The Yearlong Soulcraft Immersion – 2023

The application deadline for this Yearlong Immersion is December 31st, 2022. The guides will review and reach out after that date. 

The Yearlong Soulcraft Immersion: Cultivating Soul-Infused Artistry and Leadership in a Time of Global Change is an advanced program for people already immersed in their soul-discovery process and who are either in a leadership position or are longing to support radical change in our world through cultivating their most vital, visionary essence. This program is focused on neither healing nor therapy, but rather on the underworld journey of soul encounter and on the development of the skills and sensibilities required for the embodiment of cultural artistry and leadership. This is a courageous journey into the mystical darkness of the soul and the depths of the heart, there to gather the images, symbols, and themes of our individual  mythopoetic identities.

The Yearlong Soulcraft Immersion is anchored by four group sessions – three 5-day sessions and one 8-day session – spread out over eight months in four stunning landscapes of the American West.

This year-long highly experiential program allows our personal relationships, our group field, our intimacy with the wild Earth, and our facility with soulcrafting to develop and deepen through extended contact and practice. Our primary goal is to enable and support each participant’s fullest contribution to the Earth community at this time of planetary transformation. During the year, we employ the full range of soulcraft practices, selecting them according to the developing needs of the individuals and the group, as well as the challenges and seductions of the wild. A 3-day vision fast will take place during the third session. Participants work on group and individualized assignments between sessions.

We’ve found that people can reach extraordinarily deep when they have much of a year to do so, when they are consistently supported by an ongoing group (maximum of 13) and a pair of guides, and when they are steadily assisted to respond to the signs and opportunities that appear during the year. There is an exceptional kind of magic that happens when a group field forms around a journey that has ample time to unfold.

The Yearlong Soulcraft Immersion takes the form of a yearlong vision-fast ceremony or underworld journey. By “underworld journey,” we mean a descent to soul that unfolds in three stages: Severance, Liminality or Sacred World, and Return.

The Severance stage involves the deconstruction of the life you’ve been living, a positive disintegration or dismemberment of the way you’ve been belonging to the world — wiping the slate clean in order to uncover what the soul has in mind for the rest of your life. The sound and fury of one’s current way of belonging (as rewarding and as healthy as this might be) needs first to be quieted before you’ll be able to hear something else — the still, small voice crying out in the wilderness of your life, your true voice, the sound of the one life you can truly call your own.

The Severance is the descent portion of the journey. It begins with the first session and continues for most participants up to and perhaps through the second, for a four or five month-long unraveling, which most everyone experiences as ecstatic and freeing as well as psychospiritually challenging at times. Our second session deepens the unraveling and begins the Sacred World stage: the exploration of the mysteries of nature and psyche. (As Rilke put it, “Now you must go out into your heart as onto a vast plain. Now the immense loneliness begins. The days go numb. The wind sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.”)

During this first half of the Yearlong Immersion, we work with a variety of soulcraft practices including cultivating the four facets of our innate wholeness, soulcentric dreamwork, romancing the world, council, self-designed ceremony, soul poetry, and talking across the species boundaries. We explore our sacred woundings, shadows, and childhood survival strategies, all of which reveal some of the hidden roots of our soul’s passion and the gifts we carry for others. We cultivate our capacity to evoke and sustain non-ordinary states as we explore the mysteries of nature and psyche.

When the time of our third session arrives, we meet for eight days, providing the time for a four-day fast and three-day solo, the deepest portion of the Sacred World stage. All prior preparations, including any fasts you might have previously enacted, usher you into this death-rebirth journey, where a fresh vision for your life and your way of participating in the world is kindled and ignited.

Then, from the last days of our third session through our final gathering, the journey is about the Return: learning to embody what you’ve gathered during the year. You live questions such as: Given all I have learned this year about who I am, what are my soul’s deepest desires for this lifetime? How I am meant to participate in this world? What lifestyles, projects, crafts, professions, relationships, and communities shall I participate in? Which “delivery systems” would most enable me to offer my soul gifts to this world, to contribute to the Great Turning of this century? What forms of embodiment and action most resonate with my soul? This is the purpose of the Yearlong Soulcraft Immersion: preparing and empowering you to “carry what is hidden as a gift to others,” as David Whyte puts it, or to become the most effective and fulfilled artisan of cultural evolution that you can become in this lifetime.

Might this Yearlong Immersion be for you? Good question. For most people, the answer would be “no.” This experience is not for everyone but only for those who’ve reached a certain turning point in life: when you feel healed enough in all the ordinary ways of emotional healing; when you are no longer trying to find just the right relationship or job or residence before you really start your life; when the biggest questions for you are no longer about social standing or relationships or job or career, but rather about the mystery that pulses softly at the very core of your life and about your soul’s greatest desires, an appreciation of which, you correctly suspect, will completely shift your understanding of what your life is about.

This is an intense and uncompromising journey, and it is essential you are ready for it. To help you and us assess if you are, we have an application for you to fill out. Here is a sechule of our sessions. We will be meeting at 4pm on each starting date:

Session 1: March 12 – 17, 2023 – Joshua Tree National Park, California. The first 5-day session will be held at the Cottonwood group campground of Joshua Tree National Park. Note: There is a $30 Joshua Tree National Park Entrance Fee not included in the price of the program. 

Session 2: May 31 – June 5, 2023 – RoFo Ranch, Southern Colorado. The second 5-day session will be held at a ranch outside of Cortez, Colorado.

Session 3: September 4 – 12, 2023 – Zion National Park, Utah. For the third session, we will backpack and camp for eight days near Zion National Park. This session includes a 4-day fast and 3-day solo, which constitute the deepest portion of the Sacred World stage.

Session 4: November 3 – 8, 2023 – Dharma Treasure, Arizona. The final 5-day session will be held at Dharma Retreat Center in the desert southeast of Tucson, Arizona. Participants will still be asked to camp at this venue.

For each session, participants will be divided into meal teams to plan, purchase and prepare group dinners – personal breakfasts, lunches and snacks are the responsibility of each participant.

Yearlong Soulcraft Intensive participants agree to pay for all four sessions of the program, even if they cannot attend all four sessions, without the option of a refund or the option of transferring funds to another program. The balance of the program will be due 30 days prior to the start of the third session.

The application deadline for this Yearlong Immersion is December 31st, 2022. The guides will review and reach out after that date.