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The Lines that Whisper Us • Writings – Bayo Akomolafe "Where do you stand?"

Opinion | How Do You Serve a Friend in Despair? I learned hard lessons when my oldest friend, Pete, plunged into depression.

'Ring them bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering...'
Leonard Cohen

Because it's nearly Christmas, and because I love the theory behind this small offering, I've made this mini-course free on Teachable for the month of December... if you know (or are) someone who feels doomed in any aspect of life, and would like to regain a little bounce, this is a rich perspective....

Between Defeat and Destiny is a carefully-crafted distillation of a theme I have been passionate about for many years: how to retrieve passion, buoyancy and vitality from the shadows of stagnation and despair. Bollas' understanding of this territory is potent, original and a hugely supportive vehicle for those deeply engaged in inner work.

Between Defeat and Destiny aligning with vitality

Because it's nearly Christmas, and because I love the theory behind this small offering, I've made this mini-course free on Teachable for the month of December... if you know (or are) someone who feels doomed in any aspect of life, and would like to regain a little bounce, this is a rich perspective....

Between Defeat and Destiny aligning with vitality

Being Human - Winter '22 exploring the ways we need each other

'We have the gift to engage with two very different qualities and streams of time. One of them is a quality of the present moment that is basically an extension of the past. The second is a quality of the present moment...as a gateway to a field of future possibilities...'

Otto Scharmer

How can we live nearer this second possibility, aligning with what is possible in fresh ways? When we balance our respect for past, present and future, we enable our own ripening.

On Tending our Futures, we seek conditions for our blossoming, engaging our 'evolutionary impulse' to serve our unfolding futures...

Tending our Futures This course will appeal to those seeking a deep, textured context in which to freshly sense our own lives. The group will be small, (max 14) and our live sessions form the heart of the course experience.

'We have the gift to engage with two very different qualities and streams of time.

One of them is a quality of the present moment that is basically an extension of the past.

The second is a quality of the present moment that functions as a gateway to a field of future possibilities...'

Otto Scharmer

Tending Our Future explores rich essential territory in all our lives.
Through a focus on presence, integration and emergence, this course looks at how we may tend our own futures as sources of inspiration, clarity and nourishment.

We do this in three ways: looking at how we may best make room for the impacts and residues of the past; how we may engage more vitally in our present experience; and what pathways and perspectives support us in awakening to our future as a source of inspiration and renewal.

Tending our Futures This course will appeal to those seeking a deep, textured context in which to freshly sense our own lives. The group will be small, (max 14) and our live sessions form the heart of the course experience.

RE-RELEASING THIS FREE OFFERING...

I don't usually quote Sandra Bullock, but she really captures something here:

When people are like, 'Life is good,' I go,
'No, life is a series of disastrous moments, painful moments, unexpected moments, and things that will break your heart.
And in between those moments, that's when you savor, savor, savor.'

Sandra Bullock

I created 'to receive and to savour' as a free pandemic-era offering that might bring some sustenance. Re-released this autumn, it's a gentle slow-paced encouragement to deepen our capacity to receive and to savour. All welcome ;-)

to receive and to savour an offering from 'The Art of Wanting'

BETWEEN DEFEAT AND DESTINY
“the fated person feels as he does because the world has not responded
to him in a way that leaves him with hope”

Christopher Bollas

By the time we reach adulthood, many of us are predisposed to feel doomed, impotent or hopeless about core aspects of our lives. In these domains, we sense that life is essentially un-transformable, that we are victims of forces beyond ourselves, that core elements of our potential are already lost. We have a sense that this is 'how things are and always will be...'

But this sense of doom is workable; we are more pliable than we realise and can learn to recover what Bollas calls our 'destiny drive'. This journey between defeat and destiny is one of the richest themes explored in my forthcoming course. All info and early bird pricing below...

Tending our Futures This course will appeal to those seeking a deep, textured context in which to freshly sense our own lives. The group will be small, and our live sessions form the heart of the course experience.

two lovely voices on....EMERGENCE AND PLIABILITY....

