
I have been truly blessed by a life full of opportunities to love, learn, and expand in the direction of my heart. I have never had the need to do work “just for money” and every experience has helped me get clearer on who I am and what is my purpose.
I have gone through some significant transformative experiences — initiations — which have helped me to see the big picture or larger themes in my life. My love for learning and integration has been the “red thread” of my experiences (a metaphor I learned from my friends of TomorrowMakers) and I knew that all the things that bring me joy were somewhat connected – even though they may seem scattered or eclectic. Magenta Wisdom is the beginning of the synthesis of all that is important to me and of the gifts that I’m committed to bring into the world.
People often differentiate between personal and professional activities. I have a hard time with that distinction. I know that I get paid for some of those and I’m willing do others for “free” — although that’s true only from a narrow economic definition, not from the abundance of meaning and connection that I receive in return. There is work that feels like work and work that doesn’t. Peace and joy are the “north” in my compass. And the more I advance on my journey, the clearer the direction becomes.
I love the people with whom I work, and I work with people I love. Not sure which one comes first. We come together to collaborate for as long as the work is for the greatest good. Trust, honesty and vulnerability are always present. And even when our paths diverge, there is a celebration and an honoring of what we learned and created together. Equanimity has become a practice: it doesn’t matter if I find myself in a beautiful or harsh situation, “this too shall pass.” And I have learned to receive the gift in every experience and to appreciate each encounter as sacred and every person as a teacher.
I don’t wear different hats for different occasions. I’m that kind of person: one package, all included —the highs and the lows, the laughter and the tears, the conceptual and the practical, the intellectual and the creative. I inhabit somewhere at the edge of the worlds of academia, business and social entrepreneurship. I’m a social innovator and cultural healer.
An important part of my journey has been my willingness to embrace my feminine power. I figured that being born a Latin woman was not an accident. There is something in my culture, in the experiences of my ancestors, in my childhood and youth in northern Mexico, that shaped the core of my consciousness. After leaving Mexico to come to the US to do my doctoral work and eventually live, I have both grown beyond the limits of my native culture and reconnected deeper to my roots. Experiencing life in a woman’s body has been humbling. I feel deeply connected to nature and her rhythms and consider my sensitivity a great gift, even though it’s not easy to feel so much. I have been painfully aware of the injustice, inequality and oppression that women from all around the world suffer, and yet, that has not been my direct experience. I come from privilege – not economic, but social through the rich educational opportunities I had – and have always had the freedom to chose how to live my life. I have had opportunities that my mother, grandmothers and great grandmothers could only dream of. As a mother of a daughter, I’m aware of how I’m breaking away with so many patterns of the past so that she may have even more freedom and ability to fulfill her dreams and her full potential.
Feminine power is needed in today’s world. Feminine power is the power to love, to create, to dream, to accept, to forgive, to celebrate, to care. Feminine power is alchemical – it can transform scarcity into abundance, sadness into joy, disappointment into learning. Feminine power is about bringing back beauty and sacredness into our everyday lives. It is the power necessary to create true partnership between men and women, young and old, and to weave a harmonious tapestry out of our diversity. Feminine power is the ability to love our planet and all the children, and to honor all our relations.
Magenta Wisdom is the nest where I incubate and hatch my ideas, the hearth for my work. For the last couple of years, I have been carrying the intention of creating this space. But I didn’t push myself to complete it by a certain date. Rather, I allowed it to marinate and to mature on its own. I knew that I wanted a symbolic name to represent my work rather than to associate it directly with my name as a way to hold the tension between two truths: it is all about me (my work, my voice) and it is not at all about me – but about something larger that includes us all and that I’m here to explore with you.
The name Magenta Wisdom seems to have popped in my mind one day, and when it did, it was as the only possible name for my work.
Magenta is a bold color. In my view, it is the color of feminine power. It is vibrant, joyful, and impossible to ignore. Choosing magenta requires letting go of shame and desire to hide or go unnoticed – something I have done in the past. It is a colorful way of saying: Here I Am. Magenta is natural beauty and magic like the magenta-throated Woodstar hummingbird.
