The emergence of a new consciousness in our time brings challenge and crises in individual development. Many people live with urgent existential questions that are often the starting point of a search for a deeper and more conscious understanding of their own life.
Everyone’s biography is a unique story of unfolding events, relationships, hindrances, talents, drama and longings. Each phase of development poses its characteristic questions. How can we read the intentions and meanings of the events and circumstances that weave through our biography? How can we become the writers of our own story and so shape our future more responsibly and creatively?
Re-membering, bringing consciousness to our life experiences, is at the heart of biography work and biographical counseling. It relieves suffering and is essential to the health of the soul, helping us to find a freer relationship to the past, expand our present awareness, and listen to the call of our future. It serves the development of the "I" and engenders interest in others and the world.
In this course there will be talks and conversations on the theme and biographical and artistic exercises to facilitate the process of working on one’s biography together with others. We will practice a phenomenological approach to working with experience.
Suggested reading: Rudolf Steiner,
Social and Anti-Social Forces (Mercury Press),
The Meaning of Life, (
Psychological Distress and the Birth Pangs of the Consciousness Soul, Zurich, Oct 10, 1916) (Rudolf Steiner Press), Bernard Lievegoed,
Man on the Threshold (Hawthorn Press)
MARGLI MATTHEWS is a biographical counselor, supervisor and trainer with over thirty years experience in adult education and private practice. A former faculty member of Emerson College and the Centre for Social Development, England, she is co-founder of the Biography and Social Development Trust and Director of the Diploma Course in Biographical Counseling in the UK. She teaches training courses and workshops on biographical counseling and biography work in many countries throughout the world. She is a contributor to the book
Lifeways and co-author of
Ariadne’s Awakening, a book concerned with a new consciousness of the feminine and masculine.