Autonomy In Association

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Autonomy In Association

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Draw Into the Circle

Draw Into the CircleDraw Into the CircleDraw Into the Circle

biography, social art, soul-spiritual development, anthroposophy

Draw Into the Circle

Draw Into the CircleDraw Into the CircleDraw Into the Circle

biography, social art, soul-spiritual development, anthroposophy

WHEN WE COME TOGETHER, INSIGHT, ENTHUSIASM, AND COURAGE SHOW UP EVERY TIME.

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN

Biography and social art Event October 23 - 28, 2025

A gathering by and for Biography and Social Art Practitioners 

Foxhollow Farm, Crestwood, KY

Catering by Jared Wilkinson


Photos by Kendra Lynne Photography

REGISTER

The sphere of the Spirit is the soul’s true home,

And human beings will surely reach it

By walking in the path of honest Thought;

By choosing as their guide the fount of Love

Implanted in the heart;

By opening the eye of the soul

To Nature’s script

Spread out before them through all the Universe,

Telling the story of the Spirit

In everything that lives and thrives,

And in the silent spaciousness of lifeless things,

And in the stream of Time—the process of becoming.


Rudolf Steiner

BIOGRAPHY AND SOCIAL ART 2025 : Conference & Continuing ED

The Initiative Circle and the Center for Biography and Social Art

are pleased to announce A Co-created Autumn Gathering.


REGISTER for the conference or the continuing education course or both. SEE LINK BELOW :  LINK TO PRACTICAL INFO BELOW AS WELL.


Meeting in Community : Honoring the Thinning Veil

A conference by and for biography and social art practitioners

Coordinated by the Initiative Circle 

October 23 - 26, 2025 : Thursday evening to Sunday noon


We will meet mid-autumn as the air cools and days grow shorter, as Hallows Eve and the Festival of All Soul’s near and the veil thins. Remembering that our key purpose is to meet and, in our meeting, feel belonging, strength, and renewal, can we DRAW INTO THE CIRCLE with devoted attention to the space we create together where Spirit Beings may join us? They are eager to associate with us in true social experience and encourage our development, individually and as a community, toward thinking of the heart.  Let us plan to meet with the Spirit World several times per day! We will again highlight active and developing research, as well as the significance of research itself in our field, at this time. Studios will be offered by colleagues, including explorations of loss and transformation, the virtues, work with the night, movement as a path to the soul’s home, self and community, the life and work of Hilma af Klint, and more. Of course, we will visit the Stones of Foxhollow Farm and, as is our way now, enjoy a full and wonderful evening of playfulness and laughter. Updates will come throughout the summer, as we continue to create the program. 


Working with Polarities

A continuing education course

with Robert Karbelnikoff (Karp)

Supported by the Center for Biography and Social Art

October 26 - 28, 2025 : Sunday evening to Tuesday noon


This workshop will be grounded in the mystery of social and anti-social forces as they present within our selves, within our communities and organizations, and within the society at large, for example in political polarization. Building from the Social Motto of Rudolf Steiner and drawing on the principles of social threefolding and biodynamic agriculture, we will go on a journey in search of that mysterious third force which is capable of harmonizing these tensions and raising them to a higher synthesis. We will use a variety of methods to uncover and embody these newly emerging capacities, including Goethean observation and Goethean movement, theater games and biography exercises. We will also spend time in nature to learn from the beautiful and effortless way the natural world is able to harmonize the most extraordinary polarities.  


Robert Karbelnikoff (aka Robert Karp) has been a student of anthroposophy, esoteric Christianity, social threefolding, and leadership development for over 40 years. Robert is the former executive director of the Biodynamic Association in the US and has been a long-time leader in the organic and local food movements, where he pioneered impact investing in organic farmland, and has helped start numerous local and regional food system projects. Robert has a masters degree in educational leadership, a certificate in anthroposophical psychology, and is the co-founder of the Zinniker Farm Stewardship Association, Threefold Driftless and the Anthroposophy and Social Justice Project. Robert is increasingly focused on teaching workshops on esoteric Christianity, social threefolding, and earth healing. Robert lives in Viroqua, Wisconsin. Learn more about Robert at www.robertkarp.net 



The Initiative Circle is an inclusive and open group that seeks to support work with biography and social art, in light of anthroposophy, through circle formation, collegial dialogue, conferencing, and other associative activity. The Initiative Circle is committed to wholeness, encouraging both individual contribution and “consciousness of the field of the group.”  


The Center for Biography and Social Art celebrates the threefold human being—body, soul and spirit; encourages reverence for the uniqueness of every life journey; illuminates the mysteries of human life in earthly gesture and spiritual depth; and practices authentic human encounter. The Center fulfills its mission through adult education programs and events, research, professional networking, and community and client support.

practical information

conference2025_studios (pdf)Download
gathering2025_practical info (pdf)Download

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN

Register for conference or continuing ed or both
REGISTER

A Leading Thought

 Sergei Prokofieff 

The Esoteric Significance of Spiritual Work in Anthroposophical Groups


Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual-scientific indications regarding the conditions 

necessary for the collaboration of human beings with the new group souls [– Spiritual Beings longing to meet with us –] may be cultivated in three successive stages: knowledge of spiritual truths of anthroposophy in thinking; free streaming together of feelings around a single focus; attaining of social unity in the will. Of the three conditions, the main one is the second, which may be attained by human beings only by dint of their developing thinking of the heart. 


conference 2024 : Simple Sacred sublime

CONFERENCE 2022 : DRAW INTO THE CIRCLE

The program in 2022 arose out of what we have to offer one another, in collegial spirit, around three central themes: "beginnings," where we honored those who pioneered this work; "real need," currently met in the field by inspired practical activity; and "the space between us," the fertile if yet shaky ground we cultivate in the interest of a more human future.  

