“The Way of Community”
A social spiritual practice designed to promote personal empowerment,
leadership maturity, cultural transformation, and lifetime community.
Humanity is confronted by a unique 21st century challenge. We, humankind, pose a grave danger to our own survival, to our on-going evolution as a species. This is because our technological prowess has outgrown our social capabilities, our ability to get along. If we are to survive and to fulfill our own evolutionary potential we need to rediscover our fundamental nature as community beings.
Community once served as the cradle from which our unique consciousness was nurtured, it was our natural social habitat. The loss of community adds to the danger we now face. To survive and thrive, we need to tap community's profound potential as an incubator of human consciousness and activate humanity's hallmark survival strategy: collaborative learning. These are the principle goals of The Way of Community.
The Way of Community combines community building, collaborative learning and an on-line interactive community and thereby offers a sustained experience of community. The program starts by building community, then employs the natural properties of community-life to stimulate personal growth, cultural awareness and new leadership capabilities.
The Way of Community is a social spiritual practice which employs a set of disciplined social spiritual practices. Among other things these practices focus attention, instill openness, encourage shared inquiry, arouse awareness, deepen reflection, and promote collaborative learning. Aligning heart, mind and spirit these practices set the stage for transformation and the emergence of collective wisdom.
The Way of Community gathers together seekers, community builders, social and environmental activists, leaders-in-the-making, and those with an intuition of the integrating power of community life. Together we explore and experientially apprehend the underlying wholeness in which we are all embedded. This first-hand experience of deep interconnectedness empowers all of our actions, nurtures our relationships and infuses them with meaning and depth.
The Way of Community offers an experience of social depth. Exploring this depth fully requires time and intention. The Way of Community makes time for what takes time by offering a series of voyages into community life. These forays build one upon the other. This approach enables participants to make stage-by-stage commitments to a journey that, as it unfolds, reveals greater depths and more profound learning, which, in turn, engenders greater commitment. Along the way this program nurtures bonds of connection that may be sustained for a life-time. Here are the initial phases of this overall journey.
The Gateway to Community
The Gateway to Community provides an experiential introduction to the process of building community as well as the challenges and rewards of participation in a social spiritual practice. Participants commit only to this introductory intensive experience and receive the extra benefit of having access to a follow-up on-line community. This allows for a deeper integration of the gateway experience and exposure to the benefits of participation in an on-going on-line learning community. To see a flyer describing the next Gateway intensive click on www.mariposagroup.org.
Pathways to Community
Pathways to Community is a 24 month process which includes 6 day intensives (every 6 months) and an on-going, on-line facilitated learning community. By combining face-to-face intensives with a virtual learning community this phase provides a sustained immersion in community processes and exposure to greater depths of engagement and learning. During this phase participants will utilize social spiritual practices which arouse collective awareness, increase connection and make available new ways of thinking and acting. Participants will develop a more complex and resilient sense of self while simultaneously acquiring a greater capacity for deep and meaningful connection with others. It is expected that enduring bonds will arise from this shared endeavor.
Lifetime Community
For those desiring it Life-time Community, offers the opportunity to commit to an on-going community of fellow practitioners for purposes that each community will define for itself. This phase will focus upon each unique community acquiring the ability to govern itself and to define its own direction and purpose. During this phase the participant's leadership sensibilities will be further cultivated. Intensive experiences will be designed and held for self-defined purposes. Once having achieved self-governance a life-time community will become autonomous, defining for itself the level of commitment required as well as the type of support it desires from the Way of Community process. For a more detailed description of each of the stages click here.
On-Line Learning Community
Each of these phases will be embedded in an on-going, on-line, hosted learning community. Here participant's will have access to resources, virtual meeting places, periodic conferences with notable leaders as well as the capacity to design community spaces for purposes to be determined along the way. This will provide immersion in sustained community processes of engagement, inquiry, learning, shared reflection, creative expression and meaningful connection.
