An invitation to trade growth for depth

Join us for a deep winter community solo

It is a curious idea, this notion of perpetual growth.

If in doubt, grow. 

Head upwards.

Into the sunlit uplands.

Where everything will feel brighter, and better.

It is an idea I see played out not just in the global economic race, but also in the way we are told we need to be growing ourselves.

Always striving to do more, get more, achieve more.

And it is not just in economic or career terms, it is increasingly becoming true of how we view our personal development, how we take action in these times.

Feeling uncertain, lost or scared? Then you’d better get growing.

At a crossroads? Grow through it.

Do more. Achieve more. Create more.

You might have guessed it by now, but I am a card carrying member of the anti-growth coalition and I’m advocating for depth over growth as the place we need to be heading in these mysterious times. 

It is not that action and creation in response to these times is bad, but rather that growth without depth leaves an imbalance. A tree without roots is going to fall over when the storm comes. And there are plenty of them on the horizon. 

To trade growth for depth is a form of composting. 

It requires a commitment to lean into the discomfort of these times. 

It invites us to sit with the trouble and embrace our vulnerability.

To attend to the needs of our roots, not just our branches. 

It means being prepared to sit in the darkness.

To dig in.

When we do that we might realise that silently sitting next to us is someone else doing exactly the same thing.  

This is where the magic is, alone, together in the darkness.

True community.

Becoming Crew.

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Trading growth for depth and sitting together in community is one of the principles of our new Community Solo offering.

The Community Solo is a learning journey where we will experience this feeling of being alone, together. Sitting in community, building our crew, whilst attending to the deepening required to navigate these mysterious times.

We are offering two deep winter Community Solo’s:

• 27th November - 15th December 2022

• 12th January - 2nd February 2023

Our deep winter Community Solo’s are designed to support and encourage our capacity to listen, ask better questions, and cross the threshold to a deeper relationship with ourselves, with our community, and with the more-than-human world.

It's about trading growth for depth, swapping isolation for community and looking inward rather than outside of ourselves for the answers we need.

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We begin our Community Solo by building our Crew. 

We do it with 5 x two hour online gatherings. 

Through these sessions we explore our intentions & questions. We share our longings and uncertainties, letting go of what no longer serves, attending to the deepening. 

Becoming compost.

We will introduce a range of practices to support reflection, deep listening & nature connection and we’ll prepare for our Nature Solo. 

The Nature Solo is the heartbeat of our Community Solo, it works with the age-old idea of taking our questions, ideas and longings out onto the land. Our deep winter solo will encourage you to walk through a portal to a ‘medicine walk’. A medicine walk is an intentional experience where you travel alone, and where you decide where you go and how long you spend doing it. With the knowledge of your crew also out on the land at the same time, you will experience what it is like to be alone but still connected and together in community. Your experience might involve some sitting in silence listening and feeling and it might involve wandering down trails you have never seen before. It may be a few hours or it may start before dawn and end after dusk. We will support you to find an experience that feels appropriate for where you are at. Importantly you are encouraged to make your nature solo an experience you do from your doorstep, getting to know the place you call home.

Becoming famous for 5 miles is an idea first presented by Gary Synder - poet, writer and environmental activist. It is a delicious invitation fit for these mysterious times and one that is at the heart of the medicine walk.  Trading our 5 minutes in the limelight for 5 miles of deep relationship with the rhythms and stories of our homes. To deliberately stay local, 5 miles or much, much less than that. To spend some time digging in, tuning into the stories of that place, the human ones and the more-than-human ones, simply noticing what comes up, inside us and around us.

If we were all to create a life-long apprenticeship to the places we called home we might start to find our own indigeneity to the places we are in and that we have lost connection with. If we rediscover the stories of our places perhaps we might realise how worthy they are of our presence, our attention, our care?

This is an act of depth not growth. 

And it's a radical one in these times. 

Following our day gathering the stories of our places we’ll head back into our community, welcoming our crew back to our virtual village to share our experience and begin the process of integrating them into our life, galvanizing ourselves through reflection and intention, for transformation in service to life on earth.

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The winter promises to be long, cold and dark, but together, in community we have the chance to deepen, connect and tune-in. 

The Community Solo is brought to you by Evva, Dan and Mark.

We’d love to have you join us, to spend the winter deepening, apprenticing to the stories of your community, Becoming Crew. 

If you fancy it, you can get more information and register your interest here:

https://www.becomingcrew.com/community-solo