TCN Newsletter Issue 8: November 2014
Featured Emerging Leader:
Mycelium
Mycelium is a cutting edge education institute based in Asheville, North Carolina whose 12 week Learning Journeys are transforming the work of social change catalysts via powerful growth & development strategies. For the Journeyer (elsewhere known as student), a Learning Journey can compliment a semester at a traditional University, can be used independently to catalyze a project, or as a tool for personal self-discovery toward a greater sense of placement in our cultural ecosystem. No matter where you are in your path on Earth, a Learning Journey with Mycelium is a good idea if:
a) you’re bringing an initiative to life (a book, a documentary a social enterprise) or
B) you holding a burning question or at a crossroads in your life
AND
a) you have consistent access to the internet and
b) can attend two retreats (in person) that everyone enrolled in the 12 week transformational education experience must attend to gather, network, co:educate, and co:catalyze the shift in consciousness that is growing beneath the lawn of the modern cultural landscape.
Co-founders Ashley Cooper and Matthew Abrams at the Mycelium Launch Party (reprinted with permission from Mycelium)
“The Mycelial organism is the root system of mushrooms; an underground network that connects to the roots of plants and trees and distributes nutrients and information to support the health of the whole ecosystem”¹ The evolution of our planetary culture is growing in the same exact structure of mycelial networks: underground, and through nutrient-dense relationships that develop supplemental, supportive, and complimentary bonds. Mycelium is where these beneficial microbial bacteria that distribute nutrients to plants from the soil go to learnto do their jobs better in developing and strengthening the health of the interconnected projects and organizations of which you play a part. “Many microbial species have proved to be consummate evolutionary wheelers and dealers, arranging collaborations, mergers, and acquisitions that usually serve both partners well.”²
Journeyers of this revoluniversity begin their journey with a driving question that will guide their journey. This question is what many people spend years of their life trying to answer. The question that makes or breaks a crucial discovery point in someone’s career and untapped potential.
Over the 12 week Journey, this burning question gets strategically addressed through interactions with peer groups, self discovery advisor groups, relationships with a personal mentor, learning coaches, and other interpersonal resources. Mycelium is a network of immense abundance to which the tuition grants access. Your dreams and highest goals are waiting to be activated.
(reprinted with permission from Mycelium)
Another great aspect of Mycelium is that nothing is given to the journeyer. The journeyer pays tuition for access to learning portals, which are workshops, learning coaches, online classes, and in-person meetings that teach the journeyer how to navigate the complexity of their life and their work. Mycelium helps them develop strategies, fundraising skills, vital relationships, and clarity in the project and how to surround themselves with a network of supportive mentors and business connections. No one is making a crowdfund campaign for them, no one is developing their business plan, no one is writing their grants. What is given is access to the right resources that empower the participants to make these steps happen. This Learning Journey is the process of developing one’s real life work through guided self-empowerment exercises and experiences, which are the life skills that aren’t quite there in our current education system.
Dana Pearlman and co-founder Ashley Cooper are the jedi masters that guide lucid wakefulness in the magical life systems of participants’ physical realities, and their job is to facilitate a mission driven environment for the journeyer to fulfill the journeyer’s highest potential without having to find professional resources that are tailored specifically to making the project a success. What they can then focus on is developing their project or personal mission on the next level of their larger journey through life. Co-founder Matthew Abrams support Ashley and Dana as a strategy architect, network weaving, and business developer.
I literally recommend everyone to sign up for a learning journey with Mycelium because the environment has been dialed in with such attention to detail that if everyone I know was enrolled, we’d be living in a Way different world, right now. Mycelium is catalyzing social change fractally by creating social change catalysts with inside access to the abundance of the Mycelium network and its lush resources and tools for making your dreams a reality. These social change catalysts then go into the world and inherently inspire other beneficial microbes to flourish within the network financially, socially, culturally, and spiritually.
You can apply for Mycelium’s next Learning Journey semester that begins in January here.
¹ “Mycelium School.” Mycelium. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Aug. 2014.
² “Microbial Mergers: Collaborations on a Minute Scale.” Microbial Mergers. Microbe World, n.d. Web. 31 Aug. 2014.
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Article Written by
Taylor Proffitt
TCN Community Member
Network Ambassador at Project Nuevo Mundo