FiRE:
'The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think'
Gregory Bateson
Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness the energies of Love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, humankind will have discovered fire.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
FiRE: Fundamentals in Radical Ecosynthesis - an experiential weekend course
Discovering fire enabled spectacular human evolution: we have come a long way towards the mastery of waves, tides and gravity that de Chardin describes. Limitation spurred new technology, new exploration, new opportunities - and new challenges.
In 1946 Einstein wrote to the New York Times: “A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels”. Feedback from human and ecological systems we depend on suggest that this has become a personal, social, spiritual and ecological emergency.
"I really GOT the embodied and the en-worlded and loved the changes it has brought about in me. GREAT stuff. Generous, expansive and thoughtful. I felt pushed, pulled, drawn to new edges in myself all the while."
Fortunately, the new thinking is already here, finding its voice and feeling in diverse social, spiritual and psychological disciplines. Bateson's "the pattern that connects"; Thich Nich Than's "interbeing", Tutu's "Ubuntu - I am because you are", de Chardin's "Love", Assagioli's "supreme synthesis", Wheeler's "participatory universe" and Macy's "work that reconnects" are some of its expressions. One of the original psychological methods, Assagioli's Psychosynthesis, offers processes and tools to directly experience and consciously direct ourselves within these greater, ongoing systems.
In this context of systems thinking these tools allow us to see personal and social challenges as feedback - individual and collective expressions of the system. Engaging thse processes within the reciprocal nature of the system opens us to a participatory, "more than human" experience that enhances our well-being, creativity, sense of connection, and fun. This brings necessary information to address individual and systemic dis-ease which we cannot do in isolation: there is a dimension to our "personal problems" that belongs to the planet, just as the planet's issues belong to each of us. Ignoring or denying this interbeing results in personal experiences of powerlessness, separation, anger, inadequacy, burn-out and so on in the face of ongoing systems collapse and collective uncertainty, denial or avoidance. Disconnected from our own big picture we are as likely to act out or run round familiar circles. Despite our best efforts, our activism, meditation, mindfulness, social change or psychoanalysis practice often seems to address the symptoms, not the cause.
Guided by an experienced psychosynthesist, social ecologist and group facilitator
FiRE is a weekend immersion for anyone interested, drawn or called to get beyond separation - and the defences we have about that - without losing our sense of uniqueness, aliveness, curiosity and delight. Whether you are a teacher, activist, meditator, therapist, healer, observer or parent FiRE explores the Fundamental energies of Will that we all draw on and shape uniquely to spark our individual flame. It is Radical because it's experiential approach goes to the roots of intelligent, generative processes common to all life, as well as asking us to consider how our dearly held ways of being may both serve and limit our purpose. It links Ecological thinking, embodied awareness, psychological insight, personal spirituality and action.
Human evolution required us to firstly differentiate from the world, and then to act upon
it. This has led to a story that sees us as separate from just about everything, including
ourselves. Perhaps this was an evolutionary necessity to develop self-reflective
consciousness. In any event, it has brought us to the beginning of a new story which sees
us as "distinct, and not separate" participants in the universal story. We can understand
Nature and Human Nature as the inside and outside of the same thing, each with vital
information for the wll-being of the other, which we can perceive physically - both in
terms of what we see in the world, and what we feel in our bodies.
As far as we know, this is the first time evolutionary process has developed
self-awareness of itself with the capacity for action on many levels,
individual and collective, micro and macro.
And for humankind, this may be a second discovering of fire.
"I loved the ideas, the inspirations, the eclectic nature of all the offerings. They were broad, and deep, rich and full. I have gone on to pursue some of these teachings in greater depth. I found this work very generous, thoughtful and contributed to building more capacity.
I would have liked more opportunity for the transcendence immanence to be more explicit.... I really only GOT that language as a deliberate intention in the last weekend. I think it is central to the new edges and evolution of psychosynthesis in NZ and wanted a whole lot more of that...."