Our 2025 Intensive Community: Awareness, Power and Communities
Our Intensive is a training event and at the same time action research experiment for creating alternative narratives for individuals, teams and communities.
We use aspects of Process Work to demonstrate and practice how the discipline of differentiating the Process-oriented Awareness Modes including multi-dimensional Process Work rank awareness modes can change perspectives, narratives and outcomes of community work.
We practice the use of the essence level when facilitating escalation, polarizations and hotspots. Our focus is on dropping personal history, and facilitating from the ground we stand on up.
Process Work differentiates between three types of rank, each with its own power, privileges, and characteristics:
• Consensus Reality Rank refers to measurable power hierarchies, whether individual or systemic, based on factors such as social status, wealth, or institutional influence.
• Dreaming Rank arises from an understanding of subjective roles and deeper psychological or relational awareness, existing on both individual and systemic levels.
• Essence Rank stems from a connection to deeper spiritual cores or essences, holding both dualities and offering a sense of interconnectedness beyond conventional and energetic hierarchies.
We practice the alchemy of awareness of multi-dimensional rank structure, and Process Work Conflict Phases to transform conflict into authentic collaboration.
The Paradigm
Arnold Mindell’s Process Work paradigm expands the traditional concepts of depth psychology, the existing narratives of modern physics, and ancient and modern spiritual traditions through his research of how we use diverse awareness modes to create our own realities.
Our Intensive focuses on demonstrating and practicing how dualities and polarizations shift when we cultivate the discipline to distinguish between our experiences in Consensus Reality—the collective ‘truth’ agreed upon by a culture or community—our Dreaming Reality, and our sentient knowledge.
Building on postmodernism, which deconstructs generally accepted stories of what reality, truth, and knowledge is, etc., it opens new and unexpected perspectives on the challenges we face as individuals, communities, and as a species.
This paradigm transforms not only our inner work but also our coaching and facilitation practices, giving us the fluidity to facilitate in complex, "chaotic" and also violent situations.
Inner Work in this Intensive
Process Work integrates the broad scientific fields of genetics, neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and linguistic research, challenging the idea that children are born as a blank slate. Instead, it proposes that children are born with an inherent personality structure. Building on Jung’s research on childhood dreams, Process Work explores how these early dreams reveal patterns that express themselves in various ways throughout life, creating a ‘life myth’—a journey principle, akin to a psychological-spiritual DNA.
This life myth - your natural journey principle through life, is the core of individual adaptility and hence "resilience", not as a static force, but as an individually diverse dynamic organizing principle that creatively adapts to and processes external challenges and internal evolution. The discovery and befriending of our life myth, or deeper self, is an ongoing journey of self-awareness and growth. It works as an elixir against outer and internalized oppression and a life vest in turbulent situations.
Large Group
Processes - Community Building - Conflict Facilitation and Resolution
In this Intensive, we explore how these conflict dynamics interconnect and how precolonial wisdom and postmodern collaboration models are deeply intertwined in fostering sustainable transformation. Conflicts—whether personal, communal, geopolitical, or even full-scale wars—are expressions of timespirits (Zeitgeist). They emerge as roles within the collective, manifesting in different forms across time. Although this is a process of evolution and innovation, it follows a cyclical pattern can be understood through four distinct phases:
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Status quo identification,
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Polarization:One-sidedness,
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Mutual recognition of the other side
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Detachment and resolution into a new role
Large-group processes and facilitation help reduce both inner and outer polarization by uncovering and reintegrating marginalized essences. This process allows us to engage with conflict from a place of renewed detachment, bringing awareness to the perennial nature of life that we all share.
Co-learning
Together:
The Team
The Intensive follows a Process Work Clinic format, developed and co-facilitated by Ellen and Max Schupbach. It brings together a dynamic mix of seasoned Process Work Diplomats, advanced learners, and newcomers, creating a living co-learning experience where a unique culture of collaboration emerges differently each year. This evolving process adapts to each group and environment, leading to powerful, inspirational experiences that are shaped by those who participate.
Our participants come from diverse backgrounds across the globe. For this Intensive Clinic, we are actively engaging with communities in Eastern Europe and post-Soviet countries, as well as members of the Deep Democracy Alliance who are deeply connected to indigenous traditions in their daily lives.