Magenta is an “extra-spectral color:” that means that it cannot be created by one wavelength of light. It is not part of the rainbow. Magenta is the balanced blend of red and blue. This was meaningful to me: magenta requires collaboration and the blending of opposites.
As I was researching for the meaning of this color from multiple perspectives – color theory, spirituality, healing, psychology – I got more and more fascinated by the variety of interpretations that resonated with me. Magenta heals at all emotional levels; it infuses feelings of self-respect and self-awareness; it is the color of universal harmony and universal love; it communicates kindness, compassion and appreciation; it is the color of inspirational thinkers and futurists; it communicates optimism, creativity and innovation inspired by beauty; it is associated with a non-conformist and spontaneous attitude; it is the color of wisdom, leadership and higher consciousness. And another name for the color magenta is Mexican pink. So I really didn’t have a choice!
Using “wisdom” in my professional name was a more straightforward decision. Much of my work has been on systems thinking. Russell Ackoff and Bela H. Banathy, two prominent systems thinkers, talked of the need to move from information, to knowledge, to understanding, to wisdom. Wisdom is a more systemic and inclusive level. It goes beyond knowledge and understanding by integrating intuition and love. A wise decision may not be the most rational one, or the one based on all the facts. A wise decision comes from the heart and carries a higher consciousness that includes cares for the whole. Bela, who was my mentor, pointed out that our current stage of human development is characterized by a gap between our technological and ethical intelligence. We are like children playing with dangerous toys – and we are at risk of destroying ourselves. My work supports the development of our ethical intelligence – learning to use our scientific and technological knowledge in life affirming ways; for the greater good.
Wisdom in Greek is Sophia: the divine feminine. “Sophia symbolizes the womb of creation which brings forth all life from the sacred marriage of opposing energies: spirit and matter, heaven and earth, intellect and intuition” writes painter Victoria Moore as part of the description of her painting The Mystery School of Sophia. In my view, the underdeveloped ethical intelligence is an expression of too much knowledge and not enough wisdom. It is related to the lack of balance between masculine and feminine power. It is time for the return of the feminine and the reconnection to the ineffable.
I hope you join me in my inquiry which is, in simple terms, an exploration of what it means to be a whole human being.
I have gone through some significant transformative experiences — initiations — which have helped me to see the big picture or larger themes in my life. My love for learning and integration has been the “red thread” of my experiences (a metaphor I learned from my friends of TomorrowMakers) and I knew that all the things that bring me joy were somewhat connected – even though they may seem scattered or eclectic. Magenta Wisdom is the beginning of the synthesis of all that is important to me and of the gifts that I’m committed to bring into the world.
People often differentiate between personal and professional activities. I have a hard time with that distinction. I know that I get paid for some of those and I’m willing do others for “free” — although that’s true only from a narrow economic definition, not from the abundance of meaning and connection that I receive in return. There is work that feels like work and work that doesn’t. Peace and joy are the “north” in my compass. And the more I advance on my journey, the clearer the direction becomes.
I love the people with whom I work, and I work with people I love. Not sure which one comes first. We come together to collaborate for as long as the work is for the greatest good. Trust, honesty and vulnerability are always present. And even when our paths diverge, there is a celebration and an honoring of what we learned and created together. Equanimity has become a practice: it doesn’t matter if I find myself in a beautiful or harsh situation, “this too shall pass.” And I have learned to receive the gift in every experience and to appreciate each encounter as sacred and every person as a teacher.
I don’t wear different hats for different occasions. I’m that kind of person: one package, all included —the highs and the lows, the laughter and the tears, the conceptual and the practical, the intellectual and the creative. I inhabit somewhere at the edge of the worlds of academia, business and social entrepreneurship. I’m a social innovator and cultural healer.
