Campfire Technology: What is a campfire? Principles and Practice

A campfire is an original human technology. For millennia, it was the only way for our ancestors to hold back the dark, stay warm, cook food, and share our experiences of survival.

Today, the industrial equivalent is "the meeting". Bring to mind the last meeting you were in. What happened to your energy?

Most meetings I have attended over my career have been draining, frustrating, and felt wasteful. I found most to be purely functional, strictly time-bound, and outcome-focused, leaving zero space for my human being to simply exist. Over time, the tragedy of working in this way, day in and day out, is that I forgot who I was and what I loved. I became just another cog in the industrial machine of economic extraction. After decades of this, my body broke, I realised I was exhausted, and I eventually got discarded.

At my busiest, I would find myself running from one meeting to the next. I often thought it felt good to be busy and useful, and that it must be important to attend these meetings. But now I deeply question this way of working. So many people complain about it. I still enjoy coming together and meeting others, provided it is purposeful and energising. I am now asking the question: where is that one gathering in my week that cuts through the bullshit, helps me tune to what is real, and provides the warmth and nourishment I actually need to be truly alive? Where is my weekly campfire?

I just need to get warm.

The campfires I host are not functional meetings or workshops. I am not a manager, teacher, or an expert. I am a fellow traveller with my own firewood to burn, who has also been feeling the cold of the extraction machine. As the host, I work with the physics of resonance by tuning to the Real using the Compass of the Three Worlds. Each campfire utilises a specific map—like Carol Sanford’s Regenerative Life framework or J.G. Bennett’s mechanics of Hazard—used not as a syllabus, but as a diagnostic lens to examine the terrain of our own messy lives.

Around the campfire, we operate by burning our own firewood and using these four developmental principles:

• Our mess is our curriculum: We do not hide our friction, anxiety, or failures. They are not trash to be swept away; this is our firewood—the kindling, softwood, hardwood, or dense ironwood we throw into the centre of the fire to burn and generate warmth and vivid aliveness. 
• Flow over force: There is no one forcing anyone to do anything here. Just like at any physical campfire, you can sit and just watch the flames, or you can burn. 
• Witness struggle: This is the absolute boundary of a campfire. We drop the exhausting need to advise, rescue, or perform. We simply witness the struggle. It is a necessary part of the transformation process and it builds evolutionary capability. We allow the silence and the warmth to do the heavy lifting and naturally thaw out those freezing parts of ourselves. This friction is how we regenerate life. 
• Maximise hazard: Every moment is an opportunity for new adventures. If we do not allow ourselves to experience the full hazard of that moment—which for me feels like being vulnerable or exposed—an opportunity to transform, evolve, or be illuminated can be missed or distorted. Stepping into the hazard makes things real and exciting. 

See some of you at a campfire,

Ākāśadāka