Our live journey ran from September to December 2023
and each of the 8 videoconferencing sessions were recorded.
Now we have made the programme available in self-study format
so that you can benefit from the rich course material and participate
at your own pace, from the comfort of your own home.
It is the great evolutionary will of the divine mother to birth out of the global dark night that we are enduring a new divine human race, capable of co-creating in great, ecstatic truth and intelligence, a holy new way of being and doing everything.
Andrew Harvey, Founder of the Institute for Sacred Activism
The Invitation
In a time of escalating global crises on all levels, affecting all species, with no apparent hope of easing in the foreseeable future, one can be forgiven for plummeting headlong into the depths of despair, unable to take in one more shred of incontrovertible evidence of human-caused catastrophe.
Yet out of this darkest night, a barely perceptible ember faintly flickers and begins to beckon. The great mystics call this a time of savage grace. What is the gift at the heart of darkness we are being beckoned to turn towards? Is there a purpose in all we are enduring?
You are invited to explore this phenomenon together with like-minded, courageous soul friends to attentively grow the ember into a flame that will spark the divine light of consciousness in all of us and birth a new humanity capable of thriving in the emerging new world.
Come with me. Follow the light. Another world is possible.
Journey objectives
As we straddle the transition between the death of the old world and the emergence of the new, we will be consciously guided by these objectives:
- Understanding the collective dark night as a birthing process, the purpose of which, as the mystics tell us, is to strip us of our illusions and fantasies and to show us that, if we can endure it and align with its laws, we can become an embodied divine humanity, capable of cocreating a whole new world with extraordinary new powers of love, insight, wisdom, courage and compassion;
- Choosing transformative pathways to a life-affirming future which consciously integrate Indigenous knowledge, the great wisdom traditions, and observations at the leading edge of contemporary science;
- Discovering the nature of reality as a purposeful, meaningful, unified whole with the power to heal our fragmented perspectives, radically change our collective behaviours, and transform the challenges of our global emergency into the emergence of our conscious evolution;
- Embodying divine love and offering our unique gifts in selfless service to the new, thereby raising the collective frequency of compassionate action in the world;
- Stepping into our collective destiny as stewards in service to Earth’s living systems, participating in and supporting lifeās innate ability to thrive in evermore intelligent, resilient, adaptive, creative and regenerative ways; and
- Risking new shapes by allowing ourselves to be dismantled and remade in response to the inner knowing that another world is indeed possible if we choose it.
Support
You will be supported throughout the journey by your journey host and the presentations of our guest speakers. Inspiration will come from these sources as well as your own inner spiritual authority, compass and guidance.
The 8-Session Journey
The journey is made up of these 8 sessions:
What you will receive
- 8 pre-recorded video sessions: The Introduction and Completion sessions are 1.5 hours in duration. The 6 speaker sessions are 2 hours in duration. The format of each session includes: a brief framing of the session and speaker introduction by the hosts, speaker presentation, time to pause at your own pace for individual reflection, Q&A/participant sharings, and closing remarks. You will be able to view the recordings at your convenience. You may also want to review the recordings more than once to integrate the content of the sessions more deeply.
- 8 Session Study Guides: To help integrate the content and experience of each session, a study guide will be provided including a transcript of the speaker presentation, questions for contemplation between sessions, and additional resources, featuring lists of videos, films, books, projects, events, and blogs relevant to each session.
- Ongoing access to your journey host: Your journey host will be available via email and Zoom calls to support you to deepen into the journey, field your questions, and share insights, reflections and information.
- Free access to our panel discussion: An Intimate Discourse with Visionaries of The Great Turning. The 1.5-hour video talk is a great introduction to Great Turning themes and may be useful to watch before you begin the online learning journey.
Time Commitment
Please note that you will need to set aside at least 3 hours per session, depending on the level of depth you are willing to go to, in order to:
- engage with the session videos and
- work with the ‘Questions for Ongoing Reflection and Dialogue’ contained in your session Study Guides.
Meet Our Great Turning Visionary Speakers
All of our inspiring speakers are proactively committed to pioneering new ways of living and being as we journey through the dark night toward the new world. In each session, we’ll have the opportunity to draw from their inspiration to help illuminate the way which, in turn, will compel us to take compassionate action in our own lives and communities.
