Each moment of perception has the potential to be experienced as a moment of pure perception - experience not yet mediated through discursive thought and conceptual process. These moments are not yet conditioned by hope and fear, by our opinions, desires and beliefs.  This immediate awareness of pure perception is without choice, without demand, without anxiety.  Moments of pure perception are experiences of beauty expressed through specific details.     

 

The moment is deepened by noticing the details that call to us - any taste, any sight, any sound, any sensation, whether physical or emotional.  These moments are portals to the truth behind all forms and experiences.  We get in touch with the true beauty within ourselves and cannot help but recognize THAT in others.   Its the call of the awakened.  Its the recognition and embodiment of the beauty within us all.

 

By truly opening to these details, we can clearly listen to the response of our heart.  We discover our Soul's Passion in deeper and clearer facets.  Unconditional joy and freedom dawns in more moments while permeating our work, our relations, and our immediate and global environments.  Soul Passion guides your days, your moments, your Life!

 

This ability to rest deeply in the serene center of your Being is the most natural of all our experiences.   However, we rarely or infrequently touch this Truth. Yet, without this resting in the serene center of our being, we are destined to try to find peace, fulfillment, joy, and unconditional love in our work, family and personal relations which at best are only temporary and conditional.  The cultivation of the direct experience, direct perception of the state of pure perception leads to freedom and the peace we all have been seeking behind all the efforts we have made to find lasting happiness.  Then we bring this unconditional love to our families, and relations of all kinds including our envirionment.  We live life unconditionally, fully.  We are lived BY life.

 

So why is this state of being and the sense of self that comes with it, so elusive, or unsustainable for most humans?.  It appears to be because of the clusters of images that have been programmed in our nervous system, mostly at the level of the survival brain and spinal cord.  Most of these come from early development in the womb, (even the central nervous system of one who lived a "perfect " childhood will still show  these distortion patterns- more explained below). Childhood trauma seems to reinforce what was already there at birth.  Each person will take the same stressor and have totally different responses based on the holding patterns already present.  If we were all born free of distortion in our nervous system we would roll very differently with the punches, (if there would actually be any punches).  But we are here to learn to love unconditionally, which means we have to have conditions that challenge us to bring out love.  So we have this world of seeming opposites and its apparent threats to love.

 

In the earliest parts of our incarnation, we do not have a language brain developed that can make an abstraction about reality.    All our experience is organized in images, and the images become our reference for what is real. Some of those images were aligned with reality and that is where our life will reflect success.  Other images, (most), were not aligned with reality and extremely RARELY with THE REALITY described in the first 3 paragraphs.  

 

In all mystical writings of many of those humans who went through the transformation of the primal filters of separation from the divine into an intimate identification with It, there is a common thread of an energetic experience of something coursing through the spine.  It seems that the life force that wakes us up to who we really are comes through a channel in the middle of the spinal cord known as the central canal. Its distortion seems to be the first place we anchor a sense of self that experiences life as separate from the whole, from the Divine.

 

A good example of  how the early development of these programmed filters are created is in understanding fish and geese. Like fish, or geese, we have full ability to "school"  or "flock" with only a small part of the nervous system being developed. The "schooling" reflex is a profound survival strategy.  When a fish is small, it appears larger to the sonar and other sensing mechanisms of predators.  This reflex has nothing to do witht the 5 senses.  If the little one at the periphery of the shool had to hear or see the others turn, it is too late and they become lunch.  The reliance is on the ability of the very primitive brain to sense a "field" that the others are one with.  Likewise, the geese navigate through the same part of the nervous system.

 

This phenomena is called entrainment.  Before clocks were digital, it was a problem for shop owners who had a sizeable inventory of the wind up variety because all the clocks would eventually tick and tock in the same deafening rythm about once a month or more frequently.  If a few or more women live together for a little while, their monthly mense cycle begins to synchronize in the same way.  This is a "field " phenomena.

