If you and I are connected, there are many ways that may have happened over the years. Perhaps we sketched together during the Doodle Revolution. Maybe we share an obsession with books and publishing. Maybe you’re a multi-sensory facilitator, a gamestormer, a collaboration designer. You could also be a public speaker, a Zen student, an IFS-trained therapist, a shaman, an inner scientist. However we found each other, I’m willing to bet you also love to learn. For this reason, I’m sharing what Liya and I are up to these days, after 18 years of spelunk and craft. We talk about it in this free mini-course that describes the what / why / how / who cares around something we hold dear: a D.I.Y. approach to Inner Work.
A sliver of backstory: Our joint endeavor, the Center for Deep Self Design, opened1 on January 2nd of this year and my sister died tragically eight days later, so Liya and I are getting our feet under us as co-Founders, but we’re committed to a shared vision of a “third-space,”2 where sincere students and courageous collaborators can grow up and wake up, together.3
If you and I are friendlies from a different craft universe but Inner Work intrigues you, know that our version leverages things you may enjoy like visual thinking, thought experimentation, and multi-modal learning, but in this community we ask you to go deeper—toward contemplation, self-knowledge, and that elusive genius—self-compassion. Our approach to Inner Work is playful, accessible, and evidence-based, and it addresses a challenge that plagues anyone counted among the living:
Let me connect this statement directly to Inner Work by issuing a no-frills truth from Carl Jung:
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
This visual says that another way:
To tie this together, what I’m pointing to is a natural law that you and I can count on, faithful as sunrise and sunset, which is that:
> > complex systems won’t meaningfully change
> > endless cycles won’t swiftly break
> > well-worn habits won’t willingly die, and
> > weary hearts won’t readily open
until we have some way, some practice, some inner approach, to help us change course. That brave shift toward the Inner World—disruptive in a most positive sense—is where potential truly gets nudged. Our vow is to support those of you who are up to that. And if you’re not yet, we’ll build other experiences4 to meet you where you are. For now:
With heart,
Sun and Liya
Technically, CDSD opened for the second time in 2024. It first started in Austin in 2019 and the pandemic shuttered its doors in early 2020. Apparently, I wasn’t quite ready and I needed to find my karmic sister, Liya James.
For us, a ‘third space’ is a creative and contemplative space for awakening, maturing, and unlocking our potential. It’s not home, not work, not temple, church, mosque, or zendo, not the therapist’s office, and not the coach’s office. It’s a facilitated community of practice.
The expression ‘growing up and waking up’ is an expression from one of my lifelong Zen teachers, Flint Sparks, who has an elegant and robust double-helix model of psychological and spiritual maturation.
We have workshops on Inner Confidence, Fluent Collaboration™, Courageous Communication, Growing Up and Waking Up, and Trauma and Spirituality in process.
Share this post