NEWSLETTER # 1
August 2017

The Sacred Science Circle www.sacredsciencecircle.org gathers a sacred circle of individuals and groups that honor the “fires” of transformation implicit in all scientific, scholarly, and artistic endeavors. Our mission is to further that profound route to knowing, wisdom and enrichment of being that the confluence of science and the Sacred can bring to us and to our modern world. In pursuing sacred science, the Sacred Science Circle and our partner institution, the Alef Trust, aspire to transform both ourselves and the world.

The Sacred Science Circle e-Archive now includes research resources on Art-based Research, Confucian Hermeneutics, Inclusive Psychology, Intuitive Inquiry, Sacred Wisdoms and Transpersonal Psychology. Additional resources will be added over time.

 

Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Welcome to Sacred Science Circle and our first newsletter!

Over time, we hope to expand our activities to engage colleagues in the human and natural sciences in research and scholarly pursuits that encounter the Sacred on its own terms. We hope to build upon, and not duplicate, the many fine transpersonal and related initiatives already in place. Our mission and program offerings will evolve slowly as we ourselves learn and live into what a Sacred Science is and might be.

In service to the Sacred,

Rosemarie Anderson & Les Lancaster, Sacred Science Circle, Co-Directors

 

Table of Contents

Research Updates

• Engaging Sacred Otherness Online by Jessica Bockler
• Emily Dickinson’s Creative Process by Kelly Sue Lynch

Conferences

• 21^st Transpersonal Psychology Section Conference, Becoming of Age, September 22-24, 2017
• The International Transpersonal Conference, Prague, September 29-October 1, 2017
• Transpersonal Research Colloquium 2017, Prague, October 2-3, 2017
• Tenth Annual Alubrat Congress, Tomar, Portugal, October 6-8, 2017
• 50^th Golden Anniversary Celebration of Transpersonal Psychology, August 2018, San Francisco Bay Area.

 

RESEARCH UPDATES

ENGAGING SACRED OTHERNESS ONLINE
by Jessica Bockler

As a transpersonal psychologist and artist, I support the healing and spiritual journeys of people from around the world, working through community projects and postgraduate education. I have been exploring how digital communication platforms can support a whole-person approach to creative teaching and facilitation.

Piloting online creativity and wellbeing programmes, I ask questions, such as: How do we hold the space for a group that does not share the same physical room? How do we engage in embodied work when the subtleties of communication are reduced to faces and voices, transmitted through layers of Internet protocols? Amidst the audio-visual freezing, crackling and breaking up, how can we create a sacred space in which direct knowing can come to the fore?

Utilising the body as gateway, tapping somatic experiencing, I encourage participants to join me on multi-modal journeys, cultivating receptivity which invites a sacred Otherness to enter and become the primary guide – call it Soul or Source or perhaps Universal Will. In this digital space, with compassion and curiosity, something may arise between us. As we move and play together in front of our computer screens, as we witness and mirror each other’s movements and vocal expressions, resonate and soar together, we can follow our own impulses and those of others, deepening our shared direct experience beyond ‘self’ and ‘other’. Spontaneous mark-making and writing on or off-screen can offer ways to deepen the experience. Digital messaging and whiteboard facilities can become magical tools, allowing the joint creation of entrancing visual works and poetry, woven by invisible ink.

I intuit that human consciousness can blossom here, as emerging digital channels and tools complement and expand our ancient ritual technologies.

Jessica Bockler PhD is a Founding Director of the Alef Trust (www.aleftrust.org), a global transformative learning provider, which offers postgraduate education programmes and community programmes, promoting holistic psychological frameworks and perspectives, nurturing the development of human consciousness and culture. To hear more about the online pilot programmes we run, contact me via email: jessica.bockler@aleftrust.org.

 

EMILY DICKINSON’S CREATIVE PROCESS

By Kelly Sue Lynch

I listen. There is enough mystery to keep me spellbound; something in her being, her voice; how she created her poetry and lived her life impels me to continue to circumambulate her life and texts. In this process, I learn about my soul—The soul comes through the door of poetry, a deep unfolding. Like her beloved crickets she induced singing (reverie) at all hours; echoes of her words reverberate in my soul.

When visiting the nearly 100 rarely seen Dickinson artifacts (texts, photos, objects), I was moved by Dickinson’s minute handwriting and the progression of her life especially focused on her process of becoming a poet—like becoming a butterfly, awash in the sky with wings. I lingered for 5 hours.

I listen, follow. In reading what is called the first “Master” letter, an intense letter professing love to an unknown suitor it struck me as so alive, I registered the experience in my body. I think it is important to notice and record one’s whole experience. Although I could not touch the texts, photos, or objects, I could stand under, in the process of understanding, which for me involves viewing from “odd angles.” I viewed from odd angles the two photos, one the only authenticated daguerreotype of Dickinson and the other possibly of Dickinson and her friend Kate Scott Turner. Yes, the mouths are the same. The daguerreotypes leave a mirror image, to witness in person is like communing with Dickinson.

I listen, follow, attend. In studying Dickinson, I immerse myself in what I love, I build up worlds of experience and understanding. In this process, she intimates unknowing and a great expanse of being. A question arises, how do I enter and sustain a connected-knowing from my soul? When I wrote my dissertation on her creative process I wrote that only through love may a person or a poem reveal herself. I glimpsed her through a prism of love.

Kelly Sue Lynch, PhD is a Clinical Psychologist, poet, and musician, who has been studying Emily Dickinson for nearly 40 years. To learn more about Kelly’s work, contact Kelly via email: ksl_211@hotmail.com.

 

CONFERENCES

 

TENTH ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL ALUBRAT CONGRESS

ALUBRAT Portugal Transpersonal Association, October 6-8, 2017, Tomar, Portugal

SPIRITUALITY: SCIENCE & LIFE

For further information, see www.alubrat2017cong.pt

 

ADVANCE NOTICE