Jane Weintraub - Discovering Your Holy Work

Daniel shares his feelings and disorientation in the aftermath of a profound experience and Jane opens up about living with a life-threatening health condition. They discuss the intensity and beauty of working with pain and facing endings. They then turn to the value of “being local” and the critical importance of bringing people together in physical space. Jane discusses her work with Imaginisma, an organization that describes itself as “a new kind of incubator for remembering, contacting, and amplifying the aliveness and grace of being human,” and the duo explores “aliveness” as a guiding principle. Themes of rediscovering simple, fundamental qualities of our humanity and rooting growth in the rich context of local relationship and “holy work” are contrasted with modern tendencies toward philosophical abstraction, reductionism, and trauma fixation. Finally, Jane and Daniel muse on the challenges and abnormalities of our era and their sense of hope for their own work and for today’s younger generations. 1:17 Daniel's experience of a profound opening through intimacy with pain 7:49 Jane's experience facing a life threatening condition 14:02 Pain, beauty, and "holy work" 19:56 The value of being local, especially as an antidote to abstraction 28:38 Relationship, love, and the power of bodies in space 33:42 Describing "holy work" and the philosophy of Jane's Imaginisma project 39:25 Searching for life purpose and "being in the house of aliveness" 45:21 How Jane's work straddles the material and the imaginal/etheric 49:31 Rediscovering life's latent magic and fundamental qualities of being human in the digital age 56:41 The orientation of Jane and Daniel's work toward inspiration and action (over philosophical abstraction) 1:01:24 Misconceptions about personal development and issues with pain and trauma fixation 1:08:50 Casual encounters with strangers 1:10:32 The abnormality of our times, the meaning of "normal," and "sewing seeds of ecstasy for the future" 1:14:47 A beautiful future beckoning in spite of a tragic world 1:19:38 Conclusion Imaginisma Daniel's Unfolding Coaching Offering Civilizations never just happen. They are brought into existence quite consciously, with unbelievable compassion and determination, from another world. Then the job of people experienced in ecstasy is to prepare the soil for them; carefully sow and plant them; care for them; watch them grow." ― Peter Kingsley, A Story Waiting to Pierce You: Mongolia, Tibet and the Destiny of the Western World Jane recommended a poem to accompany this episode, 'Taking of Emily Dickinson's Clothes'.