By Julie Daley
The Process is Back
Just this past Friday, the first Process held at our new temporary home, IONS Earthrise Retreat Center, completed. We are overjoyed to be back in action, offering the Process to students who’ve been waiting, with patience, for months to do this deep and powerful work.
IONS Earthrise* Retreat Center is “An Outer Space for Inner Exploration, close to San Francisco and far from ordinary.” Once home to the Miwok tribe of the San Francisco Bay, the land offers rolling hills, oak trees, and a beautiful labyrinth. It’s a “sacred space where ancient and modern wisdom meet.”
Edgar Mitchell & IONS
Dr. Edgar Mitchell IONS started the Institute of Noetic Science almost 50 years ago. As part of the Apollo 14 team, Mitchell’s job was to explore and research the moon’s surface. He walked on the moon’s surface for nine full hours over two days with astronaut Alan Shepard. During their return trip home, Mitchell had what he described as a spiritual awakening:
“I came to realize that the story of ourselves as told by science—our cosmology, our religion—was incomplete and likely flawed. I recognized that the Newtonian idea of separate, independent, discrete things in the universe wasn’t a fully accurate description. What was needed was a new story of who we are and what we are capable of becoming.”
WHO WE ARE & WHAT WE ARE CAPABLE OF BECOMING
In many ways, this is what happens at the Process. Who we know ourselves begins to unveil before our own eyes. We come to envision what we are capable of becoming. In this shared crucible of transformation, our idea of separate, independent, discrete things — ourselves, those we are with, and elements of nature all around us — breaks down. We come to realize how deeply interdependent we are. This is a beautiful and wondrous thing.
HOFFMAN INSTITUTE & EARTHRISE
Raz Ingrasci, Founder of Hoffman Institute Foundation, shares this story of Hoffman’s connection to Earthrise:
“Mitchell, who passed away in 2016, was also an avid explorer of ‘inner space’ and, as such, he participated in the Hoffman Process in 1987. His public testimonial endorsing the Process as ‘a powerful and effective tool for change’ was featured on our literature for about 10 years. In 2000, the then-chairman of the board of IONS invited Hoffman to consider participating with them to acquire the land that became Earthrise Center. However, we’d already committed to White Sulphur Springs. Over the years, several members of IONS executive staff have taken the Hoffman Process and our two organizations have enjoyed mutually supportive relations for four decades.“
We grieve the loss we’ve experienced at White Sulphur Springs as the loving arms and wise land of Earthrise hold us. Things are unfolding in such a dynamic and Spirit-guided way. Held in love, together we rise again.
You can find out more about the Hoffman Process here.
*Earthrise is the name popularly given to NASA image AS08-14-2383, taken by astronaut William Anders during the Apollo 8 mission, the first crewed voyage to orbit the Moon. It’s also the name of Dr. Edgar Mitchell’s book.