God’s Lonely People: Applied Liminality

The cost of the course is $200 for the full eight weeks or $30 per week. These costs are negotiable.* Course will commence if and when sufficient number have signed up.

This course is designed to help participants develop a more conscious, relaxed, authentic, and embodied approach to living and interrelating. My hope is that, by demonstrating a way of perceiving, expressing, and engaging with existence, it will allow participants to experience deepening awareness, honesty, integrity, and well-being in their lives.

My aim is to assist participants in developing a necessary tool set—a perceptual and cognitive lens—by which to discover their own unique orientation in and through (and out) the world and to develop a connection to their own internal guidance system.

The word liminality refers to limen, threshold, as in the area between one state and another. In the context of this course, it refers to the threshold between culture and nature, nature and the world, the world and the body, the body and the soul, and between soul and the “other”—both the small other of sentient beings and the big other of “God,” or the ultimate source of our existence.

An Esoteric Thrift Store

Over thirty years or more (since my early twenties), I have pursued an evolving series of interests—creative iterations combining self-exploration, social analysis, and artistic expression—seeking harmony between my inner and outer experience. In recent years, I have called this process “liminalism,” or “applied liminality.”

Since this process has been quite public, it’s possible to see a development (a becoming conscious) in my “gonzo” method as it proceeds through a series of identifications, applications, relationships, and enactments. As this introspective-expressive process has developed, it has become increasingly congruent with my outer life and ever more grounded in moment-to-moment reality. You might even say it describes my landing in the present.

In that spirit (in line with my current day-job), I see this course as being like an esoteric thrift store: a process of self-discovery, sharing, and relating that entails both a mythic and mundane “sorting of the seeds”: to find and plant those that are fertile, and throw out what’s left.

This method, it turns out, has always been the same: how to turn the lens through which I see the world into a mirror that reveals me to myself. The way I have gradually converted the surface of existence into the means to better see myself is by identifying those elements that have special resonance and meaning for me—because they correspond with my psychology—and removing all the rest. Eventually, what remains is a rough outline of my true image.

The more I have refined my focus in this way, the deeper I have been able to move into a given area, and the more effectively it has reflected (received the projection of) my own soul, or who I truly am, beyond all images.

By exploring this life-process in a sharing environment my hope is that others will be able to apply it to their own lives (tilt the mirror towards themselves) and so deepen their own connection to their true soul-selves.

The Liminal Structure

The course as structured will take place over eight weeks and include one weekly video interactive meeting (2-3 hours), as well as optional additional time for forum group discussions and exercises between meet-ups. Since the main purpose of the course is to deepen our sense of relating, participants are welcome to meet and collaborate outside of the course structure.

Week 1: Refuge. The world through the lens of pop culture: comic book heroes, pop music, movies, celebrities, artists (Blood Poets, Secret Life of Movies).

Week 2: Adversity. The world through the lens of paranoid awareness: alien abduction, UFOs, conspiracy (Blood Poets, Matrix Warrior, Lucid View)

Week 3: Personal Power. The world through the lens of sorcery: Castaneda, Crowley, Strieber, occultism, psychedelics, lucid dreaming, being “the One” (Matrix Warrior, Lucid View)

Week 4: Limitation. The world through the lens of autism: SWEDA, John de Ruiter, Extra-Consensual Perception, Philip K. Dick (Paper Tiger, “How Am I Not Myself?”)

Week 5: Family Secrets. The world through the lens of trauma: Donald Kalsched, Jonathan Lethem, marriage (Seen & Not Seen, “Occult Yorkshire”)

Week 6: Socialization. The world through the lens of liminality: 2nd Matrix, Rene Girard, Dave Oshana, house renovations (Prisoner of Infinity)

Week 7: Embodiment. The world through the lens of community & the other: house renovations, Garbanzo, thrift store, marriage.

Week 8: Home. The world through the lens of the soul: faith, Christianity, traditional metaphysics, Dave Oshana & the enlightenment transmission.

*Prices vary according to a) participant’s financial situation b) the number of participants. While the full course requires a time commitment of around 64 hours (8 hours per week), participants are encouraged to decide their own level of involvement. While there may be benefits to committing to the full “curriculum,” in the spirit of applied liminality, the course-structure is intended only as a guideline and will allow for maximum improvisation, spontaneity, and the unexpected—a “presiding over a series of happy accidents.”

To participate, email me: jasun [at] protonmail [dot] com