Building Group Subtle Fields by David Nicol

While engaging in an individual spiritual practice can produce tremendous benefits, our inner work is radically amplified when we practice together as part of a highly coherent group field. Perhaps even more significantly, when we pool our consciousness together we discover higher forms of collective wisdom regarding the major challenges facing society today. The group field can be developed and refined in such a way that it becomes a new entity in its own right — and an extraordinarily potent vehicle for both personal and collective transformation. As Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh famously said, “The next Buddha may be the sangha.”

In this session, you’ll discover:

• The evolutionary significance of moving beyond individual practice to collective practice
• A new process to develop the subtle body of a group
• How to use the group field to support your personal healing journey
• How to use the group field to support healing in society — in other words, how to engage in “subtle activism”

You’ll also participate in a guided meditation to build our group heart, and in a Gaiafield Group Synergy practice to access the power of love to support your highest intention for what you want to see emerge from the course — for yourself personally and for our world.

We’ll explore three overarching questions: How in practice do we develop the collective spiritual intelligence of a group? What essential elements must be present for group wisdom to arise? How do we build coherent group consciousness while maintaining our individual uniqueness and autonomy?

In this session, you’ll discover:

• The 3 keys to building collective intelligence in groups
• Why diversity is necessary to maximize the collective intelligence of the group
• How the group field can support you to be your unique self

You’ll also participate in a guided meditation to co-create our “group mind,” and in a Gaiafield Group Synergy practice to harness our group compassion for healing a personal issue.

Subtle activism involves the use of consciousness-based practices like meditation and prayer for collective transformation. An example is the WiseUSA project, which has brought thousands of people together in meditation and prayer to call forth wisdom and compassion from the U.S. electorate in the 2008 and 2012 elections and again this year. Subtle activism is a bridge between inner and outer transformation. It is the art of harnessing the power of love to transform the world.

Practicing together as a group amplifies our spiritual capacities to heal the whole. It also allows us greater access to the collective unconscious where deep patterns of collective thought reside. Our collective focused intention can thus initiate an organic process of social change at very fundamental levels of reality.

During this session, you’ll explore:

• Fascinating historical instances in which focused group intention led to social and political change
• Empirical evidence for the social impact of large meditation groups on entire cities and nations
• The relationship between subtle activism and direct action

You’ll also take part in a guided meditation to help build our group will, and in a Gaiafield Group Synergy practice to apply our collective joy for personal and collective upliftment.

Subtle activism extends our spiritual practice into the collective realm. Opening to these broader social fields can raise new questions about how to engage in these activites ethically and safely. How should we best approach our subtle activism practice? What is the right orientation to take? How can our engagement on collective levels be integrated seamlessly into the rest of our spiritual lives?

In this session, you’ll discover:

• The ethics of engaging with subtle dimensions for collective upliftment
• How to participate safely in the practice of subtle activism
• The principle of non-attachment to outcome
• The principle of humility: owning the dark places inside ourselves
• The importance of engaging from wholeness

You’ll also participate in a guided meditation to connect our group heart, mind and will centers, and — on this International Day of Peace — in a Gaiafield Group Synergy practice to apply our group field for personal and planetary peace.

How do group fields work? How do our spiritual activities affect each other across vast distances in space and time? And how could our group work possibly influence modern societies, with their enormous size and complexity? The notions of group fields and subtle activism run counter to our regular perception of the world as a collection of seemingly separate material objects and to the materialistic assumptions of orthodox science. But science itself has come to recognize not only the profound interrelatedness of all things at more basic levels of reality, but also the complex connection between consciousness and the world. We’ll consider various leading-edge theories that have been developed to explain the nonlocal nature of consciousness.

During this session, you’ll discover:

• The significance of biochemist Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of morphogenetic fields and Carl Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious
• The fascinating psychedelic research of Christopher Bache, including his theory of how individuals in non-ordinary states can bring healing to the human mind
• The theory behind the Maharishi Effect research
• Dion Fortune’s esoteric theory of magical activism

You’ll also participate in a guided meditation to help purify our group will center, and in a Gaiafield Group Synergy practice to harness our group will for personal and collective transformation.

We’ve reached an extraordinary threshold in the human and planetary story. Alongside the threat of the global ecological crisis and the potential collapse of current socio-economic systems, there are seeds all around us of an emerging planetary wisdom civilization. What can we do to nurture this nascent planetary awareness? How might working with group fields and practicing subtle activism help catalyze this process of planetization?

In this session, you’ll explore:

• The Noosphere: Teilhard de Chardin’s extraordinary vision
• The Integral Earth Community: David Berry’s notion of our transition to the Ecozoic Era
• The Reenchantment of the Cosmos: could humanity be poised to re-awaken to the spiritual intelligence of the universe?
• How the practice of global meditation can serve as a collective initiation into planetary consciousness
• Why chaos theory suggests that a profound collective shift could happen far more quickly than we think

You’ll also participate in a guided meditation to purify our group heart, and in a Gaiafield Group Synergy practice to activate our group strength.

As The Club of Budapest President Ervin Laszlo recently said, “Subtle activism is an idea whose time has come.” Although the term subtle activism is still new, a movement is emerging worldwide to harness the power of our collective consciousness in service of a global shift. The movement is very young, fresh and open to creative ways of engaging with it. Are you feeling the call? If so, how might you take the next steps on your path as a subtle activist?

In our final session, you’ll discover:

• How to create your own subtle activism circle
• How to get involved in the WiseUSA campaign to uplift the hearts and minds of the American people in the 2016 election cycle
• How you can participate on a regular basis in ongoing forms of subtle activism practice

You’ll also take part in a guided meditation to purify our group mind, and in a Gaiafield Group Synergy practice to unleash the power of celebration to to recognize our group spiritual achievement.