Embrace of the Beloved: Tantric Heart Meditation Intensive, Sat Feb 1, 10am-6pm

Saturday, February 12th ~ 10am – 6pm, a 1-day Tantric Heart Meditation Retreat
$150 (*$125 if paid in full by Wed, Feb 9)

Embrace of the Beloved: Leading You Deeper Into the Heart of Love

In this 1-day Intensive Retreat, it’s all about direct experience of the Truth.  This direct experience will come through sensing, hearing, seeing, and feeling, and quite possibly in ways you didn’t even know were possible for you.  Using Ecstatic Breathwork, Empowered Mantra, Contemplation, Tantric Meditation, and other tools, we will explore the answer to this question ~ There is Love...so what must be the HEART of Love?

This retreat is about experiencing the answer to the question.  We won’t be looking to theorize and add to your already full basket of thoughts.  In the direct experiencing, the questions fall away.

What is the HEART of Love?  How could an entire day immersed in the experience of it open you deeper to freedom, love, and happiness that aren’t dependent on circumstances or other people?

Don’t worry if you’ve never meditated or don’t feel good at it.  You’ll be guided to find and experience your own doorways, doorways that work, to lead you into the places that deep true meditation opens.  This is for all levels of experience.


Breath Deep. Heart Awake. Body Soft. Attention Clear.

Join Us.

  

When:   Saturday, February 12th, 2010
Time:       10:00am –6:00pm

Exchange:   $150.  (***$125 if paid in full by Wed, Feb 9th)

Where:  1226 Havenhurst Dr. #9
                (Havenhurst is 1 block West of Crescent Heights between Santa Monica Blvd and Fountain Ave)

Parking:    Since this is a daytime workshop on a Saturday, you may be able to find spots in the neighborhood.  No permits are needed until 7pm. There’s also the West Hollywood City Lot just South of Santa Monica Blvd behind Out Of The Closet between Havenhurst and La Jolla.  The City Lot is $1 per hour in quarters and you can park there for up to 10 hours.

RSVP:      48hrs cancellation by phone for this workshop. (310) 922-4890

BRING:      A folded blanket and/or yoga mat to lay on for the breathing meditation, eye pillow if you have one, Journal & Pen, any cushions for sitting on, water, and a smile!

LOVE,
SCOTT
http://trustthebreath.com
http://scottschwenk.blogspot.com
http://huffingtonpost.com/scott-schwenk    

Trusting Yourself, Trusting Your Path ~ ECSTATIC BREATHWORK in West Hollywood, Sunday 1/30, NOON-1:30pm

  TRUSTING YOURSELF,
TRUSTING YOUR PATH;
OPENING THE DOORS TO GRACE

Doubt separates the doubter from the Power of Grace.  Grace is that aspect of Spirit that empowers, that energizes, that brings fresh new life, that births and Creates, among so many other manifestations.  Where do you have TRUST in your life?  Where do you have doubt?  In what can you TRUST and/or TRUST more deeply, more actively?

Breath Deep. Heart Awake. Body Soft. Attention Clear.

Join Us.

These workshops are for all levels of experience and are nothing less than a tool for setting yourself free.  We’ll use a simple yet powerful breathing meditation as the linchpin for the work.  I call it ECSTATIC BREATHWORK.
  

When:   Sunday, January 30th, 2010
Time:       NOON-1:30pm
Exchange:   $40
Where:  1226 Havenhurst Dr. #9
                (Havenhurst is 1 block West of Crescent Heights between Santa Monica Blvd and Fountain Ave)

Parking:    It’s best to park at a meter on Santa Monica Blvd or in the West Hollywood City Lot just South of Santa Monica Blvd behind Out Of The Closet between Havenhurst and La Jolla.  The City Lot is $1 per hour in quarters.  Other meters in the area are free after 6pm.

RSVP:      Due to size of the space, please RSVP to hold your place.  If need be, we’ll start a waiting list. 24hrs cancellation by phone. (310) 922-4890

BRING:      A folded blanket and/or yoga mat to lay on for the breathing meditation, water, and a smile!



These ECSTATIC BREATHWORKSHOPS are nothing less than a journey deeper into the experience and expression of who and what you are, a journey into the Heart of Freedom within.  Through a simple and powerful breathing meditation, you gain and deepen the tools for seeing past your former limitations, gain muscle for being your own best ally, teacher, and healer, and deeply taste a place free of insecurity, full of self-love.

LOVE,
SCOTT
http://trustthebreath.com
http://scottschwenk.blogspot.com
http://huffingtonpost.com/scott-schwenk   

The Grace of Fierceness

As I navigate the deeper waters of meditation lately, there's a lot I don't know.  Acknowledging that while I'm practicing helps me to pry the ridiculously tenacious fingers of the controller OFF my meditation.

