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Deep Imagination, Soulcraft and the Reanimation of the world
November 20-24th (Motueka Region NZ)
With Bill Plotkin, Brain Stafford & Laura Gunion


The application deadline for this immersion is Friday, August 9th, 2024. Please submit your application prior to that date. 

A shifting, leafy canopy casts green shadows on the forest floor. A creature appears: tall and upright, hair braided, body draped in earth fibers and verdant silks, human-like but not tame. She turns your way and perhaps you shudder, recognizing that she may know you better than you do. The trees lean in, listening.

 

The exuberant, inter-species conversations that animate our planet are nearby – very near – as is the mysterious terrain of soul, where we might encounter strange, alluring, cryptic, unbidden images, creatures, or impressions. Deep imagination is a portal to the terra mysterium of soul and to the wrenchingly alive, sentient, ensouled world. Recovering our innate awareness of an intelligent Earth (populated with both seen and unseen presences) and reclaiming our relationship with our deep imagination not only re-enliven us as individuals but also erode the outworn Western worldview of a meaningless, disenchanted universe, a worldview upon which life-assailing business-as-usual depends. Discovering or deepening a relationship with soul can serve as a compass to guide us as we learn to reinhabit a wildly alive, participatory Earth and Cosmos.

 

In this immersion, we offer inter-connected, multi-layered experiential practices – including deep imagery journeys, dreamwork, solo wanderings on the land, stream-of-consciousness writing, conversations with other-than-human beings, and poetry – that shift our consciousness toward the depths, toward the wilder, mythopoetic current that streams beneath everything else. There is a significant difference between intellectually recognizing that Earth is alive versus directly experiencing an ensouled world. Experiences of participatory relationship re-shape the ways we enact our lives. Through the wild window of deep imagination, we might experience the soul of the world – in all its dimensions, textures, hues, and wild voices – in intimate relationship with our mysterious human soul, which is the psychospiritual – or mythopoetic – niche that each of us uniquely occupies in the larger community of Earth/ Cosmos.

 

This is an advanced immersion, suitable only for those who have previously encountered hints (or full blasts) of soul, and who are resourced enough with their four facets of wholeness to wander more deeply into the world. Your completion of an application is requested and is due no later than August 4.

 

Last to note here: This will be an especially potent intensive in that, in addition to having three Animas guides, it will also be a training experience for 4 to 6 of our apprentices in our Soulcraft Apprenticeship and Initiation Program (SAIP). Plus, the number of participants will be limited to no more than 16. So, the guide to participant ratio will be much higher than we are usually able to offer. Buckle up. On second thought, don’t. But do apply, please, before August 4.

With Animas valley guides Bill Plotkin, Brian Stafford and Laura Gunion

Costs sliding scale (It is an costly process to fly these highly experienced guides from the US to New Zealand, this will probably be Bills one and only visit to this land)

$1,425.00 to $1,725.00 – Sliding Scale Price: you are free to select any price within this range

$1,725.00 – High End Program Price: choosing the high end amount contributes to the full cost of the program and allows us to offer a sliding scale option.

This is will be a fully catered camping intensive, participants will be camping in an wilderness area near Kahuranghi National Park. This is not taking place at a retreat centre.

About Bill Plotkin

 

Bill Plotkin, Ph.D., is a depth psychologist, wilderness guide, and agent of cultural evolution. As founder of western Colorado’s Animas Valley Institute in 1981, he has guided thousands of women and men through nature-based initiatory passages, including a contemporary, Western adaptation of the pan-cultural vision fast. Previously, he has been a research psychologist (studying non-ordinary states of consciousness), professor of psychology, psychotherapist, rock musician, and whitewater river guide. In 1979, on a solo winter ascent of an Adirondack peak, Bill experienced a call to adventure, leading him to abandon academia in search of his true calling.

 

Bill is the author of Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche (an experiential guidebook), Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World (a nature-based stage model of human development through the entire lifespan), Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche (an ecocentric map of the psyche — for healing, growing whole, and cultural transformation), and The Journey of Soul Initiation: A Field Guide for Visionaries, Evolutionaries, and Revolutionaries (an experiential guidebook for the descent to soul). He has a doctorate in psychology from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Apply to join the Deep Imaginal Journey with Bill Plotkin in November
(FULL COURSE) wait list only.

Thanks for submitting!

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