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    

30 Days + of Gratitude ~ Day 20

1. I am grateful for Avatar (the movie).  Took me even deeper into the experience-space of the connectedness of All.  
2. I am grateful for the writings of great beings...breadcrumbs left behind on the path to nowhere/everywhere.
3. I am grateful for being nudged by life in the direction of letting go...letting go of the unnecessary, the needless, the things that pretend to be love and aren't...
4. I am grateful for the people that are opening and awakening, you give me hope for the rest of Us.
5. I am grateful for seeds of all kinds.  You show me that size and volume at first perception don't matter, only intention...that one tiny seed contains universes...that with attentive, expectation-free presence, every seed can be nurtured into full expansion over time, and in the perfect time.

30 Days + of Gratitude ~ Day 5

1. I am grateful for Shri Surya, the Sun!  After several days of much needed rain here in LA, the Sun was out this morning.  Every morning I do about an hour or so of practices, and today, got to do them in the Sun once again.  Wow!  What an enormous unstoppable force of Grace that gives unconditionally to everything.  
2. I am grateful for the previous days of clouds that magnified the depth of my appreciation and gratitude for today's Sunshine.
3. I am grateful for my morning practices, consisting of chanting, breath, meditation, and writing and my dedication to them.  Chanting the ancient stanzas of the Guru Gita (a profound conversation between Shiva and his wife Parvati (or Shakti) about the True nature of the Teacher/Student relationship...exposing through direct experience, the Teacher within) clears my head, my body, my throat, and energizes my capacity for Awareness-in-action.
4. I am grateful that I like and love myself.  This was hard-won, and a commodity that cannot be priced and brings appreciation and value to everything I engage with.  I'm not always present to it consciously (hence my practices for remembering), but it's always there when I look within to see.
5. I am grateful for my Macbook Pro and the Internet.  The list of gifts from both these items to me is nearly endless ~ research, writing, connecting with amazing beings all over the planet.

Turning Poison Into Nectar

"That by which we fall is that by which we rise."
~ Kularnava Tantra

In times of increased energy; during a Full Moon or Eclipse, at the height of great emotion, on the heels of a powerful spiritual experience or awakening, when something we believe to be greater than we thought to be possible happens...in these times, not only the light in us, but also any illusions we're carrying (known or unknown) are also magnified. And when illusions are magnified, it can feel painful, even like everything we know is falling apart. What is true North during these moments? How do we meet them productively without giving in to the ego's convincing chatter that something has gone horribly wrong and is only going to get worse?

How can we turn these experiences from poison to nectar? What can we look to for real, palpable support?

Don't get mad...'cause I'm going to say the 'd' word again. Discipline. The tendencies for the mind to look on the dark side are a form of discipline, habit turned to conditioning. Pavlov's dog; ring the bell, and the dog salivates after many times of ringing a bell and then giving the dog food, the dog then associates bell-ringing with impending food delivery.

So we've got these two forms of discipline or conditioning...the ones that have disciplined the mind to be invested in illusions and create suffering of any degree, and the ones that avail the mind to Truth.

When Socrates says "Know Thyself", he's not offering it out for the heck of it. How well do you really know yourself? How clear are you about the bells that consistently get you to salivate, even when there's no food in sight? Are you ready to unhook from the puppet-strings that make you act, think, and feel in ways that are wholly unproductive to your Freedom, to living fully in the present moment, and able to choose, really choose the best option for all concerned in the moment, rather than being led around by your conditioning.

For years, my sexual energy led me around like a dog on a chain. Something would trigger this sexual energy, and I would go on the hunt to act it out. Sometimes immediately, sometimes working out a plan. And I was never satisfied by the experience when it was arising in this way. Physical intimacy is only satisfying for me when my Heart is open and I don't need it. When I'm sharing it from a place of contentment.

Sure, I've been able to have a truck-load of peak-experiences, but most of them were merely spikes of adrenaline, and once over, left me feeling empty, unfulfilled, and like I still had a tremendous itch that not only could I not scratch, but didn't even know what the itch was.

It's Love. Self-Love. Self-Love which opens me to Universal Love.

