This retreat explores what meditation teaches us about being human. It teaches us about resistance and over-thinking, about humor and mercy, about healing stuck emotions and expanding stuck views. It teaches us how we relate to other people and to ourselves. It teaches us both majesty and humility. All this and more happens when we sit and get quiet. It also happens when we sit and don’t get quiet. So all neurotic brains welcome!
The teacher is meditation itself, which has a way of organizing the nervous system all on its own. We also learn from other people’s reports of their experiences, insights, and challenges. So there is sharing and discussion, in addition to meditation and wandering through the summer foliage all awestruck and blubbering “the glory!”
Meditation isn’t any one way. Every kind of experience can happen on the cushion–our own internal processes are as distinct as our fingerprints. The simple skills gathered in meditation—the concentration and the clarity, the equanimity and the care—lie at the headwaters of mental and emotional and spiritual health. Over three days, this becomes ever-more obvious. We learn as a collective.
The goal is for everyone to return home with a clear understanding of why they meditate, and a clear feeling for their own strange and beautiful practice.