About half-hour or so into my meditation this afternoon (guessing here), I realized I was just treading water, so-to-speak.  I was working with my mantra, allowing thoughts to catch my attention, and just generally feeling like I was in an all-too-familiar holding pattern.  Ironically I've been feeling the same way out of meditation over the last several days.  Actually, it's not really ironic at all.  It's pretty much a "duh" type realization.  No real rocket-science.

While at this seeming impasse, a type of active seemingly impersonal fire of anger-like energy starts to focus itself in my awareness.  It's not anger in the sense of being mad about my experience and pouting about it.  More like a focused, clear, and take-no-prisoners "Enough is enough" sentiment.

In the moment, I had the sense that this uprising of will could easily just pass on by and I'd be back in the malaise of sitting rather aimlessly.  Grasping this fire and basically ingesting it into every cell of my body and awareness, I sharpened the intention to harness and focus this force through the Heart, to churn as much visceral self-love as I could possibly conjure, mix it into this fire, and PIERCE the stuckness -- not just once, continuously.

If it's true that God, Guru, and Self are all One, then all of it dwells within me.  Waiting hopefully for someone outside to show up on a white horse and make all the differences in my life that need making is pointless.  Until I make the shift deeply within, my life will continue to mirror exactly the places my attention is rooted consciously and unconsciously inside myself.

I've been feeling for some time that it's now time to take my life deeper, and I've been experiencing a lot of frustration about not seeing the kinds of support from places I feel like I've given so much support to over the years...the exact kind of support that my ego was convincing me would make all the difference for me in expanding the quality and experience of my world.

In this meditation, I just basically said, "Fuck it.  If it is to be, it is up to me."  I don't mean the little me that would go off like Chicken Little to do all the work of making the bread herself just to be right about how great she is and what a jerk all the other animals were for not helping her out.  That paradigm is called Victim clothed in arrogance.  I've danced that dance so many times it makes me nauseous just thinking about it.

This impulse of it being up to me, is pointing at a deeper aspect of self, a quality of will that I'm discovering has great power within it.  In the Tantras there's the description of Iccha Shakti, the energy of will, and in that context, it's a very pure form of will with little ego around it, if any.  I'm sensing, and hoping that what's dawning is the opportunity to sense, tune to, and work with that type of will.  If it isn't it certainly feels like it's on the road to that zip code.

Regardless of the official truth on all of this, whatever that might mean, something turned today in meditation.  The awareness that sitting isn't meant to be passive if it's going to lead to a deeper realization.  Nor is it to be forceful.  Both those are flip sides of the same hand, the same energy.  Some how what got sensed and tapped today seems to run right up the middle.  We'll see.

ADDENDUM ~  In re-reading this piece, I realized I left out a crucial piece from the meditation and the ardent (thank you Zaven for that word) firing up of intent.   At the beginning of the shift in this meditation from the malaise to focused will, I had a vision of my Guru's feet.  In the Tantric understanding, the feet are said to be an access point to the Guru's shakti or spiritual force.  It's also understood that the outer Guru is a mirror for the truth of the Guru within.

At this moment of glimpsing his feet, I reached out and grasped them firmly in my hands, determined not to let go, and lowered my head to place it squarely on them, as my body flooded with goosebumps and my awareness felt like this giant bellows-like fantastically alive pulsation.

This firing up of will was not conjured by me alone.  It was and is inspired by Grace.  It has all the hallmarks of True Support.  May I never forget.  May I always remember.


Copyright 2011 Scott Patrick Schwenk, All Rights Reserved.

(Poem) An Ode To The Mother

Scaling
Sliding
Slithering
along and
through the moist folds
formerly another Love Canal
void of spark
full of decay
Holding
Holding
Always holding back the flames
that would ignite
the passageways 
of physical history.
A laugh,
an unexpected chortle,
into a snort...
unbelievably,
movement.
Several explosions later
Shaking
Breaking
Oh, YES!
I am Whole.
Letting go,
it lets go.



Scott Patrick Schwenk      1/1/11

All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2011 Scott Patrick Schwenk

Meditation For The Love Of It

For many years, my most persistent experience of sitting meditation consisted of futile attempts to stop thinking followed by my chin landing repeatedly on my chest, fairly often accompanied by drooling on my meditation shawl.  A bobble-head doll that leaked -- nothing like my inner pictures of the Buddha.

Meditation seemed like this illusive mountaintop to summit, only I kept finding myself barefooted and passed out in base camp.

