Update ahead:

It’s been about a full year since I took Spirit School into private mode. When I launched Spirit School in 2020, I essentially jumped right into the deep end of starting a business with a vague vision and lots of passion, but also with a mindbodyspirit that was exhausted by years of walking through compromised and toxic systems and institutions. Spirit School was born in many ways out of challenge, resistance, and deep anger. And particularly that first year, those were the motivating forces—they inspired me to experiment, create, and dream big. But as I’ve said before, and I’ll say it many more times, for me, work that does not cultivate peace, ease, and gentleness is not sustainable to my being.

When I logged off last year I didn’t know what I was logging off into, I just knew I needed a break from having to engage in decolonizing work in a public facing way. My own inner world was calling to me to take time to feel into who I was/am Becoming apart from Spirit School and, in that space, to encounter some new truths about the ways we can break free from oppressive systems. Consciously living life, that is, attending to each moment in space and time as a sacred invitation into the range of humanity offered to us through embodied intellect, emotion, and spirituality, has brought me to a certainty of the centrality of slowness and story in aiding the integration of liberative practices.

This has been a season of the continual undoing and redoing of the mindbodyspirit toward transformation and liberation. And that’s the thing, although Spirit School was birthed from a deep part of my story, my own story continues to evolve and I’ve had to disentangle myself from my work, even as my work flows directly out of my own being. It took the past year to start making sense of that differentiation, and it’s been imperative so that I could continue to grow and flourish apart from the meaningful work of supporting others in their own decolonizing and spiritual journeys.

While I’ve been publicly quiet about the multiple iterations of Spirit School that have unfolded the past year and half, with every season that passes I feel deeper into my relationship with this learning and support container. All that to say, I’ve been discerning potential shifts for the direction and future of this budding business baby that has it’s own life apart from my own. I’ve been granted deeper clarity and new visions for myself and Spirit School, but also for the reciprocal relationship with those of you who have chosen to engage with this space. So here’s where I’ve landed, at least for today:

In terms of Self—A refreshing of vocational boundaries and a remembering that my own journey through this adventure of life doesn’t have to get brought into or processed in the moment for Spirit School. I get to exist as an autonomous being apart from this container that I hold. It is not all of me and I give myself permission and space to shift, expand, and be free in new ways with each new day. My life is not fodder for my work, even as it is the soil that my embodied wisdom grows out of to be shared with others. To encounter a multi-faceted Me you can find me on my personal website and Instagram.

In terms of Spirit School—It’s become clear to me that it’s not helpful to Spirit School for me to be the only one sharing my voice, stories, and perspective, both for the sake of my energy and for the transformation-potential for others. The spiritual landscape we’re all a part of is noticeably and radically shifting, and I know I’m not the only one in my network who is embodying, practicing, and/or thinking about decolonizing church and/or spirituality in new ways. Spirit School is expanding to be a place of conversation across multiple modalities with folks who are imagining and enacting praxis, community, and Becoming in ways that extend through the interconnectedness of mind-body-spirit-creature-land-time-space-cosmos. Cue: Commons and Spirit School Press.

In terms of You— An invitation to engage with the stories and wisdoms of Spirit School contributors and collaborator to aid in unlocking your own inner wisdom and outer embodiment in your own journeys of decolonizing self, systems, and spirituality. An encouragement to think and feel into your own story and how you have been disengaging and divesting from systems of distorted power and moving deeper into the uniqueness of your liberative offering to the world. And finally, a hope that some of you might consider submitting to Spirit School Press in the coming months as Spirit moves and inspires our collective story-sharing.

My hope is to move into being more of a story-gatherer rather than a teacher for Spirit School and to let courses, content, and resources be secondary to the learning that comes from the wisdom of oral traditions in the stories shared by others in this expansive network. I’m excited for new writings, an interview series, launching podcasts that have been on the backburner, and expanding the way that zines are a part of the Spirit School methodology and ethos.

There will always be bleeding and cross-over. I’m not sure there is a way for me to lead Spirit School except through my own experience. So in many ways, the decolonizing subthemes that touch every aspect of our lives—spirituality, sexuality, relationality, vocationality, politicality, and so forth—will be brought to the surface through my own wonderings and wanderings. And, part of my on going work with Spirit School is to continue to make space for the rippling that is happening in the collective, in different communities and contexts and in you. I hope you’ll join.

—Eréndira