When I'm connected to Self-Love, everything is fulfilling, because I'm already fulfilled. So anything I engage with becomes an expression of my fulfillment, rather than a futile attempt to get some person, experience, or place outside of me to lift me up, to complete me, which by definition, it cannot.

I have had to develop the discipline to Love myself. No Guru, holy book, sacred vortex, or special diet can do this for me. And when I'm connected to Self-Love, I can feel and be further uplifted by the Truth through various scriptures, amazing meals with friends, long silent meanderings through nature, the hummingbirds outside my window, or anything else that shows up in exchange.

This past Saturday night, I went to a puja, an ancient Indian ritual with powerful chants honoring and invoking the Truth that is already here through direct experience. On the drive over to Maha Yoga in Brentwood for the puja, I focused on feeling the breath moving through my body, the sensations of it, and all the ways I Love myself. This was my preparation. And I continued it throughout the puja.

Over and over again during the puja, I was amazed at the intense, expansive currents of palpable energy I felt moving in wave after blissful wave through my body and my Heart. These currents were emanating from within my Heart in response to the chants. And having been at this spiritual path business for a couple of decades, I've been to a number of chants and other rituals. And always from a place of looking to the ritual to give me something, something I wasn't finding within.

It's this ridiculously funny irony (at least to me)...until I find what I'm looking for on the inside, I'll never find it on the outside.

How does that apply to turning poison into nectar?

When I'm connected to Self-Love, I don't see or experience anything as poison. I experience it as no different from anything else. Another moment in time with choices to make, or not. And actions to take or not, knowing that what I am doesn't change either way....what I Truly am. From this perspective, I can meet any circumstance with what it needs.

Do I always do this? No.

Am I developing my capacity to live this way all the time? Yes. That's discipline.

So the places where I feel like I'm falling are the places where I'm being shown my next exercise to develop Self-Love in the Universal Gym.

A Spiral Path...

I'm such a typical Capricorn about so many things in my life, and often have had to remind myself and be reminded that nothing about life is actually so linear as my mind tries to make things. Everything in life is linked and interdependent. Every event or happening effected by every previous happening. And yet, nothing is happening whatsoever.

As I get cozier with, and actually digest, the notion that everything is connected to everything, I'm re-introduced with what I experience as a liberating perspective ~ it's 'how' I show up that's profoundly more important to my experience than 'what' I'm actually doing. And it's not like I just read about this on Twitter and am telling myself some cute new narrative to make life seem more bearable. I've heard about this for as long as I've been interested in knowing what the heck this life is really about. However, until recent years, it was just another 'idea'.

I don't even know how well I can explain it (in language) to myself, as I'm mid-stream with the living of it. It's playing itself out through and around me. I'm just becoming more cognizant of it through my experience.

All the paradigms I reach for to put words to this whole thing seem stuck in, rooted in, an 'either/or' perspective. The main one being 'interior/exterior', as in living life from the 'inside-out' or from the 'outside-in'. However, nothing about life is that simple, or that linear...

It seems to me that the only way through all of this without going crazy is to keep contacting direct experience of consciousness itSelf...without trying to make rules for future practice out of any of the experiences.

Consciousness/Awareness is the game itself. It's not becoming conscious, it's recognizing experientially Consciousness as it already is. And that happens through direct experience. Any of the books, scriptures, chants, cd's, classes, lectures, etc.....ultimately the biggest gift they can give me is nothing in contrast with direct experience.

The challenge I've begun to recognize more clearly with time is that on the heels of direct experience, my intellect, left to its own devices, will nearly always try to make some sort of meaning (usually in language, starting with trying to narrate my experience to me while it's actually happening, as if I really need a 'play-by-play' when I'm in the experience) out of the experience, and usually in Language...words.

Well, the thing about words, is that they're fun and all, but they're always talking 'about' something without being the thing itself. Those Taoist bad-asses were quite fond of telling their students that Words are like fingers pointing at the Moon, the word Moon is not the Moon...at some point, depth of Awareness emerges as the pointers (in whatever form; teachers, words, books, memories) are let go of in favor of Direct Experience of Reality.