Workshops with David Spangler

Down to Earth:  Part II of the Path of the Chalice
February 4 - March 24, 2012

Incarnational Spirituality honors who we are as unique individuals and offers tools for expressing the creativity and energy inherent in our individuality.   One of these tools is an understanding of our personal self from the perspective of the incarnational process.  In spiritual traditions, the personality is often regarded either as a detriment to be overcome or suppressed or as a fiction or illusion, a dream from which we need to awaken.  Incarnational spirituality takes a different approach, looking at the personality as neither an impediment nor an illusion but as an important function created by the incarnational process itself.   In this class, we will explore from an inner, energetic perspective the nature of our everyday, individual self as a lens through which spiritual realities come into focus in the world.  We will examine this self as it emerges and develops through the “Three Acts” of Incarnation—Prebirth, Physical Life, and Post-Mortem Life—and explore the capacities that it has for being a source of blessing and power for ourselves individually and for the world around us.

This seven-week online course is part of Part 2 of the Path of the Chalice, Lorian’s core educational track.  It stands alone, though either prior participation in the Part 1 class, Incarnational Spirituality and the Way Forward, or having read the book, An Introduction to Incarnational Spirituality, would give a useful background.

Down to Earth seeks to enable us to express the creativity and energy inherent both in the incarnational process and in the phenomenon of selfhood.  There are some spiritual traditions that view the self as an eternal reality—Christianity is one of these—and there are other spiritual traditions, most notably in the East, that view the self as non-existent and an illusion.  My own experiences working with the subtle worlds lead me to a viewpoint that lies between these two.  The Self is not a thing that we possess in the way that we might possess a car or a house, but it’s not purely a fiction either, like a dream that will evaporate upon awakening.  The self has a real existence and effect in the world. It is a presence that is constantly emerging and manifesting from a stable process governed by the interaction of the five principles of incarnation we explored in Part I.  The self is the expression of an identity, the manifestation of a set of boundaries, a means of connection and engagement with the world, an emergent phenomenon, and perhaps above all, a means by which wholeness may be introduced and enhanced within the world.

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Cost is $195