GETTING REAL IN UNREAL TIMES
A 6 week online lecture and practice series

About this series

The last 15-20 minutes of each week’s session will be dedicated to an embodied ritual practice of Archetypal Qigong- an offering that will shift us from words into a felt-sense and inhabitance of the energies and qualities we will be speaking about in our conversations.

You are invited to attend the full series or just a few of these lectures.The series will build upon itself and deepen each week, however each lecture stands entirely on its own and is open for “drop in”.

With the intention to create an online culture with more energetic coherence and connection, live online attendance is required- the “doors” will be locked at 6:10 and these sessions will not be released in a recorded version.

Schedule: Each week from 6:00-7:15 pm MDT

Wednesday Sept 11
The Indestructible Soul: An Invocation with Women Who Run With the Wolves

The book Women Who Run With the Wolves, written by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, is nothing short of an Oracle and invitation for personal (and therefore social) revolution. It is a bone-stirring call toward wakefulness, out of our trances of domestication and capture. I know of few other sources that have the capacity to reach into the deepest layers of our psyche and shake us awake, back into the vitality and purpose of our birthright. In this first session, Sarah will be reading aloud- with powerful transmission- from the introduction of this book. If you have read it before, you will not have heard it in this way. The invocation of Dr. Estes’ words is unparalleled in its brazen calling-out of how we have given ourselves away, the cost we pay for our own capture and willful blindness, and its insistence that we claim our lives. Things you have long forgotten will begin to stir awake in this hour and lay the foundation for what, why and how of the rest of our 5 weeks together. Sarah has studied directly with Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes for many years and brings forth many of her direct transmissions of this work. Come with a cup of tea, gather around this story-fire let yourself be taken by Sarah’s masterfully crafted facilitation and reading of this work.

Wednesday Sept 18
Sexual Depth and Power as a Social and Spiritual Responsibility

New Age spiritual sexual teachings and culture has failed us. Mainstream sexual teachings and culture have failed us. The wider response and engagement with the sexual conversation in the #MeToo era has been largely reactive, polarizing and unsophisticated. We are begging for, as evidenced in our relationships, actions and non-actions, for a sexual mythology that does justice to the immensity of our sexual energy and source, and gives us a pathway for walking in the world as reliable, integrated and embodied sexual beings. This evening’s talk will help us understand and claim our sexual energy as a responsibility and pathway for activism and sovereignty- both spiritual and social. Sexual embodiment and integrity does not ask us to become something we are not. It asks us to become ourselves, fully, to return to this ancient knowing of the most primordial energy that runs through us. Based in her studies of Daoist-based Depth Sexology and Sarah’s work of The Great Remembering, we will traverse the intimate and intricate territory of the most fundamental energy of our life and understand how and why it is not separate from anything.

Wednesday Sept 25
Killing us softly: The cost of New age spiritual whitewashing

Popular New Age spiritual values and teachings are robbing us of the very substance our souls are made of and need to express in order to be whole, free and engaged people. With its insistence on positivity, denial of the width of our nuanced layers (inside and out) and a bypassing of the richest and most necessary territory of our becoming, it has severed our instincts in a devastating and widespread way. .  Tonight we will explore how New Age spirituality has violated our sexual energy, communication, relationships, inner emotional lives, creativity, expression and our ability to occupy purpose and real meaning. Though Sarah will wield a sharp and clear sword this evening toward an insidious influence of our time, she will also imbue us with great faith in our natural capacity for engaging reality, our undomesticated humanity and the truest needs of our souls.

Wednesday Oct 2
The Problem with “Masculine” and “Feminine”: Boxed Into a Corner

What do gun violence, impotence, and vulnerability as beauty have to do with each other? When was the last time we understood that silence was power?  This is not your average “gender” conversation, nor a pitch for universal Transgenderism (though Trans people in attendance will likely feel more “seen” in their essence than ever before). Tonight, Sarah will turn our ideas of Masculine and Feminine on their head through the exceptionally powerful Post-Daoist teachings of Yin and Yang, and help us understand the truth of what lives inside of us, regardless of our gender identification. We have been boxed into a corner of misunderstanding and false definitions that reduce us every single day- and instinctively, we know this- we just haven’t had the language or paradigm to see all the way through the box. Delivered to thousands of students in various contexts over many years, this particular teaching is, hands down, one of the most nuanced, illuminating and transformational teachings available on this subject.

Wednesday Oct 9
The Call of the Wild: Wilderness as a Map, Mirror and Medicine

There is no greater mirror and invitation toward naturalness, source and harmony than the wilderness. No greater tonic, nurturance or elderhood than the wisdom and love of the land.  But it is possible to go into nature and miss it altogether. We do this every day- hold on to our “front-country” consumer mindset and use nature as a mere backdrop. When go into the wild with deep intention and listening,  we recover and commune with a bone stirring memory of purpose and place in the “family of things”. What we find in the wilderness and all of her cycles of life and death, if we go with intention and attention, are Maps, Mirrors and Medicine- Trustworthy Maps to follow, guide us and locate ourselves within,  Mirrors in which to truly see ourselves and life and Medicine…a nourishment of source, reservoir to drink from. Tonight’s topic includes threads from the last many weeks of lectures- sexuality as a force of nature, our courtship of soul and the width of our humanity.

Wednesday Oct 16
“Do Not Lose Hope. We Were Made for These Times”. Meeting the World with Courage and Calling.

“Do not lose heart, we were made for these times…In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours. They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.” Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes

What if we really took these words to heart? What if we knew that we were, in fact, made to weather the waters of our lives and these times, with just the right medicine in our quiver. Tonight, we lean into the call of this truth. So much of our loneliness, lostness and dissatisfactions are because we have so much more… to give, to become, to ask of ourselves and each other. We are here with a calling and gifts to give, in a life and planet that is calling for us and our gifts.