NewStories Teaching and Dialogue

CORONA AS COLLECTIVE INITIATION

Developing our own rite-of-passage in this time of the 'Great Pause’

We will hold two sessions on this same teaching. Session cost is by donation.

April 29, 2020 09:00 AM Pacific Time – Please Register Here:

https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcufuisqTwoHd20MU97gVGNeqEdac-x9AcF

May 2, 2020 04:00 PM Pacific Time – Please Register Here:

https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJArceGhqTMiH9UoHUeAuGA4qaNKIbRBN2to

For information on other NewStories dialogues: https://newstories.org/pandemic/newstories-events/

“The only energy that can move the collective is the awakening of individuals.”

– Michael Meade

In this experiential seminar, we will begin to explore where we are in our own rite of passage, what our challenges are and how we might establish a ritual structure for meeting them.

The corona virus has brought home to us what nothing else could, that we are all in this together. Climate change and its localized disasters—flood, fires, tornadoes, droughts—are too big for most people to comprehend let alone know how to respond to. But a microscopic force, too small for us to see, has compelled us to change, to behave differently, to separate from business as usual and pause for reflection, rethinking, and reevaluating. In essence it has plunged us into a collective rite of passage. And each of us has a part to play in what comes out of it. The purpose of an initiation is to come out on the other side a bigger person or with a different, more expanded world view. If we are not different and don’t act differently, if there is no change, then we have not really faced the crisis or completed the initiation.

Initiation rites of all forms begin with Separation. In the Vision Fasts that my husband and I used to lead, we created the separation by having people leave their homes and go into the desert for twelve days. The corona virus has forced us into a different kind of collective separation—social distancing, sheltering in place, being locked down. Whether we like it or not, we have been separated from our old patterns of being and doing. We are already into the initiatory process.

The second phase of a rite of passage is called the Ordeal or the Challenge, where we cross the Threshold into what is called liminal space. We enter into a flux time, where things are uncertain, the way forward is unclear. It is a time for reflection, for ritual, for inner dialogue. If we are patient and remain steadfastly open, willing to face our fears and sorrows head on, and listen deeply to our inner calling, we may be gifted with a new vision of who we are and what is ours to do.

The third stage of a rite of passage is called Reincorporation, or the Return to Community. In an ideal world, this return as a new individual with a new vision or gift to give, would be welcomed, blessed and celebrated by the community. And the initiate would in turn bring inspiration and reinvigorated imagination to the community. We are not there yet, either as initiates or as the receivers of them. But we do have the opportunity to use this Great Pause, this enforced liminal time, to open more deeply into our own individual initiation. We have been released from a future many of us did not want and now we must attend very carefully to the new forms, new ways of being, and new expression of our own deeper gifts that are calling us into a future we do want to live in.

Now is the time

(“The Gift” – versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsy)

Now is the time to know

That all you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider

A lasting truce with yourself and God.

Now is the time to understand

That all your ideas of right and wrong

Were just child’s training wheels

To be laid aside

When you finally live

With veracity

And love.

Hafiz is a divine envoy

Whom the Beloved

Has written a holy message upon.

My dear, please tell me,

Why do you still

Throw sticks at your heart

And God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside

That incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know

That every thought and every actions is sacred.

This is the time

For you to compute the impossibility

That there is anything

But Grace.

Now is the season to know

That everything you do

Is sacred.

Lynnaea Lumbard

Lynnaea Lumbard, Ph.D., Board Chair, is a transformational psychologist, interfaith minister, wilderness guide, community weaver, social artist and strategic philanthropist.

My life path opened while a student at Stanford with a course called Consciousness and the Human Potential. Catapulted into the just-birthing world of humanistic and transpersonal psychology, I trained as a practitioner of Hoffman Process, Reichian Therapy, encounter groups for social change, NLP, psychosynthesis, psychodrama, gestalt therapy, voice dialogue, conscious evolution, depth psychology, energywork, and council.

In 1986, I co-founded Temenos Associates, a national workshop company offering introductory consciousness intensives, ongoing trainings in enneagram, voice dialogue, and dreamwork and 12-day retreats for Awakening the Heart, Embracing the Shadow, and Opening the Third Eye.

Moving to Boulder, Colorado, in 1995, I was a founding minister of All Seasons Chalice Church, building a spiritual community around the StarHouse. I co-led 12-day Vision Fasts in the Utah desert before co-creating a four-year mystery school based on the Medicine Wheel, integrating body, soul, mind and spirit through the changing seasons of life.

I turned ever more towards the wounds of our collective psyche, bringing the successful archetypal patterns that govern individual transformation to the processes to cultural healing. NewStories’ work comes out of the longing for humanity to step out of old stories of who and what we are to come into greater wholeness as individuals and into a conscious and compassionate relationship with Earth and all life.

My current work is curating NewStories to illuminate and disseminate new stories and practices for a life-affirming future. When not writing or speaking, I engage with small collaborative teams to strengthen, support and synergize the burgeoning new stories movement through convening, hosting, and facilitating social change workshops and gatherings.

I live with my husband, Rick Paine, in the land of ferries on either side of the Salish Sea: Whidbey Island, WA and Cortes Island, BC.

NewStories Teaching and Dialogue

CORONA AS COLLECTIVE INITIATION

Developing our own rite-of-passage in this time of the 'Great Pause’

Now is the time

Lynnaea Lumbard

Stay in touch! Sign up for our newsletter:

Newsletter

About

Services

Stories

Projects

Resources