"The self you leave behind is only a skin you have outgrown.
Don't grieve for it. Look to the wet, raw, unfinished self, the one you are becoming.
The world, too, sheds its skin: politicians, cataclysms, ordinary days.
It's easy to lose this tenderly unfolding moment..."

from Pat Schneider's Instructions for the Journey....

_______________________

"You cannot stop life, you know.
You are always changing into something else.
Always. Incessantly."

Shunryu Suzuki

Tending our Futures This course will appeal to those seeking a deep, textured context in which to freshly sense our own lives. The group will be small, and our live sessions form the heart of the course experience.

EMBRACING WHAT HAPPENS...

"Let us go back to the very simple formula that I have repeated constantly: that a happening is either embraced or not embraced. If it is embraced, it is also constructed through the imaginative processes into a personal artistic product within. If it is not embraced, it remains like a foreign body within that irritates and troubles my calm. It is like a fly that keeps crawling over my face…’

Neville Symington

Even though this quote is a little dogmatic, it captures something precious: our ability to embrace our experience is life-changing. It softens and weathers us.

When we find ways to embrace our experience, we partake of life's natural dynamism, aligning with creativity and fluidity. When we try to deny or curtail the impact of what happens, we align with denial, rigidity and stagnation. rather than with this process of unfolding influence.

Embracing/Digesting our Experience is one of eight rich modules on my upcoming course, starting Sat October 1. Early bird link good til Friday 16th... all info below...

Tending our Futures This course will appeal to those seeking a deep, textured context in which to freshly sense our own lives. The group will be small, and our live sessions form the heart of the course experience.

Being Human - Live Autumn '22 exploring the ways we need each other

TWINSHIP

'The essence of twinship is the deep human need to experience the essential likeness of an important other...'

Stephen Cope

When, as children, we feel safely held and contained, a new possibility arises: Twinship. We find ourselves wanting to know another being for their own sake.

Twinship is more than just liking someone or recognizing that as humans we have fundamental things in common. It is the living experience of deep mutual discovery with particular others: others with whom there is an intense, often playful or passionate recognition of having 'found' someone who is in some fundamental way 'just like us.'

Twinship is one of six forms of connection we will explore in Being Human, a small online course over six Tuesday evenings from September 13...

Being Human - Live Autumn '22 exploring the ways we need each other

RESONANCE

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”

― James Baldwin

As we grow older, we sometimes lament how rarely we discover 'friends' with the passion and intensity we remember from our youth. This is often accompanied by a sense of loss; as we mature, others are rarely as intensely formative as they once were. The wild alchemy of our early discovery of others tends to diminish. Our processes grow more subtle.

But this leaves room for something fresh: a quality Stephen Cope calls 'Mystic Resonance' - the recognition of meaningful connections with others (artists, writers, musicians, thinkers) that traverse distance and time.

(Resonance is one of the redeeming gifts of adulthood. It is one of six precious ways our relationships sustain us; deepen your affinity with each on Being Human: six ways we need each other, live from September 13th..)

Being Human - Live Autumn '22 exploring the ways we need each other

'Perception bestows blessing' - James Hillman

Mirroring is one of six essential ways of relating we need to experience in order to thrive. On Being Human - my forthcoming online course, we have the opportunity to explore and deepen our understanding of each of these six...

In adulthood, our best mirrors perceive us 'with a blend of accuracy and love...' This is not always easy, and can feel exposing, but it helps us continue to evolve...

To join us in this exploration, for info and early bird pricing (to Sep 7) below...

Being Human - Live Autumn '22 exploring the ways we need each other

'The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens...' - Rilke

Saturday mornings from October 1 - December 3

Taking as touchstones the qualities of Presence, Integration and Emergence, this live course (on zoom) is an opportunity to arrive more richly in this moment and deepen our care for our futures.

Click on the link for more info, testimonials, and an early-early-bird-offer....

Tending our Futures This course will appeal to those seeking a deep, textured context in which to freshly sense our own lives. The group will be small, and our live sessions form the heart of the course experience.

'We deeply need to feel safely held and soothed, aligned, attuned,
and resonant with another non-abandoning being.
It is impossible to exaggerate how much we want this…’

Stephen Cope [from 'Containment', one of Six Categories explored in Being Human]

As we rest into the slow soft last days of August, September will soon be upon us with its own loveliness and settling.

