Welcome in the here and now
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Who is the course for?
This course is for anyone seeking to develop a depth of capacity and artfulness in philosophical thinking and feeling, transformative dialogue, and the onwards journey of response to the call of soul: know thyself as authentic being in relation to others and the world. It will appeal particularly to lovers of wisdom that desire real participation in a supportive context of deep learning, and who seek to strengthen their voice and capacity for meaningful expression, communication, and understanding.
What is the course?
The course is designed to create a profound context for philosophical development and transformation. It runs over 6 (+1) weeks, and connects participants to a vital field of peers and educators, in a context of education, contribution, and belonging. It features material and practice incorporating dynamics of body, mind, heart, and soul. There will be lectures, workshops, emergent dialogues, reading materials, fellowship groups, and onward pathways to participate in an evolving participatory wisdom commons.
Why has it been created?
It has been created A) to offer a unique pathway for initiating an increase in the fundamental, but institutionally forgotten and suppressed essence of philosophy: real capacity to participate in transformative relating to self, other and the lifeworld.
B) to address the lack of an accessible, yet powerfully deep educational on-ramp into emerging cultures and networks of transformative response to dynamics of meta-crisis and the shifting identities of being and structures in our time.
And C) to connect exceptional educators, students, and peers to a developing participatory wisdom commons, in a value exchange that will support the holistic becoming of this vital context.
When & Where?
The October 2022 intake has been postponed until Q2 2023.
- Sessions will take place at multiple times to account for separate timezones. Fellowship sessions will take place across Friday evenings, Saturday mornings, and Saturday evenings by default, but there will be support for additional times where possible. See the FAQ for specifics.
This course is an online course. Enrolment grants you full access to the Voicecraft.Network for the duration of the course and an integration period afterwards.
- The course will live in the Transformative Philosophy course space inside the network, which will coordinate event times, fellowship groups, workshops etc., and also features private messaging, forums, video content, and many other features.
Course Faculty
This group of faculty have been invited in consideration of the unique value they share with an emerging sphere of response to the realities of psyche and culture in our era. Common to each is a sincerity and dedication of address to the vital, transformational context of the self.
Each faculty member will convene and participate in one, or a selection of modules.
Several faculty members will participate in generative dialogues that address points of difference and alignment as contributions to the emergent commons of exploration and broader field of understanding.
TIM ADALIN
Tim is a philosopher with interests in metaphysics, psyche, culture, and nature. He is working to develop networks and communities which seek to support wiser contexts for education, contribution, and belonging.
He is the Founder of Voicecraft, and the host of Voicecraft.Network, an online and offline portal to participate in the development of a participatory wisdom commons.
CHRISTOPHER MASTROPIETRO
Christopher Mastropietro is a philosophical writer with interests in dialogue, symbols, and the concept of self. He is a co-author of several publications, including Zombies in Western Culture: A Twenty-First Century Crisis (Open Book Publishers, 2017), “Gnosis in the Second Person” (in Dispatches from a Time Between Worlds, Perspectiva Press, 2021) and “Dialectic into Dialogos and the Pragmatics of No-thingness in a Time of Crisis”.
JONNY MILLER
Jonny Miller is a nervous system specialist, writer, podcast host, meditation teacher, and Founder of Curious Humans.
He is the creator of Nervous System Mastery. NS Mastery incorporates breathwork techniques and evidence backed protocols to cultivate increased capacity to regulate one’s physical, mental, and emotional state.
CADELL LAST
Cadell is a general thinker interested in questions about human existence and evolution. He is author of Global Brain Singularity, which focuses on the nature of temporality and the future of consciousness; and Sex, Masculinity, God, which focuses on the consequences of libidinal energy, gender identity and theological mysteries for our knowledge constructs. The tension between sex and love, as well as death and immortality, drives much of his current philosophical work, which is deeply informed by dialectics and psychoanalysis.