Generously hosted by Foxhollow Farm

Video by Dana Jenks

A Leading Thought

 Rudolf Steiner

Berlin; November 23, 1905  


People who work together in a brother/sisterhood are magicians because they draw higher beings into their circle. One no longer has to witness the machinations of spiritism when one works out of brotherly/sisterly love in a community. Higher beings do manifest themselves there.When we give ourselves over to brother/sisterhood, this giving, this merging into the totality, is a steeling, a strengthening of our organs.When we then act or speak as members of such a community, 

it is not the single soul that acts or speaks in us, but the spirit of the community. 

circles are a free initiative - Anyone can start one

associative activity : It takes a circle

About Circle Formation

It is an express intention among many biography workers and social art facilitators to actively associate with one another, particularly through  circle formation.  Knowing that wholeness is found in diversity, we continue to seek to  respond to the call of our time with clarity of purpose: by embracing individual contributions and by developing new perspectives on and ways of working in community.  


Guidelines for forming and sustaining circles for Biography and Social Art Practitioners are below.

About the Research Circle

With this initiative, we hope to champion the central role research itself plays in our field. The intention is to support ever deeper insight and ever clearer articulation of that which our beautiful, warm, soul-spiritual practices stand upon.  The research circle seeks to be both informed by and relevant to practical activity in the field. 


Where the breadth of biography and social art is supported by depth, the work will be sound -- and worthy.


Spiritual or esoteric science, as communicated by Rudolf Steiner, is the vital underpinning of every general reference to “biography” within anthroposophical understanding. You can read more about the role of research within the School of Spiritual Science, and the special place held for the human being in the General Section of the Anthroposophical Society at: 

https://allgemeine-sektion.goetheanum.ch/en/the-section


For more information, contact:  biographyworker@gmail.com 

About the Karma and Biography Research Circle

The interest of the Karma and Biography Research Circle is in following a path of inner development by working with exercises given by Steiner for recognizing karma in our biographies. Emphasis is placed on taking an exercise and working with it, using our own life paths. The focus is on our personal discoveries and on developing the capacities required, rather than on reading and presenting Steiner’s findings. For more on this circle, see the Karma and Biography Research Circle Report below.  

About the Initiative Circle

The Initiative Circle is 

  • an inclusive and open group that seeks to support work with biography and social art, in light of anthroposophy, through circle formation, collegial dialogue, conferencing and other associative activity. The initiative circle is committed to diversity and wholeness, encouraging both individual contribution and “consciousness of the field of the group.”  
  • a  group  that takes seriously the nature and quality of advanced work in biography and social art, encouraging 1) deep and sound research, as the foundation of all practice; 2) continuing education for practitioners toward sustained quality and currency; and 3) practicum for new graduates of recognized trainings; among other activities that demonstrate professionalism.
  • a group of formidable people devoted to the development of biography work, knowing full well it will be several thousand years before it realizes its intention and receives its crown as The Royal Art.


Please feel free to contact us:  eileen.jonesVT@gmail.com


The Initiative Circle would like to grow, with respect to the interests of those who become involved.  

All are welcome!    

The Initiative circle - Current members

Paulette Arnold, Illinois

Paulette Arnold, Illinois

Paulette Arnold, Illinois

Sarah Putnam, N. Carolina

Paulette Arnold, Illinois

Paulette Arnold, Illinois

Lorna Kohler, California

Paulette Arnold, Illinois

Lorna Kohler, California

Seneca Gonzalez, Vermont

Seneca Gonzalez, Vermont

Seneca Gonzalez, Vermont

Eileen Jones, Vermont

Seneca Gonzalez, Vermont

Seneca Gonzalez, Vermont

Diane Piette, Illinois

Diane Piette, Illinois

Diane Piette, Illinois

Leah Walker, Illinois

Diane Piette, Illinois

Diane Piette, Illinois

more about Circles

Circles_sugg guidlines for forming and sustaining_Sept 2022 (pdf)Download
Circles_sample themes and prompts (pdf)Download
Karma and Biography Research Circle Report_Dec2024 (1) (pdf)Download

Background

the Origin of "Autonomy in Association"

The phrase "autonomy in association" is coined from the following passage --


When societies arise, this should come about according to the purpose of the fifth post-Atlantean period, in such a way that the human beings who are united in these societies are the main thing, with the purpose of achieving what can follow from the dealings of these actual people, with one another.  If this is realized, truly individual results will be achieved.  But what is usually done today?  The first thing is that statutes are drawn up.  That may all be very good, it may indeed be necessary, because outer circumstances demand statutes.  But in our field, we should be quite clear that all talk about programs 

and statutes is only a concession to the world, and that the important thing must be the individual life together, what follows from these actual people.  Mutual understanding is the decisive thing.   

-- Rudolf Steiner, Zurich; October 10, 1916   


“… the important thing is the individual life together”—autonomy in association. 



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And will be applied directly to Conference 2025.  Thank you!

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