The Channel

There was this old idea that what we call “the real world” is just the front of the world, and the real, real world is everything else: the other world, the world behind the front of the world.

And when trouble has permeated every aspect of the front of the world, the only way to find healing, unity, and inspired ideas is to go to the reality behind the front of the world, to go to the other world.

—Michael Meade

Why now?

Beloved artists, writers, musicians, creators — trouble has permeated the front of the world.

But do you feel it too, percolating everywhere? A premonition that what we’re in isn’t merely a collapse, but a profound restructuring?

I believe artists are here on earth to channel visions that the collective desperately needs.

Visions of how we heal,
how we love,
how we remember what’s sacred,
how we get in right relationship with change,
with beauty,
with one another,
and with earth.

Artists are here to reckon with the multidimensionality of time,
to invent new forms of alchemy and transformation,
and to make the pain of untangling ourselves from the mess we’re in beautiful enough to bear — the whole way through.

What is this gathering?

The Channel is a vision that’s been coming into form for a while now.

About a year ago, my friend and collaborator Hannah Sadtler introduced me to the phrase “the technology of the circle” — which is a way of talking about what happens when humans gather, and sit in a circle together, and open ourselves to collective intelligence beyond what any of us could hold alone.

In a circle, there is no hierarchy.

No one’s voice counts more, or less, than anyone else’s.

In a circle, we open to magic. Some of my most profound transformations of the past few years have happened in circles.

And now I want to sit in circle with you — with us — as artists.

Because I think we have things we need to discover together that we cannot discover alone.

How is this different than Entering the Cave?

Entering the Cave (which I still plan to offer) is a series designed to offer support for artists in meeting their next edge, moving through a season of change or fear or creative block. A key component of Entering the Cave has always been community; I believe that we heal in relationship, and that artists need fellow artists. That remains true.

In The Channel, our primary focus shifts slightly — from meeting your edge as an individual artist for your own sake — to recognizing that channeling your art is also a vital offering to the collective.

This gathering is about faith that we are part of a much greater ocean of change. That what we do as artists matters — perhaps more than we fully understand, yet.

I believe, with every cell in me, that each of us discovering the deepest work we’re capable of, and bringing it into being, is a vital part of the world’s wholeness.

And so I’d like to gather us together, regularly, so that we can strengthen our connection to the Otherworld, and constellate new bonds with one another, and find companionship, support, and genuine nurture as each of us encounters the next cave we fear to enter.

Unlike previous versions of Entering the Cave, this won’t be a series where you have to sign up for the whole thing. This will be a regular, ongoing sacred space that you can drop into whenever it works for you.

We come together because it’s possible that the precise question you are wrestling with is the key to unlocking someone else’s next answer. We come together because it’s possible that the gears that have been quietly turning in you will click their next notch, and you’ll leave knowing how to take the next step towards something you’d been hovering on the cusp of for months. We come together because we need to be seen, and we need to be loved.

The more we genuinely understand this -- that each of us is needed, that we are stronger together, and that there is truly room for all of us to become our most vibrant selves in the future we’re dreaming together — the faster we channel the Otherworld into this one.

Here’s to doing it together.