In Portland . . . Nov. 17 - 18
@ Portland State University. Sponsored
by: Program for Culture, Ecology, and Leadership
Speakers Series ~~ http://www.piiecl.pdx.edu/Sylvapolitan Rising: Plant-inspired
Teachings on Gaian Evolution, Culture Genesis, and the Flowering of Humanity
Friday, 7 - 9 pm
Free Public Lecture - @ PSU, SBA #190 in Business/Education
Building, 631 SW Harrison St.
As the Empire building of predatory capitalism begins to crumble beneath
the weight of its excesses, and many First Nations people disappear or
become radically changed before the ongoing forces of colonization, we
find the world awash in cultural fragments and detritus. It is out of
this broth of identity nutrients, this compost heap of social possibilities,
that an archetype of human renewal is arising. I call this the 'sylva'
(of the forest, and in its expanded sense, Nature) 'politan' (citizen
of). The sylvapolitan is a bridge figure, alchemizing balance, and often
synthesis, between the colonizers and colonized; the techno-rational mind
of modernity and perennial wisdoms; reason (eagle) and spirit (condor),
male and female knowledges. The sylvapolitan represents our potential
to survive this era of great extinctions, to act as co-creative partners
with the great Evolutionary intelligences of the planet, and flourish
as a species. This talk explores the role of elder life forms (e.g., fungi,
plants, and animals) in the cultivation and education of the sylvapolitan,
its the lineage and attributes, the significance of its current proliferation,
and its potential to help us understand culture change in these transitional
times and align to positive outcomes.
Saturday workshops - $15 for one, $25 for bothWorkshop I - 9:30 - 11:30 am
Singing Alive the Creation-Body - the 'frequency' of the sylvapolitan
(likely at City Repair headquarters, 2122 SE Division, Portland)
Learning thru books and their visually absorbed symbols of conceptual
abstractions is but a blip on the historical screen of human development.
More universal to humanity are the oral traditions of learning, those
that use the voice to create felt engagements with information. Songs
are especially effective in helping us to resonate with teachings, to
become that which we seek to know, and thereby open ourselves to be more
fully changed by them. This workshop introduces the 'frequency' of the
sylvapolitan, in an energetic encounter with the archetype. By way of
communal breath work, toning, spirit languaging, simple chants, prayers,
songs, and visualizations, we move thru an origin story of the sylvapolitan.
Beneath the sunlight of an opening heart, our embodied evolutionary heritage
awakens and thrives, eventually passing to us an impulse of self-transformation,
the same one that creates crystals out of rock, and butterflies out of
caterpillars. How we fertilize the soil of our incarnation (vitality practices),
tend the garden of our relations (love thy neighbor), attend to the weather
of our emotions (surface and clear), and improve the climate of our mind
(imaginal hygiene and meditation), determines the extent to which this
impulse matures and blossoms in each of us. Such organic understandings
of 'living for a living', defines the Way of the sylvapolitan. Workshop II - 1 :00 - 3:30 pm
Sprouting Thru the Cultural Compost - discussion forum on enacting the
sylvapolitan story (likely at City Repair headquarters, 2122 SE Division,
Portland)
If indigeneity is understood as a way of life, a heritage of human-nature
relationships that is ever evolving in form but unified in substance,
then the sylvapolitan represents a re-indigenization of humanity. However,
this is not a retro 'back to the land' phenomena, but a cyclic spiral
around to a new engagement with the society of Nature, one tempered by
the crucible of our historical passage. This workshop is a discussion
forum for us to identify sylvapolitan characteristics in our lives, to
develop an eye for noticing them as sprouts thru cracks in the proverbial
road of progress, and to apply this archetype to understand the power
of Nature to act thru us in generating culture change. We will go over
ways to shed the conditioning of corporate-sponsored reality and the various
'consensus trances' beneath it, to bring into activation our 'original
instructions' revealed by this shedding. As we shape the sylvapolitan
world view, we will engage in a few activities which I feel help root
the experience, and facilitate its flowering. Among these can be: enlivening
the world thru discourses of familiarity and kinship; exploring the languages
of Nature, such as flower fragrances, and other 'signatures'; doing exercises
to move the locus of learning from the head to the radiant 'feeling body';
exposing unconscious judgment patterns in our inherited ideologies and
daily conversations and replacing them with organic metaphors and frame
stories; immersing ourselves in visualizations that effect change in the
world by bringing things together (synergy) rather than taking things
apart (analysis); and ways to respectfully and artfully feed on composting
cultural forms (and avoid their toxins), and transmute them into their
more expansive potentials. In Olympia, WA. . . Nov. 6Pro-Active Health and Gaian EvolutionMonday, 6:30 pm. @ Evergreen State University (Seminar 2, C2109) sponsored by the Healing Arts CollectiveCosmopolis, WA . . . Sept. 9thOrganizing Gathering for Singing
Alive ~~ @ Rivermeadow, 1778 Northriver Rd, Cosmopolis, WA
98537 This is an invitation to attend a gathering to share our
circle songs, dances, and music, and work with the vision and logistics
of putting this ceremonial village together for a weekend sometime next
summer (2007). We will meet around 12 noon at the planned site for
the event, a beautiful ribbon of meadows along the Northfork river of
SW Washington, on Sat., Sept. 9th. We will do our work and play
over the rest of the day and into the evening, and you are encouraged
to stay overnight. Bring food, water, instruments, songs, camping
gear, etc.directions:
From Olympia, take 101 towards Aberdeen. Go S. on Hwy 8, which turns into
Hwy 12. Take the Montesano exit and turn left on 107. Turn left when it
hooks back up with 101 (approx 7 miles). Immediately after the town of
Artic, there will be a bridge over a river. Turn left onto North River
road. Follow it approx 11 miles to 1778 (Next to Blue Mountain goat ranch).
