Through the Dark Wood

Courageous Conversations on the Way to a Better Place

Finding a deeper awareness of who, how and what you can be...

Join best selling author and philosopher poet, David Whyte, and the creator of Mythodrama, Richard Olivier, for a unique 2 ½ day workshop here in the stunning environment of the Moray Coast in Scotland.

Through the agency of poetry, myth and the vision of Shakespeare we will “travel” taking you on individual and collective journeys from darkness, repression and powerlessness to a future field of belonging and societal cooperation that still prizes individual and private experience.

This workshop will be an opportunity to explore a different future that still preserves a love of individual imagination and adventure. We will look at the kind of transitional human identity that might be needed to inhabit the sustainable society we are hoping to create.

From Adversity to Abundance -
Dramatic imagination and courageous conversation for troubled times

“Sweet are the uses of adversity.
This our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
I would not change it.”
Duke Senior, Act 2, As You Like It

Sometimes it takes a growing awareness of a great stuckness to ease you out of a past role that has outlined its usefulness.
Sometimes it takes a despair greater than that you have ever known to move you towards the one future you know is yours.

Now, as we contemplate the world around us, we cannot help but notice a growing feeling of stuckness as things fall apart – the great centres of society buckle one by one, the religious structures, the economic structures, the political structures, even the eco-system itself – all bent by the will of a fearful few to be the potential undoing of many.

The great challenge and the great calling of our time is to live larger than our fears. Our essential nature is to dream, to imagine and then, when pressed hard enough, to break the bounds of previous possibility to create the new.

Using the great myth of renewal and regeneration hidden at the heart of Shakespeare’s magical mystery comedy As You Like It, we will journey together on the path of transformation.

First, we must recognise the old structures that are oppressing us, at every level, within ourselves, between ourselves and in the world. Then we must be prepared to abandon the known and to enter the “Forest of Arden”, a magical space outside of the ordinary world, where we can gather in a spirit of collaborative evolution. Using philosophical thinking, poetic expression, courageous conversation and time in nature, we will deepen our awareness of who can we be, how can we be and what do we need to do to bring sustenance to ourselves and sustainability to the world.

In the forest new relationships are formed in less hierarchical and more egalitarian ways, and new marriages are pledged which have the capacity to change our old ways, and perhaps even to affect others around us.

Shakespeare’s philosophy points to four potential marriages waiting for us all; marriage to another, marriage to our own souls, marriage to meaningful work in the world, and marriage to a transcendent other. Which marriage awaits you in the Forest of Arden?

Price: £345

Includes 3 nights accommodation and all meals