Welcome to Aletheia
I am excited to welcome you as a participant to our Aletheia Intensive.
Whether you are an ‘old hand’ or a ‘newbie’ to Integral and/or Relational Practice, this weekend provides tools to expand and evolve the way relationships occur and are experienced in your personal day to day life.
In support of everyone creating the most value possible please arrive Friday well rested, nourished, and as undistracted as possible. I encourage everyone to take especially good care of yourselves the week before the course and remember that we're about to take the art of relating with everyone in our lives to a whole new level of fulfillment.
You will find logistical information (lodging, what to bring, etc) as well as a pre-course practice below. Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions.
Looking forward to diving deep with you all.
Best,
Robert A MacNaughton
Aletheia Prime Course Leader
robert@integralcenter.org
Pre-Aletheia Assignments
Hello everyone!
Preparing for this weekend...where to begin…
Part 1:
Investing an entire weekend towards having rewarding community & relationships can keep payin’ off for generations, no exaggeration. First of all, the profound gesture you’re making by spending an entire weekend with an advanced group of people similarly committed, focusing three entire days on taking any interaction to deeper places, that alone makes it very difficult not to see shifts in your life.
Beyond that you’re also very likely to be supported and...extraordinarily nourished in a way many people say they’ve never had the opportunity for. These needs this weekend tends to meet for you are termed ‘Actualization Needs’ (as opposed to ‘Deficiency Needs’).
Getting your basic needs met is absolutely essential for creating the community you’re inspired to have, they just aren’t particularly well met in this weekend AND the degree to which you get them met is the degree to which you can really go deeply into these later levels of development.
So, your first assignment:
- Choose one action you’re avoiding ‘handling’ in your life, one thing that could have you distracted in the weekend, one of the things in the back of your mind that you ‘oughta be handling instead of spending all this time doing some seminar’.
- Choose one person to tell about that action, why it matters to you, and by when you’ll have it completed.
- Immediately take at least one step towards completing it (if not completing it all together).
Part 2:
If we could spend say, three months practicing and exploring together, expectations and cultural norms would inevitably arise...but we have only three days together and I want us on the same page ahead of time on how we are going to play together in service of making the very most of that time.
The cool thing about being in a rush to create this...it encourages us to practice making explicit agreements of how we’re inspired to be with each other (as opposed to unconsciously expecting each other to follow our implicit expectations yet often feeling upset when they impose theirs on us!).
From an Integral perspective, how we relate together isn’t bound by any one assumed form of relating, but it can be inspired by all cultures and ultimately can be co-created. More like a game we might play together, I don’t play chess because I ‘should’ but for the joy of the play.
If someone prefers shoots and ladders...the only thing that makes one game better than another is the degree to which it includes the perspectives and values of all the players.
To play any game together, as one community, we all either get really good at improvising OR stop and take the time to get on the same page about what game we most want to play and what rules we can all commit to that’ll most potently encourage it.
Your second assignment:
Read over The Agreements below. There will be time on Friday to ask any questions and make any additional requests of your community before we all explicitly agree to play by these ‘Rules of the Game’. Arrive prepared to do so and do any soul-searching or exploration on your own this week such that you feel in Integrity committing to these agreements.
The Agreements
(consider these agreements to be in order of precedence)
1. Integrity
We each commit to doing what we say we will do, and in cases in which we have broken an agreement we commit to:
- Acknowledging the Agreement we broke, whether it be implicit or explicit, and how we broke it, with the people involved.
- Getting the Impact it had on those involved.
- Offering Amends, actively contributing to the relationship as a demonstration that you value it.
- Re-committing to or Re-negotiating that agreement.
2. Honor Self
We each commit to doing what we truly want to do & nothing that we don’t truly want to do.
By creating a space of ‘personal responsibility’, we can spontaneously play with larger groups knowing that our infinitely unique needs and preferences can be accounted for as they come up, by each individual speaking up, making requests, and in some cases getting support to benefit from sitting out on some activities all together.