There will be a blue garage there. Rivermeadow is approx. 3/4 miles in.
Follow the path across the bridge until you get there.for more info contact: Morgan Brent (xen@kevcom.com);
Michael ‘Skeeter’ Pilarski (friendsofthetrees@yahoo.com)
~ 541.386.6052In Tacoma, WA . . . Sept.
76:30 - 9:00 pm @ Crystal Voyage - 2601 East "D"
St. - Suite 201, Tacoma, WA
www.crystalvoyage.com
WA state chapter of the American Herbalist GuildHerbalism and Culture Change
The premise of this talk is that what we do to nature we do to ourselves
(and visa versa), and that this can be cogently understood in our relations
with medicinal plants. This talk uses competing models of herbal efficacy
to understand competing models of human culture, and points to their resolution
in a balanced ecology of knowledge, exemplified in integrated, or 'global'
herbalism.
The active constituent (AC or pharmaceutical) model of herbalism is materialistic,
mechanistic, and reductionist; it seeks to identify chemistries in plants
with biological potential to act upon specific structures and functions
in the human body to positive effect, or attack agents presumed to cause
disease. Therapeutic relevance takes place on the level of molecules,
usually in microscopic battles of dominance and exclusion. In contrast,
the whole plant (WP or ecological) model is inherently vitalistic, holistic,
and extends into animistic understandings of relationship; it necessitates
an intact inner plant ecology to then 'teach' organizational order, impart
life force, or otherwise nourish and balance the inner human ecology.
These two models validate different medical ideologies, reflect different
ways of knowing the world, and affirm different cultural ethos. In this
talk we will use the AC metaphor to understand the forces of modernity,
(e.g., patriarchy, scientific materialism, Protestantism) that have been
crucial to the generation of Western culture, and by extension global
industrialism. We then turn to the whole plant (WP or ecological) model
of herbal efficacy, and apply it to understand cultures that are cosmologically
and physically interactive with the productive forces of the land, that
lack extensive social hierarchy and private property, and that value social
elements that constellate around the procreative and nurturing principles
associated with the feminine. We use these models to critically analyze
modern history, illuminate the modern cultural wars (however we might
define them), and discuss their integration in synergistic ‘bridge
cultures’ appearing worldwide.In Abadiania, Brazil .
. . August 15 - 28John of God (Joao de Deus)I'm taking a small group to see John of God, a trance medium
who, via the 'Entities' that work thru him, presides over a hospital in
Brazil, free, and staffed by volunteers. The place is known for
psychic surgery, and bringing about miraculous cures, and spiritual awakenings.
People from all over the world make the pilgramage to Abadamia for this
reason, and to be here is to be immerged in an international cultural
of spiritual healing. Let me know if you'd like to accompany us
. .
