North of Eden includes the North of Eden Teacher Training program. This is a highly intensive training program offered for people involved in Archetypal Dreamwork who want to become teachers of the work, including leading groups at Dreamwork Retreats. People become apprentices working with the NOE Teachers in order to find their own unique way of being a teacher.
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A Short History of the North of Eden Teacher Training Program
by Laura Ruth
The North of Eden Teacher Training process is a living creative process. The purpose is to create a vessel to gestate the birth of the individuation process with Him into third stage dreamwork for people who are actively involved in their own dreamwork process. The training is that personal: it is about growing into one’s inner work in order to bring the dreamwork out into the world and to have the capacity to be present to others who are wanting to grow into their own inner work.
Every step of the way is a practice in listening. North of Eden is fluid and responds to the direction of the Archetypes and the inner life of its members. It is constantly changing as it grows, learning how to manifest in life what is the will and desire of the spirit. For each student, and for NOE itself, each step is a leap into the unknown, sometimes bumpy, sometimes corrected, often miraculous. It is about learning how to discern spiritual truth and have the flexibility and courage to act upon what is heard.
Entering the Teacher Training Program means turning toward the inner voice, the heart, the soul, the unknown, the budding connection to essence and the divine. It is about surrendering to God’s template, rather than our own. The core of the work is simple and profound. It is the practice of being who we truly are, as the Archetypes see us. It is that intimate. It is turning toward an individual calling in North of Eden.
Becoming a student in North of Eden requires a relationship with the dreamwork that can manifest itself in a number of ways. Anyone is welcome when they are ready. Often the dreams speak about an inner relationship to working with the group that is quite specific and comes into the therapy. What is important is that there is a desire to fulfill a calling; that the student is at a point in their process where they have had an experience of essence and know something of their desire to serve God through the North of Eden process.
The Desire to Fulfill a Calling in NOE
The desire to fulfill a calling in North of Eden manifests itself in individual ways. Some people know that they want to become group leaders or therapists, others know that they want to write or make art related to bringing the dreamwork out into the world. Others have an inner knowing that they want this work to be their life path and that is all they know. For everyone, it is a step into the unknown; North of Eden is an evolving being, still becoming itself, as is each individual path to the soul self. For each student though, a desire related to North of Eden is born from an experience of essence.
An Experience of Essence
An experience of essence awakens the desire to know the inner self and the archetypes, and reflects the capacity to know and receive God. Learning to receive, humbly and graciously, is part of the practice of North of Eden. A taste of essence exposes the dreamer to the core morality of the archetypes, a morality that has little relationship with the good/bad judgments that rule us in the outer world. The depth of the work that takes place in the student groups grows as students learn to receive and act upon the inner desire to grow into their true selves.
Permission and Support of the Therapist and Executive Committee
In the dreamwork it is always the inner work that informs the dreamer and the therapist about the need, desire, health and direction of the psyche and the will of the Archetypes. The therapeutic relationship takes place one on one with the analyst and remains the center of the work throughout a student’s involvement in NOE. The determination of readiness is always between the analyst and the dreamer, and the dreamer must have the permission of the analyst to join NOE. The Executive Committee is the leadership circle of trained teachers who must offer their support to the decision before the final confirmation between the therapist and the dreamer that it is time to join NOE.
Roots and Beginnings
Marc Bregman had a dream in November of 2003 when he was mentor to the small group who facilitated this website for the dreamwork. This group, who had helped people prepare personal statements for the site, were now to be the process group leaders at the first retreat for the dreamwork. The dream led him to share his fears about the issues that could surface when a group of people doing very intensive inner work lived and worked together in retreat, as they do in their daily lives, beyond the conscious reflection and safety of the therapist’s office.
The preparation for the retreat became a polishing process. The group made a commitment to expose how each person’s pathology manifests itself in daily life, how they are then separated from inner self, the other and the divine, and what effect that might have on their colleagues and participants during the retreat.
The practice of truthful presence, knowing and not knowing, and exposing in the moment when one is in process and when one is in pathology, was the essence of the work together. It was all about creating and holding the container for participants at the retreat from the place of being in the truth. All details were taken care of outside the training process. Nothing stood in the way of this practice of presence and honest exposure. This was the original model for the North of Eden teacher training, and continues to be its inspiration.
The North of Eden Teacher Training began when Marc Bregman was asked "to suspend my opinions about how to do anything and simply allow the unconscious to move. To allow Animus to move in me and ‘quite literally’ show me the way." In May of 2004, he said to the teachers, "As long as we know that we know nothing, Animus can be seen. The more we know about things the more we lose our way. This is what I mentor and this is what you need to mentor for each other. He will help you if you let Him guide you from your deepest self."
The Founding Directors
Marc Bregman has been practicing as an Archetypal Dreamwork analyst for over 35 years. His practitioner’s class has been ongoing for 16 years. The depth of his spiritual connection grew out of his willingness to always act upon what the Animus has told him to do, moving deeper, both into the intimacy and into outer life, by trusting in the Animus’ knowing of what is true. NOE continues to respond to the will of the archetypes as it grows, led by Marc’s honest discernment and fierce, devoted love for Him.
Christa Lancaster has been an analyst in the dreamwork for 18 years and was asked almost immediately to bring her experience with groups to the work through leading the Bache, support groups and process circles, and Astrology class. Her leadership is infused with the loving acceptance of the Anima and the warrior potency of the Animus, which she now brings to NOE as facilitator and leader of the Core Group and the teacher training.