The Journey from Head to Heart
A Conversation with Raz Ingrasci, President, Hoffman Institute
Jan-Feb, 2006
 Raz
Ingrasci is president and CEO of the Hoffman Institute, a Process
teacher, Board member, and chairman of Hoffman International.
During his 35-year career in the human potential movement, Raz
has held key positions in national seminar companies. Raz joined the
Institute in 1989 and worked closely with Bob Hoffman until Bob’s
death in 1997. Raz has distinguished himself as a visionary
leader in the field of personal growth and development.
Stanley Stefancic: In describing the heroic journey
of the Hoffman Process, I’ve heard you say, “The longest
distance you will ever travel is the journey from your head to your
heart.” Would you elaborate on that?
Raz Ingrasci: When our actions are intelligent,
full-hearted, and spiritually connected, we make a difference in
the world. To be whole we must integrate our intellect, our emotions,
and spirit. The path from head to heart is a spiritual one. That’s
what the Hoffman Process is about in a nutshell.
SRS: You seem to be speaking about what might
be called “Integral Intelligence;” that is, a combination
of rational, emotional, and spiritual intelligences.
Raz: Right, those three plus physical/biologic
intelligence. The question is: Are we connected to life through
feelings of abandonment and fear, or is love our fundamental connection
to life? Human beingss are multidimensional and our core is light
and love. We have, however, in many ways been “mis-educated”
to operate out of fear rather than from our core reality.
In the Process, you can re-educate the effect of this miseducation.
When you connect with the core reality of yourself and the essence
of life, you find that your essence and the essence of life is the
same — and it is love. To the degree that we can come from
that place of love, we are connecting to the love and spirit that
exists in all things. It’s an extraordinary and beautiful
shift to “Integral Intelligence.”
SRS: There seem to be two major movements in
the personal growth domain — helping individuals be less miserable
and helping individuals be happy. What would you say the focus of
the Process is in terms of these two possibilities?
Raz: It’s an old axiom that people are
led by their fears and by their dreams. To the extent that people
are driven by their fears, it undermines achieving their dreams.
Dreams cannot be achieved through fear. You can never get love through
fear. Bob Hoffman said that in negative love you always get the
opposite of what you want. The reconciliation of one’s true
nature with one’s life purpose is another goal of the Process.
People often mistakenly think that love is synonymous with weakness.
That is not true. Love of self and others is a source of strength,
of evolution, of power. When we’re talking about making people
less fear-based, we are talking about removing their weakness. When
we speak about people connecting with their inner core of light
and love, that is an infinite source of strength. We are offering
a form of self-empowerment that, in turn, allows people to empower
others.
SRS: Once a person discovers that core of love
within, one can give and receive love in a different way.
Raz: Jerry Jampolsky, the famous psychiatrist,
said that people are either expressing love or calling for help.
When you’re based in love, you’re able to express and
receive love; but you can also hear the calls for help and respond
compassionately to the pain and suffering.
SRS: In an interview two years ago you stated
that the goal for the Institute had been to create a foundation
strong enough to support the programs and future that we envision.
You said, “We’re strong enough now to begin fulfilling
the vision and greatness inherent in the work.” That was an
accurate assessment given where the Institute is today. Would you
talk about the state of the Institute today and what was accomplished
in 2005?
Raz: In 2005 more people participated in the
Process (873) in the U.S. than any other single year, and the momentum
is such that we should see more than 1,000 people do the Process
in 2006.
We reached a threshold of organizational development where we
no longer have to construct the foundation. It’s in place
and we are building upon it.
Today we have 19 teachers and an administrative staff of 14, plus
eight consultants. Our retreat site at White Sulfur Springs has
a full-time staff of 10 and numerous part-time support staff.
Over the next few years, I see us growing to the point of serving
something on the order of 1,500 Process participants a year.
Given that our work is so labor- and skill-intensive, it’s
never going to be the case that we’re working with 25,000
people a year, but we will continue growing.
SRS: Would you say something about the ways the
Institute is engaging with our culture as a change agent?
Raz: Yes, we’re reaching more people in
leadership positions in business, academia, religion, the inner
city, and medicine.
First, the fact that participants experience positive, lasting
change from the Process has been documented through scientific research
has begun to shift people’s perceptions of what is possible.
Awareness that human beings can change quickly in a positive, lasting
way is very good news. That news makes people more open and hopeful.
We’re in the midst of preparing a program that will be presented
this year at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University,
as part of their leadership training.
We’re also working in specific areas; we are initiating
a physician well-being program. Through our survey, we learned how
much healthcare professionals, including physicians, have benefited
from the Hoffman Process. We’re looking to see how the Process
or elements of the Process that awaken a person’s compassion
can be brought into medical training. Doctors want more compassion
for themselves and more compassion for their patients.
We’re creating a program for inner-city kids, with a wonderful
organization in New York City called Youth at Risk. In 2005, we
developed a workshop for a chapter of the Young Presidents Organization;
I believe we will be doing more of those in the coming year.
SRS: 2006 is the ninth year that the Institute
has been a 501(C)(3) nonprofit. What has been the impact of that
decision on the growth of the Institute and the Process?
Raz: Rather than non-profit, I like to say that
the Hoffman Institute is a “social profit” organization.
Everyone wants to make a difference in the world and from the Hoffman
Process individuals experience more positive change than, perhaps,
anything else they’ve ever done. People naturally want to
give something back. We wanted to position the Institute so that
people’s contributions could make a difference in the lives
of other people.
