Paul Sanders, Peter Ross
Considering spiritual life as conscious presence in the world, we invite participants to critically reflect on the personal and social characteristics of emergent self-consciousness, which we explore through personal and group engagement, including pre-reflective consciousness, reflective consciousness and non-dual awareness. Dialogue and self-questioning are used to open the internal and external dimensions of this awareness. We explore self-emergence as it pertains to the importance and urgency of understanding the place of the Earth-Self, including a comparative examination of spirituality as a social and cosmic reality through the windows of contemporary feminist thought and Eco-psychology. Participants develop a variety of psycho-spiritual and eco-spiritual practices, approaches and attitudes instructive for the integration of mind and body; learning to relate, within the oases learning environment, as an intentional commitment to others and as the reciprocal and mutual enactment of self-emergence as intentional presence.