Hey folks,
This here's an announcement and an invitation to the project we've been working on for all of quarantine, and really, our whole lives––the 2.0 version of Recapture the Rapture, a six week digital community gathering.
It’s all about how we can become HomeGrown Humans who can forge a future for everyone, together..
With a name like the Flow Genome Project, and a reputation for neuro-performance, folks might rightly wonder what the connection is between these two domains. After all, what does optimizing for peak states have to do forging a resilient future?
Actually, everything.
Because, truth is, we’ve never taught any of this stuff for the quick-hit transactional reasons most folks online huff and puff about. We’ve taught it because playful joyful exploration is a much more durable fuel for growing up than guilt or vanity ever could be.
For us (and hopefully for you too), it’s not about "10Xing your performance!!!, Crushing your productivity, hacking 500% returns, or upleveling your ferociously dangerous life.
Consider that kind of biohacking one of the last great bait and switches of Late Stage Capitalism––co-opt the most ineffable, tender and sacred parts of this human experience, and turn them into scooby snacks for ego-driven attainment.
So, nope. That’s not why we teach how to demystify peak states, and weave them into a life of real meaning.
We do it because, in many ways, it’s the only way to handle the triumphs and disasters of this human experience and remain standing with our hearts wide open.
We do it because we have to find ways to digest our grief.
We do it because claiming our purpose and passions is our birthright.
We do it because no one should have to die still wondering.
Now more than ever, we need to future proof our lives. That’s why we do what we do.
***
We noted in one of our recent newsletters that there are some deep and structural global challenges coming our way, fast. Crossing our fingers and hoping for "someone to figure it out" or for the ship to miraculously right itself, are naive options that won’t survive first contact with what’s ahead.
As our executive director retired SEAL Team 6 commander Curt Cronin once told me about his deployments in the Middle East "we entered these conflict zones and kept thinking "whoever’s in charge better have some ideas about how to fix this mess, until we realized, there was no one higher up than us, we were it––the tip of the spear!"
And while few of us may have that kind of responsibility (or training, or resources), Curt’s insight is more and more true for all of us. There’s no one behind the curtain. We’re it.
If you’re wondering about the future, and how to live into it with courage and grace, and look after everyone you love as best you can––that means you’re at the tip of the spear too!
(the adults left the building a while ago).
What we need, is a durable hope. Because there’s hopeful hope––the flimsy kind that crumples, and then there’s radical hope––the kind that inspires and endures.
What we’re going to cover in this year’s Recapture the Rapture 2.0 course, is explicitly focused on how to cultivate a radical hope that is so durable, so deep, that it is not only strong enough for us, but it is something we can pass on to our children and their children.
You can’t really get there by affirmations, or by workshop highs, either. There aren’t enough Post-It Notes or Succesories posters to give us that kind of courage when things get truly hard.
The only way, proven out for tens of thousands of years, for as long as humans have been initiating each other, is to Die Before You Die. To become a "twice born" human. And for perhaps the first time in history, we actually understand the specific science and practical protocols behind that mythical initiation.
That’s the actual end point and holy grail for all of this state-chasing and biohacking BTW. If you really want to get serious about not just up-leveling your consciousness, but about reformatting your very being, this is how it works. Not for the faint of heart, but then again, it wasn’t ever supposed to be.
Here’s what the six week course breaks down into:
The first section is called Choose Your Own Apocalypse and it maps out the collapse in Meaning––of both traditional religion and the American Dream––why that's happened, why it's so hard to make sense of, how it's sparking identity politics and tribalism and how essential it is to address.
If you are freaked out yourself, or broken hearted seeing friends and family members get lost in conspiracies and delusions, or find yourself lying awake at night torn between planning bugout-bags or vacations––this section walks you through making a plan that's right for you.
The middle section is scandalous, outrageous and imminently reasonable––The Alchemist Cookbook. It offers the toolkit for you to reclaim your inspiration, discharge your trauma, and reconnect to passionate purposeful relationships––with your partners, and with your people. In other words, how to blow yourself sky high using household materials. If Aleister Crowley hired Malcolm Gladwell as his ghostwriter, this is the book they'd pen. (This is also the section that fully outlines the Death/Rebirth protocols).