As a matter of fact, tuitions only cover about 80 percent of the
costs of running the Institute. Those additional costs are made
up through gifts. We run a very substantial scholarship program,
which gives more people access to the Process and creates a program
that provides financial assistance for people who can’t pay
the standard tuition. We’ve made the Process accessible to
more people.
SRS: The number of people taking the Q2 Graduate
Intensive has increased significantly. The Q2 has been revitalized
and I know that you love teaching the Q2. What’s been your
experience in teaching it?
Raz: We’ve been actively refining and developing
the Q2 for five years and we have reached a high point. A Process
graduate taking the Q2 today can expect that in two and a half days
they’re going to achieve a breakthrough at a level similar
to what they experienced in the Process itself. We all need, at
some point, that next stage of growth; the Q2 is an environment
in which you can move yourself to that next stage. It’s very
exciting. We’ve about doubled the number of Q2 graduates this
past year alone. The word is getting out that this is a great program.
In fact, all our graduate programs are growing.
SRS: There is a lot of interest lately among
people who study the brain and human development about the importance
of parenting. One of the things I’m picking up is that the
Process is a wonderful path to positive parenting. It helps us as
parents deal with our own negative love so that we can become more
loving, purposeful parents.
Raz: Parenting is one of the great mysteries
in life and it’s a skill that is empowered in the Hoffman
Process. We really can become more positive, purposeful parents.
I remember my own experience. My kids were four and six years
old when I did the Hoffman Process. One day, I realized in the Process,
I was trying to get them to be “little adults.” I was
trying to get them to behave appropriately in my world, but they
had no access to my world at all.
After the Process, I had more access to love, innocence, joy,
and fun. Suddenly I could get down on my hands and knees and play
with them. I could enter their world. That made all the difference.
The Hoffman Process gives people the opportunity to enter the
world of their children without fear of regressing back to their
own childhoods when they were powerless and people were dominating
them. Once you get over that fear, as we do in the Process, you
can enter the world that children inhabit and with a completely
different opportunity for relationship.
SRS: You also have an opportunity to “be
a child again” in some ways in which you couldn’t be
when you were a child. You can be open and free in ways that you
may not have been able to be when you were actually that age.
Raz: Yes; your childhood is no longer lost to
you.
SRS: You often speak about the Process as a threshold
experience. What do you mean by that?
Raz: I mean a threshold kind of learning. For
example, you can’t get better at riding a bicycle until you
can ride a bicycle. You can practice and work at it but until that
moment arrives when suddenly you can ride the bicycle, you cannot
get better at riding the bicycle. So it is with emotional intelligence.
Until you cross a certain threshold of emotional intelligence you
don’t continue to improve in knowing your own feelings and
connecting with the inner life of others and relating appropriately.
Another threshold experience is a spiritual awakening, after which
you can expand that learning. There has to be a threshold moment,
an opening, and then you can expand on that. The Process turns out
to be a huge threshold experience for people in many ways because
it initiates us into a new kind of adult life. Many of us are chronologically
adults but we’ve never grown up.
SRS: So it’s a maturing process.
Raz: It’s a maturing process in the sense
of the positive things that “maturity” can mean: autonomy,
making proactive choices, personal responsibility, inner peace,
care and concern for others and self, etc.
SRS: So you’re making a distinction between
acting in ways that are expressions of self-motivation rather than
motivation from what we would call “negative love programming.”
Raz: Absolutely. We could say it that simply.
SRS: What are the implications of the Hoffman
Process on leadership? We have a Leadership Path program but I’ve
heard you mention the fact that the Process itself is about leadership.
Raz: Every human asks, “How am I going
to lead my life?” We all have to answer that question. The
Hoffman Process connects a person more deeply with personal meaning,
mission, and purpose. Thereafter, a person will live his or her
life more successfully.
For people in formal leadership positions, this question is particularly
important because the way they answer it impacts lots of other people
in their business institution or organization.
We must ask: “Who or what is leading the leader?”
Is the leader being led by his or her negative patterns, or is he/she
really connected to him/herself and to life?
At the core of the loving self is an inherent sense of belonging,
how we fit in the world. When we say a person is “soulful,”
we are speaking of how their spiritual self connects to the world.
One of the things that the Hoffman Process does better than anything
I know is to integrate spirituality with being in the world.
That, too, is a fundamental task of a leader: To support people
in experiencing and expressing their spiritual selves in the world
so their lives have meaning, their contribution is brought forward
and they can be happier, more productive, fulfilled people. A fundamental
task of leadership is to align people with what’s true, whole,
and beautiful within and have them move forward expressing that
in life. The Hoffman Process does that for people and it empowers
the best qualities of leadership.
SRS: Then leadership is primarily about developing
a relationship with one’s self, with the part of ourselves
that is unique and not programmed — the spiritual self.
Raz: Yes. That’s not all of it, of course,
but without that piece it’s just hopeless. The biggest problem
adults have today is that they don’t know how to let go of
the internalized mom and dad. That’s the problem parents have
with their children. The parents are still attached to their own
mom and dad.
So, if you’re a leader today and you’re still emotionally
attached to your mom and dad, or pretending you’re not, you
are attempting to function in this incredibly high technology age
while operating off of emotional information that’s at least
a couple hundred years old. And, since 80 percent of decision-making
is emotionally based, it’s impossibly stressful. I mean, you
are obsolete right now.
Forty years ago, Martin Luther King said, “Our scientific
power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and
misguided men.” That is still true.
But when people reclaim their spiritual authenticity and their
positive emotional legacy and marry that to our technological prowess,
a new future emerges. Only when people take that long journey between
the head and the heart can they finally wear the mantle of true
leadership.
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