Deep Imagination, Soulcraft, and the Reanimation of the World – November 2024, New Zealand

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-enlivens us as individuals but also erodes 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.