Hello Folks,

Thanks Bonnie for the recording. Excellent to hear you all and see the subtle body coming through in so many ways at this initial share and check-in: so good to see the unseen honored and welcomed into this group. That Bly poem shared by Esther really held our initial collective intention for me.

One correction to my abbreviated share. Bonnie said I am an Animas Valley Institute guide, and although I have trained with Bill Plotkin and several of his group’s other wonderful guides, I am not an Animas guide. I have done other trainings with the School of Lost Borders, but my actual year-long guide training was with Rites of Passage out of Santa Rosa with Mike Bodkin.

And to wrap up my share…In both image and symptom, psyche has asked of me to balance my love of flight, the gifts of the puer and his god Hermes, with the need and desire for deep earthing, grounding, senex-ing my puer, and welcoming more of Apollos gifts to my table.

On the closed/open Alliance front I am drawn to the pole of opening the container for the sake of more lived experience brought into the conversations in the community. I am drawn to open-ness that brings our work in dp into a wider circle that includes more households, moves beyond the halls of academia, and outside the consulting room. Also as Brent suggests, open to other circles of psychological knowing and frameworks. However within this pull toward opening the Alliance, I personally feel a strong need to honor the container for the sake of allowing the free and safe movement of psyche. In other words, at this initial pass through the subject, I might recommend a widening of the circle of our community, while still recognizing the need for a safe container.

I will hold my other reflections at bay for now. Although the issue of sustainability has been on my mind and so when I hear Bonnie, with some apology, mentioning her initial dream of the Alliance including some financial compensation for the massive quantity and quality of work she has given to the community, I want to honor that important need for sustainability. I think that our work in depth needs to take into account these material needs, right alongside that of the spirit, yet this is often in shadow for us and many others that work in the healing arts.  I can say more, but for now just wanted to add this subject to the stew we are brewing.

Looking forward to a more grounded phone conference call when we are ready. Although if we want to do some more testing on Skype, I’m open to it, I will just need to make sure I am not travelling if we consider that medium again. Again my apologies for my struggles to show up. I would have loved to have seen you all, while listening, for the whole time if my connection could have been made. What I did experience, despite the frustrations, was quite exquisite in fact.

Fair thee well friends and fellows!

Mark