Saying Yes to Experience

Learn how to activate the radical immediacy available within our ordinary experience.

We are pleased to offer this summer retreat at Ratna Ling Retreat Center in Sonoma County, one of the premier retreat centers in Northern California (www.ratnaling.org).

The self has a strong impulse toward the therapeutic, toward making knowledge into something that can benefit the self.
–Love of Knowledge, Ch. 27

We live in a world shaped by the stories we tell about it—stories centered on the self. Using a logic that starts with the existence of the self, we turn knowledge into a tool that we use to uphold our own limits.

In this retreat, we will question this commitment to the self and the therapeutic mindset it puts in place. Focusing strongly on practice, we will learn how to activate the radical immediacy available within our ordinary experience, if only we know how to look for it. We will learn what it means to say “yes” to experience, to discover freedom within the patterns of the ordinary and bring it into every moment.

Among the exercises we may draw on in our inquiry:

Going without Going (TSK Ex. 23)

A Marriage of Sound and Breath (TSK Ex. 24)

Moments between Moments (LOK Ex. 14)

Conducting the Vision (DTS Ex. 1)

Time of Thinking (DTS Ex. 2)

Body-Mind-Thought Interplay (TSK Ex. 7)

Layers of Mind (LOK Ex. 2)

Sound within Sound (LOK Ex. 28 and 30)

Observing without Owning (LOK Ex. 23 and 22)

Commanding Time (DTS Ex. 13A)

Field of Awareness (LOK Ex. 17)

Embodied Energy (LOK Ex. 38)

Alternatives to Mind (LOK Ex. 46)

This retreat builds on themes explored in the workshop, The Self in Question, offered online in March 2022. However, anyone can benefit from participating, no matter what their background. All you need is an interest in inquiry and the intention to come more fully alive.