Stage 1: Grounding

Our journey begins gently, as we become acquainted with the program, the different engagement "tracks" and the opportunities to engage in dialogue, practices and sharing with fellow explorers.

INVITATIONS

1st Invitation - Setting your Intentions for this journey

Please find some time on your own to connect with what was it that made you say yes to embark on this journey. What is your intent now as we enter the journey?

Example: You can practice the “Burning Bowl”. First you write down all the things that you desire to leave behind as you start the journey and then have that letter be burned (with regard to fire safety of course). Afterward, a new letter is written with your intentions for summit (another way to put it is your intentions about your relation to conflict situations in your life and context). The intention letter is sealed as the summit begins and kept somewhere safe until the end when you re-read it and then burn it.

How to Set an Intention - One of the simplest ways to set an intention is, like in the example of the Burning Bowl ceremony, to write a letter. You can write a letter to your future self, to the Universe itself, to Life, or to a religious or spiritual deity that you feel especially connected to. In this letter, you can simply state your intention regarding the summit's theme and journey. You may also write about your sense of feeling called in a certain direction. Setting an intention doesn’t have to be complicated and you don’t have to know anything more than the simple fact that you want to sincerely connect and understand.

2nd Invitation - Grounding yourself in gratitude

So, our second invitation to you is to connect with and bring to awareness all the things that you feel grateful for in your life.

There is so much to be done, and the time is so short. We can proceed, of course, out of grim and angry desperation. But the tasks proceed more easily and productively with a measure of thankfulness for life; it links us to our deeper powers and lets us rest in them. Many of us are braced, psychically and physically, against the signals of distress that continually barrage us in the news, on our streets, in our environment. As if to reduce their impact on us, we contract like a turtle into its shell. But we can choose to turn to the breath, the body, the senses—for they help us to relax and open to wider currents of knowing and feeling.

Gratitude for the gift of life is the primary wellspring of all religions, the hallmark of the mystic, the source of all true art. Yet we so easily take this gift for granted.

The great open secret of gratitude is that it is not dependent on external circumstance. It’s like a setting or channel that we can switch to at any moment, no matter what’s going on around us.

3rd Invitation - Build an altar to support your inquiries

We invite each participant to make an altar for the summit, where you put elements of the conflict(s) you are trying to lean in and inquire into, as well as elements of "medicine" for healing: objects, symbols and other elements that connect you with healing.

Questions for this stage

In relation to the summit:

• What support do I need (aside from this document) in my role as host?

• What helps me and others to get our feet on the ground and get ready?

• What is my personal purpose in engaging with this summit?

• What are my expectations of the summit?

• What intentions do I want to set for myself/my group for the duration of this summit?

And more personally:

• What are my strategies for taking care of myself?

• What is my personal relationship with conflict: how do I feel about it, what are my stock responses and how well do they serve me?

• What are the stories I tell myself about conflict in my life or in the wider world? How well does it serve me? What would it take to shift it?

Here is an extensive article about being ungrounded and many techniques to ground your self in your body and in the earth body: https://scottjeffrey.com/grounding-techniques/

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