~ Guides ~


Doug Van Houten
is a body, heart & soul guide, student of Hakomi, apprentice to the honeybee, visual artist, wild ceremonialist, activist and guide for Animas Valley Institute (www.animas.org). In this work he draws on the wisdom of indigenous cultures, the natural world, depth-psychology, eco-psychology, dreams, poetry, and many cross cultural soul-encounter practices such as vision fasting, council, trance rhythms and conversations with the sacred Other. Doug's Great Work lives in support of others uncovering their own unique gifts and in so doing transforming their own lives in service to the Great Turning transformation of our times.


 
Annie Bloom
has been guiding people into the mysteries of our deepest mystical connections with the earth for 20 years. She has trained with School of Lost Borders, worked with Wilderness Reflections, and was a senior guide with Animas Valley Institute between 1995-2013. Annie is an initiator, a soul practitioner, a deep listener who carefully attends to the large story in the everyday stories of our lives. She has a 30 year BodySoulWork practice which has blossomed through the careful and attentive listening of her hands. She has guided hundreds of people to the intersection where our personal soul resides in the world soul. She has travelled the planet, but most especially the red-rock deserts and mountains of the American west, guiding people into exquisite wildernesses to make contact with our larger destiny and the fulfillment of being alive at this time in our planetary evolution..


MLS Photo

Marilyn Stoner
is a psychotherapist in private practice. She was the co-chair of the Festival of Faiths in 2008. She co-facilitates with Mark Steiner groups through Cultivating Connections in The Work That Reconnects founded by Joanna Macy, Brian Swimme's Evolutionary Cosmology studies, and the Awakening the Dreamer Workshops. She has also worked with the Hosparus Bereavement Center to provide expressive therapy groups for adults, and is working with Louisville's Compassionate Community. Marilyn delights in participating in small group gatherings with our awesome ever widening compassionate community.
CC logo trans png 2
Help us to keep cultivating the connections.  Make a year-end donation

Cultivating Connections affirms and explores the connections between environmental sustainability, social justice and spiritual fulfillment, and the role we each are called to play in bringing forth a vibrant Earth Community, by offering workshops, study groups, retreats, conferences, sacred celebrations and other programs around the themes of environmental spirituality, personal empowerment, and the new cosmology.

Parsifal's Quest:
The wound that never heals and what emerges when the masculine and feminine divinely unite in service to life

with Doug Van Houten & Annie Bloom 
April 23-27, 2014  ~  Harrods Creek Farm
(30 minutes outside of Louisville)

Register early and receive a $100 discount.
YOU MUST PRE-REGISTER space is limited

AT HARRODS CREEK FARM near Louisville, Kentucky, we will listen to the story of The Wounded Fisher King and Parsifal and in allowing the ancient wisdom of this tale to enter into our psyche and bodies, we will explore the terrain of where our personal story and wound intersects with the world's wounding story as we are experiencing it daily. We will dive deeply into what quest we are being called forth to seek.  We will ask the question "What IS the Holy Grail?"  and what power does it have to beckon knight after knight into far reaching realms seeking its presence?


One of the central mythologies of our culture is the timeless tale of Parsifal's quest for the Holy Grail.  Mythologies emerge from our earthly indigenous human consciousness to teach us deep and essential ways to approach and engage in our lives in service to that which gives us life.  In the ancient text of Parsifal, written down by Wolfram von Eschenbach in the 12th century but told for decades before, we meet a host of characters embodying various aspects of the masculine and feminine. 


The story is a multivalent riddle that leads us deeply into what is central in each one of us -- a masculine aspect that is a holy spear, and a feminine aspect that is a holy chalice.  In the Age of Chivalry, it was understood and practiced that the masculine courted, protected, and cherished the feminine.  The wound we suffer is the inevitable consequence of coming of age in an overly rational, materialistic, aspiritual age where our masculine competency and drive has overridden our inner feminine ability to access the internal knowledge that comes with the mysteries of gestation and birth, and the guiding wisdom of our instinctual self -- soul, you might say.

While it is a woman's body that bears life, it is the union of the healthy and holy aspects of masculine and feminine energies within each one of us that conceives and serves a life that nourishes the world.

The Fisher King, whose kingdom mysteriously holds the Holy Grail, has a wound inflicted upon him in his groin that will not heal. Similarly, a severe wound pervades each of us individually as well as the collective.  It is a single question that must be asked by Parsifal in order to enter the kingdom and will heal that which has laid the land to waste and has caused great affliction to everyone.  It is a question that we all must come to ask at some point in our lives, and it arises from the intertwining of the masculine and feminine energies within ourselves -- the sacred marriage that makes our hearts whole.

This myth has numinous power and great meaning for the modern psyche of both men and women.  The sacred task before each of us is also at the heart of the Grail story for Parsifal, to make conscious what the unconscious (feminine) instinctual self holds to be true and to enact consciously (masculine) those truths into the world.   The world's pain is beseeching us to do the deep exploration and balancing of these energies.  Are we constantly moving forward with our well-laid plans only to feel bereft and hollow when we find there is something missing in our hearts?  Do we continue dreaming of ever ending possibilities and never accomplish a thing?  Are we suffering along with the world in agonizing ways that make us feel helpless in knowing which way to turn?

To register click here

All camping program
(however, there is lodging nearby in Crestwood, KY)

Program Fee: $575  
Early Registration Discount: $475 
(with a non-refundable $225 deposit paid by February 23) Registrations and final payment due 30 days before the program start date. Meal cost not included.  Sharing in food preparation will be part of our community practice, more details on meal logistics will be included in the prep materials.  In the event that we find it necessary to cancel the program you will receive a full refund.

For more information and registration please contact Doug at:
doug@dougvanhouten.com
(502) 472-6563
 
Blessed be the longing the brought you here...  ~ John O'Donohue   

Reclaiming a Soul-Infused Life:
A Journey Exploring Individual and Community Wholeness 

with Marilyn Stoner & Doug Van Houten 

Friday, February 28, 6 pm thru Noon Sunday, March 2, 2014
Camp Kavanaugh, Crestwood, Kentucky
Cost: sliding scale $175 - $225

You are invited to join a circle of concerned hearts to call pieces of our soul life back home. Our time together will include:
  • Expressing our grief over losses to our individual and community wholeness
  • Opening up to our stories of loss, hope and joy
  • The use of the creative processes of art, music and movement
  • Focused time alone in nature
  • Soulcentric dreamwork, guided imagery, council, ritual and celebration
WE LONG TO RESTORE the lost aspects of our soul life. Soul loss can be felt as a diminishment in meaning, connection, vitality, joy, intuition, imagination, power, feeling, vision and community. Because of the ceaseless demands and frantic pace of contemporary culture, we often find that we have little time for self-reflection, healing, wholing and encounters with our true self -- our soul life.  This leaves us feeling that something essential is missing from our lives.

How to Register or for more information
call or email Doug Van Houten:
doug@dougvanhouten.com  (502) 472-6563
CC Banner
Cultivating Connections
502-897-2721