Oh, I could chant mantras for hours on end, read and gather information with the best, but sitting meditation?  That was something on the calendar for mastering “someday”.

That is, until I started working with Sally Kempton in a monastery tucked away in the Catskill Mountains of New York State over fourteen years ago.  Then under her monastic name of Swami Durgananda, she graciously took on working with an eager group of twenty-somethings one night a week after most ashramites had begun settling in for the night.

A handful or more of us would gather in the small meditation hall, it’s walls quietly infusing the space with the echoes of countless mantras and the delicate lingering aroma of sweet smelling champa, under the quiet reflection of a single candle.

Walking to the hall for those evenings with Sally kindled a kinetic joy that sent armies of goose bumps through my body.  It felt like getting on the train to Hogwarts with Harry Potter every week to soak up ancient wisdom passed along in secret.

I had my first blush crush on meditation, not yet a fully blown love affair, it indeed had my attention and held accountable by the promise that gained me entry to these gatherings, I was sitting every day.

Those evenings, writes Sally, were fodder for articulating the many precise and powerful doorways into what she calls “the meditation channel in your consciousness – a bandwidth of tranquility, energy, and joy”, doorways that overflow from her newest book MEDITATION FOR THE LOVE OF IT.

Having used ECSTATIC BREATHWORK as my primary entryway to meditation for coming up on seven years now, sitting meditation had devolved from that time in the ashram into becoming sporadic and infrequent. 

Toward the end of 2009, I started noticing an inner pull to start sitting again, at first subtle, and soon relentless.  Around that time, a friend gave me a copy of the EOC Institute’s Equisync CD.  The disc uses a technology called binaural beats to literally meditate your brain.  That night I loaded it onto my iPod, set up a meditation spot, put on the headphones, and was stunned.  No bobble-head.  No drooling.  No passing out.  Whatever was going on with this CD, it was keeping me alert, present, and available for meditation.  I started sitting two to three times a day, and found those doorways Sally pointed to many years back wide open and patiently waiting for me begin working with again.

Within weeks, the profound stillness in my sitting practice was simply one pause away.  Just taking time to internally pause in the middle my day, I’d notice this profound and palpable Presence of stillness and wellbeing wash over me.  The more attention I gave to it, the stronger it would seem to become.  My doorway is generally to notice what Sally points out as the delicate space between any two thoughts.  The more I meditate, the more obvious and accessible this space becomes.

Drawing on the wisdom and grace of a timeless lineage of enlightened tantric masters, MEDITATION FOR THE LOVE OF IT is no ordinary book.  It is what in Sanskrit is referred to as chaitanya; it is enlivened.  What that means is that beyond the tremendous informational education, the book carries within it the ability to reveal within you the experiences it points at.  I can rarely read more than a few pages at time before I feel an unavoidable visceral pull into meditation. 

Simply put, this is not a book to be consumed on the way to literary prowess, it’s a delicacy to be savored, ruminated over, and kept close at hand.

RELAXATION, A Profound Inner Freedom ~ Ecstatic Breathwork Fri 1/21 8-9:30pm at The Hub

Friday, January 21 ~ 8:00-9:30pm ~ The Hub (West LA)

RELAXATION, A Profound Inner Freedom ~

What is it to deeply RELAX?  What will your life be like when you can RELAX in any type of experience or situation?  What’s the difference between RELAXING and being lazy?  How is RELAXATION one of the more powerful tools for Freedom and Unconditioned LOVE?     

Breath Deep. Heart Awake. Body Soft. Attention Clear and Present.

Join Us.

When:       FRIDAY night 1/21/11  8-9:30pm   
                    ((Arrive early to avoid being late))
Exchange:       $35
Where:      The Hub (http://thehub-la.com)
                    2001 S Barrington Ave, Suite 150, Los Angeles, CA 90025-5363 US
                    { S Barrington Ave between LaGrange and Mississippi }
                    Entrance for the Hub is located on street level at the ground floor of the
                    parking structure located on South Barrington Avenue.
Bring:          Yoga mat and/or blanket-we'll be sitting on the floor at first then lying down
                     for the breathwork.
RSVP:        You can reserve your spot through The Hub  310-575-4200


These ECSTATIC BREATHWORKSHOPS are nothing less than a journey deeper into the experience and expression of who and what you are, a journey into the Heart of Freedom within.  Through a simple and powerful breathing meditation, you gain and deepen the tools for seeing past your former limitations, gain muscle for being your own best ally, teacher, and healer, and deeply taste a place free of insecurity, full of self-love.

LOVE,
SCOTT
http://trustthebreath.com
http://scottschwenk.blogspot.com
http://huffingtonpost.com/scott-schwenk