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Join Dr Stephen Bacon for an immersive workshop exploring Pragmatic Constructionism, a modern adaptation of the ancient Path of Wisdom, designed to help you break free from limiting beliefs, challenge conventional understandings of personal growth, and navigate the fluid nature of reality.
For millennia, seekers across cultures have pursued wisdom through practices of deconstruction, self-awareness, and transformation. This workshop introduces a radical yet timeless perspective: what if our struggles, identities, and even mental health challenges exist within a constructed reality—one that can be reshaped?
Drawing from philosophy, psychology, and spiritual traditions, we will:
• Unpack the hidden assumptions behind modern therapy and self-help approaches
• Explore the difference between fundamental and constructed reality—and why it matters
• Learn how to navigate uncertainty and transformation using deconstruction, belief systems, and conscious awareness
• Engage with key models, including Jonathan Haidt’s elephant and rider and Paul Tillich’s authentic path
• Discover the power of the Abyss—a space of profound growth that can either paralyze or empower
This workshop is designed for those ready to step beyond traditional paradigms of healing and self-improvement, embracing a deeper, more fluid understanding of personal transformation. If you've ever questioned reality, struggled with existential uncertainty, or sought a more profound path to inner peace, this experience is for you. This workshop is specifically aimed at people wanting to explore personal development.
Step into Constructed Reality. Dance with the Abyss.
The workshop will consist of presentations, discussions and exercises to apply the model of constructed reality to your own personal development.
Date & Time: Tuesday 29th and Wednesday 30th April. 6:30-8:30pm UK time
Location: Online via Zoom
Early booking Investment: £85
Personal growth work may sound new and modern but, in truth, it has been foreshadowed by millennials of spiritual seekers. Aldous Huxley coined the concept of the perennial philosophy—the idea that humans have discovered and rediscovered the same answers to pressing existential questions across time, geography, and diverse cultures. While all forms of the perennial philosophy participate in the equivalent essential truths, the specific paths and approaches vary and need to be updated to fit diverse cultures, environment, and individuals.
One of the oldest and most revered of these approaches is the path of wisdom; as the name implies, it seeks transformation by focusing on consciousness and self-awareness. The oldest recorded form of the path of wisdom is found in the Upanishads and is entitled Neti-Neti (Sanskrit for “not this, not that”). In this approach, the seeker is asked to review everything in their life and discard anything that is “not real.” At the end, when nothing remains, the Upanishads declare, “Tat Twam Asi (Thou Art That).”
This path has been reinvented and rediscovered by various cultures; most famously it is characterized by concepts such as “awakening,” “deprogramming,” “deconstructing,” and living consciously. Famous phrases associated with the Path of Wisdom include: “Kill the Buddha,” “Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know,” and “It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.”
Although it has been recreated and been present in most cultures, it is sometimes referred to as the hidden path or the path of secret wisdom. Sometimes these teachings were indeed hidden; in certain Western religions heresy was sometimes punished by death. For the most part, however, it earns its reputation for secrecy not because the teachings are so hidden; rather, they are secret because of their abstract nature. Those whose temperaments better fit alternative spiritual paths often react to the teachings with disinterest or confusion. But for those who find the Path of Wisdom appealing, it can be a meaningful shortcut to inner peace and personal development.
Typically the path begins with an insight or epiphany where the seeker learns something or experiences something that calls into question their basic assumptions about how the world works. Berger and Luckmann, in their classic book, The Social Construction of Reality, point out that human suffering is inevitable and that each culture creates an explanation for that suffering and a set of prescriptions designed to cure that suffering. The path of wisdom has often been associated with the cultivation of a different understanding of human suffering.
In the West, personal suffering if often explained using a mental illness model and its remediation rests on the various techniques of psychotherapy (plus medications) to redress the problems. This workshop will introduce evidence from the therapy outcome literature that demonstrates that these assumptions are false, and that healing mental illness—and addressing personal growth—occurs by nonobvious means. Things are not as they seem. Legions of therapists, psychiatrists, and authors of personal growth books have misconstrued the basic mechanisms involved in human change and growth.
The implications of these findings for personal growth are profound. If techniques lack inherent power and are rituals activated by expectancies and beliefs then it makes to state that past life regression therapy is just as effective as the most “science based” version of cognitive therapy. If our symptoms and problems can be resolved by rituals/placebos then how real are our problems? Older cultures resolved mental health problems via exorcisms of malevolent spirits that never actually existed. The path of wisdom points out that our cultural beliefs are not that different than the ones that came before.
We are all familiar with the fundamental reality of tables, stones, and bridges—a reality which is the same across cultures. The path of wisdom postulates there is another reality—constructed reality—which differs across cultures and which defines our individuality, beliefs and meanings. This reality is essentially amorphous and fluid; it can be altered by a thought or a feeling. Magic doesn’t exist in fundamental reality but magick is the operating principle in constructed reality. Our problems, traumas, and psychological obstacles operate in the realm of constructed reality. The goal therefore is to become a denizen of constructed reality—one who can use discernment to separate the real from the unreal and one who has the courage to create effective individual and community realities.
This workshop begins by introducing the history of the path of wisdom and the criteria for walking that road. It demonstrates that the basic understandings of personal growth, mental illness, and psychiatry are based on false assumptions. Finally, it provides an introduction to constructed reality and outlines the possible doors that lead to successful navigation of that realm.
Pragmatic constructionism is an updated form of the path of wisdom that fits modern Western culture. The workshop focuses on concrete steps that allow one to embrace this new level of consciousness. We will go over the principles of deconstruction, learn about Jonathan Haidt’s model of the mind—the elephant and the rider—which can both minimize shame and guilt and facilitate self-awareness. Paul Tillich’s model of an authentic path and the ultimate concern provide grounding and guidance as one attempts to navigate the fluid and amorphous space of constructed reality.
Most importantly, the pragmatic constructionist attempts to understand the principles embodied in Dancing with the Abyss. The concept of the Abyss has always been central to the path of wisdom. Deconstruction leads to emptiness; the discernment about the real versus the unreal leads to the edge of knowledge and meaning. From the first steps of walking the path of wisdom, its practitioners sense the presence of the Abyss.
The Abyss can, in fact, stand for an existential despair; when meaning is eviscerated by trauma, victims often talk about being cast into the Abyss. But for those who practice the path of wisdom, the Abyss stands for something much more profound. Joseph Campbell says, “at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.” Rainer Maria Rilke says, “The abyss may open beneath you, but only to reveal that you had wings all along."
The path of wisdom can be framed as “Dancing with the Abyss” in that the Abyss is always present and operates as a goal, as a guide, and, if we stray, as a terror. Sensing the presence of the Abyss looming over life is a form of an altered state. Dancing with the Abyss can also be construed as a life is constant dialog with the Abyss.
Rumi, a famous practitioner of the path of wisdom, put it like this.
"Out beyond ideas of right doing and wrongdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’ doesn’t make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don’t go back to sleep. People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep".