NonOrdinary SenseMaking

NonOrdinary Sensemaking

How to Navigate a New Reality

You’ll Learn:

A new framework with cognitive and psychospiritual tools you can bring into everyday life to improve how you make sense of the world.
A deeper understanding of how to access, navigate, and integrate nonordinary states and how they can give you more “levers” for how you experience reality.
A nonlinear, fractal approach to evolutionary development.
A variety of practices and techniques you can use to relate with others, and culture, more effectively.
Resources in various media forms like films, podcasts, and articles that will support your continued expansion.

Course Dates: New Format Starting April 2024
Course Length: Monthly calls covering an emergent topic.

NonOrdinary Sensemaking is a course like no other.
Travel to the edge of your own perception, learning skills and frameworks to help you move into exciting new territory in your own life and in how you make sense of the world around you.

Join the Waitlist for the new course format starting April 2024.

The Teachers

Alexander Beiner

Alexander Beiner is a Holistic Counsellor and the author of The Bigger Picture: How psychedelics can help us make sense of the world. He has run courses on sensemaking, men’s work and self-development for thousands of people. He is the co-developer and co-facilitator of Regenerative Stewardship, an innovative legal psilocybin retreat in the Netherlands, and one of the executive directors of Breaking Convention, a charity that hosts Europe’s largest conference on psychedelic science and culture. He was one of the founders of the alternative media platform Rebel Wisdom, and writes a popular Substack, The Bigger Picture, focusing on topics like AI, popular culture and systems change. You can read more about his work on alexanderbeiner.com.

Trish Blain

Trish Blain is a positive impact entrepreneur, international facilitator, and expert in nonordinary skills and states of consciousness. An explorer at the evolving edge of what it means to be human, Trish is deeply committed to creating a world where we all thrive. She is passionate about helping change-makers, leaders, and lovers of life amplify their pleasure and impact. She is the Founder of NonOrdinary, a new paradigm approach and platform offering community and training for paradigm shifters. She has developed a unique framework called The Four Forces, through 30 years of experimentation, research, and teaching. She uses this framework in combination with other modalities, a method she calls EdgesWork, in her individual coaching and in group settings in retreats, workshops and conferences. Learn more here.

The Book That Inspired This Course...

Show proof of purchase of Alexander's new book and get $25 off this course.

This course was inspired by the work Trish and Alexander did together to help him prepare for, navigate and integrate nonordinary experiences in a ground-breaking trial at Imperial College investigating intravenous DMT. You can read all about those experiences, and how we can apply what we learn from nonordinary states to making sense of the world, in The Bigger Picture.

Trish’s work is founded on nonordinary experiences that don’t involve psychedelics, and the idea is that these states can be developed. We can learn how to pull the ‘levers’ that allow us to tap into them on demand. So while this isn’t a course about psychedelics, we will delve deeply into the topics Alexander explores in his book, and why what we’re learning from psychedelic science is so important. What you’ll learn in NonOrdinary Sensemaking is how you can move between different states, and apply information and ways of perceiving from them to your day to day life.

If you purchased the book, select the discounted price of $470 button and send your proof of purchase to Trish at nonordinary.com within a week of registering for this course.

Learn where to buy the book here.

About the 2023 Course

We’re living in nonordinary times, and we need nonordinary skills to make sense of them. Many of us now spend much of our waking lives on the internet, a realm more similar to the otherworlds and underworlds of folklore and altered states than real life. Generative AI has the potential to change not just our economies, but our conception of consciousness.

As we try to navigate these technological advances, on the social level we’re struggling to share our realities with one another as culture war rages. We’re all trying to get different desires met, and coming from different states of consciousness that mean we often see the world in radically different ways.

But what if we could learn how to navigate these different states effectively? To translate between them, choose when and how we explore our inner worlds, and find new ways to build exciting new realities together? To do that, we need to develop new skills — a new kind of sensemaking that includes everything we’ve learned, and adds layers of complexity, flexibility, and expansion.

We need nonordinary sensemaking.

