MUTATIONS

This September, join author and integral philosopher Jeremy D Johnson for a four-day in-person retreat, “MUTATIONS: CALLING IN THE FUTURE.”

MUTATIONS is co-organized by Jeremy Johnson and ecosomatic psychotherapist astrid montuclard, and hosted by the Living Land Project in Guilford, Vermont.

This retreat will convene on September 12—15, during the temperate weather of late New England summer. Participants will have many opportunities to enjoy and explore the verdant hills, gardens, ponds and streams of this idyllic Vermont location.

“CALLING IN THE FUTURE” is the very first gathering of its kind for the Mutations network, a vibrant online community concerned with the direction of our world and seeking new and transformative ways of being.

Over the last five years, Mutations—beginning as a small podcast project that was an extension of Jeremy’s research forays—has grown into a diverse, transdisciplinary and intergenerational learning hub, a virtual ‘home’ for artists and educators, therapists and filmmakers, poets and academics. Something that everyone seems to have in common is that they are spiritual seekers and practitioners—each in their own way—trying to find new and meaningful paths towards self- and cultural- transformation in a world that feels like it’s cracking open into the cosmos.

The first Mutations retreat is a four-day event designed to become a creative ‘zone’ for personal and intersubjective insight.

Mixing silence and speech, theory and praxis, and creativity and contemplation, “Calling in the Future” is designed to creatively explore, enact, and embody the key principles of an emergent, integrative worldview.

According to the Swiss philosopher, poet and phenomenologist of consciousness Jean Gebser (1905-1973), a dramatic re-working of self and society, space and time, is presently underway.

Becoming integral involves a process of overcoming modernity’s many subject-object dualisms in order to arrive at a more relational ontology: a world where the self is actualized through its interrelationships, mutual becomings, and both past and future dynamically shape a spiritual present.

This new integral self becomes what Gebser calls “sense-full.” To be sense-full is to embody the creative agency to act “effectively from Ursprung,” origin. The integral life is one of renewed agency and freedom which emboldens us to become “untimely,” as Nietzsche wrote, “acting counter to our time and thereby acting on our time and… for the benefit of a time to come.”

THIS EVENT explores how we might become individuals and communities of the untimely, to become creative agents of planetary thinking and being: those who call in the future.

Through four days of emergent dialogue, collective meditation practices, workshops and philosophical-spiritual talks, and hands-on gardening time with the land, this retreat will explore—in the spirit of ‘serious play’—how we can begin to enact an integral worldview in our present.

• We will explore how we can reclaim time from clock-time, colonized time, and begin telling new stories about who we are, where we have been, and what we might become.

• We will explore the tools and techniques that we need to take with us, like imaginal medicine bags that have applications in our diverse fields, vocations, and artistry.

• We will come away as planetary way-finders and soul-makers, recognizing the supreme importance of spiritual imagination not only for healing our wounds, but overcoming the barriers of oppression and alienation so that we can unmake and remake our world.

• We will explore how the ‘integral’ mutation helps us to develop an intuitive and embodied—rather than merely abstract—experience of planetary thinking and being, mythmaking and regeneration.

• Finally, we will explore how we might become communities of the untimely: integrative communities of practice, fellowship and experimentation who experience the future as radically, and creatively present.
  

Schedule

Retreat participants will gather on Thursday, September 12. Events will conclude on Sunday evening, September 15.

Thursday - Aggregation

Participants arrive throughout the day. Setting up camp, lodgings.

Dinner served at 5 p.m.

Firepit conversations and evening conclusion. Musical performances and dancing.

Friday - Intensification

8:30 a.m. Meditation (optional).

Breakfast served at 9:15 a.m.

10:00 a.m. Opening talk: “Revisioning the History of Consciousness, or, How the Muses Love Alternatives” - Jeremy Johnson

Lunch served at 12:15 p.m.

Break and walkabout.

1:30 p.m. Afternoon workshop: “Becoming ‘Senseful’: Somatic Approaches to Integral Ecology” - Jeremy & astrid

3 p.m. Evening talk. “Cosmology Gained, Cosmology Lost: Dreaming Towards Planetary Futures” - Jeremy Johnson

Dinner served at 5 p.m.

