Navigating a Time Between
An Invitation to Leading Through Emergence
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the pace and complexity of change and breakdown happening in the world. Crisis and disorder are converging across political, ecological, social, economic, and personal scales. Some call it a metacrisis. Others call it a time between worlds–a liminal space between dissolution and becoming.
In the face of this, many of us feel called to enact our care and contribution in the world, however grand or small—in our work, in our communities, in our parenting, in our art. Motivated by a vision for a more beautiful, just, and flourishing way of existence that deep down in our hearts we know is possible.
But how can we follow this impulse in a time that seems complex and overwhelming? How can we cultivate the capacities to meet this moment together?
Maybe you feel this in your own life–the gap between what you sense is needed and what you feel able to offer. Maybe a part of you just turns away from what is happening. You sense a longing for a deeper way to be with this time of dissolution and transformation.
If you’ve reached this threshold, you’re probably not just looking for more tools and practices. You’re asking a different question entirely:
How can we be with what’s happening? How do we participate in what wants to emerge? What is this moment not just asking us to do but asking us to be?
Dissolution is Only Half of the Story
We believe there is something profound happening beneath the surface turbulence, a kind of remembering that’s trying to surface through the cracks of what’s breaking down.
It seems we have collectively dreamed ourselves separate—from each other, from nature, from the unfolding of life itself. And you could say this separation has created much of what we now struggle against. But as the forms built on that foundation crack open, we’re being invited into a different relationship with reality altogether.
Not through transcending what’s difficult or by finding the perfect strategy. But by learning to be present with and move with what’s actually unfolding, including the not-knowing, the uncertainty, the vulnerability of being in-between.
When we’re willing to acknowledge dissolution, in ourselves, in the world, and to learn to rest in it without rushing to solve it, we can begin to sense what’s actually trying to move through us. This is about developing an entirely different capacity: the capacity to participate in the process of emergence itself and sense what wants to take form before it has clear shape.
When we cultivate this capacity both individually and collectively, we meet this moment with more grace, intelligence, creativity, and compassion.
Engaging the Moment from Awakened Wholeness
For twenty years at Pacific Integral, we’ve been exploring what it means to engage transformation from this deeper ground—not transformation as something we do to ourselves or the world, but as a living process we learn to participate with.
What we’ve discovered is that when people begin to access this deeper ground, a different kind of capacity becomes available. This is not a skill to be learned, but a way of being to be cultivated. We call this capacity leading through emergence - a practice of engaging the future from awakened wholeness.
Leading through emergence is a participatory practice of being in a deep relationship with life as it unfolds. It’s learning to sense what wants to move through us individually and collectively, and to midwife that into being without forcing it into forms dictated by our expectations or fears.
This isn’t an abstract idea, but an intimate lived experience. It shows up in how you navigate a difficult conversation, how you sense what’s needed in a complex situation, how you access creativity when you’re depleted, how you stay present when everything in you wants to collapse or control. It’s the quality of presence you bring that allows something genuinely novel to emerge in yourself, in your relationships, in the systems you’re part of.
But how do we cultivate this capacity?
Releasing into Trust
Engaging in emergence requires a shift from willfulness to willingness, to release a particular kind of control so that we might activate a more participatory way of creating with and as the unfolding of life itself.
This release happens with a shift in awareness, widening our view to a way of seeing the world that includes and integrates our differences, to see through the illusion of our separateness.
From this wider awareness, we come to embrace a deeper unfolding wholeness, a wholeness that’s always already present, before we fragment it with our stories and constructs.
An Invitation to a Shift in Being
This spring we’re offering an 8-week journey into cultivating the capacities to engage this moment from this deeper ground.
Leading Through Emergence is an experiential, transformative container designed to support these three essential shifts in being:
Cultivating the trust to move with life’s unfolding rather than against it
Embodying the capacity to see the world through a wider lens
Remembering the wholeness that exists beneath our fragmentation
You’ll develop these capacities through direct practice—something you feel in your body, apply in your relationships, and enact in the contexts that matter most to you.