Course Structure

This course is designed to give you a new modality and framework, with real-life, applicable skills to sensemake and impact the world in NonOrdinary ways. The coursework will be provided via video and written text, with 90-minute live calls primarily focused on experiential practices, Q & A and sensemaking together. We’ve designed the course to include a rich variety of practices, exercises, and methods for sensemaking so you can find your unique way of engaging the nonordinary. Replays will be available if you cannot make the live calls.

You will be a part of our first cohort!

This is the first time this course is being offered (wooohooo!). Throughout the course we will be taking your suggestions, feedback, and desires to heart and leaning into emergent practices.

9 Sessions in 3 Parts

This course is set up in three parts. The first part is focused on the foundational NonOrdinary approach, framework, skills, and concepts we feel are the most helpful with bridging the ordinary world with the nonordinary.

In part two, we’ll be mapping real-world issues and culture using different methods of NonOrdinary sensemaking, which not only add layers of insight, but also open new options for how to move forward. You will have an opportunity to explore your personal relationship to these issues.

In part three, we expand our concept of reality, and our place in it. We explore other forms of consciousness, such as artificial intelligence, aliens, and other nonhuman forms of consciousness. Finally, we step into visioning which reality we could create together — and how we might help each other create a utopia of utopias.

Our 3:1 Rhythm

To maximize the impact of the course, we find having a chance to integrate and process is helpful. Our rhythm accommodates integration and time for connecting with each other, practicing, and sharing experiences. We have designed the course with 3 weeks of coursework and calls, with a week “off” that we call “community week”, a chance to connect and sensemake with each other. We also use this week if we need to do a make-up session.

Our Community Website & App

All coursework, Zoom links, calendars and supplemental materials will be available on the NonOrdinary platform at NonOrdinary.com. This new community website will offer opportunities similar to popular platforms like Mighty Networks, with the advantage of being completely private. During the course, NonOrdinary will also be launching the beta version of their app, which you can download for free from the Apple Store, or Google Play Store. The app is expected to launch for August 15th.

Bonus One: NonOrdinary Games

Practice your intuition and subtle senses skills during NonOrdinary Intuition Games events as part of The Language of the NonOrdinary training (see below.) Each session offers a chance to experiment and play with developing your ability to access nonlocal information through fun games with others. These events happen three times a month, and you will have free access to them for the duration of the course.

Bonus Two: NonOrdinary Connections

Let life make some unexpected connections for you. As part of the course, you’ll have the opportunity to opt-in to meeting other course participants for a one on one, 30 minute video call. Using the web service Intros.ai (or equivalent), you will be matched with another class participant and given the opportunity to book a call with them. This will be offered as an experiment for the first month of the course.

Bonus Three: Breathwork Session

During the first break, between modules three and four, we will be offering an optional session to experience transformational breathwork, which can give you access to nonordinary states.

Bonus Four: EdgesWork Group Process

During the second break, between modules six and seven, we are offering for a taste of EdgesWork, a form of group process work. This type of process work is valuable for conflict resolution, personal work, and integration of nonordinary experiences.

Course Content

Part 1: Navigating the NonOrdinary

In part one, we bridge the ordinary and the nonordinary. We explore the shifts in perspectives and skills needed to begin sensemaking in nonordinary ways. How do you navigate in unknown territory? What does it mean to live in the new paradigm in practical terms? What are the new skills and levers that allow you to experience and impact the world around you with more choices and ease?

Week 1: Paradigm Shifting the Paradigm Shift

Whatever we call it (Game B, the infinite game, metamodern, or second tier), in the sensemaking communities we are aware of the need for new systems, a new way of engaging…a new paradigm. We have consensus on the need, and yet significant differences in our versions. Why are we finding it so challenging to coordinate? How do we invite others to shift without being coercive or superior? How do we move from talking about it to creating it? This first week, we explore a nonordinary perspective on paradigm shifting, including a framework to coordinate our visions, and a nonlinear, fractal approach to evolutionary development. We will explore why metaphysical skills and nonordinary states are critical to creating the new reality we are sensing.

