The Evolutionary Pathways Series
Transitioning into Transformation
with Carolyn Toben

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Pathway 6: Love, Presence and Identity
Saturday, March 21, 2015, 9:30-4:00

In this statement, Thomas guides us to the heart of spiritual wisdom by bringing the inner life together with the outer world, giving us a way forward through a new set of eyes that reconciles all opposites. Love including, yet beyond, personal attraction, becomes the unifying energy that links all persons and things.  “The sense of the sacred is at the heart of it all,” he said, and he led us to see it through the beauty, wonder, and intimacy of the natural world where we discover a new spiritually sensitive presence to all living forms – and a unity with them. We also discover that through Love, we have a new identity with the earth, the cosmos and the evolutionary process of life itself. “We are evolving now from a personal identity to a sense of identity with an emergent universe,” Thomas said.

In this retreat we will explore further enlarged meanings of love through meditative earth walks, solos experiences and journalling to reflect on and integrate new understanding.

  Pathway 7: Transitioning into Our Sacred Stories
 Saturday, April 11, 2015, 9:30-4:00

 “So what you are, the world is: and without your transformation     there can be no transformation of the world.” Krishnamurti

As our journeys continue into this last retreat of the series, we will consider each of the evolutionary pathways as they help transition us into the transformations needed to support the new heart/mind necessary at this time for both our personal and planetary healing:

• The meaning of the sacred story of the universe as a new context for our lives...
• The Creative Principle at work in our own lives...
• The new spiritual understanding of all our relations and its effect in  our daily lives...
• Cultivating a sense of the sacred...
• Recognizing the intuitive awareness when it arises...
• Dealing with our inner obstacles to transformation as they arise...
• Learning to surrender all that hinders the evolutionary “flow”...
• Learning to trust the process and the freedom of “not knowing”...
• Bringing the practice of soul time into our daily lives...
• Remembering “Love as an inner presence to all things”...
• Adopting regular practices to sustain the soul/spirit ...

Carolyn Toben, M.Ed, is a retreat leader, educator, counselor and creator of new social forms that foster spiritual growth and cultural renewal. Her background includes degrees from UNC-G (Phi Beta Kappa), extensive post- graduate studies in spirituality, depth psychology, world religions, and teaching in both secondary and college settings with an emphasis on alternative and interdisciplinary education. She created teacher renewal seminars at the NC Center for the Advancement of Teaching in Cullowhee and for the Center for the Advancement of Renewal for Educators in San Francisco. 

In 2000, she founded the Center for Education, Imagination, and the Natural World at  Timberlake Earth Sanctuary, a work inspired by cultural historian Thomas Berry which offers children and teachers a new understanding of the human-earth relationship in experiencing the living world around them. In the last ten years of his life, Thomas and Carolyn spent many hours in deep discussion regarding his foundational evolutionary thinking, and in 2012, Carolyn published the fruits of these encounters in Recovering a Sense of the Sacred: Conversations with Thomas Berry  In 2014, Carolyn received the Sacred Universe Award from The Well, a Spiritual Retreat Center in LaGrange, Ilinois.

More Information

For more information, contact Hope Horton at hopematrix@fastmail.com