SELF-PACED PROGRAM
Partnering with life means much more than getting into nature to soothe our troubled selves. We have been missing our greatest ally, this generous and intelligent world that is incessantly creative in responding to what’s needed. Life is waiting for us to join her as we struggle to maintain sanity through this dark and destructive time. She is our perfect ally, giving us the means to both persevere and create together.
Indigenous teachers summon us to our relationship with Life, with animate, sacred world. They note it’s us humans who’ve gone missing, that Life wants to welcome us back into relationship – as partners, not dominatrix. As lone individuals or even as committed communities, we do not have the energy, intelligence, strength, and wisdom to persevere in our efforts to bring more goodness into this world. Western scientific materialism has blinded us to this wondrous ally–Life–with her energies, dynamics, and other intelligences eager for relationship with us humans. We just have to respond to her invitation.
We inhabit a generous, intelligent Universe
where everything alive has intelligence,
nothing becomes manifest until it’s in relationship,
and nothing lives alone.
My aspiration is for these truths to become the trusted foundation and source for how we are and act in the world. As we learn to partner with Life, relying on her dynamics rather than imposing our own, we easefully develop practices and capacities that are life-affirming. We connect, create, and persevere as we join with Life’s momentum to create more life, more possibilities, more harmony, no matter what is happening around us.
Session One | The Nature of The Universe: What Are We Partnering With?
We begin with a stunning exploration of the Universe from cosmic to microscopic where we understand that intelligence is a condition of the cosmos and all life. We encounter a world of meshworks where relationships of support and nourishment are constantly being created—in forests, in mycelium, in humans. This wisdom of how the Great Mother creates and sustains life was introduced to us tens of thousands of years ago in the Goddess cultures that thrived in eastern Europe, the Aegean, Egypt and India.
Session Two | A Magical Mystery Tour to Discover Our Allies
Every culture, except Western scientific materialism, has enduring and trusted relationships with both visible and non-visible beings. Many Indigenous cultures speak freely of the Star Beings; Lakota (in the US Mid-west) do not identify themselves as humans. What experiences have you had with feeling protected and/or guided by other-than-human intelligences? What stories have you learned from your parents, grandparents and ancestors who lived in times when these experiences were normal?
Session Three | Being a Good Partner with Life
In this session, we explore partnership from many different traditions and practices. A co-creative partnership requires behaviors different from our usual ways of relating. We are not in it for ourselves, for what we can “get.” We don’t extract, we create together. We forego the demands of a needy self and cheerfully enter into a relationship with other people, energies and intelligences to explore what’s possible. Two practices are taught: “Taking Our Seat” to unite the energies of earth and sky, and Ubuntu “I am because you are.”
Session Four | Practices for Strengthening Our Partnership with Life
When we’re in true partnership with life, drawing on energies and insights far beyond our human frailty, we are able to persevere. We cannot persevere and contribute if we go it alone. We are suffering not only from the reality of escalating cruel and frightening events. We are suffering because we have been told it’s all up to us and we believed it. It is not. We are not alone and life is still calling for us to partner with her. Four practices are taught to strengthen our relationships with one another and with Life.
Session Five | Have We Developed Relationships with Life?
By now, we’ve learned to connect, cocreate, and persevere, joining with Life’s momentum to create more life. We may have noticed what emerges as possibilities, as harmony, no matter what is happening around us. What has been your experience with Partnering with Life? This session reviews highlights from all four sessions, with time to contemplate and reflect on your personal learning journey.
Why This Course?
I feel called to offer this course now, and to make it easy to access, because it’s increasingly more difficult to maintain our center, to know how best to serve. Daily we face the reality of what has been termed “malevolent incompetence.” How do we transcend personal feelings of powerlessness because we can’t stop the unbearable cruelty that is destroying both people and our planet? How do we persevere to offer ourselves in service?
My strength and clarity to persevere come directly from my magical and trusted partnership with Life, drawing on energies and intelligences far beyond my human capacity. I know that we cannot go it alone. We‘re not only suffering from the reality of cruel and frightening events. We’re suffering because we ‘ve been told it’s up to us when it isn’t. We are not alone and Life is still calling for us to partner with her.
Price: $149
Questions? Contact us at info@berkana.org
