FIELDTRIP course page

CULTIVATING CAPACITY TO LOVE THIS WORLD, NO MATTER WHAT THE NEXT CENTURY BRINGS

Welcome to the FIELDTRIP into the Four Fields

Beginning September 2023—a series of online courses and retreats exploring new styles of contemplative life as worlds end. We attune primordial spiritual methods to the ecological and social Real of our churning times—the blooming and decay of it all.

The climate and political context (the 1960s through the 2000s) that hosted the development of modern Buddhism, mindfulness, yoga, and contemporary spirituality has ended.

What contemplative tones and gestures are called for within today's mutating ecosystems and social collapse?

From our heartbreak and longing, we hear a call to support each other in living so fully that we disentangle from life-destroying dominant systems, rendering them inoperative, and opening worlds for free play.

This is a deep dive into the Four Fields of ecological-political contemplative practice:

MOSSROCK FIELD

WILDFIRE FIELD

LIT OCEAN FIELD

SPACE FIELD

BEGIN YOUR FIELDTRIP or learn more below...

Do you sense a chasm between deep spiritual practice and the social and ecological realities of our times?

The Four Fields interrupt this division by:

Grounding our practices in regional ecosystems, materiality, and the teachings of place

Preserving the profound depth of meditative awareness and healing without bypassing

Braiding socio-historical analysis and colonial context into contemplative practices from the beginning

Including the shapes that changing landscapes, capitalist speed, intergenerational trauma, white supremacy, and technological-media spectacles impinge upon us— "outside-in" —alongside the particular personality structures, biographies, and individual habits that shape things "inside-out"

Going beyond the guilty, righteous urgency and crisis epistemologies that lead to panic and burnout

While going beyond the ignorance, complicity, coddling, and fear that leads to bypassing

Exploring psycho-social political transformation not as an "application" or optional engagement, but as inseparable from awakening

Liberating rigid path structures to allow an unforced unfolding of attunement, play, and curiosity

Nimbleness—opening to all of this gently and patiently without overwhelm or goals, free from any sense of mastery or control

These practices and perspectives can cohere together into a simple contemplative ecosystem

Over 6 modules of teachings and practices, help co-create this emerging learning community and school of practice

TAKE THE FIELDTRIP!

The FIELDTRIP...

MODULE 1

Introducing the Four Fields

Sept-Oct 2023

In our first module we will introduce the Fields as ways to love this world and as places to ask feral, transformative questions

An overview of the Fields
Their traditional and fresh sources
How your own stories map on to the background sources, questions, struggles, and lineage streams that flow into the Four Fields
Core, "seed" practices: meditation, land-practices, inquiry, natural awareness, and non-practice / wound practice.
Nimbleness—attuning to the Fields in an ongoing flow
How the fields wander free from dualities such as: inner/outer, transcendent/immanent, and spiritual/political.
The "pulsing" of the fields in their contracting and composting
The teaching of thresholds-ecotones and inoperative rest

You’ll finish this course with a good sense of the Fields and their seed practices and gestures.

MODULE 2

MOSSROCK FIELD: Ecological practices

Nov-Dec 2023

The next step is a Fieldtrip into the ecological-embodied and elemental Mossrock:

A direct introduction to this field that you already are
Your sensual embodied organism as the fold of this field
How the field contracts in our bodies, and in a world-ecology of toxicity, climate chaos, and extinction
How to compost this contraction in an ongoing flow
We will ask "what is nature" and how do we open to ecosystems today?
"Skin" and "flesh" sensory and somatic elemental practices
How our everyday lives can participate in ecosystems and love this world

You’ll finish this course with a good sense of ecological contemplative practice.

MODULE 3

WILDFIRE FIELD: Inquiry Practices

Jan-Feb 2024

The next step is a Fieldtrip into the psychological and imaginal Wildfire:

A direct introduction into this field that you already are
How this field contracts emotionally, becoming a subject captured in dominant patterns and ideologies
How to compost this field through igniting "sulphur, wind, and spark" inquiry practices of unfolding emotional alchemy
Releasing a play of feral subjectivities, loosened from capture
Radical Ecopsychology as a response to collective climate trauma

You’ll finish this course with a good sense of psychological inquiry practice within our contemplative ecosystem.

MODULE 4

LIT OCEAN FIELD: Awareness Practices

Feb-March

The next step is a Fieldtrip into the boundless awareness of the Lit Ocean:

A direct introduction to this field that you already are
How this field contracts into tension, restless speed, and subject-object duality
How resting back and back into the simplicity of contentless awareness composts the pressured temporality of hypermodernity
Gestures of inoperativity and effortless action
Giving our selves and our planet a break

You’ll finish this course with a good sense of how natural awareness is part of this contemplative ecosystem.

MODULE 5

SPACE FIELD: Practices of being and emptiness

April-May

The next leap is a Fieldtrip into the groundlessness of Space:

A direct introduction to this expansive field that you already are
How this field contracts into reified stories and concepts as well as political foundations
How to compost these solidifications through the humility of unknowing, apophatic, devastating freedom
Explorations of darkness, mystery, absence, nihilism, and exhaustion
Soaring through themes of collapse, hospicing a dying civilization, and the relief of having to be no-one, tolerating emptiness

You’ll finish this course with a quivering of questions, uncertainties, and how the unborn provides space in our contemplative ecosystem

MODULE 6

COHERENCE: Threshold of the fields as forms-of-life

June-July

The next step ripens the seeds of the fields into their spontaneous surging-forth as form-of-life.