Week 2: The Many Languages of the NonOrdinary

Learning to communicate with each other is critical to finding a path forward. We all speak more languages than we realize. We need to learn to translate and go beyond the words. We also need to learn the language of the NonOrdinary. Taking the woo out of “woo woo,” gain access to additional layers of information and experience by cultivating non-physical ways of knowing through the subtle senses and developing your own personalized nonordinary language. Learn the channels and tools of accessing nonlocal information, and how imagination, the imaginal, and relationship are the keys to communicating with the nonordinary.

Week 3: States of Consciousness

States not only determine how we experience reality, they also determine which realities we have access to. Learn how sacred medicines and spiritual practices can be mapped using the Four Forces, and how to cultivate the skills to access any state of consciousness at will… including nonordinary and ecstatic states. Learn what can happen when you experience expanded states, how to consciously navigate them and integrate them into your everyday life.

BONUS Week 4: Breathwork Session

This is an optional session, with no coursework. This week you have the opportunity to experience expanded states of consciousness through breathwork. Led by a guest facilitator.

Part 2: Mapping Culture & Possibility

It’s no longer enough to make sense of culture–we also want to be able to engage it, consciously evolve and transform it. In part two, we map real-world issues and culture using different ways of nonordinary sensemaking that not only add layers of insight but also open new options for how to move forward.

Week 5: Making Sense from Sensing

Utilizing the nonordinary skills of perception, projecting consciousness, and shifting states, we will explore current cultural issues, using the subtle senses to feel into a situation, person, or ourselves, while mapping the Four Forces. We will invite nonlocal solutions and insights that inspire new action and new options.

Week 6: Making Sense from Desire & Perspective

Where are you sensemaking from? In this session we play with sliding perspective, and mapping culture from personal, collective, and nonordinary perspectives. We will explore common collective perspectives that are currently at play in our culture wars. We explore how desire and power impact our ability to sensemake, and how cultivating perspectival ways of knowing enhance and expand our options.

Week 7: Making Sense from Consciousness Fields

What may be influencing you without your knowing it? Why does it seem that some issues take on a life of their own and become mind viruses? Why do we get caught up in groupthink, propaganda, and cult creation? In this session, we engage nonordinary sensemaking through accessing and understanding consciousness fields and how they can be used and impacted, without getting caught in them.

BONUS Week 8: EdgesWork Session

This is an optional session, with no coursework. This week you have the opportunity to work with your own edges and experience a form of NonOrdinary group process work led by Trish.

Part 3: Expanding & Emerging Realities

In this final three sessions, we expand our concept of reality and our place in it. What other forms of consciousness are there? How do we as humans fit into the vast ecosystem of consciousness? How can we cultivate relationships with other realms of consciousness? How we can take our place as conscious agents of life and embrace our ability to craft reality?

Week 9: AI & Agents of Life

AI has exploded, bringing a mix of frenetic application as well as intense existential concern. In this module, we take a different approach to engaging AI, asking what it is informing and showing us. Why now? How does AI fit into the nonordinary? How can we utilize it for greater sensemaking? What can we learn about reality and our relationship with life through our relationship with AI?

Week 10: Aliens, Devas & Elves– Oh My!

Human beings have been reporting encounters with beings and entities for tens of thousands of years. Regardless of what we think might be going on, the experience people report is that often these entities that offer valuable information and perspectives. Currently, we are seeing a mainstream acceptance of aliens, regularly interacting with artificial AI entities, and ecological groups are campaigning for legal personhood for rivers and mountains. In this session, we explore what we can learn from these traditions and modern psychedelic science that can help us move through the new reality being ushered in by our technology.

Week 11: A Utopia of Utopias

What is your ultimate version of reality? If you imagined contemplating being human….what would be so compelling that it called you into physical being? What is your desire now? What wants to be called into existence through you? What would be your personal utopia? In this final session we engage the field of potential and possibility, and call into the physical our deepest desires. We explore the possibility of creating a utopia of utopias.

No question is silly.
Please reach out with any concerns or
questions…we are happy to talk with you!

Be NonOrdinary!

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