The program includes weekly practice sessions where we work directly with what arises in the moment, small group containers for deeper inquiry and mutual reflection, and guided practices you can return to throughout the week. Everything is designed to support you in developing your own creative engagement with the emerging future—not to give you answers, but to help you access the wisdom that’s already present when you know how to listen.
Each week opens a different facet of this practice:
Week 1: Awakening to What’s Already Present (May 7): The ground of awareness where emergence happens, and how this presence itself becomes our foundation.
Week 2: Embodying Connection in a Fragmented World (May 14): Maturing our capacity to deepen intimacy in the midst of the intensity of our times.
Week 3: Seeing Beyond Limiting Perspectives (May 21): Developing capacity for the complexity this moment asks of us.
Week 4: Expanding Your Capacity for Care and Action (May 28): Learning to meet what matters while honoring our limits.
Week 5: Integration Session (June 4): Reflect on insights, deepen your practice, and connect with your small group.
Week 6: Integrating Shadow and Healing Fragmentation (June 11): Including what we’ve pushed away or disowned.
Week 7: Accessing the Wisdom Between Us (June 18): Collective intelligence as lived practice.
Week 8: The Generative Power of Joy (June 25): Moving with the unfolding as joy and play.
Who This Is For
This work is for anyone who feels the call to participate in this moment differently. You sense the potential for a greater freedom, creativity, belonging, and joyful engagement with a time of great disorder and potential.
We’re looking for people who:
Feel the invitation to wholeness beyond the crisis
Are already sensing something trying to emerge but need support to trust it
Recognize that not-knowing is where freedom begins
Seek like-hearted companionship for this journey
Can commit to showing up fully for the practice
Maybe you guide teams or support clients. Maybe you’re raising children or tending land. Maybe you’re creating art or building community or simply showing up where life has placed you. Whatever your context, if you sense there’s a different quality of engagement available, a way of being that might allow something new to move through you, this practice is for you.
The program begins in May 2026. We’re currently building the cohort.
Program Features
What’s included: This isn’t a passive learning experience—it’s a lived inquiry that invites your full participation. The program includes:
Live Practice Sessions: Weekly 2-hour calls where we engage in experiential practices, reflection, and coaching under the guidance of our core faculty. These sessions create a field where transformation happens in real time.
Learning Content: Weekly videos introducing key concepts and perspectives that inform each week’s practice, allowing you to absorb ideas at your own pace before our live sessions.
Practice Guides: Recorded practices and written guides supporting your ongoing application between sessions, helping you integrate insights into daily life.
Practice Groups: A consistent small group throughout the program, creating a container of trust where you can practice with greater vulnerability and receive personalized feedback.
Real-world Application: Throughout the program, you’ll apply what you’re learning to 1-2 areas of your life or work that matters most to you, ensuring the learning translates to tangible impact.
Online Community: An online space where faculty and participants can continue discussions, share reflections, and support each other between sessions.
Apply to Join
We’re accepting a dedicated cohort of participants ready to commit fully to the practice. Sessions are held live on Thursdays, 4:00–6:00pm PDT, May 7 – June 25. If you sense this is the right moment and this is the right container, we invite you to apply. The application takes 5–7 minutes.
Program Details
May 7–June 25, 2026
Thursdays, 4:00-6:00pm PT
8 weekly sessions
Investment
Early Registration: $600 (or $206/month × 3)
Regular Registration (after April 7): $800 or ($275/month × 3)
We have a limited number of scholarship spots available for those experiencing financial constraints. If cost is a barrier to participation, please email us directly at hello@pacificintegral.com to discuss options.
P.S. For the past five years we offered this work in a program called Emergent Leadership. However, leading, as we understand it, isn’t about position, a role, or an identity. It’s about our capacity to generate new ways of being, relating, and functioning. We have renamed, reframed, and evolved the offering to emphasize the process of engaging with emergence.