O.G. ROSE
Daniel Garner as one part to the O.G. Rose duo spent several years working collaboratively with other artists at Eunoia, a creative community Rose helped develop in Central Virginia. Rose now lives on a farm, manages a wedding venue named Mead Lake Lodge, operates Frozen Glory Photography, and teaches piano using visuals from the DLG Pattern Method.
A finalist for the 2020 UNO Press Lab Prize and 46th Pushcart Nominee, Rose’s creative works appear at The Write Launch, Allegory Ridge, Streetlight Magazine, Ponder Review, Iowa Review, The William and Mary Review, Assure Press, Toho Journal, West Trade Review, ellipsis, Poydras Review, Open, and Broken Pencil.
LAYMAN PASCAL
Layman Pascal is a species of author, public speaker, yoga teacher, nondualist theologian, meditation advocate & chakra biopsychologist.
He is the host of the popular podcast THE INTEGRAL STAGE. He is based in Victoria, British Columbia. He is a writer on themes of cultural philosophy, shamanism and organic spiritual development. Lately, he has been active as a board member of the Foundation for Integral Religion and Spirituality and a founder of the Beyond Interfaith project.
Modules & Timeline
Module 1 | Transformative Philosophy (Tim Adalin)
This module comprises an introduction to the course: its scope, its praxis, its affordances, its intentions, its commitments to you, and the opportunity to address the reciprocal commitment you’re invited to breathe in and out.
For a sense of the content that will be shared in this module, the introductory video above will paint the picture. Additionally, further down the page, a recent dialogue between Cadell Last and Tim Adalin will help to illuminate the nature of communing, and participatory responsibility, the course invites.
It also comprises an initiation into the notion of transformative philosophy in the context of 1st person, 2nd person, and 3rd person knowing: a transformative means of being and becoming in the world.
Teaching lead: Tim Adalin
Module structure:
- Live seminar (additionally made available as recording)
- Initiation group dialogues
- Personal reflection
Module 2 | Nervous System Regulation For Transformative Dialogue (Jonny Miller)
This module intends to equip participants with the capacity to gain greater awareness and agency over their internal state. And in so doing, to create the conditions for deeper connection and participation in transformative conversations.
This module will primarily consist of a workshop
Module 3 | Dialogos (Christopher Mastropietro)
“Conversation is a natural behaviour for human beings. But the art of conversation is an excellence. When refined into dialogue, it becomes a powerful conductor of insight. We can use it to seek depth, or to conceal it. When dialogue conceals in the service of depth, it is a Socratic irony. When the depth responds and guides us, our dialogues become ‘dialogos.'” – Christopher Mastropietro
Module 4 | Dialectics: Thinking the Real of Transformative Processes (Cadell Last)
“These principles include (1) the relationship between universality and particularity; (2) dialectics as process; (3) dialectics as function; (4) the nature of polarity and opposites; (5) as well as the position of absolute knowing. These principles will be described in technical conceptual detail, and coupled with precise and concrete examples from contemporary scientific theories of physics, biology, and anthropology. The goal of the module will be to demonstrate the importance of dialectical thinking as a tool to be able to understand transformative processes (substance), but also to include your self as a concrete historical entity in those same transformative processes (subject).” – Cadell Last
This module will include a lecture and seminar, in addition to weekly fellowship dialogues.
Module 5 | The Phenomenology of Voice (O.G. Rose)
“If we explain to one another how we traveled here, we will not necessarily address why we arrived.” – O.G. Rose
This module will function as a week to metabolise and integrate material and themes developed in the course so far. To help us do this, O.G. Rose will first introduce a distinction between Explanation and Address. For a window into additional notes of inspiration for this module, you can listen to the conversation titled ‘The Phenomenology of Voice’ between Tim Adalin and Daniel Garner (O.G. Rose).