An important part of my journey has been my willingness to embrace my feminine power. I figured that being born a Latin woman was not an accident. There is something in my culture, in the experiences of my ancestors, in my childhood and youth in northern Mexico, that shaped the core of my consciousness. After leaving Mexico to come to the US to do my doctoral work and eventually live, I have both grown beyond the limits of my native culture and reconnected deeper to my roots. Experiencing life in a woman’s body has been humbling. I feel deeply connected to nature and her rhythms and consider my sensitivity a great gift, even though it’s not easy to feel so much. I have been painfully aware of the injustice, inequality and oppression that women from all around the world suffer, and yet, that has not been my direct experience. I come from privilege – not economic, but social through the rich educational opportunities I had – and have always had the freedom to chose how to live my life. I have had opportunities that my mother, grandmothers and great grandmothers could only dream of. As a mother of a daughter, I’m aware of how I’m breaking away with so many patterns of the past so that she may have even more freedom and ability to fulfill her dreams and her full potential.
Feminine power is needed in today’s world. Feminine power is the power to love, to create, to dream, to accept, to forgive, to celebrate, to care. Feminine power is alchemical – it can transform scarcity into abundance, sadness into joy, disappointment into learning. Feminine power is about bringing back beauty and sacredness into our everyday lives. It is the power necessary to create true partnership between men and women, young and old, and to weave a harmonious tapestry out of our diversity. Feminine power is the ability to love our planet and all the children, and to honor all our relations.
Magenta Wisdom is the nest where I incubate and hatch my ideas, the hearth for my work. For the last couple of years, I have been carrying the intention of creating this space. But I didn’t push myself to complete it by a certain date. Rather, I allowed it to marinate and to mature on its own. I knew that I wanted a symbolic name to represent my work rather than to associate it directly with my name as a way to hold the tension between two truths: it is all about me (my work, my voice) and it is not at all about me – but about something larger that includes us all and that I’m here to explore with you.
The name Magenta Wisdom seems to have popped in my mind one day, and when it did, it was as the only possible name for my work.
Magenta is a bold color. In my view, it is the color of feminine power. It is vibrant, joyful, and impossible to ignore. Choosing magenta requires letting go of shame and desire to hide or go unnoticed – something I have done in the past. It is a colorful way of saying: Here I Am. Magenta is natural beauty and magic like the magenta-throated Woodstar hummingbird.
Magenta is an “extra-spectral color:” that means that it cannot be created by one wavelength of light. It is not part of the rainbow. Magenta is the balanced blend of red and blue. This was meaningful to me: magenta requires collaboration and the blending of opposites.
As I was researching for the meaning of this color from multiple perspectives – color theory, spirituality, healing, psychology – I got more and more fascinated by the variety of interpretations that resonated with me. Magenta heals at all emotional levels; it infuses feelings of self-respect and self-awareness; it is the color of universal harmony and universal love; it communicates kindness, compassion and appreciation; it is the color of inspirational thinkers and futurists; it communicates optimism, creativity and innovation inspired by beauty; it is associated with a non-conformist and spontaneous attitude; it is the color of wisdom, leadership and higher consciousness. And another name for the color magenta is Mexican pink. So I really didn’t have a choice!
Using “wisdom” in my professional name was a more straightforward decision. Much of my work has been on systems thinking. Russell Ackoff and Bela H. Banathy, two prominent systems thinkers, talked of the need to move from information, to knowledge, to understanding, to wisdom. Wisdom is a more systemic and inclusive level. It goes beyond knowledge and understanding by integrating intuition and love. A wise decision may not be the most rational one, or the one based on all the facts. A wise decision comes from the heart and carries a higher consciousness that includes cares for the whole. Bela, who was my mentor, pointed out that our current stage of human development is characterized by a gap between our technological and ethical intelligence. We are like children playing with dangerous toys – and we are at risk of destroying ourselves. My work supports the development of our ethical intelligence – learning to use our scientific and technological knowledge in life affirming ways; for the greater good.
Wisdom in Greek is Sophia: the divine feminine. “Sophia symbolizes the womb of creation which brings forth all life from the sacred marriage of opposing energies: spirit and matter, heaven and earth, intellect and intuition” writes painter Victoria Moore as part of the description of her painting The Mystery School of Sophia. In my view, the underdeveloped ethical intelligence is an expression of too much knowledge and not enough wisdom. It is related to the lack of balance between masculine and feminine power. It is time for the return of the feminine and the reconnection to the ineffable.
I hope you join me in my inquiry which is, in simple terms, an exploration of what it means to be a whole human being.