I envision the PsyEarth Institute as a wilderness retreat and leadership training center, comprising of a series of rustic, yet comfortable buildings and hermitages located within a 10,000 acre private ranch hidden deep within the mountains of the American Southwest. The PsyEarth Institute’s mission is to provide an environment where the individual can reconnect his or her mind, soul, consciousness and spirit with that of the Earth’s and learn to become an effective planetary steward, possibly serving in a future global leadership position. The Institute would be best known for its 12-month, 4-phase experiential program keyed to the solstice and equinox cycles.

      Participants would begin their 12-month commitment with extensive wilderness survival training during the summer. Upon the arrival of autumn equinox in late September, students are then dispatched to small, isolated hermitages to live in seclusion for three months. While in retreat, the student undergoes a process of “directed personal self-examination” and learns to reunite psyche with Nature and a the Source of All That Is. 

      Following the December winter solstice, PsyEarth Institute apprentices continue to remain in their forest redoubts for an additional three months but meet with other members of their group on a weekly basis at a central location. Students are charged to refine their intuitive skills acquired earlier and venture deep into uncharted intuitional and spiritual territory. The next six months finds the participants lodged in dormitories at Institute headquarters. Daily classes focus on rooting out old psychological patterns that prevent attainment of one’s full personal potential. Students undertake extensive past-life regressions to help them understand present-life relationships and develop a sense of soul destiny. After processing their multi-lifetime experiences, students team up with members of the opposite sex to work toward restoring trust between men and women and exploring the creative and profound benefits of properly balanced male and female energy. 

      During the final six weeks of the program, students concentrate on shifting themselves to the next level of possibility — the new man and woman of the 21st century. To help in this transformation, participants study the principles of alchemy and Natural Law, the lives of extraordinary men and woman of different cultures, and work to develop and refine critical leadership skills. Elders from various indigenous cultures share their personal wisdom with the students.

FROM A PARTICIPANT’S DIARY

    I thought about Phase I.  I’ll be all alone up there in the woods.  No fellow humans or comforting radio, TV or newspapers connecting me to the larger sphere of civilization.  But, we were told, we’d learn much about our inner self, perhaps for the first time in our lives. In reality, this meant confronting our internal dragons. But would this process of self-directed examination actually pave the road to real insight? And would real insight guarantee I’d be a happier, more effective human being?

    This would be no easy endeavor. No simple thing. I have my doubts. Lots of them. And they keep returning to harass me as I prepare for liftoff into space or descent into the underworld — whatever the case might be.  But what was the alternative? A life of media-mediated denial? Living as a regular citizen while civilization descends into violence and madness? I have no desire to fritter away the prime of my life in some inane job while my life force and that of the planet’s fade to black?  No way. While I live, I must pursue my mission, my destiny, here on Planet Earth — whatever it is. This much I feel sure about.

December 18

    It was, after all, the season of death.  Winter-whipped winds raced through the pines that shielded my small ridgetop stone shelter.  A dimmer sun, moving lower across the tree tops, meant night descended quickly.  Winter Solstice — the shortest day and longest night — loomed nearer day by day.  I felt the growing darkness as my own shadow self closing in on me, revealing itself as inadequacy, confusion and failure. The venom worked its treachery until all seemed lost.  But what was lost? An outmoded way of being? A life of separation, fragmentation, alienation?  Exile from a true, all-species community; a life of fear and paranoia? I could feel the terror in the trees, the anxiety in the plants, the worry in the water.  And anger . . .  I felt powerless to do anything about anything. And I became even angrier. 

      “Release and accept,” staff had said. “When you hit the wall and can’t go any farther, just let go of all the burdens you think you need to carry. Accept the nature of humanity and the world the way it is. Love it. Send it compassion.” 

      Release was hard enough, but acceptance — the acceptance of my self with all my faults, failures and dashed expectations, I found even more difficult. I wrestled with my unwillingness for days, weeks, months. Each day I asked for guidance from the trees, the divine, the sacred earth, the spirit world. I learned to seek insight from my surroundings. I could feel a new dawn readying to stir within.

