Enlightenment Intensives
An Enlightenment Intensive (EI) is a minimum three-day structured and highly focused retreat designed to assist and support participants in an accelerated process of self-discovery, with the aim of a breakthrough into non-dualistic consciousness, otherwise known as enlightenment.
The intention of an EI is for you to have a direct experience of your object of inquiry: Who am I? What am I? What is Another? What is Life? During the intensive, you are asked to set aside life’s many distractions, thus supporting you in directing your energy and attention to your chosen inquiry.
An EI combines the contemplative practices of Rinzai Zen meditation, Ramana Maharshi’s teachings from the Vedanta tradition, and the more recent Western element of the dyad form of communication. Charles Berner observed that the combination of these elements into a specific technique allowed individuals to achieve an enlightenment experience in a matter of days rather than months or years, as with other disciplines or practices.
EIs are not affiliated with any group or particular belief system. The concept and structure of an EI supports participants but leaves the work solely to the individual. At no time on an intensive are participants ever told who they are, what to believe, or what their truth is. All are welcome regardless of age, experience, and cultural, religious, or spiritual background.
For more information about EI's click here
Silent Retreats
Silence can be a powerful companion in one’s process of awakening. A Silent Retreat provides a supportive space for you to enter stillness, allowing you to relax into awareness, and a deep state of listening. In our daily lives we often succumb to our mind’s compulsive fixations and interpretations of our experience by way of emotions, thoughts, and physical sensations. Due to past conditioning, or fear of future possible outcomes, the mind has a way of distorting the reality of our present experience. As a result, we are drawn into habitual patterns of behaviour, often leading us into an experience of suffering.
Resting in silence brings us to a place void of external distractions. The noise of daily life falls away, allowing stillness to support our natural state of awareness. Through this process, we begin to experience what elemental awareness is. The emphasis of the Silent Retreat is on being awareness, rather than what we are aware of. As we relax into that state, the mind’s conditioned reactions dissolve, and we begin to objectively see through (and are then liberated from) our habitual ideas and beliefs.
