I’m in the middle of teaching a course that my brother Ollen and I designed. It’s a 5 session introduction to seership and journeywork designed to take a student from zero to competency in the course of 10 weeks. Last night was session two, and I’m already amazed by the progress the attendees are making and the great experiences everyone is having.

One of the things that I kind of expected, but is surprising me anyway, is how strongly using group work and a shared symbol-set is impacting the entire class. The most interesting part of it is how each person in the group adds their own talents and gifts to the energy of the group to make something much larger and more complex than the sum of the parts.

Last night every single man present began having visions. During one of the techniques I felt the potential for spirit posession rise up in the majority of participants and had to redirect that energy to refocus the technique we were practicing. At another time nearly all the participants began speaking in tongues, all within moments of each other.

I’ve been considering what this means. First, it is extremely rewarding to Ollen and I as the people who developed the course. To be seeing such immediate and advanced progress so early in the curriculum gets both of us giddy about where we may be able to grow in the last sessions. Second, it confirms two things I’ve been thinking about for some time now. It confirms that group experience and practice are excellent tools of initiation for experiential techniques. By leveraging the development of group consciousness we’re able to produce profound and strong experiences even in people who have almost no training or personal experience in the work. Second, the mixture of trained and untrained practitioners creates a very powerful dynamic.

Last night our class was two relative neophytes, two advanced practitioners, and two instructors. I’m very interested in exploring which elements of this type of group work most profoundly effect the experiences had. I think there are three key elements, but I won’t be certain without more research.

1. Instruction/Leadership: The focus and skill of the person or persons leading the group makes a huge difference on how the group energy will coalesce and impact the whole.
2. The ratio of experienced practitioners to neophytes.
3. The willingness of all participants to engage in group consciousness and commit to each other.

Fortunately, this first time we’re teaching the class is giving us some great observational experiences as instructors so we can tweak and refine the class for other settings. We’re also using Brotherhood Members as our first class, which gives us an easy jumping off point and a common energetic bond with all participants. When we teach this publically I think we will need to start off with some sort of ritualizing and group-consciousness creating work to bring an element of effortless connection to the class.

This entire experience comes at just the right time for me. I’ve been having a powerful and life-changing experience teaching Amatheons curriculum in the Brotherhoods Mystery School. Placing that in reference and connection with teaching a curriculum I helped develop is really affirming of my skill as a teacher and mentor, and providing me with a great deal of confirmation about my choice to spend so much of my energy on teaching and leading. Already last night I found myself mentioning to George that I have to start thinking about the next curriculum/course I want to write. I haven’t decided what topic it will be on yet, but I really want to dig in.