IS: Conflict in Connection & Communal Reverie
Upcoming open events:
- Saturday September 7 - Practice Dojo Connection Lab #3
- Friday September 13 - Office Hours
Calls start at 1pm Pacific Time (4pm Eastern, 8pm UTC). Core Community Season 15 calls run Sundays through Sept 22.
This week! Open session! Conflict!
This Saturday, our Connection Lab session in the IS Practice Dojo is titled "Conflict in Connection" and is the last in this series. We will examine the embodied experience of "conflict" and practice perspective-shifting moves that help us be with it and transcend it. Get the link here.
Communal Reverie
Last Sunday, in our Core Community call, we welcomed Sam Hinds introducing us to Communal Reverie, a collective imaginal practice combining the presencing lineage of Collective Presencing (Baeck) with the imaginal lineage of Active Imagination (Jung, Corbin) and Soulmaking Dharma (Burbea).
In my own words, I would describe it as... team dreaming. Like a sleeping dream, you don't know what is going to arise next, and new things can keep emerging and somehow folding themselves into the dreamscape. Listening deeply to what is emerging into the collective center, the improvisational creativity happens below the regular "yes, and" level of stage improv, in the space of our presence-ing or "we-space" relational attunement.
In our introduce-it-and-try-it session, I admired the way many members leaned in and embraced something that seems quite different and unusual compared to many practices, let alone "normal" life! There's a "letting go" aspect that I could feel as integral to the practice, letting our subconscious layers bring forth their wisdom through our sensory systems. And, at the same time I found myself touching the question of "but what does this dream mean?" which I have also asked many-a-time of my sleeping dreams and have rarely answered to my logical satisfaction. (I mean that in a humorous way, especially for any McGilchrist fans out there.)
One taste of Communal Reverie of course probably didn't have us stretching the limits of the form or even grooving in its sweet spot. I'm curious to explore further, in my own personal speculation, bringing our collective context into closer contact with the imaginal activity. Could we dream together a description of Intentional Society in a way that advances our sense-making? It seems pretty darn plausible to me.
This was a members-only event inside IS, but Sam has run open sessions before (including at The Alembic in Berkeley) and if online opportunity arises, I'll relay that here!
Maybe I'll also mention, because I probably don't mention it enough, that membership in IS is free and lightly held and you can apply here for access to our weekly community calls.
Cheers,
James