“If we explain to one another how we traveled here, we will not necessarily address why we arrived. The hope of this session is to help participants better understand the difference between “explanation” and “address” in the context of sharing the voice, with a focus on bettering, feeling, and understanding the invisible dynamics which arise between people when they commune. Each of us is a dwelling, but when we are incapable of address, we can feel like a black box, locked from unlocking. No one can exhaust the fullness of people, but even honoring and witnessing our being-together can prove difficult if we are unaware of how we might move beyond explaining our days to addressing what our shared presence calls forth. Culture is in great part the sum of its emergences, and if we want to engage in culture-making beyond the culture wars, learning the art of our emergence must be where we start.” – O.G. Rose
This module is comprised of one short lecture and participatory seminar, and either an additional workshop or reflective dialogue, in addition to fellowship gatherings.
Module 6 Beyond Practice: Returning the Way to the World (Layman Pascal)
“Wisdom slowly becomes a priority. We begin to adapt ourselves to lives of spiritual or existential maturation. What comes next?” – Layman Pascal
“Wisdom slowly becomes a priority. We begin to adapt ourselves to lives of spiritual or existential maturation. What comes next? Layman Pascal will explore how we become capable of cultivating personal relationships and real communities that both support and extend our depth-practices. How do inner skills translate into being constructively present with the ecological, technological and sociological risks of this world-historical moment? And how do we find high-integrity ways to connect with & co-create networks of people capable of collective sapience, transrational intersubjectivity and essential real-world projects?”
What you will learn
- Develop a rare craft of speaking and listening with others.
- Hone your ability for internal processing and phenomenological orientation.
- Learn with outstanding philosophical guides and apply yourself in a collaborative context of insight and understanding.
- Build your capacity to cultivate a lifeworld of relationships rich in wisdom.
- Connect with a cohort of peers in a living context that supports authenticity and collaboration.
- Make purposeful steps on your philosophical journey of becoming and contribution.
- Grapple with profound thinkers and challenge yourself to widen and deepen the perspectives you can inhabit and integrate.
- Deepen your awareness of relation between body, mind, heart, and soul.
- Learn to regulate your nervous system and increase your access to meta-cognitive awareness during dialogue.
How you will learn
- Lectures & Dialogues delivered live, and recorded for anytime access.
- Written and spoken interaction with peers and guides, in response to live content and optional reading material.
- Workshops, participatory Q&As and experimental large group sessions.
- In a digital space within Voicecraft.Network (which runs on the excellent Mighty Networks platform).
- Participation in small group fellowships and ephemeral groups over Zoom.
- By dedicating between 3-5 hours per week to listening and responding to course invitations over six weeks.
Fellow
- Full course access and participation.
- Includes 6+1 weeks of material, live lectures, workshops, fellowship dialogues, and pathways to ongoing contribution.
+ Tutoring
- Full course access and participation.
- Includes 6+1 weeks of material, live lectures, workshops, fellowship dialogues, and pathways to ongoing contribution.
- PLUS three additional 90 minute one and one dialogues with Tim. (See FAQ)
*Purchases using the mobile IOS app accrue a higher fee due to Apple taking a 15% cut. You can pay via web browser to avoid this!
FAQ
For philosophy to be transformative it must be known in participation, must be lived as a praxis.
This course in transformative philosophy is a submersion in something uncommon to philosophy inside the institution. It addresses a virtue of philosophy as creative articulation of understanding, at the levels content and context.
‘Transformative philosophy’, as named in this course, is primarily a mode of praxis, although it can be conceptualised and as such inform theoretic description of transformative process in general. There is no settled theory of transformative philosophy being taught in this course: ie., you will not graduate as a theoretician of Transformative Philosophy with a ™ on the end. But you will have the opportunity to follow the call of wonder, craft your voice in response, and increase the breadth and depth of your knowing as being-in-relation to beings-in-relation, and perhaps, as a being in relation to that which is beyond your capacity to name. In this sense, it’s a course that intends to develop a context affordant of know thyself as process of becoming and return, in a community of peers, some of whom may become friends and fellows.
From a level lower to the ground, this course intends to help you:
- Better understand the processes of thinking and relating,
- Develop your capacity to contribute the creative potential of your perception and expression,
- Notice qualities of feeling, and regulate your nervous system during transformative interaction and engagement with profound material.
