Flourishing Now // Session One // Experience & Reality

About this event

**What's Flourishing Now?** ​[Flourishing Now](https://northerncommons.space/projects/flourishing-now/) is a six-session course that draws from contemplative traditions, philosophy, cognitive science, complexity science, and more. Each two-hour gathering will be more like a jam session than a formal class, with a mix of conversation, meditation, and other contemplative practices. Sessions build on each other, so it's helpful (but not absolutely necessary) to attend them as a series. **What's it all about?** We live in a world of astonishing beauty, creativity, and possibility, as well as profound suffering, injustice, and loss. There is much worth loving just as it is and much that urgently needs to change. But our desire for things to be different can make it difficult to fully encounter things as they are. We can become so focused on what should happen next that we lose touch with what is happening now. Yet accepting the world as it is can seem like giving up on changing it. How can we engage with this tension? Can we flourish here, now, in a world that’s both beautiful and broken and still change things for the better? **Session One​: Experience & Reality** In Session 1, we'll investigate experience itself. Rather than assuming we know what experience is (or that what we experience simply corresponds to reality) let’s investigate perception, awareness, attention, embodiment, and knowing. By becoming more curious about how our experience takes shape, we may discover new possibilities for how we relate and respond to the world around us. **Session Schedule** 1\. Experience & Reality: Mon\, Oct 5 \| 6:30–8:30 pm 2\. Belonging & Boundaries: Mon\, Oct 12 \| 6:30–8:30 pm 3\. Opening & Closure: Mon\, Oct 26 \| 6:30–8:30 pm 4\. Attention & Insight: ​Mon\, Nov 2 \| 6:30–8:30 pm 5\. Wisdom\, Freedom & Play: Mon\, Nov 9 \| 6:30–8:30 pm 6\. Flourishing Now: Mon\, Nov 16 \| 6:30–8:30 pm **Other Details** * ​We'll provide snacks and beverages * ​[Here's some info…