Paul’s individual offerings are listed below with the most recent first:
- Life After Ego Ego is a major force supporting our individuality and uniqueness. This one-day workshop focuses upon the 7 contributions of ego to conscious living. Strategies for exploring deflated and inflated ego are explored with an emphasis upon remaining receptive to the needs of our ego. The roles of humility, acceptance, compassion and simplicity are examined as energies empowering a life after ego. Participants are offered skills for both strengthening ego as well as letting it go in order to embrace a larger spiritual vision.
- WELCOMING SOPHIA: An Invitation to Personal Wisdom The word Philosophy comes from the Greek, meaning Love of Sophia. This workshop explores how love of Sophia opens us to move beyond a life inundated with information to a life blessed with personal wisdom. From the Gnostics, we are told that Sophia’s energy is at the heart of matter. We explore several questions pertaining to Sophia: How does love of her come about? How do we sustain a life of heart? How do we access the courage to live heartfully? What does it mean to know with our hearts?
- Power, Compassion and Embodiment—Finding Our Authentic Power Through the Heart and Integrated Body-Mind (facilitated with Gary Blaser in Northampton, MA) “When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.”—Jimi Hendrix. At the time Hendrix wrote this statement his generation was railing against the rampant abuse of power. The danger in adopting this sentiment is that we may reject power that in fact supports life and run the risk of depriving the world of our gifts. We all know that power can destroy; it is time to recast love of power from meaning abusive power into a new paradigm of loving authentic power. How many of us, for fear of doing harm, abdicate our power, our passions, or our needs? To hold personal power in ways that support life, we must engage with our gifts and our wounds, bringing deep compassion to our own experiences. In this experiential workshop we explore the shadows of our power and invite you into expressions of power which support and evoke life.
- Living in Larger Stories We all live in our favorite stories even if these stories are small, constricting our freedom & personal empowerment. The culture is relatively barren when it comes to offering support & encouragement to reside in larger stories. The workshop explores how we remain in small stories in order to love others, feel lovable ourselves and generate illusions of safety. Participants are afforded an opportunity to identify how to deepen and enlarge their soul stories.
- Moving From the Past to Presence (facilitated with Jen Cohen & Samuel Bartussek at The Omega Institute, Rhinebeck, NY) Our bodies have a lot to tell us. But few can read what they are saying. This workshop shows us how to look directly into our inner world – our mindsets, movement, and energy – to see what our bodies have to teach us about the ways we keep falling back into habitual patterns, and how we can fully embody who we wish to become.
- Path of the Novice Mystic This workshop expands this idea of mysticism as a way to have an authentic relationship with life and with ourselves, and possibly, God. We’ll examine what it takes to quiet the rumblings of ego which attempt to call us away from being students of life. The workshop focuses upon the attitudes which allow us to quiet ourselves in the presence of loss. We explore what it means to allow our wills to dance with fate, creating our personal myths and destinies.
- All You Need is Love Contemporary cultural images of love suggest that the above line from a Beatles’ song depicts what needs to happen in a committed relationship. This workshop explores the energy of love, its strengths and limits. We examine the challenge of receiving love and how to work with diverse expressions of love. The workshop considers four manifestations of love: Agape, Eros, Philia, and Storage.
- A Call to Spiritual Maturity When there is a cultural distortion of values, it can be very difficult to know what to trust and believe. Such trauma easily leaves us confused and/or indifferent about a life characterized by authentic spiritual devotion. This workshop clarifies some of the ancient meanings of the word “spirit” and bridges the gap between spirituality and psychology. We focus on three specific expressions of immature spirituality and what it means to respond to a larger spiritual call. The workshop explores four spiritual crises and how we can allow these challenges to deepen and expand our spiritual vision.
- Regression, Shame, and Creativity This one-day workshop examines the life conditions which are inclined to stimulate a regressive pattern, leading us to think and act in ways that are less than adult. We describe indicators of regression, and what can be done to return to adulthood. We also explore the impact of denied shame upon our essential goodness and upon our creativity. This workshop investigates what it means to summon the courage needed in order to live our creativity as a daily practice.
- The Way of the Descended Path So many of the ancient stories and myths speak of the hero or heroine trying to get home. This one-day workshop focuses upon what it means to make our way home to ourselves. A significant portion of the journey will inevitably be a descent into insecurity, doubt, hurt and loss. We will lose loved ones, parts of ourselves, and lose our way. The workshop explores how we can prepare for the trials awaiting us in the Descent. We examine what it means to allow ourselves to be Initiated into our own depths as well as into the deep waters of Life.
- Stepping into the Waters of the Wound: Choosing a Life of Healing and Learning This Workshop explores the sacredness of the wound as a source of learning, strengthening our capacity for compassion while deepening our own humanity. We examine healing as the willingness to enter into a creative and dynamic relationship with our own woundedness, rather than be seduced into a mechanistic paradigm which mandates that our wound be fixed. We review how the real psychological demons are the ways we attempt to protect ourselves from our wounds, and not the wounds themselves.
- Ritual Soul Work Ritual Soul Work is a multi-session group experience for individuals, utilizing psychodramatic interventions based upon the archetypes of sovereign, magician, warrior, and lover – as explained in the writing of Robert Moore (please see http://www.robertmoore-phd.com. Participants have the opportunity to design rituals which dramatize areas of concern or desired change, as well as interrupting hindering patterns in their lives. The enactments to be employed allow participants to examine Shadow Material, or aspects of the personality which have been denied or have not been fully integrated.