      I listened to the creaking of the trees bent by wind, the wild rush of rain-drizzle cascading down a mountainside, the pumping of crows’ wings overhead, the steady cacophony of a stream chasing gravity downstream. The more I attended to the fine details of the land that enfolded me, the more my physical sensitivity increased. I opened myself to air, wind, water, earth, fire and spirit. Soon, I could feel the life force well up within me, making everything around seem so much more alive and truly sentient. As I allowed the healing sounds arising out of stillness to roll over me, I concluded that to be truly human, one must learn to listen and listen carefully.

      I say this because, as strange as it might sound, I do believe I was receiving messages. First, they were quite faint; then they became stronger. I felt myself becoming privy to a kind of direct knowingness. This subtle intuition might take the form of sensing beforehand when I would encounter a special rock formation, an animal, or a change in the weather. Then, situations exhibiting concepts or principles new to me began to present themselves. For example: I learned about referencing to the vibration of my own heart and breath . . . and then matching that frequency with the rhythm of my outer environment. The inner voice beckoned, "Don’t think yourself through life . . . synchronize your way. Become part of the flow."

      Of course, this is much easier said than done. I learned the process requires an empty, quiet mind and lots of patience. But when I did manage to bring my internal self into resonance with my external reality, my subjective and objective realities would also merge. Separateness briefly disappeared. Feelings of euphoria would sweep through me like a wildfire set by lightning upon a wide prairie.

      I finally understood that as humans, we have the ability to be one with Creation. We can craft our existence according to our desires. If this is true, imagine the implications for positive global change. But is humanity ready? Might we use such power to create the Quantum Leap New World . . . rendering our present world obsolete? Likely, I thought, but we’d better do it soon.

      Deep listening, then, seemed a potent means of direct knowing, of gaining insight into matters of all kinds. I had discovered, in fact, an especially useful means to gather such information. I practiced making my mind a blank slate — like a wall of light shimmering on the surface of a pond. And insights, images and ideas would slowly appear on my mental screen.

      I learned about the reciprocity of thought . . . how my environment would mirror my state of mind. On days when anger and frustration gripped me, a storm might mysteriously gather out of nowhere. If instead, I felt joyful or unusually ecstatic, sunlight or rainbows would fill my day. Whatever my heart sent out, it got back. Indeed, this effect was curious, but, I concluded, it proved the interconnectedness of mind and matter. The communication medium was thought, rendered into vibration and transmitted as wave and particle. As I formulated thought-created vibrations from my feelings, I was constantly summoning associated physical energies into existence.

      As a result of my experiments in conscious sensing and thought projection, I decided that if we could better understand how thought-vibration connects our unconscious to physical reality, we might achieve a more intimate alignment with the natural order of things. I suspected that this state of high resonance with nature, spirit or Source is also the source of synchronicity — the appearance of miraculously-timed coincidences. Perhaps synchronicity is, in fact, the natural state of life, reflecting the base state of World In Balance. If we could regularly clear our habitual blocks and resistance to such heightened states, I felt confident we would discover the full knowingness and joy inherent in being truly human.

January, Phase II -- Communication

      In our weekly meetings back at the lodge we discussed the animal reality at length. Human evolution would have flickered out long ago were it not for the presence of our non-human brethren. Our species is mightily beholden to the gift of animal flesh, fur, fin, feather and bone. Our ancestor hunter-gatherers knew well this fact and accorded the human-animal relationship the highest degree of reverence. When the aboriginal human entered the forest, he knew he was setting foot on sacred ground. But to perpetuate himself and his kind, he needed access to the web of natural intelligence. And so he developed many ingenious means of inter-species communication. Human would ask Bear if Bear would agree to provide food and life for his tribe. If Bear agreed, Human and Bear would begin the dance of giving and taking. Also, Native Americans would thank the spirit of the animal they killed and pray that it return to physical form again soon.