In Mosier OR . . . August 5-7@Metapoesis ~~ http://www.cityrepair.org/wiki.php/wow/mainSpirit Languaging and Ceremonial Voicework
- Communiversity Workshop
This session is a encapsulation of how the spirits and intuitions accessed
thru various plants (and fungi), taught me to use my voice for various
empowering, devotional, healing, and mystically fun ends. We begin with
Taoist-influenced warm up exercises, with which we cultivate awareness
of the body as a musical instrument, one that can project a voice that
charges ourselves (and those around us) with harmonic life force each
time we use it. We then move into the fertile spaces between toning and
singing, known as 'soning' or 'tribal talk'. This is where the groundswells
of spirit languaging arise, a free-form, primordial broth of sounds, syllables,
melody riffs, breaths, animal utterances, plants whisperings, and elemental
voicings, that nourishes our re-creation. This allows us to get free of
english language patterns, and social acceptability issues about what
comes out of our mouth, surfaces embodied understandings, clears blocks,
cleanses our vibrational palette, and gets us on the 'felt' wavelength
of communication shared by all tribes of existence. From there we voice
our rebirth into communion with the Ancestors, singing ourselves Alive
as we journey our way thru the story of Creation. Thru the imagery of
the journey, the teachings of the songs, and the resonance of community,
we awaken our body to its structural destiny to flower into its Divine
potentials. Those who don’t think they can sing are encouraged to
come and claim their birthright! Prescribed for those suffering from left-brain
dominance, and unintegrated neocortexes. Sat, late morning . . . Surfing the Wave of Whatz going On - Communiversity Workshop
This is a medley of a few of my raps - the culture of Nature, the Gaian
agenda for humanity, plant teachings, the human flowering response, and
the rise of the sylvapolitan - all weaving a kind of unified field theory
of indigenous consciousness, a visionary understanding of the zsigns of
the times. From all this come some juicy directions HOME, and ways to
enjoy the journey. Sun., late morningIn Pleasant Hill, OR .
. July 22-23@ NW Herb Fest
http://www.herbaltransitions.com/Classes.htmlHere I will be doing a talk on lessons (tough love!) from
the Amazonian Teacher plants, and a morning Song Circle (or two) . . . In Oakville, WA . . July
12-13 @ Wild Thyme Farm (35 minutes SSW
of Olympia)
http://www.wildfermentation.com/
http://www.wildthymefarm.com/
Wild Fermentation and WildfoodCrafting
This event is being co-produced by Shari Trnka and I Foraging and
kitchern witchery. Email me for more info . .
In Veneta, OR . . July 7-9 @ Oregon Country Faire
http://www.oregoncountryfair.org/I be doing a couple talks at the Spoken Word performance venues. They are (tentatively) titled "What
the Plants Teach: cultural evolution", and "What
the Plants Teach: human flowering". They will
be at The Rabbit Hole (Friday @ 1pm), and Chez Rays (Sat @ 2 pm).
If enough quiet time and space can be found, we will also do one or two
ceremonial singing circles as well . . . In Portland, OR . . July
6 @ Portland State University. Program
for Culture, Ecology, and Leadership
http://www.piiecl.pdx.edu/From 4-6 pm I will be doing a guest lecture on Indigenous
Consciousness. Education and Business Blding (corner of Broadway
and Harrison), Room 314.
In Fairyland . . June 23-25@Skalitude Retreat Center, North
Cascade Mts., WA
http://www.fairycongress.com Songs from the Garden ~~ 6:30
am Sat. and Sun. morns:
Wake up! Start your day with a morning cup of breath-work, visualization,
tones, sones, and songs. We sing ourselves Alive as we journey thru the
Story of Creation, weaving the double helix of the devic and de'human
whirleds into a flowering of the heart, into the promise of heaven as
earth. Those humans who have yet to discover their birthright as a singing
species are encouraged to come, and let the fairies help you blossom your
voice . . Tribal Talk ~~ in the evening . . .
Tribal talk is variant of 'soning', which explores the fertile spaces
between toning and singing. While soning encompasses the full-range of
sounds, syllables, melodies, and breaths in a kind of free-form, primordial
excavation of human voice possibilities, tribal talk is more structured,
and most importantly, more conversational. In this session, we begin with
soning as a warm up, and then direct the creative flow to the formation
of inter-dimensional languages, and dialogues. Tribal talk is the art
of being very articulate in speaking words with no meaning, i.e. no 'apparent'
meaning, for all the nuances of intonation, phrasing, timing, the give
and take of speaking and listening, etc., all that makes for good conversation,
are highly present, for they carry the stream of meaning.
