Radiant Body of Time

Notes on the Rhizome and Re-Thinking Emergence

Next Tuesday, August 23, is the start of my new class: Fragments of an Integral Future: Re-Visioning Consciousness Unfoldment in a Time Between Worlds.

I’ve shared some thoughts about the course in the last missive that went out, and the latest Mutations podcast.

For this round, I wanted to touch on the most important image the course (and my book) has been inspired by: the rhizome.

What if we could embody a different relationship with time? If we took other images from our world - spirals, zig-zags, rhizomes, crystals, the folds of a midnight flower, the pulsing undulations of the jellyfish - and allowed our narratives of becoming and transformation (personal or otherwise) to follow those contours and weaves, those meta patterns?

What if we didn’t need the narrative of progress or sequence to imagine the complex processes of cultural unfoldment or emergence?

What other tools, myths, and voices would then come forward?

The first few sessions follow the path of the rhizome and root as an inspired image, both as metaphor and conceptual toolkit to begin sensing, imaging, and thinking with time. I will be playfully suggesting a new “history” of consciousness unfoldment, i.e., thinking less linearly — progressively — about the narrative, what then becomes of the story of human emergence?

This old plum tree is boundless. All at once its blossoms open and of itself the fruit is born. It forms spring; it forms winter. It arouses wind and wild rain…. Its whirling, miraculous transformation has no limit. Furthermore, the treeness of the great earth, high sky, bright sun, and clear moon derives from the treeness of the old plum tree.

                – Eihei Dōgen, “Plum Blossoms”

I suggest that something quite radical, as in rad (“root”) occurs, a re-visioning of consciousness unfoldment more appropriate for complex, planetary, ecological thinking and being. More reflective of the supposed integral consciousness structure that many scholars in my field have described emerging in our present civilizational crisis. We are then better situated to ask: how do we lean into this new consciousness, learn to body it forth in our daily lives, our praxis, our culture? Become like emissaries from an integral future?

Here’s our schedule:

As a closing note, I wanted to give a brief appreciative mention of a Coaches Rising panel I participated in with Spring Cheng and Steve March, facilitated by Joel Monk. “Transformation in a Meta-Modern World (& the Stage Theory Debate).” It was a delight to jump right into the deep end with Spring and Steve - both are putting forward their own models of human emergence and unfoldment, and I so look forward to our continued conversations and collaborations on how we might re-imagine our thinking on these subjects.

That’s all for this round. Hope to see you next week for class!

Sincerely,

Jeremy