Our Purpose

We need a different way of being in the world

There is so much happening in the world that needs our attention.

The natural world is under enormous pressure. Our political and social worlds are increasingly fractured. Many people are lonely, overwhelmed, or struggling to find a sense of meaning and belonging.

It is tempting to respond to all of this by looking outward. To try to fix what is broken in our systems, communities, and institutions. And of course, much outside us does need tending.

But I believe that some of the deepest problems of our time also require something of us as human beings.

We need to change.

We need people who are compassionate and courageous. People who can remain present in difficulty without becoming governed by fear or defensiveness. People who can see beyond their own immediate needs, care for what is vulnerable, imagine new ways of being together, and take responsibility for their place in the larger web of life. 

This is why inner work is, in fact, world work. Because when we learn to sit with our own pain, we become less likely to pass it on. When we recover our capacity for wonder, we become more capable of caring for a world larger than ourselves. And when we become more whole within ourselves, we become more available to the people, communities, and living world around us.

This matters especially for those whose choices directly affect others. Leaders, founders, teachers, parents, and others with significant responsibility can bring the fruits of inner work into the way they lead -- becoming more thoughtful, less reactive, more capable of holding complexity, and more intentional about the cultures they create around them.

The Far Meadow is for anyone who wants to deepen their way of living, including those who want to bring greater depth, humanity, and intentionality to their home life, workplace, or community at large.

We Need Elders

This is also why The Far Meadow is ultimately oriented toward elderhood.

In many traditional cultures, people lived in smaller, more intergenerational communities where the stages of life were more visible. As people grew older, their roles changed. They accumulated experience, learned from those who came before them, crossed thresholds, and eventually became people who helped younger people over their own thresholds. 

Our modern culture has, in many ways, lost that path.

I believe we need to bring that path back in a way that is relevant to the modern world.

Elderhood is not simply about getting older, nor is it a status to attain. It is a stage of human development. One in which we increasingly orient ourselves toward wisdom, responsibility, stewardship, and service.

An Elder is someone who can hold a wider view.

Someone who can remain present in difficulty.

Someone who protects what is vulnerable, shares what they have learned, and helps others find their way. They are willing to become powerful enough to do what the moment asks of them—and responsible enough to use that power in service of life.

An Elder also understands that they belong not only to the human community, but to a greater community of the more-than-human world.

This is the kind of human development we want to support at The Far Meadow.

A Place To Stay

The idea for The Far Meadow also grew out of something I've noticed consistently in my work with people.

When people undertake deep inner work, including the deconditioning that changes how they understand themselves and relate to the world, it's common to find that some of their old ways of relating no longer make sense or appeal to them. That can feel isolating at first. I wanted to create a place where people doing this kind of work can find one another.

Over the years, I've also found that my private students make significantly more progress in their individual work when they also have teachings, practices, and a community supporting them.

And for some people, structured inner work within a school community can be a more accessible and affordable complement to more traditional talk therapy.

But there is another reason I wanted to create a place like this:

We don't always need something new.

We live in a culture that constantly encourages us to find the next course, the next insight, the next thing that will finally change us. But sometimes seeking more information is a subtle way of avoiding deeper change. Sometimes what we need is to stay with a teaching long enough for it to become part of how we live. To return to it until we truly embody it.

That's why The Far Meadow is designed as a place you can stay.

You don't have to keep searching for the next thing. You don't have to constantly figure out what you need next. The path is here.

The school lays out a long arc of teachings and practices designed to support the gradual work of healing, maturing, and becoming more fully yourself -- because gradual, consistent work is the work that lasts. 

The teachings here well-roundedly address psychological, emotional, spiritual, and relational health.

You can move through the programs here at your own pace. You can linger, you can circle back, you can spend a period of time deeply engaged and another simply resting in the community.

Because this isn't a school you're meant to complete.

It is a place to settle into for the long journey you change.

From Healing Toward Service

We believe that every human being carries a deep capacity for wisdom, love, imagination, and goodness.

But these qualities can become obscured by wounds, conditioning, fear, and the adaptations we develop simply to survive.

So the work is not to manufacture a better self. It's to remove what stands between us and what is already alive within us. And to gradually  make our way to a larger question:

What really matters to me? What do I want to nurture or share with the world?

Because healing, in our view, is only the beginning. The deeper journey is toward deep self-belonging and authenticity. And then toward becoming someone who can hold a wider view.

We don't believe inner work alone will solve the world's problems. But we believe it is an essential part of the solution.

When enough people undertake the work of becoming less defended, more courageous, more compassionate, and more connected to the living world, inner transformation becomes cultural transformation.

That is the deeper purpose of The Far Meadow.

Not simply to help people feel better. And not simply to help people build better lives.

But to create a place where people can heal deeply, mature fully, find one another, and gradually become people whose lives are of genuine service to the larger world.

The Roots of the Work 

The teachings at The Far Meadow draw from several strands of wisdom: nature-based wisdom, Western psychology, Buddhist philosophy, and contemporary nervous system science.

These traditions meet here in a way that is grounded, experiential, and deeply connected to the living world, bringing ancient wisdom and contemporary understanding into conversation with one another, and into the realities of everyday life.