Andrew Harvey is Founder and Director of The Institute for Sacred Activism, an international organisation focused on inviting concerned people to take up the challenge of our contemporary global crises by becoming inspired, effective, and practical agents of institutional and systemic change, in order to create peace and sustainability. Sacred Activism is a transforming force of compassion-in-action that is born of a fusion of deep spiritual knowledge, courage, love, and passion, with wise radical action in the world. The large-scale practice of Sacred Activism can become an essential force for preserving and healing the planet and its inhabitants.
Jeremy Lent, described by Guardian journalist George Monbiot as āone of the greatest thinkers of our age,ā is an author and speaker whose work investigates the underlying causes of our civilisationās existential crisis, and explores pathways toward a life-affirming future. He is the author of the award-winning book, The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning and The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe. Jeremy is the founder of the Deep Transformation Network, a global community exploring pathways to an ecological civilisation, and the nonprofit Liology Institute, dedicated to fostering an integrated worldview that could enable humanity to thrive sustainably on the Earth.
Jude Currivan PhD is a cosmologist, planetary healer, futurist, author, most recently of the award-winning The Story of GAIA: The Big Breath and the Evolutionary Journey of our Conscious Planet, and previously one of the UK’s most senior business women. She has a Masters degree specialising in cosmology and quantum physics, and a Doctorate in archaeology researching ancient cosmologies. Experiencing life-long multidimensional realities and working with traditional wisdom keepers, her work integrates leading-edge science, consciousness research, and universal wisdom teachings. She is a member of Evolutionary Leaders, co-founder of WholeWorld-View and a WON Buddhism International CIRCLE award recipient for her āoutstanding contribution towards planetary healing and expanding new forms of consciousnessā.
BĆ”yĆ² AkĆ³molĆ”fĆ© is a teacher, public intellectual, author and facilitator. He is globally recognised for his poetic, unconventional, counterintuitive, and indigenous take on global crisis, civic action and social change. As Executive Director of The Emergence Network, BĆ”yĆ² inspires a diffractive network of sharing ā a slowing down, an ethics of entanglement, an activism of inquiry, a āpolitics of surpriseāā¦one that does not treat the crises of our times as exterior to āusā or the āsolutionsā that conventional activism offers as separate from the problems we seek to nullify. BĆ”yĆ² is host of the online writing course, We will dance with Mountains, author of We will tell our own story! and These Wilds Beyond our Fences
A’ida AL-Shibli is a mother and a lover of life, born to indigenous tribes of Palestine. She is a feminist and a long-term political activist, a member of Defend the Sacred alliance, and founder of Global Campus Palestine. She has been living in Tamera, a peace research village, in Portugal for 18 years and supports the community’s social fabric. With her knowledge of healing and love, she brings a unique quality of sacred activism rooted in indigenous wisdom.
Charles Eisenstein is a speaker and writer focusing on themes of human culture and identity. He is the author of several books, most recently Climate: A New Story, along with Sacred Economics and The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible. His background includes a degree in mathematics and philosophy from Yale, a decade in Taiwan as a translator, and stints as a college instructor, a yoga teacher, and a construction worker. He currently writes and speaks full-time.
Michelle Holliday is a visionary author, facilitator, consultant, and researcher. For the past two decades, her work has centred around āthrivabilityā ā a set of perspectives and practices based on understanding organizations and communities as dynamic living systems. On this basis, she supports pioneering, purpose-driven clients across a wide range of sectors, including tourism and agriculture, to enable the transition to more regenerative systems and structures. Michelleās research and practical experience are brought together in the highly acclaimed book, The Age of Thrivability: Vital Perspectives and Practices for a Better World, as well as nearly 100 articles on themes of thrivability.
Meet Your Great Turning Journey Host
Mattie Porte holds a degree in Psychology, is trained in alternative energy medicine, and is a lifelong student of Eastern and Western spiritual and mystical traditions. She has over 20 years experience in spiritual and personal development education and mentoring at Findhorn Ecovillage in the North East of Scotland, where she currently resides. She is the director and producer of the feature-length documentary film ā An Enquiry into a New Story for Humanity: Change the Story, Change the World. Her focus is spiritual awakening and the evolution of human consciousness from an integrated scientific and esoteric point of view. She is passionate about the potential in moving from our current paradigm of separation and fear to an emerging paradigm of unity and wholeness.