This is an organic, natural time to lean into new moments of learning, and I'm delighted to be offering once again, Being Human Live on Tuesday evenings.

A warm, expansive and accessible course, Being Human deepens our awareness of the rich and diverse forms of connection all of us need in order to thrive. We will be a small contained group, meeting weekly on zoom (supported by rich, evocative modules on Teachable) gently deepening our understanding of the dynamics that shape and nourish us.

Below is a link to best early bird pricing, and further info....please join us if you feel called.

Being Human - Live Autumn '22 exploring the ways we need each other

'Almost all significant human development and transformation happens in the context of interpersonal connection.”
Stephen Cope

My warmest, lightest live online course...will run over five tuesday evenings in May and June with course content available for two years. Being Human covers beautiful, expansive territory, enabling us to look at forms of relationship that help us thrive.

This Easter offer is good to April 25....

Being Human - Live April/May 2021 exploring the ways we need each other

"The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens..."

Rilke

Two Places remain on Tending Our Futures [begins Sat am, Jan 22, from 9-11am]. This rich course offers a guided journey to support participants reflection and exploration. It will appeal to those seeking a deep, textured context in which to tend their own lives in fresh ways.

Through a balance of Presence, Integration and Emergence, we emphasize the value of balancing our care of past, present and future. This enables a beautiful relation to time, wherein we include the wide span of our lives and support our unique ripening.

Together we will bring this territory alive in ways that reach and nourish us, both as individuals and as humans gathering together.

Tending our Futures a gathering from winter to spring 2022

“Everything flows and nothing abides;
everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.”
― Heraclitus of Ephesus

We cannot truly befriend our futures without acknowledging the fluidity of life itself. Change is ubiquitous. Life is ebbing, moving, surging, hurtling always. The extent to which we can make our home amid such dynamism plays a large part in how richly we engage our futures.

For we humans are also creatures in perpetual flux. From birth we unfold in myriad complex ways, developing new faculties, capacities, maturities, even as we are also subject to decline, atrophy and death. Throughout it all we are subject to continual change. If our futures are to enliven us, we need to keep aligning with our pliability in ways we find vital, attractive and compelling.

Yet the dynamic, fluid quality of our identity is something we often fail to take account of when we think about the future. Despite our malleability, we also know ourselves as prone to stagnation and repetition in ways that dismay us. When low, we are particularly inclined to think in static ways, as if we ourselves will stay the same, and life will unfold (badly or well) around us. From this vantage point, impermanence is felt mostly as a threatening force, evoking unreliability, uncertainty and loss in a world of scarcity.

But there are richer ways to envisage impermanence. For it is also a summons to lean into our fluidity in a universe in radical, playful flux. Foregrounding pliability invites us not just to acknowledge change but to identify how we may best align with it. This literally feeds the life that lies ahead for us, ensuring that our futures – and how we evolve within them – are more open, creative, and expansive than they would otherwise be...

(an excerpt from tending our futures, live course earlybird offer below)

Tending our Futures a gathering from winter to spring 2022

earlybird til January 6th....

Tending our Futures a gathering from winter to spring 2022

'The future enters into us in order to transform itself in us long before it happens...'
Rilke

TENDING OUR FUTURES - A GATHERING FROM WINTER TO SPRING

EARLY EARLY BIRD UP TO CHRISTMAS...

Tending our Futures a gathering from winter to spring 2022

"The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens..."

Rilke

EARLY EARLY BIRD: Tending Our Futures

with Emma Philbin Bowman and Simon Courtney

January 22-April 10th Saturdays* 9-11am on zoom, [two meetings take place on Sundays]

Over nine live sessions, we will create space to receive ourselves in places of struggle and sense where we are with freshness, specificity and care. Core themes will include: How we digest our past; relating to fate and destiny; the value of moods and mourning; sensing what calls us and aligning with fluidity and emergence.

Our emphasis will be on bringing this territory alive in ways that reach and nourish us, both as individuals and as humans gathering together.

We envisage this offering as a kind of harbour: one that will enable you to rest, deepen and resource.

Tending our Futures presence, intimacy, emergence