Undistracted
A Winter Online Retreat with Megan & Chris
January 1-4, 2026
3 Sessions/Day
$150
“There is no samsara apart from your own thoughts.”
DESCRIPTION
The reason there are many texts and many teachings in regards to meditation and the spiritual path is because our human patterns, habits, wounds, delusions, and blindspots are varied and vast, and each of our unique karmic histories mean we have different proclivities and different places where there is ease of access to presence and beingness.
So, the texts, commentaries, and meditation instructions are offered to support finding our personal "on ramps" to going inward. Ideally, these various teachings enrich an ever deepening understanding of ourselves, and an increasingly clear navigation of our inner world and its unfolding.
But the risk is that the practitioner hears so many potential "ways in" that they can't settle into themselves and their experience. Instead, they flit about trying this and that, interrupting and interfering with their natural inner process, resulting in confusion, dullness or defeat.
The word "deep" is used so often when speaking about spiritual experiences, but what is actually meant by this? What does one mean when they describe an experience as "deep"? It means that there is a sense that we are more connected to a truth or understanding that seems to be elusive otherwise - we are somehow "more in there".
How do we support deepening?
Deepening happens when we remain consistently present in the nowness of our experience, without being pulled or pushed elsewhere.
You could say that awareness practice is the practice of noticing that we are either distracted or undistracted. In the simplest of terms, distraction keeps us in a superficial experience of reality, operating solely on habit and unconsciousness, unable to drop-in deeper. "Non-distraction" leads us into those deeper layers of consciousness that expand our wisdom and compassion. So, when we meditate, all we are doing, in some sense, is recognizing when we are here or not here, undistracted or distracted, knowing now or not knowing now.
Deepening ultimately requires regular phases of uninterrupted non-distraction.
Our conditioned/egoic mind is so used to things being complicated (in fact, it thrives on complication) that it cannot fathom that simply being undistracted is sufficient for walking us into awakening. It really wants to debate and negotiate, and wonder "am I doing this right"? It wants to strategize and doubt. It wants to ruminate on where we've gone wrong or been wronged. Etc.
Exploring our life stories and understanding ourselves therapeutically and psychologically is critical for a comprehensive awakening. And we apply practices like inquiry to use the mind on purpose to explore the story, idea, and belief realm. It's also true that much of our story, idea and belief realm can be revealed through pure undistracted awareness practice. In fact, often these two cultivations are working in synergy, but it is important to understand non-distraction on its own terms.
In this retreat, we will turn toward the cultivation of non-distraction. We will deliberately stay away from the content of our stories. We want our being to make contact with the power of non-distraction as a critical development for deepening.
Because we all have different natural doorways, this retreat will be discovering your doorway, or deepening what you already know to be your natural access to non-distraction.
TAUGHT BY
Retreat Dates
Thursday, January 1 - Sunday, January 4
Daily Schedule
7:00am-8:00am PST
10:00am-11:30am PST
4:00pm-5:30pm PST
(It is okay to participate asynchronously via recording.)
Cost = $150 USD
Registration
(Blue Heron Circle members receive discounted tuition for this retreat. Please use the link we sent you to register.)
Retreat Format
Each day has three teaching and practice sessions together with pointers on integrating the rest of your day (and whatever happens in it) into your retreat container. The goal is to take the entirety of our experience - family, noise, work responsibilities, isolation - as path.
Sits are ~45-min and have some guidance. The 7:00-8:00am morning session is a sit with practice instructions and sometimes questions. The 1.5 hr sessions include a sit, Q&A, and a talk. If you can't make a session, and can't get to the recording in an easeful way, please don't worry. This retreat is designed to be something you can plug into in the way that is right for you at this time. If you make every session, and continue practice in between, great. If you have a very full life paralleling this retreat, great. That really is the design - how can we come in and out of duties and responsibilities while continuing to find more presence.
Sessions are done over Zoom and are recorded. You will receive each recording within an hour of the completion of each session. Recordings will also be stored in an easily accessible archive that you will have lifetime access to. This allows folks in incompatible time zones to follow along and participate if it works for them to do so.
“I asked Dipa Ma, “Would you like to move into the other room to sit? There is a group coming over this evening.”
Dipa Ma: “I’m sitting now. Why go to the other room to sit?”
“Well, we’re going to do a little sitting in there.”
Dipa Ma: “We are sitting.”
“But other people want to come, and they’ll be sitting in the other room.”
Finally I got her to go into the other room and sit. She could just “be there,” relentlessly. Her eyes could be open, her eyes could be closed, it really didn’t make any difference. That was the most remarkable aspect of her presence in our house, the sense of, “Why move? What is there really to do?”
At these sittings, sometimes fifty people might arrive to receive her blessings, but no matter how many came she would take each person one by one and be completely present. In watching the singularity of her focus and connectedness, I could see she was relating to each person as God.”
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