Meet Brian Berman

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brian Berman. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brian below.

Brian, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.
From early childhood, I questioned what is my purpose? I was deeply traumatised as a child by the Holocaust genocide and the violence of war. I felt from my very beginnings, that we are here to love and support each other. I was raised by the Golden Rule, and I felt that if everyone treated others how they want to be treated there would be peace in the world. Like Jimi Hendrix wrote, “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” Hitler made me a Peace Maker.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
The heart of my work is peace building, which comes from over 50 years of meditation and peace practices. Brian teaches love and compassion for oneself as an essential ingredient, for without peace on the inside there can be no peace on the outside. My professional life over the last 30+ years has been as an “Artist for Peace.”

As the former co-director and facilitator of the Compassionate Listening Jewish-German Reconciliation Project, Brian with his wife Lisa centered their work on reconciliation and healing the wounds of war. We met in 2002 when I cofacilitated the first reconciliation project. As a Jewish German couple now married 20 years, together we established an educational website, Awakening Peace after we co-founded Ojai, CA in 2014 as an International City of Peace (ICP). Ojai ICP and Awakening Peace offer programs that enhance a culture of peace with the emphasis that peace begins within each of us.

Brian in 2012, he created the HOLOS design, a transformational tool that symbolizes our One Humanity. This HOLOS has been one of Brian’s signature sculptures representing Love, Peace, and Unity. Brian is also professionally trained in Hakomi Therapy, Attitudinal Healing, and yoga and meditation. He is an award-winning sculptor..

Here are a few highlights where we are today, living in Krakow, Poland and working with the nonprofit One Humanity Institute after being invited to serve here after the outbreak of war in the Ukraine. This nonprofit is based in Oswiecim/Auschwitz, Poland, and the US. We have been a support to the OHI programs that have been offered in the House of Hope in Oswiecim.

Before moving to Poland, we downsized greatly, and shipped our household essentials so that we could feel at home in a foreign land. We don’t speak Polish, and are surprised how friendly most people are to us. As we are peace makers, we find that our presence makes a difference beyond the actual work. As and example when we have love in our hearts, we radiate that around us and it is felt and appreciated often verbally. Our deep inner peace also radiates out around us.

The present war between Israel and Hamas brings back the need for community listening support circles which we have begun again. Lisa and I embrace the shock and traumas of war in Ukraine and Israel.

After the attacks of 9/11 and the feelings that arose in this country, I saw the seeds of global conflict were also present in my dearest friends. I saw that some kind of healing modality was wanted and needed that didn’t yet exist. I felt inspired to create a community peer-based listening council to support healing these conflicts.

I began to share my vision with some good friends about starting a Listening Council. Many were enthusiastic, feeling the great need in our community for a safe council of peers. So, I further investigated what skills we would need to bring to this work. I knew of the work with Compassionate Listening in Israel/Palestine and asked for training. Wanting to have leadership of both genders, I invited a close woman friend, who had years of leadership experience in women’s groups, to co-facilitate this work with me.

We needed training, so we began a weekly practice group for embracing compassionate listening skills. We led this weekly group in my home for 8 years and it continues today in both the US, and Germany.

So here we are in Europe sowing seeds of Compassion and Love.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
1. Follow your heart. Do what you love. Ask yourself, “Does this open my heart, or close my heart? Follow what opens. 2. Listen to the soft inner voice. Learning to listen brings a gift to both you and whomever is speaking. (It might be a stone, or a tree. Let nature’s voice also be heard.)
3. Trust the unseen hand that is guiding you to what’s next. Even in times of loss, the Phoenix is a good myth to understand, that before a rebirth or a rising from the ashes, it first enters the fire. So loss is the beginning of something else. Trust that you have the inner strength to move towards what you love.

What has been your biggest area of growth or improvement in the past 12 months?
My biggest area of growth has been embracing our move away from our family and community to volunteer here in Poland. What I let go of was my art career, my livelihood, my entire art studio of tools and materials, and more importantly the creative art expression which had been my primary communication tool. I thought I could just release my artwork, and volunteer as a retired person. When my health began to rapidly suffer, I inquired within and discovered that the artist part of me was rebelling. It was screaming at me for giving up such an important part of my purposeful life. I have no language skills here in Poland, I have no tools or supplies to work with and I’ve embraced the changed by making glass castings here in Poland and the Czech Republic. I have also begun to focus on making 2D artwork, finding ways to share my designs on an internet platform that will produce my designs for direct purchase with the customer. I am also spending time writing my life story, as I want to have a documentation of the steps and stages of my life. This might be the final creative act. I don’t know when my life card will be pulled from the deck. So I live with love and peace in my heart and go forth each day not know what will come my way. Hopefully greater peace and love.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
All photos are taken by me or belong to me.

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