Nov 26-Dec 2, 2024 Residential Retreat

About the Practice of Retreat

Retreat is, in essence, an opportunity to “dip your toe” into the felt-sense of living the surrendered life. What does that mean?

It means you experiment, first and foremost, with taking refuge in what matters most. You affirm -  in the simplest and most human way possible - that for this period of time, intimacy with your own true nature is the touchstone.

You do this out of a deep longing.

The longing is in part a longing to offer the burdens accrued and carried by the conditioned self to the ocean of true nature to be alchemized and healed. The “heaviness of life”, so common on this plane, is a backlog of energy asking to be processed. This can “feel” like a burden to the conditioned self. “If I stop, then I have to contend with all this unfelt pain, all these things I have not been honest about, all these energies I have not digested. It’s too much.”

It is “too much” for the conditioned self, but fortunately it is not the conditioned self that does the “processing.”

Surrender is nothing more than the willingness to align to “That which can” do the processing.

Willingness is the key word. 

You do not have to be “good” at spiritual practice at a technical level in order to surrender (“you” as a relative personality structure will never be good at it, because it is not in the purview of the relative self to begin with).

What you have to be is sincere and real. And mature. 

Maturity in this context means “seeing suffering as suffering.” You are no longer trying to sugar coat your habits or hide the ugliness of your shadow from yourself or others. You are more or less convinced that all the ways you avoid, manipulate, aggravate, deny, dissociate, and rationalize are not going to give you what you truly long for. This means you are willing to trade in what they have given you (power, control, status, agency) for the unknown mystery of your Being. 

You are done with the developmental stage of coping. Of managing the “deck chairs on the Titanic.” Your “habit body,” formed by all of that karmic and developmental conditioning, persists. But it is no longer completely identified with or justified.

At the same time, you glimpse (and sometimes soak) in the Silence. Your heart-essence is flirting with you! The connection is there. In some moments strong like a river, in some moments delicate and subtle. Sometimes you swear the silence speaks to you. Maybe not even in words, but in energy. And you risk acting on it.

As you do, the parts of the personality that make up your “habit body” look on curiously. What is this new Knowing? Can we trust it? Will it keep us alive? Do we have to change in ways that we don’t want to in order to accommodate it? 

This is how the psychospiritual path feels. Like one, big, giant renegotiation. The personality structure (the facets of our diamond-like nature) are re-known at a deeper level of consciousness. As this happens, the so-called “external world” is also re-made and re-known.

During various phases of this rebirth, retreat is often spontaneously and organically called for. 

It is a way for us to affirm, in the deepest recesses of the heart, our longing for the full expression of our Divine nature in this body and life. 

And then to let the power of the vow completely guide even the smallest and most insignificant action. 

This is the life we have been waiting for. 

It is inviting true nature so, so, so deep into what we previously called “the mundane” that it is realized to be the only place true freedom, connection and aliveness can be embodied. We sit, we stand, we lie, we walk, we bathe, we cook, we speak. We function naturally as ourselves from the root of inner surrender and connectedness. 

Nothing else matters other than this, and we know it. It is the very essence of “enoughness.” All desire is a desire for this Self-Intimacy!

Format

This year, we are returning to a full, 6-night/7-day residential retreat model that will include the practice of the 4 postures (sitting, standing, lying, walking), somatically-focused work on the body and energy system, and individual + small group intuitive inquiry work.

To borrow Keith Dowman’s phrase, we would describe the vibe as “ruthlessly hanging loose.” The sessions will be intense, but there will also be unstructured space in the schedule, and that is intentional.

The basis of inner work - primordial or unconditioned consciousness - is also “unstructured.”

Unconditioned consciousness organically becomes foreground and is “remembered” when we have the courage to “relax” the fear/control-based tendency to perceive everything in rigid separation. Always having to be a “me” interacting with “stuff” is exhausting! Formal practice says: “put the dual world down for a while before it becomes barren, stale and compulsive!”

In terms of the retreat content, practice with us generally falls into three areas:

1. Letting the Self rest in body while sitting, standing and lying down, revealing the “dynamic field of living stillness” that we are. This is the practice of creating a home for the fullness of the spirit in this body that we have. It is learning to speak the language of grounding, spaciousness, observing, feeling and sensing. It is “waiting without waiting,” as Jean Klein says. It is making the body into a conduit for energy and information. It is becoming a “transparent mountain” - the most stable and unmovable thing you can imagine that is also paradoxically the most fluid, soft, gentle and available. It is an awareness that sees all inner and outer arisings with a laser-like clarity and discernment that is “unchorded” to any form of judgment or ego-based comparison. It is the connected, intimate and natural presence of Being.

2. Letting the Self speak, sense, decide and act via the practice of intuitive knowing. If primordial consciousness is the Self at rest, knowing is the Self in action (interacting with and dynamically managing all inner and outer events). It is the ability to “read” the wisdom-information emanating from true nature via the primary senses of seeing (inner vision), feeling (the felt-sense), and hearing (the inner voice). It is also the skill of entering into healing and repartive dialogue with parts (facets of self) that have taken on conditioned adaptive strategies as a substitute for being connected with the Self and its many essential qualities. Finally, it is a clarification of the nature of prayer as an ongoing, playful and reparative dialogue with the Forces.

3. Letting the Self subtly move and adjust the body and direct the energy system via the practice of non-directed movement. When the spirit comes back into the body, sometimes long periods of stillness organically arise. At the same time, “stillness” as some kind of control state is not the point at all. Being vividly aware and controlling our experience are distinct. If we are not controlling, but simply resting in a dynamic state of surrender, “movement” may happen (but there is no “mover”). As this form of movement is explored, an uninhibited responsiveness is discovered. An ability to feel. An unrestrained movement of emotion. A circulation of energy. The body of the child present in the form of the adult.