About Michael Regan

Michael was born into a tradition that his Celtic ancestors brought from the west of Ireland to the outskirts of Boston that included the raising of children, a love for Nature, and the encouragement to be oneself no matter what. This idea  captured his imagination at a young age, and was reinforced by spontaneous mystical experiences that he had no words for yet.

With a sense that U.S. policy towards Central America represented the moral test of his generation, Michael went to graduate school at Duke University and talked his way onto the staff of an international dialogue on more equitable and sustainable development in Central America. During that period, he wrote a master's thesis on a backlash to an innovative, risk taking approach to providing grassroots philanthropic assistance at the InterAmerican Foundation. 

A mischievous Nicaraguan economist walked Michael's resume over to the Research Triangle Institute, where he researched and co-wrote a guidebook for the US Environmental Protection Agency on strategies for involving the public in siting new waste management facilities, and for communicating  more effectively with the public about various environmental and health risks. 

After a three month stint as a fellow at Duke University,  Michael's sense that the country was in trouble prompted him to drive north on a bitter cold winter day to work in the policy shop of an insurgent presidential campaign, followed by a move to Washington, DC, where he found work as a policy analyst and consultant on projects related to climate change.

At the peak of his managerial career, Michael left that position to explore the felt sense of a deeper potential of some kind, followed by an overdue conversation with his heart, a few strange coincidences, and a wrenching ordeal that stripped away the armor that most of us carry to protect ourselves from the harshness of the world and revealed the heart's sacred core as a gateway to the inside of everything that we see around us.

As the creative magic of life returned, doors started to open  where they did not exist and Michael began working as a consultant and advisor to several nonprofit ventures, including a bilingual multicultural learning center in the neighborhood (now CentroNia), a national fellowship program for nonprofit leaders (Eureka Communities), and a new foundation to support educational projects for children around the world (The Global Fund for Children). 

While co-writing a children's book on cultural diversity in youth sports around the world,  Michael heard about an experimental leadership gathering where a group of seventy scholars, leaders, scientists, artists, activists and guides were exploring whether new possibilities exist on the frontiers of human consciousness and what groups can do to help bring a new world into being. 

On the first night, Michael was sending a raft of love to help his grandmother to make her way to the other side of what we see. In response, her earthy wisdom to "be yourself" came to his ears, so Michael resolved to be ruthlessly authentic, with minimal concern for social convention, and a deep respect for the work of the group - to find a solution to a world in crisis.

 On the final evening, Michael was exploring his creative niche in a breakout session with twenty consultants and guides when an invisible, sacred force drew him beyond the senses into a vast eternal awareness without reference to a body. That realm then collapsed into a primordial void where a self-radiant divine light revealed itself as the Source of creation, whether recognized or not.

After a lovely closing ceremony, the grapevine revealed that several of the elders who worked as leadership and organizational consultants mistook the radical breakthrough into divine love for a demonic possession of some kind, which revealed where the leadership field was at the time. As a private person, Michael held the revelations close to the vest and returned home to explore the implications for his life and creative work.  

After returning from an improvisational theater workshop at a ranch on the outskirts of Santa Fe, the spontaneous revelations of an intrinsic, divine order continued until a radical sage arrived in a dream to offer advice for "working with people", said that it would be embarrassing, and that it is best to keep the teaching simple. 

In response, Michael launched a series dialogues on awakening without a master in small informal groups in Santa Fe, Taos, Dallas, Austin, Washington, DC, Philadelphia, New York, Cape Cod, Camden, Boston,. Denver, Aspen, Calgary, and Asheville, among other locales.

When the time came to work with people in a more intensive way, Michael took small groups of practitioners and guides into the canyons of southeastern Utah, where they got to engage in inquiry around the campfire at night, and to experiment with how to move together during the day as unique expressions of the One. 

For the next twenty years, Michael held workshops with a small, vibrant group at a cabin on the upper Rio Grande and at a ranch on the outskirts of Santa Fe, where his work with silence, deep listening, inquiry and dream work was complemented by gifts that participants bring, including painting, music, writing. movement and more. 

In 2022, Michael returned to the Boston-area neighborhood where he was born and raised to be close to family, and interact as happily with friends and acquaintances from grade school anyone else. That creative process includes conducting private consultations and talks, and putting the finishing touches on a book, Open Mind, Wild Heart, where leadership and innovation meets the deepest potential of love (available on the website).