June 5th – August 26th (see detailed schedule)
Venues: Boulder, CO area & San Isabelle National Forest, CO.
Cost: $1150.00
Early Registration Discount! $995 if you apply and register by May 5th
How is Earth calling you to be and act in this time of immense planetary and humankind crisis; this opportunity for radical creativity?
How is your soul longing for you to participate?
Thresholds to Belonging is a community-based exploration of the conversations, myths and practices that feed our souls and the Soul of the World. It’s an embodied discovery in ways of perceiving and participating that reweave us each in unique, aware, intimate-felt-relatedness and reciprocity with Earth, Cosmos, Mystery and our own souls. It’s essential that we rediscover how to kindle warming fires that can burn through the naturally occurring and reoccurring fog of amnesia that can mire us in forgetfulness, depression, complacency and fear, detaining us too long from living our one wild and precious life in service to the world.
Over the course of 3 months, together and individually, we will seek to open to the mystical, visible and ‘invisible’, forms and forces of Nature and Psyche while allowing what we encounter to deeply feed and do its change work on us. If we are so fortunate Eros will lead us, as in a romance with the world, toward the heart of what calls most deeply to each of us. The Anima Mundi and our ailing human culture are gravely hungry for each one of us to bring the expression of our soul-rooted creativity into generative form.
Session One: Weekend Immersion: Friday, 6/5, 5:30 pm through Sunday, 6/7, 3 pm. Boulder Foothills.
Session Two: 5-day Intensive: Tuesday, 7/7 6 pm through Sunday, July 12, 3pm. All car-camping at a remote base camp in the San Isabel National Forest, 3.5- 4 hrs S. of Boulder.
Session Three: Daylong: Sunday, 7/19, 9 am -8 pm
Final Session: Evening Potluck and Council: Wednesday, 8/26, 5:30 pm-9 pm.
Program Fee: $1150.00 / $995 by May 5th
Includes guide fee, camping fees, retreat center fees, and (14 total) wholesome, organic, vegetarian breakfast and dinner meals.
By design we will not travel very far from home and yet the territory we may wander will be boundless. Over the course of 12 weeks we will gather for a weekend immersion in a foothills retreat center on the outskirts of Boulder, a 5-day, all camping immersion in the San Isabel National Forest, and two additional sessions in Boulder. We’ll cultivate states of consciousness and ways of moving that allow us to reverently approach and encounter the mysteries and wild otherness of the world. Engaging in this way (further) evokes the deep and particular mystery of who we are and reveals our unique place of belonging to the world. Between sessions participants will conduct an ongoing council practice, by and for themselves, with support from their guides. Participants will enact a ‘Day Walk’, individually or collectively, in June. Each return home to friends and loved ones, work and community, will be an opportunity to embody and live the mystery and vitality of our souls.
Required reading: The mythic story called, “The Toe Bone and the Tooth” in a book called, “Stealing Benefacio’s Roses,” by Martin Prechtel.
Suggested reading: “Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche,” by Bill Plotkin
- Group size is limited to 8 participants.
- Participants will carpool to session locations and provide their own lunches, snacks, camping gear, and potluck contribution for communal dinners on 7/19 and 8/26.
- Enrollment is by Application. Please request an application from Mary or April.
- Payment plans can be arranged. Once your application has been accepted, you will be asked to send a non-refundable deposit of $550 to hold your space.
- For more information or to apply please contact:
Mary at be.earth.now@gmail.com
April at aprilglaser@msn.com
This offering is also intended as a way to support the generation of soulful community and viable, local, place-based cultural forms that are both sourced in and in service to the wild otherness of the more-than-human world. Please join us in this effort to re-wild human culture in the greater Front Range area by gathering with us for this exploration.
Guided by Mary Marsden
Mary is a soul-guide, mentor and wilderness guide. She creatively and heart-fully invites people to be in intimate and vulnerable relationship with Nature, Soul and Spirit. Mary is gifted at guiding individuals into their dreamworlds, accessing the power of deep imagination, and supporting those who are ready and willing to be claimed by their unique, mystical relationship with the World. She guides with humor, genuine compassion, and a deeply intuitive knowing of the soul journey. With grace, beauty, and fierceness, Mary invites sojourners to discover their unique gifts and to bring them into world – to feed Life itself. Mary’s work is deeply informed by her love for the Colorado River Basin and it’s imperiled waters and spirit. She is a mother, river-runner, front yard gardener and tends a flock of hens in her backyard in Boulder, CO. Mary incorporates her training and experience in Hakomi, somatic psychotherapy, trauma work, and creative movement into her guiding. She leads Animas programs, her own locally based soul programs and mentors individuals, near and far, on their soul journeys.
Assisted by April Glaser
April is a devotional poet, visionary artisan, lover of truth and the feral bodied Earth. Her work circles around a primary longing to speak the voice of the land in a way that others can intimately hear. She practices this daily through prayer (which she shares at http://www.wildlyopen.com) and by holding space for others to re-open and remember their own sacred truth. She has been blessed to study with some incredible soul-guides over the past several years, including Mary Marsden, Bill Plotkin, Annie Bloom, Jade Sheer, Johanna Macy and David Atekaptzin Young, and is now honored be an assistant to the ever-unfolding, mysterious dance of soul. April lives in Boulder, CO, where she climbs tall mountains and snowboards down their unfathomable slopes. She practices Thai Massage and teaches yin yoga, both as a way to guide others into the full inhabitance of their precious or precarious human flesh. She has an extensive background in dance and performance, with further exploration in psychology, eco-psychology, Soulcraft, social activism and environmental stewardship.
This program will be run under the auspices of Outdoor Leadership Training Seminars under a permit issued by the San Isabelle National Forest.
Outdoor Leadership Training Seminars
…Earth, isn’t this what you want? To arise in us, invisible?
Is it not your dream, to enter us so wholly there’s nothing left outside us to see? What, if not transformation,
is your deepest purpose? Earth, my love,
I want that too. Believe me,
no more of your springtimes are needed to win me over—even one flower
is more than enough. Before I was named I belonged to you. I seek no other law but yours, and know I can trust
the death you will bring….
— R.M. Rilke
Be Earth Now 