How do we live the coherence of the fields amidst everyday pressures and captures?
Opening fully to our longing for fresh ethical and political ways of being
Going beyond bypass and burnout
Form-of-life and inoperative politics of effortless non-action
Enjoying the naturalness of the fields as we effortlessly allow them to pulse and flow, contract and compost
Recognizing the empty threshold of the fields naturally-frees up an eco-political form-of-life

All modules will be online; all will be recorded to explore on your own; you can join in to any module and need not complete them in any order. If you miss one, you can sign up to have access to the previous recorded teachings.

Wandering somewhere before and beyond rigid, impersonal, path structures, but also aspiring to offer some hand-holds, hints, and collective gestures, each module is composed of 3 units:

1. Slow-learning teachings/talks by Adam that you can watch on your own schedule.

the tone here is oriented towards head and heart

2. Four live, online learning labs on Tuesdays where we will practice and be in dialogue

the tone here is more collective, oriented towards flows of communication and experience

3. An online Sunday morning 3-hour retreat to go deeper into the practices.

the tone here is more embodied, sensory, and contemplative

For those who want, we will gather for a full week of in person retreat and play at a beautiful retreat center summer of 2024

Over these six modules we will wander through:

Ecological spirituality, philosophy and politics, questioning Romantic ideas of "nature" while listening to the ongoing teachings of the land
Ways to skillfully navigate apocalyptic claims of collapse, climate chaos, emerging fascism, and fear of the future

Methods to inquire into and transmute the colonization of lifeworlds, lands, and psyches
Nondual, primordial awareness meditation that nourishes revolutionary rest
Ethical and political forms-of-life
Journeys into ancient and contemporary theories of being and emptiness

And how these practices can cohere together in a contemplative ecosystem, as your form-of-life.

YOUR FIELDGUIDE

Adam Lobel, PhD

Hello! I want to invite you into these fields of practice and non-practice. After more than 20 years teaching Buddhism, I remain curious about a contemplative life for our times. Practicing at the thresholds of ecologies, Buddhist meditation, the Dzogchen and Bön traditions, and contemporary theory, I am a professor of Ecopsychology, a Guiding Teacher for One Earth Sangha, an environmental justice activist, and meditation teacher with a private counseling practice. I am grateful for so many friends, lineages, mentors, ancestors, my family, and the more-than-human world who continue to teach me about the fields. You can find out more about me here: https://www.releasement.org/site/about

This Fieldtrip Is For You If...

You are longing for a spiritual practice attuned to ecological and socio-political reality

You respect traditional maps of meditation training but wonder how their goals map onto the present

You are seeking political potency beyond old models of representative democracy (voting every few years), activism, or resistance

You are thinking "yeah but even the website marketing for this course is just more of the same"

You love this world with such an unspeakable, heartbreaking force that there is no room for it within our dominant ways of life

You are ready to allow releasement

sounds about right

Questions:

Q: Do I have to sign up for the whole thing or can I just do one module?

A: You can sign up for each module individually.

Q: Can I skip the first few modules and hop in to a later one? Will I have missed stuff?

A: Sure! Hop in whenever you want. Yes, you will miss stuff, but each module starts fresh, and you can always sign up to get access to the recordings of earlier teachings.

Q: What if I don't like people and am burned out on even the word "community" and want to just do the asynchronous learning parts? Can I still sign up?

A: Yup! You can choose to only have access to the recordings and not come to the live learning labs. It will be a different and more limited experience for you, but that may be what is best for you right now. (It's the same price to sign up, you would just skip the live sessions).

Q: How are you thinking about power-dynamics and the position of the teacher (Adam), especially in light of the abuse of power in Shambhala and other modern spiritual groups?

A: A critique of solid hierarchies is inherent in the 4 fields model. Just as each field is equal to the others, there is no notion of a human hierarchy. No one is a "master" of the fields, we each have certain ways of accessing and enjoying the fields. Instead, we will get into different "shapes" together. Sometimes the shape will be more hierarchical with Adam giving a talk. Other times it will be more collective, with some facilitation. And at other times, it will be more of a co-created space. It remains true that Adam is designing and teaching this course (unlike some other courses on releasement.org that have been teams), and therefore has a certain power. We will take time to explore and sense into the power dynamics as an essential part of the Fieldtrip, not just an aside.

ENTER THE FIELDS

FIELDTRIP

How will the economy work for this FIELDTRIP?

Last year, Releasement.org tried out a few financial models: free courses, gift economies, higher prices, lower prices etc. and we have come to a few options for this Fieldtrip.

The basic choices are:

1. Do I sign up for just one module?

If you choose to try just one module, click on that module below to sign up for a single fee for that one module.

2. Do I sign up for the whole Fieldtrip?

To enter the whole Fieldtrip and travel through all the Fields, you can choose:
- a one time purchase
- a monthly membership

Click below to sign up!

Scholarship Support:

We are also offering a scholarship monthly membership for those who need extra financial support at this time.

You may choose to continue memberships for future courses, Fieldtrips, and teachings on Releasment.org or to close the membership at the end of the 2023-2024 Fieldtrip.

If none of these options work for your economic reality, please email us at:

[email protected]

NO ONE will be turned away for lack of funds.