The final section is Ethical Cult Building. If you haven't noticed, whether documentaries on past debacles like Wild Wild Country, or Heaven's Gate, or real-time trainwrecks like NXIVM (to say nothing of emergent Conspirituality strangeness of Plandemic and QAnon), culty movements are having a bit of a moment. And it's only going to get worse from here.
The more freaked out we all become, the more tempting it is to latch onto someone, anyone offering certainty in a sea of chaos. This section offers a Culty Cult checklist––what to watch out for in your own leading and following, as well as an open-source toolkit for Meaning 3.0––including everything from ethics to metaphysics to sacraments and scriptures. Think of it like blockchain––open-source, flexible and scalable––but for transformational culture, not finance.
And we won’t just be learning about culture in the abstract, we’ll be practicing it too––with a learning community dedicated to group flow, rich dialogue, accountability and support. It’ll be a forum where you can lay your burdens down, and have the conversations you’re dying to have, but simply can’t anywhere else.
***
We ran a sold-out pilot of this course last year right before the book came out, and it was our top rated course in the history of our organization. Super rich community of practice, filled with over 100 folks from all around the world, coming together to wrestle with the content and truly grok what it was about.
The feedback was awesome, but two things we’ve noticed were:
So we’ve taken that deeply to heart.
And here’s what we’ve come up with. Now that the content of this course is in print and on video, we’re turning the training completely upside down.
While we’re still going to be sharing (and requiring) reading and viewing of those core frameworks and ideas so people show up informed and ready to contribute, we’re making that more of a "listen like it’s a podcast" kind of pre-work. Fit it in on your own time, before our time together.
The real work, will be applying that in our Team Time when we gather live together every week to actually wrestle with these ideas, apply them to challenges of making sense of the world and our lives, and discussing them with fellow travelers in the program.
You’ll have coach-led small and large group discussions, 1:1 dialogues, and be asked, again and again, to put your stake in the ground, to clarify your thinking and resolve any fuzziness and confusion in "what’s going on?" and "what should I do now?"
By the end of the program you will have:
1. A clear sense of what you think the next ten years is going to bring, what "dashboard" you will be looking at to monitor change, and what steps you need to feel financially, professionally, personally and spiritually prepared for what’s ahead.
2. A personally customized annual plan that builds in structured access to peak states, healing and core relationship. Durable enough to take hits and keep going, flexible enough for you to adjust as you live into what’s next.
3. A direct experience of "ethical culture" where we get to merge into group flow (or communitas) while preserving everyone’s individual perspectives and personal path. You will also make core friends with whom you can discuss things more deeply, more clearly, and with less drama than almost anywhere else in your life.
So that’s it—and that’s our promise. We have some alums from last year’s pilot coming back to serve as coaches, and we have a bunch of great new faces and voices, and a completely fresh approach to driving engagement, personal meaning, and practical actions for all of us.
>> Apply for the course and future proof your life
We want a core group of Homegrown Humans from our community who are fired up to dive deeply into this content, with us and each other. The caliber of your fellow travelers is everything for this to work––so our admissions team has strict orders to filter for good hearted and dedicated people.
Every week will be live and we will have the chance to go into the content, its implications and ramifications. And share off-script and unfiltered stories, outtakes and behind the scenes that won't be making it onto the podcast circuit or keynote stages.
We will also have Cdr Curt Cronin teaching a special session on Leading in VUCA conditions (from the guy who ran Joint Special Operations Command in a few dozen countries and was a partner at the McChrystal Group––you're getting intel and insights that simply aren't publicly available).
And for folks that have been interested in connecting directly with us but aren't up for the 1:1 Executive Advisory program we offer, this is the one shot for us to connect directly.
So that's it––we're going to be announcing the rest of our mission, our annual calendar for trainings, and a host of ridiculously amazing projects that we can't talk about yet––but consider this a call to arms and a call to adventure.
>> Apply for the Recapture the Rapture 2.0 course
The hour is late, the time is now, and we are, as always, the ones we've been waiting for.
Jamie
We share what's happening on the leading edge of peak performance and culture. Connect with us and stay in the know.
