Embracing the Unknown
EP. 02
Embracing the Unknown
with Ben Mustin
In this episode, Alma is joined by Ben Mustin, an organizational ecologist, systems thinker, and facilitator whose curiosity has led him from organizational consulting into deeper creative practice through dreams and the unconscious.
They explore how practice has shifted his relationship with self — from control toward surrender, from striving toward receptivity. They touch on shadow, engagement with the natural world, and the companions who have guided him—thinkers like James Hillman, Ursula Le Guin, adrienne maree brown, and Octavia Butler. What emerges is a portrait of someone learning to live in closer dialogue with mystery, with image, and with the gifts that arise when we yield to life’s deeper currents.
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About Ben Mustin:
Ben Mustin is a facilitator, organizational ecologist, and writer who lives between the Salish Sea and the Cascade Mountains.
As a writer and multidisciplinary creative, Ben moves between prose, poetry, dreams, and myth. His work bridges the personal and collective, exploring themes of contemporary masculinity, ecological belonging, and purposeful work. His manuscript-in-progress, 87 Dreams, traces a personal and archetypal journey through fatherhood, wilderness, and inner transformation.
He is also producing the first season of Reading Ursula, a podcast exploring the legacy of Ursula K. Le Guin through literary reflection, cultural conversation, and creative kinship.
Since 2024, Ben has co-led Making Peace with Masculinity alongside his dear friend John Helmiere, a series of retreats inviting men and masc-folk into embodied inquiry, land-based ritual, and the reimagining of gender beyond patriarchal norms.
Ben is the founder of Mercury Wayfinding and the creator of the practice methodology "Ordinary Facilitation." His facilitation approach draws from archetypal psychology, shadow work, somatic intelligence, and the wisdom of seasonal cycles to support transformation at both the individual and collective levels. His work integrates decades of experience in leadership development, culture design, and systems change.
Across all domains of his work—and in ongoing collaboration with his partner, Breanna Doll—Ben is devoted to cultivating spaces of reflection, imagination, and renewal in service of cultural transformation.