This training occurs in a culture of ‘Adult Play’ (vs ‘Therapeutic Space’). It’s designed for people who’ve cultivated enough agency to know what ‘honoring self’ means for them and to feel comfortable speaking up even with complete strangers. That said, even the most integrated of you are likely to discover various opportunities to more fully honor your self… in service of you growing from these situations (as opposed to feelings of regret or resentment). We all commit to honoring the safe word ‘Pepper’. Any time someone speaks the word ‘Pepper’, all formal activities and practices immediately cease while staff remain available for that person, to ensure they are honoring themselves while participating at any level they choose.
3. Honor Other
We agree to:
1 - Support each other in Honoring Self by making no aggressive physical contact without explicit conversation and agreement.
2 - Immediately honor any request to cease any form of engagement with a fellow participant or staff member.
3 - Do no damage to the physical building or furnishings.
4. Own Your Experience
Our bias is that no one is the authority on truth, and we are each the sole authorities on our own experience. This means that we can only speak definitively about what we are experiencing.
When in doubt, practice speaking only things that cannot be argued.
5. Hide Nothing
By “Hide Nothing” we mean this: any time you would hesitate to share something with someone, you are committed to acknowledging it -- even if just to yourself.
This is not the same as “Share Everything”!
6. Confidentiality by Request
This agreement works in a unique way for our trainings, and is the most common to elicit questions and additional requests by participants (which is totally welcome).
Any personal expression or share is not spoken about to anyone other than who is in this course by request on a case-by-case basis.
We all commit to honoring any request for this confidentiality, even retroactively, as soon as the course begins on Friday afternoon
Logistics
Course Location:
The Integral Center
2805 Broadway
Boulder, CO 80304
We are located on the NW corner of Broadway and Balsam. The Center is close to downtown, conveniently on the SKIP bus line, and is in close proximity to a variety of restaurants, cafes, and natural grocer (Ideal Market Plaza).
Arrival Time + Schedule:
Our course will begin at 1pm on Friday. Please arrive early enough to park, check-in, and settle. If you have any questions or issues on the day of, please feel free to call or message our Course Supervisor.
Schedule Overview:
Friday - 1pm (sharp) until approx 10pm
Saturday - 11am (sharp) until approx 10pm
Sunday- 11am (sharp) to 8pm
What to bring:
- Water Bottle
- $8-20 per meal - Although we have light snacks and drinks throughout the weekend, we will have formal breaks during the course to go out for meals.
- Journal + Pen (optional)
Meal breaks during course:
- Friday Dinner (eat light)
- Saturday Lunch & Dinner
- Sunday Lunch (course will complete by 8pm for a late Dinner)
Please arrive well fed at the beginning of each day!
Transportation from DIA to Boulder
RTD Bus systems: www.rtd-denver.com/
You will be looking at taking the SkyRide (AB) from DIA to Boulder
Super Shuttle: www.supershuttle.com
Lodging Options Boulder
Walking Distance to Center:
http://www.boulderuniversityinn.com/
http://www.qualityinnboulder.com/
http://www.thebradleyboulder.com/
http://www.footofthemountainmotel.com/
A Bit Farther away (would require a cab/car)
http://www.boulderoutlook.com/
https://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/denbo-boulder-marriott/?ttr=2.18bE
Want a house/vacation rental?
(AirBNB has been very popular with participants in the past).
http://www.vrbo.com/vacation-rentals/usa/colorado/front-range#a2305
Cameras - any footage being captured is either of the staff delivering content or for training purposes.
Any participant can request a camera that happens to be in their vicinity be turned off at any time, or that footage of them be deleted even after the fact.
No footage will be viewed by anyone other than those involved with the course without prior consent of all individuals in that footage.
Thanks for reading through this letter in preparation of our journey together. I’m looking forward to seeing you soon.
~Robert MacNaughton, Boulder CO