      "Go meet Wolf," encouraged our staff. "He's newly arrived here, thanks to a local reintroduction program." Eyes widened as we expressed our doubt and fear. "You need to meet Wolf — and Bear too. Consider that it was the fear of the wild, the dark and the unknown that drove the wedge between humankind and the Earth. Our mission here is to mend that break, heal the wounding, and explore the meaning of the human-to-other-than-human relationship."

      But I met no wolves or bears. I thought myself fortunate at first, but later began to regret my missed opportunity. Something inside me yearned for a reconnection with those special beings. I knew I could learn much from them. Maybe on the extended program. . .

      Next, we were challenged by staff to develop our "group mind" — sending thoughts to each other by mental telepathy. As expected, first results were poor. Back at our hermitages, most of us were challenged with separating our own thoughts from those incoming from other sources. We simply could not distinguish the transmission signal from the background noise inside our heads. Secretly, I think most of us held substantial doubts about the viability of the process, and subsequently, any successes were greeted with healthy skepticism.

      Nevertheless, small knowings led to larger ones, and we began to experience the power of the process. At weekly meetings, we learned from others who shared what techniques worked for them — humans racheting each other up the long evolutionary ladder. It also became obvious that a great deal of trust was required to admit another person's thoughts into one's own. But once we opened ourselves to the possibility of mutual trust, we began to sense each other’s thought presence in our minds. We felt ourselves reaching out through the trees, across the miles of topographic separation to make contact, feeble as it was. I experienced incoming messages as long-awaited letters from home — a welcomed reunion that carried an extra spark of soul-felt recognition. I sensed there was great potential here for enhancing human community.

March 22

    Just as we began to build momentum, we ran out of time. The arrival of warmer weather and the Spring Equinox heralded our sojourn’s end. It was time to depart our mountain retreats and begin the next cycle of our training — the Expression Phase. Reluctantly, I packed up my small assortment of belongings, smoked my cozy nest with a bit of burning cedar and bid a tearful farewell to a favorite squirrel who had become my confidant during the past six-months. My furry friend seemed incredulous that I was leaving. We had connected, indeed communed. We had entered into the web of life together, our stories blending as one.

      She followed me down the trail for one last time and halted at the edge of her territory. She paused and remained motionless, head raised. Our eyes locked. I said, out loud, "I’ll miss you. You’ve added much to my life. Let’s stay in touch somehow. Okay?" She blinked, flicked her tail rapidly back and forth, then turned and quickly bounced up the trail toward home. The human-to-other-than-human communication grid was working, I thought to myself proudly. I had learned my lessons well.

*   *   *

       "You've reached the halfway point," a staff member informed us during our first group session since returning from the woods. "Congratulations. Your first six months were about cultivating the inner world. During the next half-year, we’ll examine the outer world and what that involves. You’ll learn how to relate to others more effectively, how to harness the power of integrated masculine/feminine energies. And, how to work with Natural Law."

      It seemed a lot to accomplish in six or even twelve months. I felt a ripple in the room as our members flashed anxious glances at each other. Yet, I detected a difference this time. We were steadier now, newly empowered. We would handle the challenges — and with grace.

      But I wasn’t prepared for the daunting task of grappling with our egos. These savage pests demonstrated an almost limitless capacity to generate fear in some form or another. And these fears, usually born of guilt, insecurity, impatience, separateness, anger or self-hatred, would tenaciously resist our heroic attempts at personal progress. Good support groups, ingenious processing methods, as well as our previous training helped to wear away these negative elements of the unconscious. Our daily program of yoga, exercise and mediation assisted us in staying focused and moving forward. Each day at dawn, we recited an aphorism by Lao Tzu, a 6th-century Chinese philosopher:

                  Knowing others leads to wisdom:

                  Knowing the self leads to enlightenment.

                  Mastering others requires force;

                  Mastering the self calls for inner strength.