 

While in the womb at the time when we are about the size of a thumb, we have a Nodal Cord that will eventually become the spinal cord and

brain.  This nodal cord is just as sophisticated as the fish's brain and of that part of the goose that knows how to flock.  The survival instinct to

"belong" is fully operative with no filters to discern what is useful to entrain with and what is not.  It only matters to entrain with mother and  father's broadcasts into the "field" (like an electromagnetic field, but inclusive of fields of consciousness).   This match up is fully developed by birth and then the nervous system must literally distort to uphold the distorted broadcasts that we inherited.  Now such an altered structure of nervous system alters the signals passing through it, and thus we have the mechanism of how the ingrained filters of reality get installed.

 

I have treated newborns while caring for the parents, grandparents, and sometims a great grandparent.  I have delivered a couple of babies as well.  The most amazing thing is that even without a fully formed boney structure of the spine and cranium, the infant has the same twists and turns in the spine as one of the lineages.  This is not genetic.     el of These become filters to reality that distort our perception, keep us in a state of separation from Source consciousness.  An ever vigilent mind naturally remains in charge of our attention to stay focused on the trying to make the world more predictable.  These filters on reality are not transformed by any positive thinking, or trying to change this habit.  Otherwise we would all be living in the freedom of Soul Guided life. I know many fine people who, after many years on this earth, still have trouble following through with their New Year's resolutions, or just stop making them. results of these distortions have to have physical anchors to  uphold a defended sense of self in this physical world of opposites.

 

The skills I have learned over a lifetime of exploration and deepening of seeing how the Life Force that animates, motivates and heals us moves through the nervous system, has resulted in a retreat that unwinds the deep anchors to the filters of reality and create a resulting defended sense of self.  The transformation in the retreat occurs while simultaneously cultivating new habits of resting in Sweet Ease.  We use traditional tools of mindfulness meditation and restorative yoga; but in a most unique way that teaches your nervous system  that it has the resources to go towards the contraction holding your humaness  in judgement and stuckness.  

 

In addition, we use other tools of directly focusing on the spinal system that are of utmost delicacy so that you feel held in the most gentle embrace of the field and of your own awareness..right in the most mistrusting nuerological anchors.  A melting occurs and you experience love with life embraced just as it is.  It is the end of the inner arguments with Life.

 

Then with a gap in the old patterns we help you re image the images  that had not yet matured from their treasured limiting views.  A growing field of unconditional love envelopes your humaness just as it is and it is all coming  from the most important person to give it..You.  What did not trust love the most will eventually emerge in the safety of such love. 

 

The result is a direct experience of the Passionate Ease of your Soul becoming accessible in greater measure over more and more extended periods of time. Direct, Pure Perception becomes clearer. You trust in Life more as well as feel greater the resources to offer to the parts of your humaness still waiting for unconditional love.  There is a momentum in the retreat that is created by the sequencing of each step.  the mind settles more and more into non discursive, non conceptual presence and recognition of deeper and simpler states of Beauty.  

 

After the retreat most find that there is greater alignment in their life.  They find the good intentions they have in their life now start to work out more and more effortlessly as those disowned parts that have been lodged in the survivial brain feel safe to be held in your growing kindness, and presence.  In other words, you rest more easily in the ending of the unconscious argument with life that was running you in the background thwarting the best intentions just to uphold what was familiar because that was all we had as a felt sense of self

 

 You fall in love with yourself just as you are and find greater motivation and appreciation in your life but now out the  compensation for the deep feeling of lack or emptinees we all carry in parts of our humaness.  This feeling of not being enough or good enough gets met and  held in utmost tenderness as you become unwrapped by the Grace of Presence that is now more available.  Then you get  wrapped again in the Grace that has always been there inside and outside.  Pure Perception dawns without effort and even includes your humaness with you just as you are!

 

 The softening and deep opening that occurs is immensely regenerative to you, it opens doors to repeat the process on your own, in more situations where you were previously unable. Because this retreat includes a direct experience of personal navigation of consciousness into Presence while engaging with Other, it's especially very helpful in bringing your awakening into your active life, and your unique way of unfolding your service to others.

 

The gifts from the retreat will have a permanent effect on the way you meet yourself and others every day.   

 

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT A FEW OF THE INGREDIENTS WE USE IN MAKING THIS DELICIOUS MEAL, GO TO RETREAT ELEMENTS.

Keep in mind that 2 chefs can use the same ingredients with vastly different outcomes.