This course features an outstanding faculty who live the praxis of the content they will share. Teaching will be delivered in the form of live and recorded lectures, workshops, Q&A, and other experimental participatory sessions. But a core feature of this course is the living context it’s held in, the Voicecraft Network, and the opportunity to participate in course specific, weekly sessions of transformative dialogue with peers and facilitators. In this way, you will metabolise content that broaches contributions across many domains of philosophy, but in a way that makes immanent the crafting of your own voice. That is, content will be known in real transformative touch with the context of self.
In this course, fixation and transcendence will be known in dialogic relationship, and we will cultivate the capacity of discernment as that which may more wisely choose, from potentiality, its contribution to the lifeworld.
Global timezones across the EU, the Americas, and Oceania will be supported. But you should expect that not all live lectures and workshops will take place at a time that is typically convenient for your timezone.
- All lectures, workshops, contributor dialogues, Q&As, and other materials will be recorded and made available for any time access.
- Weekly small group fellowships will be convened at set times that will provide access between the hours of 9AM and 11PM for timezones across UTC, CET, PST, ET, AEDT & AEST.
- There will be two fellowship session times coordinated to begin with. More can be included if there is sufficient quantity of interest (both day and time).
- Exact times will be confirmed closer to the date.
- There will be several daylight savings clock changes throughout this period, so times may shift accordingly.
Over six sessions, you will meet with a group of four to connect and dialogue in relation to course material and your shared journey.
The Tutoring tier provides one and one dialogues over three intervals, which may be scheduled during or after the six weeks of teaching. The dialogues will be with Tim Adalin.
Transformative Philosophy is scheduled to begin in Q2 2023. You can register your interest to be part of the course here.
The course will live inside Voicecraft.Network, in a private space that only course members and faculty can access.
Topics vary widely, and span themes including cultural transformation and self understanding. Many of these sessions are recorded and shared privately with the network. In this way the network participates in and contributes to the creation of valuable learning contexts and material for its members to engage with, from which ongoing threads of participation emerge. Sometimes sessions are recorded to be shared with the broader commons via the Voicecraft podcast, and in this way the network is developing capacity to interact with the emerging inter-network field of wiser living and future-making.
A core theme that many members appreciate is the shared emphasis on thinking and feeling, intellect and intuition, heart and mind.
Ethan Wells
“A lot I could say, but there are three things that seem to capture most of it. The first is a unique blend of heart-felt connection with philosophical exploration. The degree to which each gathering is rooted in the heart or the mind varies but in general they’re both online in a way I find very attractive. Simply being around this affords a greater integration of these parts within myself. Second, Voicecraft consistently draws out a quality of self-expression that leaves me feeling more myself. In this sense, the name is quite fitting as participation in the network really has been crafting my authentic voice. The felt sense of care in each gathering allows subtle, unformed emanations of insight to crystallize and be articulated. Finally, I deeply value the emphasis that is put on the subtleties of conversational flow. Tim has a real knack for it, particularly in the context of philosophical explorations where he’s able to weave multiple threads being shared by the group.”
Adriana Forte Naili
“I appreciate the recent explorations we’ve been on and I especially like the ‘fine line’ between the content provider and consumer. For ex: most, maybe all? the people I have met through Voicecraft are not just consumers. There is a very high quality of ‘mind’ present.
Cameron D
[The Voicecraft Network] involves the opportunity to participate in various interactive spaces that feel alive, fluid, and disciplined with regard to depth of insight. There’s a culture of willingness to listen and be heard, as well as many considerations underlying much of what happens or the direction of dialogical evolution.There’s also a fundamental compassion for the challenges associated with coming together and being involved in a world that seldom affords much more than survival and conformity.
The people involved are diverse and unique with regard to their capacities, insights, and ability to contribute to a dynamic and process that can enable an integration of awareness conducive to growth, individually and collectively.
[The Voicecraft Network offers] potential to be transformed through the act of participation.”Taryn Ossowski
“I value the invitation to shape, respond and create content. There is a feeling of growing with, and a trust in future support and potential.”
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For additional reflections about the nature of the Voicecraft Network, please use this link.
You can submit questions here.