The ultimate resource is origin, the spiritual ground of existence. This resource is present within you at every moment. Recovering your relationship with this foundation rewires your sense of possibility. It opens up "time-freedom," a depth of awareness, beyond what clocks can measure. In this dangerous epoch of history, we can attain clarity and coherence about the basis of reality, gaining authentic peace.
All sessions will be recorded and made available for replay.
Main Sessions - Sundays 1pm-4pm EST
Discussion Groups - Wednesdays 2pm-4pm EST
We begin with the pressure of a society that constantly forces us to self-optimize and compete, the fear of falling behind, and those threshold states of absorption, illumination, or flow which give us flashes of insight into a different order of reality. Swiss thinker Jean Gebser explores how, over the course of human history, different "structures" of consciousness shape the experience of time, space, and identity. He proposes we are approaching a new state of "time-freedom," or an "integral-perspectival" structure, where we recover a depth of presence beyond what any clock can measure.
Through studies of modern art, indigenous cosmology, and exercises in attention and creativity, we will explore what happens when we break the tyranny of a singular worldview to embrace multiplicity. The aim is to recognize and overcome mechanical habits, opening more room for spontaneous participation in the present.
In The Mirror of Simple Souls, the medieval mystic Marguerite Porete stages a conversation among Love, Reason, and the Soul. Her vision of total surrender to divine Love raises a difficult question for modern people: what continues to exist when we release the need to control or any sense of personal agency?
We will bring Porete into dialogue with Owen Barfield and Henry Corbin. Barfield, like Gebser, saw an evolutionary trajectory leading to a conscious renewal of civilization through a new form of participation; Corbin distinguishes fantasy from a spiritual realm encountered through active imagination. Through a poem, an image, or a natural form, we will investigate the relationship between receptivity and creation, allowing an encounter to change what we thought we knew.
The common prejudice of our time is that we are reaching the culmination of knowledge through the technological Singularity. But there is an entire dimension of reality, infinite worlds we can never reach, through cybernetics or automaticity. Our task is to extend our awareness into those subtler realms that post-industrial civilization has tried to deny, suppress, and choke off.
The Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo saw that humanity was still an immature species moving from what he called the mental condition to a future "supramental state" of inner illumination. The Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner similarly charted out a vast cosmology where both individual humans and the Earth reincarnate again and again, developing different "bodies" over vast epochs of time. He believed we were currently attaining a new body he called the "spirit self," which was a result of strengthening our control over the ego. We will explore these esoteric thought systems not to enforce some new beliefs, but to widen the aperture of possibility and creative cognition. In his exploration of human freedom and moral imagination, Steiner shows how independent thinking can become an active force, answering the gravity of the situation confronting us today.
This week concerns the foundation that makes insight sustainable: attention, discipline, and honest self-observation. We will work with concentration exercises and familiar moments of friction, such as receiving criticism or returning to a neglected project. The purpose is to develop non-attachment and courage, gaining greater awareness and mastery over the impulses and assumptions that direct us.
Today, rapid global warming, the geopolitical crisis, and the speed of AI make it difficult to envision a future we can inhabit together. However, when we make what Kripal calls the "flip" or reached what Gebser calls the realization of "origin," communing with the underlying pristine source, new possibilities open up. The poet William Carlos Williams noted: "A new world is only a new mind." Our task is to reimagine the future: Despite all of the threats, can we attain a new harmonic balance, activate the world's capacities for regeneration and healing, while discovering and enacting our spiritual freedom?
Our final week brings these explorations into a creative project, relationship, or shared undertaking. We will ask what you want to bring into existence, what stands in the way, and what action or discipline can help bring your vision into manifestation. Each participant will develop a personal plan to continue beyond the seminar, connecting inner development with tangible effects in the world. Our individual paths unfold through what we make, how we think, the relationships we cultivate, and what we give to others.