     After three weeks of nonstop work on our recalcitrant egos, each of us teamed up with a partner of the opposite sex. We practiced working with our male and female energies through use of special yoga exercises. And we’d engage in long discussions about our personal experiences with the opposite sex, and what it meant to be male or female. Almost immediately we found ourselves confronting the trust factor — or lack of it. Men and women, we discovered, harbor a basic distrust of each other. Our guides insisted we explore the issue in depth, taking whatever amount of time was required to go to the source. We agreed there was plenty of blame to cast, but given a historical record so replete with pain and suffering for both genders, we decided a more productive response might be to consider what actions would prevent unhealthy gender patterns from perpetuating themselves.

      As we discussed these immensely painful matters, we found ourselves bound to tightly constricted concepts of male and female — realities we each had imposed upon each other due to our personal woundedness and previous gender conditioning. Worse, we suspected our individual and collective creative potential was severely limited by the extent of our mental distortions.

      With the help of our guides, we explored how to shatter these deeply embedded fears and conceptual blocks and define new ways of relating to each other, "Remember that all humans embody both the masculine and feminine. Move beyond your distrust, as difficult as it might seem, and regard each other personally, and in this present moment, with highest honor — as fellow god or goddess. Consider that you stand before a being who carries some of life’s most profound wisdom." To this end, we were encouraged to treat the body as a temple, a place of worship where head and heart might merge in an egalitarian, respectful way.

And then there was the experience of exploring our past-life histories . . .

      We experienced this time-travel with the help of a special meditative and acupuncture-assisted process. The experience of seeming to travel backward in time while encountering the fear, trauma, joy and power of a completely foreign reality was exhilarating. I found the realism and detail exceptional. It felt like a movie playing in my head. Once the initial scene appeared, I’d know everything that was happening. I’d tune into people's deepest feelings and the hidden personal and political agendas of the main characters in each life drama. As both intimate participant and omniscient observer, I was able to fast forward, rewind, or pause events and circumstances at will. With the assistance of professional guides I was directed to evaluate the powerful and often  painful learning experiences produced by each lifetime.

      The past-life recollections I experienced certainly altered my life-view. Childhood idiosyncrasies and personality patterns became brightly illuminated as I stepped back into the shadowy dramas of my own personal history. As I relived the often dull-witted, harsh, brutish and short lives of my ancestor incarnations, I gained a deep appreciation of the long, hard journey the soul embarks upon to refine itself. I relived the laborious trial and error of each chosen lifetime, the small measures of success and repeated failures, and was forced to confront a personal nemesis that had tracked me down from lifetime to lifetime. It had challenged me again and again across the millennia — even to the present — to facilitate my finally getting a particular truth. I am amazed at the genius of it all. Despite my own unthinkable actions in lifetimes past as executioner, murderer and the like, I have seen the universe radiate with empathy, compassion and love for the unceasing struggle of the human spirit. The cosmos cares. We must, too. We are all in this together, for the duration, for the Creation.

  As our group entered the continuum of our personal histories again and again, we were reminded of the interconnectedness and the timelessness of human existence as a point to be held in constant and common reference. We had learned during our wilderness experience how to enter the Earthmind, how to work with the human group mind. Now we were traveling into the Universal Mind in which our own personal millennial histories floated adrift as well. In this cosmic mixture, all events, all intelligence is contained . . . seemingly chaotic, but still accessible by using intention-driven vibrational mechanisms. At last we had begun to tap into the level of universal reference.

      Our experiences also taught us that we do not merely observe reality. Rather, we have the ability to change it. This is Natural Law or Creation in action. "We are what we think," the Buddha said. Cause and effect. Thought power transformed into physical action — like it or not, conscious or unconscious. It happens all the time.

      To put the power to work in a conscious, directed way, we next set about drafting an action plan, something that would make a difference in the world . . . a blueprint for an improved human . . . a course charted toward our future selves.