Our Invitation to practice Collective Alchemy continues on 5 June 2020.
IN THIS TIME OF GROWING TURBULENCE,
ON WHAT ARE WE ALIGNING?
Orienting the next call on the arc of the journey so far:
In this pattern of opening a portal to practice Collective Alchemy twice monthly, we have begun walking a dual path together, alternating between the Via PositivaThe Via Positiva is the bridge of practice that we trust will carry us forward into an ever deeper and stronger capacity to live in Integral consciousness. This path takes the form of collective inquiry, mostly using the foundational practice of Collective Presencing, to lean into more transpersonal questions—matters of concern to the human collective, and eventually even beyond the personal level of the psyche, and beyond mundane worldly events. (exploring transpersonal, Integral consciousness) and the Via NegativaThe alchemical procedure is broken down into a variety of different phases, which differs according to which of the ancient alchemists you study. What all the different schools have in common is the process of burning away the impure, so that only what is pure will remain. This process of removal is what we are calling the Via Negativa. (burning off the personal dross that blocks access to it).
We can now see that the pattern of our practice calls is interweaving this two-stranded path, like the double helix of DNA. The twin paths are connected by threads of meaning stitched backwards and forwards between the calls.
On 8 May, we took a step on the Via Positiva, with our inquiry into ‘what is true in the moment’ taking us on a first, unselfconscious foray into Integral consciousness. (Read the harvest from 8 May)
On 22 May, we embarked on the Via Negativa, entering the alchemical procedure of Calcination together. We explored the very roots of our identity and discovered what remains when we shed all that is not what we truly are. (Read the harvest from 22 May)
When the practice portal next opens, on 5 June, we will be back on the Via Positiva, picking up some of the threads that emerged in the harvest of 22 May.
Framing the calling question:
IN THIS TIME OF GROWING TURBULENCE,
ON WHAT ARE WE ALIGNING?
As the Great Pause loses its focus into more collective confusion in many places, in the US cities seem to be melting down in an intense wave of racial fury.
It seems that humanity’s rite of passage is truly begun. We don’t know how long it will last or how bad it will get. We only know that trying to fend it off would be disastrous.
Wait…. what?…
The fragmented, ego-ridden humanity of today cannot survive in tomorrow’s world. Whatever form this rite of passage will take it must therefore be intense and uncontrollable enough to bring humanity to an authentic collective (species-wide) death-rebirth experience, or else the unimaginable potential of the future humanity awaiting us on the other side will be stillborn.
It requires huge pressure to bring forth a diamond from coal. What does it make sense to do in these times, then when both our instincts and our conditioning demand that we throw all our energies into fending off what’s coming?
Walking the tightrope into a thrivable future requires the rope to be anchored at both ends of the squeeze we are heading into. The rope that reaches us from the past to the present can no longer serve us—that storyline is bankrupt and we know it.
Relying on Collective Alchemy’s core practice of “sourcing”, can we lean together ‘through the veil’, into the realm of unmanifest potential— the home of the future humanity— to snag and pull through, from the future to the present, a rope that can hold our collective weight as we traverse the great squeeze?
Our calling question for this next practice portal is intended to bring us together into that space:
IN THIS TIME OF GROWING TURBULENCE,
ON WHAT ARE WE ALIGNING?
If you hear the resonant call, please join us! See harvest from 22 May below.