Firepit discussion and evening conclusion. Musical performances and dancing.

Saturday - Intensification

8:30 a.m. Meditation (optional).

Breakfast served at 9:15 a.m.

10 a.m. Morning workshop: “Parts Work and Integral Consciousness” - astrid montuclard

Lunch served at 12:15 p.m.

Break and walkabout.

1:30 p.m. Afternoon workshop: Collective Presencing - “Planetary Soulmaking in a Time Between Worlds”

3 p.m. Evening talk: “Natura naturans: Origin, Creativity, and Images of the Posthuman” - Jeremy Johnson

Dinner served at 5 p.m.

Firepit discussion and evening conclusion. Musical performances and dancing.

Sunday - The Regenerative Imaginary

8:30 a.m. Meditation (optional).

Breakfast served at 9:15 a.m.

10 a.m. Activity. Harvesting. Participants are invited to get their hands in the dirt and harvest from the garden.

11: a.m. Workshop: Collective Presencing - “Oscillating Between Worldviews”

Lunch served at 12:15 p.m.

1:30 p.m. Afternoon panel. “Dreaming Forward Regenerative Communities”

3:00 p.m. Refreshments served and networking discussion: “Catalyzing Regenerative Projects.”

3:30-4 p.m. Harvesting: Participants are invited to work in the garden.

4:00 p.m. Afternoon talk and discussion: “To Go is To Return: Integral Futuring and the Gifts of Dispersal” - Jeremy Johnson

Dinner served at 5:30 p.m.

Evening firepit discussion. Firepit discussion and evening conclusion. Musical performances and dancing.

Monday - Dispersal

Breakfast served at 9:15 a.m.

Open discussion, creative plans, and participant dispersal.

Registration

In the spirit in which it has been organized, this event is based on the principles of the gift economy. There is no set fee for attending, however, the retreat organizers will make the financial costs of the event transparent to all attendees, and there will be opportunities for all participants to make contributions from the heart. This is a practice that invites a new form of financial reciprocity that moves away from the purely transactional ways of doing rooted in our current capitalistic paradigm. To read more about the gift economy, please click here.

Register for the retreat:

Accommodations and Travel

Meals will be served daily. All our food is sourced from local Vermont farms. Participants will also be welcome to bring their own meals and food from town (we recommend the Brattleboro Co-op). Participants will have access to the communal kitchen.

Participants are encouraged to camp on the premises and enjoy the idyllic September weather (a restroom and shower stall are available at the community house). Rooms and beds in the community house have limited availability, but may also be requested (see registration form above). Participants may also request arrangements made with a nearby Vermont homestay.

A list of nearby hotels can also be provided, if requested.

The closest recommended airport is Rutland (RUT). Other airports include Boston (BOS) and Montpelier (MPV). Amtrak is also available in Brattleboro, with connections to NYC and other stations in the northeast area.

About Your Hosts

Jeremy Johnson is an author (Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness), publisher (Integral Imprint), managing editor (Integral Leadership Review), podcaster (Mutations), senior research associate at Perspectiva, and integral philosopher.

His academic research, writing, and publishing advocates new forays into integrative thinking and praxis—aligning the scholastic, poetic, and spiritual—as existentially crucial work for pathfinding in a time of planetary crisis.

Jeremy is currently working on his doctorate in Philosophy at the California Institute of Integral Studies.

His second book, Fragments of an Integral Future (Integral Imprint) is forthcoming in late 2024.

astrid montuclard is an ecosomatic therapist and nonviolent climate justice activist. Rich with experiences as public health and mindfulness researcher with UC Davis and Zhejiang University (China), past core member & organizer with the East Point Peace Academy, and land-tender at the Possibility Alliance and Vine and Fig, astrid brings critical thinking to nature-based practices in support of individual and collective hero(ine)'s journeys amidst the climate-crisis-as-initiation. Trilingual, astrid translates works in eco-spirituality between French and English.