A well-executed tribal talk session helps cleanse our vibrational palate,
gets us on the 'felt' wavelength of communication, creates space for other
beings to converse with us and thru us, and is good, mystical fun! In Fairfax, CA . . June 7th@FlowMo Pilates Studio (http://www.flow-studio.com),
85 Bolinas Rd, Suite 9.7 pm - by donationDreamtime singing - a voice
jam in the key of Creationthis gathering will likely be followed, depending on time
and energy, by a discussion of "Sylvapolitan Rising - an emerging
archetype of cultural evolution". . . . In Portland, OR . . May 24th@ Village Building Convergence (http://www.cityrepair.org/wiki.php/projects/vbc/) Disjecta ~~ 230 E. Burnside (cross street is 3rd)
enter from SE 3rd St. Time tbaSylvapolitan Rising: on
pro-active identities in transitional timesIn Okanogan, WA . . . May 6-7@Okanogan Family Barter Faire Volunteer
Summit http://www.okanoganfamilyfaire.comCeremonial singing - a voice
jam in the key of flowering - 7 am Sat. and Sun. mornings
In Oakland, CA. . . April 16Sylvapolitan Rising ~~ in song
and story
Rumi-nations on the emerging Tone Age. As many of us make the choices
to come to know and inhabit our imaginal bliss, we create pools of vibrational
nourishment in which we can spawn ourselves anew, recreate ourselves as
Sylvapolitans. The Sylvapolitan inherits the lineage of indigenous elder
wisdom, the lifeways harmonized with the ecological intelligence of the
mountains and forests, the deserts and rivers, with the metabolism of
Gaia. The Sylvapolitan is a perennial figure, ebbing as civilizations
rise, and flowing forward again as they inevitably crash, to then receive
the 'nutrients' (art forms, technologies, spiritual insights, and such)
released by their composting. We will explore the tides of the times,
and how to best utilize our Sylvapolitan instincts to effect graceful
passage thru the rapidly rising waters@8801 Skyline Blvd, Oakland, CA
beginning at 7:00 pm, Sunday,
RSVP requested: contact Ali (earthmemory@yahoo.com)
by donationIn Fairfax, CA. . . March 27Soning Alive - a shamanic voice
jam
Thru breath, visualization, toning, ‘soning’ (the liminal
whirled between toning and singing), and singing, we will journey thru
the story of Creation. The imagery of Gaian evolution, and teachings of
the songs helps us cultivate a garden within us, and so awakens our body
to its structural destiny to flower into conscious identification with
the Divine. From flowers follow fruits, which will be offered to any of
the tribes of creation that wish to join our circle of shapeshifting sound
and movement.
@ Laughing Mama Multi-Cultural Center
12 School Street Fairfax, CA
beginning at 7:30 pm, Monday
by donationIn Portland . . . SpringtimeWhat the Plants Teach
an attunement to Gaian Wisdom and the Power of the GreenMarch 7 ~ Intro: How Things got to be the
Way they Are
March 21 ~ Our Legacy of Indigenous Consciousness
April 4 ~ Perennial Herbalism and Teacher Plants
April 18 ~ Active Constituent (AC) Culture and its Discontents
May 2 ~ The Composted Cosmopolitan and the Fertilized
Sylvapolitan
May 16 ~ The Wave of Whatz going On, and How to Surf
it to Shore@Awakenings (big ground floor studio)
1016 SE 12th avenue
(bus #15 &17), Portland, OR
Tuesdays, 6:30-9 pm
by donationIn Olympia . . . March
2-3 Synergy, the fifth annual
Sustainable Living Conference
March 1-4, at Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA
http://www.evergreen.edu/events/synergyMarch 3, 10-12 am
Workshop - The Human Flowering Response (the frequency) - This
is an act-ivating meditation, inspired by a variety of traditions, including
Taoist movement arts, Amazonian Plant-based healing, and anthroposophy.
Seated in a circle with eyes closed, we breath, tone, 'sone' (the liminal
whirled between toning and singing), and sing our way thru the story of
Creation. Thru the imagary of the journey and teachings of the songs,
we cultivate the 'plant within' and so awaken our body to its structural
destiny to flower into conscious identification with the Divine. Those
who don’t think they can sing are encouraged to come and claim their
birthright! This workshop is linked to Shari Trnka's procession of the
flowersMarch 2, 2 -3 pm
Lecture - The Human Flowering Response (the story) - We can understand
our spiritual life to begin when we feel the gravity of Union pull our
spirit into deepening relations with the world around us. This gravity
can be felt in the world within us as well, as our embodied evolutionary
heritage awakens and thrives beneath the sunlight of an opening heart.
As our resonance with the Divine increases, the impulse of self-transformation
carried thru this lineage, thru all the tribes of creation, activates
itself thru the plant-like nature of our nervous system. How we fertilize
the soil of our incarnation, tend the garden of our relations, attend
the weather of our emotions, and improve the climate of our mind, determines
the extent to which this impulse matures in each of us. To cultivate oneself
with the intention to flower defines a way of life, one previewed in sacred
cultures of the past, and given new forms and urgency in modern life.
. This workshop is linked to Shari Trnka's procession of the flowers.