Intimations of a larger world that embraces the workings of daily life, yet places these activities within a much larger context. Here we find the eternal expressed in the temporal, the sacred in daily life.

Our collective attempts to understand this other domain began with an intense fascination with a world infused by spirit and mystery. From the mystics to the alchemists to the new sciences, this interest in and reverence for the profound is now expressed in what has been termed "consciousness studies". This research explores the farther reaches of the human mind, and takes us into the realm of the transcendent.

Studies in non-local communication, information transfers at a distance, and the mysterious intermixing of our new understanding of time, which finds past, present and future to be an interconnected, entangled contiguous presence, are all themes investigated in these studies.

Our 2010 Assisi Vision Seminar brings together a faculty of pioneers, who have spent years studying the workings of the transcendent, as expressed in psychology, literature, parapsychology and the arts. Keynote speaker, Diane Powell, M.D., psychiatrist and neuroscientist is the author of the ESP Enigma: The Scientific Case for Psychic Phenomena. Joining her will be Dale Kushner, noted author and poet, whose understanding of how archetypes are expressed in words, places her in a unique position to speak about both the writing process and psyche, and Michael Conforti, who will be speaking about the workings of archetypal fields and their relationship to the transcendent.

We hope you will join us here in Brattleboro, where the beauty of the outdoors is matched by the richness of the local art scene. Whether you come alone or with your family, Vermont is a wonderful place to visit.

Pre-conference Writing Workshop

Investigating the Real: Poetry, Faith and the Transcendent

with Dale Kushner, MFA

Thursday, May 13

10 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Fee: $100 ($70 for conference participants)

In this postmodern world of blogs and Twitter, of false memoirs and Photoshop, with its capacity to create pictures unrelated to reality, in this time when established scientific theories are questioned by a fundamentalist mindset, where can we look for the truth and wisdom that can sustain us through upheaval and personal change?

World literture stands as a written record of humankind's struggle with the spiritual life. Each of us has access to this body of wisdom, as well as to our own capacity to go within and find numinous images that serve as our connection to the divine. This capacity, what Jung called the Transcendent Function, mediates conscious and unconscious and allows us through dreams and fantasy, through images and symbolic language to create from our archetypal depths.

This day-long experience will be divided into two parts. The morning session will be devoted to investigating the relationship between poetry, faith, and transcendence by examining archetypal themes in the work of several contemporary poets, and by understanding how sense is made through sound and image. The afternoon will be devoted to the process of writing, first by cultivating a space for stillness and contemplation by using Buddhist mindfulness techniques, after which the group will be led through a writing exercise designed with the intention of entering our own mysterious depths and inspiring creative juice. Writers of all levels and genres, readers, seekers and the curious are welcome.

Seminar Faculty

Michael Conforti, Ph.D. is a pioneer in the field of matter-psyche studies. He is Founder and Director of the Assisi Institute and a Jungian analyst. Dr. Conforti and founder of the field of Archetypal Pattern Analysis. He also teaches and lectures widely in the U.S. and abroad. In addition to his clinical practice, he consults to organizations including the film industry, helping them identify archetypal patterns. He is the author of Field, Form and Fate: Patterns in Mind, Nature and Psyche and Threshold Experiences: The Archetype of Beginnings.

Dale Kushner, MFA is the founder of The Writer's Place, a literary center in Madison, Wisconsin. Her poetry and fiction have been influenced by the theories of Carol Jung, in particular the role of the unconscious in creativity, and the power of archetypal myths and images at work in the world. Ms. Kushner has been a long-time investigator of the intersection between poetry and spiritual life. Her work has been widely published in literary journals including Poetry, Prairie Schooner and Salamagundi, and her poetry has been a finalist for many prizes and awards, and she is currently at work on a second novel.

Diane Hennacy Powell, M.D., psychiatrist and neuroscientist, has been on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and a member of a think tank on consciousness at the Salk Institute. Her clinical practice has been diverse and international in scope, including starting the psychiatric program for Survivors of Torture, International, to treat refugees and asylum seekers from countries where genocide and torture have resulted in severe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorcer. She is one of the panelists for the PBS documentary, Science of Peace and the author of The ESP Enigma: The Case for Psychic Phenomena.

Seminar Details

Seminar Fee: $425

Writing Workshop: $100 ($70 for conference participants)

Seminar Schedule

Thursday, May 13

Writing Workshop

Dale Kushner, MFA

10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Friday, May 14

Archetypal Fields and the Transcendent

Michael Conforti, Ph.D.

10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Saturday, May 15

2010 Annual Assisi Lecture

The Mobius Mind: Scientific Evidence Suggestive of an Alternative Model of Consciousness

Diane Powell M.D.

10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Sunday, May 16

Round Table Discussion

Michael Conforti, Dale Kushner and Diane Powell

9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.