ONLINE: In Times of Crisis: 2-day Course With Pat McCabe & Bayo Akomolafe

The great remaking, the great surrender. The great Mystery. When we come to the end of our own resource, and fall against the door of the mystery, sometimes it swings open, and gives a view that remakes you. Remakes reality. Shows you another way of being that is already here, usually, but has gone unnoticed. The tools to perceive had not yet been given. But only, only, when you have absolutely nothing, no-thing, no knowing left. Your understanding has met its end. Then comes the teachers of the Great Mystery.
- Pat McCabe

In this interactive online workshop, over 2 immersive and participatory days, Pat McCabe and Bayo Akomolafe will share their wisdom on role of the sacred and the ‘more-than-human’ within our relationships with ourselves, our communities and the world around us.

We will explore how we respond to crisis, and how by re-weaving our relationships with everything that is not ‘us’, we can de-colonialise our ways of thinking and being, re-navigate where we go from here, and refine how we cope with demise and change.

We are experimenting with new ways of creating sanctuary and solidarity and in the global context we now find ourselves in, this event is more timely than ever.

Sessions will take place on Saturday 28th March and Sunday 29th March from 1pm until 6pm GMT each day. We will meet via Zoom, and the sessions will include teachings by Pat and Bayo, practice, story, breakouts, deep dives and discussions. Even though we will be online, there will be a strong sense of community and intimacy with ample time to reflect on the meaning of what we share on a personal level.

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The human era has been defined by mastery of the natural world, technological innovation, competition and growth, with such a singular vision that we have caused mass extinctions of plant and animal species, polluted the oceans and permanently altered the atmosphere. As we enter the geological era of the Anthropocene, our human story is characterised by one of separation, and it is this same story that lies at the root of the ecological crisis we are facing today.

Yet it is not just an environmental crisis we are facing, but a spiritual one too, as human psychology and wellbeing bear the brunt of a lifestyle and narrative antithetical to the natural order we are part of. We struggle to cope with emotions like grief, fear and loneliness, status anxiety and threat perception, the loss of old stories without new ones to replace them. Our system seems to sit in a self-perpetuating cycle, where our outer and inner worlds collide.

If this means that we are suffering from a crisis of relationship, how can we heal the rifts that separate us from the natural world, each other, and ourselves?

By looking at our behaviour patterns, psychology and attitudes, we can reestablish compassionate and harmonious relationships. We can re-localise and re-attune ourselves, creating a systemic shift in the ways we live and interact at the political level too.

To what extent could working with the sacred and the ‘more-than-human’, at the interface of our inner and outer worlds, of the collective and the individual, the material and the spiritual, help us to reweave broken bonds, reinstate the fabric of community, and reestablish harmony in our relationships with ourselves, one another, and the natural world? Would this method allow us to avoid replicating oppressive systems? How would such a journey positively impact our lives and our environments?

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This retreat will:
* Foster personal, ecological and spiritual resilience and renewal at the level of the individual and community;
* Equip a group of individuals to step into leadership based on the principles of natural systems and compassionate relationships.