedness rather than fear. Together, they reflect on the importance of not-knowing, embodied awareness, and the possibility that small but deeply connected nodes of consciousness can become tipping points for planetary transformation. The conversation moves fluidly between spirituality, systems change, Buddhist insight, and the practical challenge of remaining open and responsive in times of profound uncertainty. Samantha Sweetwater is a master facilitator, executive coach, and founder of One Life Circle. For over three decades, she has guided individuals and organizations across five continents through personal, cultural, ecological, and spiritual regeneration. Working at the fertile edge where old systems unravel and new forms of kinship and leadership emerge, she supports visionary leaders to reclaim wholeness, clarify purpose, and cultivate the moral imagination needed for this metacritical moment.She previously founded Dancing Freedom and Peacebody Japan, sparking a global movement of embodied awakening and training hundreds of facilitators. A former seed farmer, she carries a deep understanding of tending the real. Samantha holds an MA in Wisdom Studies, a BA in Social Theory and Dance, and has been initiated into indigenous lineages of Africa, Latin America, and Turtle Island. She lives on fog-kissed Coastal Miwok land.https://www.samanthasweetwater.com/Daniela Bomatter is a Swiss-born former software engineer and business leader who rose through various leadership positions to become CEO of SwissEnergy at the Federal Office of Energy in Switzerland. After a successful career in technology and public service, her life took a transformative turn through the encounter with spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen and his teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment.As a co-founder of Manifest Nirvana, Daniela has been a senior practitioner of Evolutionary Enlightenment, living, studying, and working closely with Andrew Cohen from 2008 until his passing in March 2025. Her work continues to carry forward the essence of his vision—an awakening that is not separate from evolution itself.She now lives in Tiruvannamalai, India, where she founded and runs the Manifest Nirvana Ashram, a vibrant hub for spiritual practice, dialogue, and conscious community within a small sustainable village. From there, she also facilitates the activities of the online ashram (manifest-nirvana.com), offering courses, dialogues, and retreats dedicated to evolutionary spirituality, collective awakening and cultural change.In 2025, Daniela published her first book, The Viratya Myth Begins—a mythic-visionary narrative exploring the next step of human evolution through a fusion of story, philosophy, and consciousness inquiry.

Brad Kershner on Co-Creating the Third Attractor

In this conversation, Daniela Bomatter speaks with Dr. Brad Kershner about the challenge of creating cultures that can truly hold complexity without collapsing into simplistic solutions or rigid systems. Brad questions many inherited assumptions within integral and spiritual discourse, especially the persistent binaries between inner and outer, individual and collective, agency and emergence. Drawing from complexity science, collective trauma research, and post-structural philosophy, he argues that the real challenge is not simply personal transformation, but learning to recognize and shift the deeper “assemblage structures” and narrative patterns that shape perception itself. Rather than advocating for grand ideological visions, he emphasizes the importance of micro-narratives, local sense-making, and practices that cultivate the capacity to move intelligently within uncertainty and ambiguity. The conversation becomes a nuanced exploration of how a future culture might emerge not through fixed answers, but through more adaptive, relational, and participatory ways of being together.Dr. Brad Kershner is an educational leader, consultant, keynote speaker, and scholar. He is the co-founder of a meta-political think tank - The Reconstitution Project - and is the author of Understanding Educational Complexity: Integrating Practices and Perspectives for 21st Century Leadership. In addition to his work in education, Brad collaborates with thought leaders, think tanks, and organizations from around the world who are engaged in developing wisdom-based responses to planetary problems. He is a graduate of The University of Chicago and Boston College. You can follow his work at integratedemergence.substack.com.Daniela Bomatter is a Swiss-born former software engineer and business leader who rose through various leadership positions to become CEO of SwissEnergy at the Federal Office of Energy in Switzerland. After a successful career in technology and public service, her life took a transformative turn through the encounter with spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen and his teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment.As a co-founder of Manifest Nirvana, Daniela has been a senior practitioner of Evolutionary Enlightenment, living, studying, and working closely with Andrew Cohen from 2008 until his passing in March 2025. Her work continues to carry forward the essence of his vision—an awakening that is not separate from evolution itself.She now lives in Tiruvannamalai, India, where she founded and runs the Manifest Nirvana Ashram, a vibrant hub for spiritual practice, dialogue, and conscious community within a small sustainable village. From there, she also facilitates the activities of the online ashram (manifest-nirvana.com), offering courses, dialogues, and retreats dedicated to evolutionary spirituality, collective awakening and cultural change.In 2025, Daniela published her first book, The Viratya Myth Begins—a mythic-visionary narrative exploring the next step of human evolution through a fusion of story, philosophy, and consciousness inquiry.

Trish Blain on Co-Creating the Third Attractor

In this conversation, Daniela Bomatter speaks with Trish Blain, a facilitator and community builder whose lifelong work centers on a model she calls the Four Forces: connection, expression, purpose, and growth. Trish argues that these four drives are in constant tension with each other, and that the failure to hold those tensions consciously is what keeps individuals and collectives locked in cycles of compromise rather than genuine co-creation. Her term for the third attractor is "the irresistible future" -- a state so compelling that people move toward it not out of obligation but because it actually feels better than any available alternative. She is skeptical of both incremental reform and purely outside-the-system alternatives, proposing instead a strategy of "alive edges": creating on-ramps at the boundary of the existing paradigm so people can transition without having to make an impossible leap. The conversation also moves into the practical difficulties of physical community, the gap between online dialogue and the friction of shared life, and why so much of the current transformation work fails to attract people -- because it asks for sacrifice rather than demonstrating vitality.Trish Blaine is a facilitator, relational practitioner, and cultural innovator working at the intersection of consciousness, community, and collective intelligence. Her work explores how human beings can learn to meet one another with greater depth, honesty, and aliveness in a time of profound cultural transition. Drawing from years of experience in transformational practice, group facilitation, and emergent culture, she is particularly interested in the relational capacities needed for a more coherent and life-affirming future to emerge.More about her here: https://nonordinary.com/meet-trish/Trish also just launched a new platform which you can find here: https://aliveedges.comDaniela Bomatter is a Swiss-born former software engineer and business leader who rose through various leadership positions to become CEO of SwissEnergy at the Federal Office of Energy in Switzerland. After a successful career in technology and public service, her life took a transformative turn through the encounter with spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen and his teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment.As a co-founder of Manifest Nirvana, Daniela has been a senior practitioner of Evolutionary Enlightenment, living, studying, and working closely with Andrew Cohen from 2008 until his passing in March 2025. Her work continues to carry forward the essence of his vision—an awakening that is not separate from evolution itself.She now lives in Tiruvannamalai, India, where she founded and runs the Manifest Nirvana Ashram, a vibrant hub for spiritual practice, dialogue, and conscious community within a small sustainable village. From there, she also facilitates the activities of the online ashram (manifest-nirvana.com), offering courses, dialogues, and retreats dedicated to evolutionary spirituality, collective awakening and cultural change.In 2025, Daniela published her first book, The Viratya Myth Begins—a mythic-visionary narrative exploring the next step of human evolution through a fusion of story, philosophy, and consciousness inquiry.