1.0 Welcome
Please watch this video as an introduction to Module 1.
2.0 Emergence
This section is “the lecture.” I am not standing in front of you in a classroom speaking. Instead you have some written material, some audio and some videos. You can take in the lecture all in one go, or you can break it up. Both approaches work. Notice the overall impact of this painting or symphony of emergence, but then take in the details (brushstrokes, layering, when notes are played and when silence occurs).
2.1 Introduction
Change requires disruption. There is no possibility for change without disruption. If the ground hasn’t shifted one should question if they have gone into the work of purpose discovery. Something new always births out of disruption. Purpose discovery is excavating, clearing, churning through the layers of your life. You had a safe static container, a regimented structure around default purpose and chosen purpose. As you come into contact with your mythopoetic identity you are disrupting this container you created, what helped you survive. Now you are in this place of integration. You are trying to make meaning, looking for coherence that wants to rise naturally out of disruption. Do not force coherence. Listen for the emergent. You will be surprised because you are birthing something new. We cannot manufacture that emergence. You want to know. You want security. The embodiment work will bring even greater coherence. You are embracing mystery, trusting intuition, tuning this instrument and using the beautiful gift of your senses. Thomas Moore speaks of obedience. It is like the game of hot and cold you may have played as a kid. Hot, hot, hot. Cold, cold, cold. Tuning the instrument. Bringing the elevator down. Tuning into the heart or the belly, obediently and faithfully. Residing there, in the heart.
2.2 What Is Emergence?
Brody speaks of emergence is his talk. Here is a short video that can serve as an introduction to the idea. The focus here is not on fully grasping this theory and its implications. The focus here is to use emergence as a lens of wonder into the imagination and the liminal realm which you visited on your Soul Quest.
2.3 Brody’s Talk
2.4 Thomas Moore Interview
“The main point I see is obedience to one’s calling. A calling is not a career. As the story suggests, it is an invitation to new life that repeats and changes. Moving from one job to another doesn’t have to be a bad thing or suggest that there is something wrong with you. You have to obey your calling.”
2.5 The Wheel of Life
“Because we are moving into a new mythic age, it is little wonder that a kind of mutation is taking place in the entire earth-human order. A new paradigm of what it is to be human emerges.” — Thomas Berry
Bill Plotkin’s follow-up book to Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche is Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World. In this book Bill posits a new model he calls the Wheel of Life. He writes, “The Wheel is ecocentric in that it models individual human development from the perspective of nature’s cycles, rhythms, and patterns.” The book Soulcraft is an elaboration of one stage of this Wheel.
Readers familiar with biologist Rupert Sheldrake’s work might recognize that the Wheel is a description of the “morphic field” underlying human psychospiritual development. A morphic field is the underlying formative pattern of a self-organizing system, such as an oak, a bear, a human, an ecosystem, Earth, the Milky Way, or the universe. The morphic field depicted by the Wheel gives the entire human life cycle its distinguishing properties. In Buckminster Fuller’s terms, the Wheel identifies the nature-generated “pattern integrity” of human development. And to borrow an idea from the physicist David Bohm, the Wheel corresponds to the “implicate order” of human maturation. Bohm’s term refers to the generative field underlying specific manifest forms, from atoms to humans to galaxies.
Consider the idea that all of nature passes on what it learns in a non-localized way. As you move into integrating your purpose you are shifting the field for all beings. I will make the assertion that soul purpose discovery will become more common for others thanks to your dedication to this process. This resonance does not just move into the future to benefit future generations, it also moves into the past in the form of ancestral healing.
These three short videos let you witness Rupert Sheldrake, Buckminster Fuller and David Bohm. My invitation is to allow the seeds of their wisdom to plant and grow in your imagination. Consider the relationship of their ideas to your own ideas of your soul and purpose integration.
3.0 Initiation
“What is initiation? It is the spiritual activity that teaches us that when we are confronted by two options we should always choose the one that is most beautiful.”
— Alejandro Jodorowsky
This section is “the practices.” The practices grow out of the lecture. The practices also build upon the previous work you have done in the Purpose Discovery course. And yes I am using an image from The Simpsons to open this section. We are doing serious work and it will be difficult. At the same time remember to laugh and keep a sense of humor.
3.1 Introduction
In this section you will practice some meditations and further explore working with images. Some discovery will naturally occur but the focus now is on integration. This work is difficult as Brody alluded to in his talk on emergence. I will be here as your guide. You will also have a partner to work with who has completed the purpose discovery course like you. In purpose discovery you met your soul and learned some ways to hold a conversation such as soul journaling. You also met an animal or plant guide. Now you will connect with a higher self guide. You will work on inhabiting a mythopoetic image from your purpose myth. Keeping a dream journal will be introduced but dream interpretation will come in the next module. Finally a meditation will be offered that can be used both for grounding and opening to doing integration work.
3.2 Connecting With A Helping Spirit
You are taking a journey to a to connect with the part of yourself that has only your highest good as its sole intent. This guide, mentor, and teacher is part of you and always available to support you in soul purpose integration.
3.3 Inhabiting A Mythopoetic Image
Please select an image from the Pinterest board Mythopoetic Nature that reflects what’s most alive for you as you cross the threshold from discovery to integration. We will work with this image in our first meeting. Following the meeting you will inhabit the image(s) you receive. You will post your experience of inhabiting your image(s) in the virtual fire circle. And, if you have something tangible that arises from this assignment (i.e. poem, collage, painting, song, etc.) please share that too!
3.4 Soul Date
You will send your Purpose Myth to your accountability partner. Read your partner’s Purpose Myth beforehand and come prepared to mirror the soul gifts within their story. Plan to begin your soul date with meditation. The entire date should only last about 30 minutes.
3.5 Dream Journal
You are going to begin tracking your dreams. Capturing your dreams can be done with a paper journal or even recorded with your phone. Upon waking, before drinking water or going to the bathroom capture your dream. It takes practice. If you do not remember dreaming or your dream that is ok. Keep practicing. In Module 2 we will explore how to work with dreams. So for now this is an opportunity to hopefully get at least one dream journaled.
She Dreamed of Cows
by Norah PollardI knew a woman who washed her hair and bathed
her body and put on the nightgown she’d worn
as a bride and lay down with a .38 in her right hand.
Before she did the thing, she went over her life.
She started at the beginning and recalled everything—
all the shame, sorrow, regret and loss.
This took her a long time into the night
and a long time crying out in rage and grief and disbelief—
until sleep captured her and bore her down.She dreamed of a green pasture and a green oak tree.
She dreamed of cows. She dreamed she stood
under the tree and the brown and white cows
came slowly up from the pond and stood near her.
Some butted her gently and they licked her bare arms
with their great coarse drooling tongues. Their eyes, wet as
shining water, regarded her. They came closer and began to
press their warm flanks against her, and as they pressed
an almost unendurable joy came over her and
lifted her like a warm wind and she could fly.
She flew over the tree and she flew over the field and
she flew with the cows.When the woman woke, she rose and went to the mirror.
She looked a long time at her living self.
Then she went down to the kitchen which the sun had made all
yellow, and she made tea. She drank it at the table, slowly,
all the while touching her arms where the cows had licked.
3.6 Four Suns
Listen to this mediation for grounding and connection.
Epic Ken Rice 