Penny Fenner Skilful Action 23a Britten Street Glen Iris, 3146, Victoria, AUSTRALIA +61 3 9885 0119 +61 (0) 411 554 007 (cell) email

What is an underlying question that gives form to your work or interest in this field?

How can we cultivate love and wisdom thereby transforming the fear and ignorance that drive us, and our organisations?

What is your personal experience of collective wisdom in groups?

When we remove the pressure to be something other than we are, wisdom can express simply and honestly.

Each year I go and sit in Sathya Sai Baba's ashram in India alongside tens of thousands of spiritual seekers. The collective energy of this love-intentional field is so enormous, the results subtle and deeply transforming.

Since the 1970's I have been actively involved in the formation of Buddhist centres in Australia. I have hosted many great spiritual masters, and been part of elite inner circles where the manifestation of wisdom, and all attendant shadows reveal themselves. The learning and transformation continue ....

I share what I have experienced and learned in totally practical ways by coaching executives and groups in organisations, so they can access and live their own wisdom, and have the courage to be true to their deepest values. This offers a humbling and touching place to be living life.

What is it about the work in this field that excites you and connects you to your own deepest self?

I searched for more than 20 years before realising that there was nothing external to find. The deepest love and wisdom DO reside here and now. How to access this and share it with others is a blessing, requiring skill to ensure that we don't get caught up in our own rhetoric and wisdom, but stay open, humble and willing to be surprised!

When the heart is open to the full range of human emotion and experience, we feel the utter interconnectedness of all phenomena. Nothing we see, feel, touch or recognise is separate. Its all part of the One.

Please provide a brief storyline or snapshot of what brought you to this work.

I started seeking in my teens - looking for the meaning that shaped suffering, self, separation, etc.

I found Tibetan Buddhism, and answers began to flow. For the next fifteen years I immersed myself in Buddhist practice, and my suffering continued, at a deep emotional level, even though intellectually I understood its roots. I yearned to feel the Oneness I had read about but my emotions weren't integrated. I then dived into psychological and personal development work, which catalysed tremendous breakthroughs in my thinking, and experience. I glimpsed that which I had hungrily sought at the feet of spiritual masters. Suddenly the teachings became real. This experience deepened year by year, as I help others in their journey, offering roadmaps and processes for others to discover their own truth, and be equipped to authentically live it.

When I met Sathya Sai Baba in 1998 (who came to me in dreams in 1997, prior to that I had no connection or feeling for him or his teachings), my own process into Love seemed to accelerate exponentially. This intangible energy force cannot be explained intellectually, but seems to have taken me deeper into my own wisdom-love self. It has also precipitated a far broader sharing of all I have learned and experienced!

How would you like to be available to others in this field? What would be a meaningful connection? Are you available to talk with others? What contribution might you be able to make?

I love to work in the here and now - enabling others to access their deepest wisdom and love, thereby transforming fear, and all the shadows which occlude the potential that we are. I love to be part of dialogues exploring the interface between spiritual wisdom and practical daily living.

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Skilful Action