Pachamama Alliance Monthly Gathering
The Nine Initiations of Life and the Imagination of Earth

Bill Plotkin and Geneen Marie Haugen

In recent decades, Western people have been remembering that the adventure of initiation is essential to psychospiritual maturation, personal fulfillment, and cultural evolution. There’s never been a time in the world when initiation has been more important than it is now — to catalyze our capacity to collectively imagine and manifest life-enhancing societies. Bill will describe the nine initiations of life with an emphasis on Confirmation and Soul Initiation. Geneen will ask: What would the world become if we approached the other-than-human beings — rivers, mountains, dragonflies, redwoods, and reptiles — as if each is alive, intelligent, and suffused with soul, imagination, and purpose? Who would we become if we participated intentionally with such an animate, imaginative Earth? Can contemporary Western people re-open the gates of perception to an intelligent, meaningful cosmos as experienced by “nature mystics” and many traditional people — perhaps our own distant ancestors?


Bill Plotkin, Ph.D., founder of Colorado’s Animas Valley Institute (www.animas.org), is a depth psychologist, wilderness-based soul guide, and agent for cultural change. Author of Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche and Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World, he has guided thousands of people through initiatory passages in the underworld of soul. Visit him at www.natureandthehumansoul.com.

Geneen Marie Haugen is a writer, wilderness explorer and guide to the intertwined mysteries of nature and psyche. Her work appears in many anthologies, including American Nature Writing and Going Alone: Women's Adventures in the Wild. Currently a PhD student in Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness at the California Institute of Integral Studies, she is committed to the world-shifting potential of the generative human imagination.

Bill and Geneen will also be giving a day-long program on Saturday, February 12th, hosted by the California Institute for Integral Studies.