One of the reasons I do these retreats and work as a therapist is to enter into a space together with another, or a group of others, where we discover a vessel in which the lost aspects of soul and psyche and body and our hearts can find sanctuary to return. Where that which has been disowned or dissociated can find safe passage, can be held, articulated, and entered into intimacy with once again.
It’s not only material from our personal, historical past that comes into thecontainer for illumination and to offer its revelation, but also nonpersonal material from that which is yet to come into being, but exists in seed form – from those future selves and aspects and qualities which long to find a place here, to come into the world of time and space, as emissaries of the mystery.
Within this sort of crucible, the concepts of “past,” “future,” and also of “the present moment” turn into living beings and are no longer abstract generalities. They are infused with imagination and allowed to play and dance in that vast field of being, in that majestic environment that is revealed when two or more are gathered.
When all is said and done, we attune together to a field a permission where we enter into the unknown, into creativity and imagination, into the art and poetry and painting and sculpture of a life, of psyche, of the heart, and allow ourselves to be crafted as a vessel in which the energies of love can find a home here.
It is less about self-improvement or getting rid of our symptoms or replacing thoughts and feelings we don’t like with others or fixing ourselves or curing our melancholy or transcending our vulnerability… it’s more about soul and intimate communion with the entirety of the mess, the pain, the beauty, the glory, the dark, the light, the courage, the hopelessness, the joy, the grief, the full spectrum of what it means to be a human being.
Art credit: in the liminal, carving by an unknown artist by way of Flammarion’s L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire
The next two events are a five-day retreat, The Place the Light Enters, with Jeff Foster, April 4-9 at Sunrise Ranch in Loveland, CO
and
The Path is Everywhere: A Weekend Intensive, June 15-18 at Sunrise Ranch in Loveland, CO
and
The Path is Everywhere: A Weekend Intensive, June 15-18 at Sunrise Ranch in Loveland, CO
