Winter Solstice
Reflections on work worth doing & the forthcoming Fugitive Futures.
“Darkness is beautiful, once you learn to play with the shadow.” - Anand Thakur
Winter Solstice.
I know I’m a week late on this but just getting the time to write now.
Growing up, the Solstice wasn’t on my radar at all.
Now, it seems many folks have re-attuned to the recognition of this celestial threshold as significant for both personal and collective ritual.
Five years ago, I wrote an essay called It’s Already Too Late: Reflections at the End of the Decade.
It was my attempt to name the undercurrent of anxiety that seemed to permeate all things, and the sense of urgency that real change needed to happen.
An excerpt:
“Here we are poised on the precipice of the decisive decade — the final chance to implement an entirely different paradigm than the one that has driven us to the edge of extinction.
Some say that we’re already too late to mitigate significant climate disruption and chaos. The rate of change — a metric employed in palliative care to indicate the onset of death — is far greater than most scientists predicted even a few years ago. We are facing daily extinctions of all kinds.
Modern society believes that to be human means to circumvent every limit that opposes us — ultimately seeing death as a biological flaw to be eliminated. Yet, indigenous cultures the world over know the law of life to be the exact opposite —as Stephen Jenkinson says in Lost Nation Road: “it is the limit that gives us the opportunity to practice being human.”
By eliminating endings we have triggered the end of everything else.”
In a twist I didn’t see coming, it was two months later when the COVID pandemic took hold and our timeline swerved into what seemed like a major detour.
I believe much of the mayhem we’re seeing today can be attributed to that encounter. Folks are still fractured and frayed and we’re trying to make sense of it.
I remain proud of the contribution I curated with longtime friend Zamir Dhanji - a live podcast series called The Pandemic Is A Prism.
Another major encounter has also been the rise of Artificial Intelligence. It remains to be seen whether this presence is a “tool” to serve human striving, or if it will be the end of human striving.
In my essay above, I circle the question that remains pressing & true: what is worth doing?
For me, 2024 marked a near completion of my work in documentary.
In February, my filmmaker collaborators and I offered our initial global release of The Village of Lovers and multi-day online summit A Cry from the Future. We had 6000+ folks attend and many thousands watch our film about the radical research project of Tamera and their culture aligned with the spirit of eros.
I recently began reading through the book ‘The Maiden King’ by Robert Bly & Marion Woodman. It some ways it’s a follow-up to Iron John, this time using the Russian story of Ivan to explore ‘the reunion of the masculine & feminine.’
Bly has a passage that struck me:
“Sometimes when one reads diaries written in one’s twenties, one finds written there accounts of sudden illumination, perhaps a moment or an entire morning when the spiritual goal of one’s life is utterly clear. The clarity is so amazing we know we will never forget it.”
I had such moment when flipping through an old journal from my time at Tamera’s Global Love School. This was the 10 day program that I attended four times over five years in the course of producing the documentary.
All of us, John, Julia and I, were not “outsiders” to the community and the work. We were participants deeply involved in our own process alongside the crafting of the film.
In my journal entry from 2017, I wrote about a calling I had to participate in stewarding “sexual rites of passage for men” in service of directing this energy in back to right relationship with the feminine.
I had completely forgotten I’d written this. And yet, now six years later, this has become a clear focus of my work with The Mythic Masculine.
Bly writes:
“It was actually an illumination; some sort of light came in from the other world, or from the stars. […] We understood our life had changed; we knew nothing would ever be the same.”
Life is mysterious and the soul tends to leave clues along the way - these flashes of illumination penetrating from the otherworld.
In October I attended the 40th anniversary of the Minnesota Men’s Conference and had the honour of visiting Robert Bly’s grave. It felt a fitting pilgrimage in service to the mythopoetic lineage in which I continue to steep & serve.
After multiple events this year, my collaborator Deus Fortier and I have now developed an ecosystem of offerings for men with exactly the intention of stewarding men’s erotic power in service to life - and we will continue to grow this in the year to come.
For men who are curious, you’re welcome to explore:
Awakening the Wild Erotic (In Person Ritual Weekend)
The Deep Masculine (Online, 3 Month Intensive)
The Satyr’s Den (Online, Ongoing Men’s Circle)
In March & May I also completed two trainings with Trevor Yellich in transformational psychotherapeutics, in support my one-on-one mentorship for men. I find this directly compliments my mythopoetic lens & tools I’ve acquired along the way.
UP NEXT: FUGITIVE FUTURES
There remains one final effort to fulfill my spirit obligation that began 10 years ago with my connection to Tamera.
In Jan 2025, we’re offering the final planetary release of The Village of Lovers, which you can register for now.
And we’re hosting Fugitive Futures (Jan 29-Feb 2) a five day journey that weaves together some familiar faces (Bayo Akomolafe, Pat McCabe, Martin Shaw, Stephen Jenkinson) along with many new friends & a global community of folks like you.
You are warmly invited to join us.
If you made it this far, thank you. If you find inspiration from my work, thank you.
I’ll keep going if you do.
IM