It is part of healthy development, in our sometimes dangerous world, to learn a measure of caution. The lesson tends to get overlearned, however, especially in the contest of personal or social trauma. The whole world, according to Rudolf Steiner, is misunderstood in its actual glory because we kick or push against it with our mental habits. For full human experience, we could learn to relax our defenses and become undefended toward the good.

Today's workshop will begin with some characterization of this problem and this possibility, but most of our time will be experiential: meditations and other practices that can open us to both human and other-than-human exchanges of love.

Materials Needed:

Please have on hand a notebook and also a small, uninteresting, opaque stone (gravel or pebble). 

Michael Lipson, PhD is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Great Barrington, MA; also, along with other roles, a husband and father.
In college, he majored in German Literature to be able to read R. M. Rilke and R. Steiner.
He was fruitfully disturbed by spending time with MotherTheresa in Calcutta, India in his early 20’s. He served for 9 years as Chief Psychologist in Pediatric AIDS at Harlem Hospital, NYC.

He is the translator of many books by Georg Kühlewind and of Steiner’s Philosophy of Freedom. He leads meditation workshops, weekly online and in-person meditation groups, and sends out a free weekly newsletter on related themes (sign up through michaellipson.org or lipson.michael@gmail.com). His latest book is BE: An Alphabet of Astonishment. An earlier book, The Stairway of Surprise, focused on Steiner’s 6 Basic Exercises.

Please be prepared with blank paper, a pen and an open heart. A quiet room is ideal. 

In order to respect the privacy of our participants, we do not record any of our sessions on ZOOM. The link will be sent to you the day prior to the workshop to the email that you registered with.

 Sunday, February 8, 2026 2:00- 4:00pm Eastern Time

Please NOTE: TIME Converter

The Center for Biography and Social Art                                    is committed to equal opportunity and does not discriminate in any program or activity on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, age, national origin, disability, marital status, or any other protected class.

www.biographysocialart.org

administration@biographysocialart.org