Metamodern Love

The October Metamodern Spirituality Lab in Vermont

Hey y’all.

I’m just putting the so-called “finishing touches” on an article about deception, manipulation, and seduction in our overlapping developmental, transformational & regenerative networks. Coming soon. But in the meanwhiles, you might want to know what’s coming up in-person:

LOVE.

That’s what’s coming up.

Metamodern Love. Etc.

This is especially important if you feel that fragmentation, polarization, regression, and fear are becoming prominent, unhealthy parts of our broader cultural field.

We have to become heart-awake coherence activists in our personal lives and our collective lives. I know, I know. You hear a lot of that shit from traditional and postmodern spirituality, but this comes from a different level of thinking and feeling. Sincere Irony. Big Picture. Simplexity. You get it.

So the October Metamodern Spirituality Lab will be the weekend of Oct. 24th. Or else October 21st if you want to risk the deeper immersion of the pre-retreat experience. We will be at the Sky Meadow Institute in Vermont, collectively exploring love, devotion, eros, philia, bhakti, family, intimacy, etc.

As you know, the MSL phenomenon is half monastery, half bacchanalia, half think-tank, half nature hike. It’s an elite global hangout, but “elite” does not just mean big names, philosophers, and teachers; it also means everyone (and their families) attuned to the spirit of the post-postmodern cultural shift. One of our most important functions is to welcome & recognize people who have been doing this work alone — or in small outlier groups.

We have locally-sourced catered meals, contemplative practice sessions, meditation instruction, collaborative liminal ritual improvisation, physical exercise, potluck meals, dance and music, emotional solidarity, feedback on your projects from high calibre peers, useful farm work, gorgeous natural surroundings, but most of all the Vibe (!) and all the important discussions.

I’ve been saying lately that this is where you “live the conversation.”

Each MSL has a specific theme. We collectively inquire into one of the key functional elements of human spirituality and religion through a “metamodern” lens. This time: Love. What does that mean? Here are discussions that I am looking forward to in October:

• Cosmic Love: Un/Believing a story of Evolutionary and Primordial Love as Nature, Cosmos, and Basic Reality

• The Problem (and Non-Problem) of Eros: The Creative Urge, the Quivering Edge, the appropriate and inappropriate sexualization of wisdom and development.

• Bhakti 101: Making sense of the practices and attitudes of devotional nonduality, guru-yoga, loving surrendering, and kindness.

• Neuro-Cardio Coherence: Meta-emotions & the body; the neurophysiology of coherent feeling states; the organismic basis of the “loving” experience. Heart-mind synchrony.

• Intimate Partners & Meta Romance: Establishing, protecting, and deepening our private partnerships and intimacies is a top human priority. It needs to be explored thematically by intelligent and responsible metamodern communities, as well as being understood as an alchemical chamber for mutual spiritualization.

• Domestic Love: What is the meta family life? Parents, children, intergenerational viability, the heart and hearth of the home.

• Philosophy & Friendship: The circle of wise conviviality across eras, cultures, and identities must continue through the metamodern or integrative mode. How do we become better friends to each other (and to wisdom)? How do we assimilate the sacredness of this in the epoch of the ‘friendship crisis?’

• Love as Ethical and Political Action - Healing the Role of Love as Work. Provide, deserve. Doing our knowing. Who cares how you feel — love is what you do for people and the world.

That’s already awesome. We are also planning to do a “Plato’s Symposium.” That means a festive meal and drinking game where the participants each must deliver an improvised definition or sermon on love. If you haven’t read Plato’s original, check it out. I might bring an idiosyncratic translation of that text I made about ten years ago.

Anything else? We want to do amateur choral music and start building up some metamodern hymns. I would like to do the preliminary work toward some Gurdjieffian dances. We will deepen our Zen koan work. And my hope is that the collective of pre-retreat participants can work out a shared understanding of the basic principles of love (whatever we think that means) to use as the “stations” of the opening ritual procession. Plus, the “field” will also have its say. Our accumulated intersubjectivity is also a player in this game. Watch out.

Personally, beyond the practice sessions, sacred collective work, and collective inquiry, I have two favorite things. (Well, maybe three if you count just getting to hang out on a beautiful property and let the landscape whisper into your soul.)

My first favorite thing is getting the real news.

I cannot trust most of what I see online, no matter who it comes from. My own sensemaking depends on getting “personal experiential information” from people who strike me as being intellectually and emotionally capable of “meta-level” discrimination. We are each other’s most reliable probes into different facets of the world. The conversations you have at MSL are part of your basic way of figuring out what’s really going on.

My second favorite thing — now that we’ve done a few of these — is seeing people grow and change. Newcomers are welcome, and necessary (and you will be surprised how easy it is for you to fit in), but as people return to these events, I see something changing in their faces, tones & “beingness.” They are growing stronger, clearer, more nourished by community, more confident in their ways of being in the world, more capable of agency, mutuality, and embodied value.

Space is limited, but we’d love to have the right people join us at Sky Meadow.

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P.S.

We recorded (thanks Shane!) the final episode of the Realizing the Biosphere podcast series live at the Eco-Spirituality MSL at Eudaimonia in California. Brendan posted it and included the previous episodes here.