Ecstatic Dance of Shiva & Shakti: Tantric Meditation Intensive, Saturday, April 2nd, 10am-6pm

Saturday, April 2nd ~ 10am – 6pm, a 1-day Tantric Meditation Intensive
$150 (*$125 if paid in full by Wed, March 30th)

The Ecstatic Dance of Shiva & Shakti ~ Immersing in the Creative Power of the Universe

Shiva and Shakti are names given to aspects of your own Awake Self, they are essential and primal forces that give rise to everything you perceive and everything you don’t perceive.  In the beginning there was One, the One became two...these two are Shiva and Shakti, form and formlessness, everything and nothing, emptiness and fullness, the Great Void and Supreme Love.

 In this 1-day Intensive Retreat, we’ll journey deeper into directly experiencing the space between these two through Tantric Meditation, Ecstatic Breathwork, and Contemplation.

We’ll also work with a specific process for releasing the pulls of the past and future, those unmet needs of the past and wants for a future that pull Awareness from the direct experience of complete, whole, perfection in the Present Moment.

This retreat is about experience over theory.  In the direct experiencing, the questions fall away.

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, an initiation into the next leg of your journey Home.


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

Join Us.

  

When:   Saturday, April 2nd, 2010
Time:       10:00am –6:00pm

Exchange:   $150.  (***$125 if paid in full by Wed, March 30th)

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   

Ecstatic Dance of Shiva & Shakti: Tantric Meditation Intensive, Sat Mar 19, 10am-6pm

This has been rescheduled to April 2, 2011

http://scottschwenk.blogspot.com/2011/03/ecstatic-dance-of-shiva-shakti-tantric_21.html

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.

Let's Not Just Talk About Sex (Baby)...

This is in part, picking a dialogue that is sprouting in the garden of one of my communities...and in particular, by my friend Katrina's recent fore into the topic (see here: http://tinyurl.com/ydpy68q ) and even more recent dipping of toes into the world of Tantra. (Or at least an aspect of Tantra...there are so many).

So much of the known expressions of tantra have to do with Polarity~male and female, balance. However, what if things aren't that reduceable? What about those of us that Native American traditions call the "Twin-Spirited" ones? Are the elemental building blocks really just balancing two elements, male and female? Or is that idea training wheels for a deeper revelation...into what my friend Jason Harler (creator of NestSpa at the Standard Hotel Miami, and home of the Integral Spiritual Center in Miami) calls "Resonance". Ever since he mentioned this idea, it's been rolling around inside, forcing me to question asumptions around relational energy in general (not just between humans, but with EVERYTHING), and my energy in specific.

So if you have two men or two women, it's not so much that one has to hold the masculine and the other the feminine. That's a bit a of flat-lander perspective that seems to traffic mostly through a strong dualistic paradigm. And yet life, CREATION is much more faceted than merely two perspectives, male, and female. Those are conveniences of language. And unexplored conveniences of language become traditions and traditions become measuring rods for morality so much of the time...though based on WORDS more than the actualities themselves.

In the exploration of perspectives, modern-day ontological rabble-rousers like Ken Wilber have gone on to pull back the veils obscuring the myopic belief-structures of individuals, groups, societies, and this particular world...revealing legions of ancestors and living, breathing modern-day thinkers, who've created altars to Trojan Horses. What's the Trojan Horse here? Substituting the names of things for the things themselves. Believing maps to be the territories themselves. The word Moon isn't the Moon, and will never give the experience of gazing at the Moon, much less standing on its surface.

Are we ready to jump off the "Either/Or" bandwagon where things are either good or bad, up or down, in or out, masculine or feminine? Are we ready to let go of the fear of screwing things up and landing in one of Dante's hells for simply being aligned with the "wrong" ideas?

What if there truly aren't right and wrong. What if there are infinite perspectives, and they're ALL true simultaneously? What then? What kind of inner wisdom would we need to awaken and TRUST to live and thrive in a world where there are no set meanings, no right ways or wrong ways, no pass or fail? What kind of Awareness would be expressing through a being who's given up fear of judgement? Probably...one who's given up fear of judgment has stopped using judgement to aid and abet fear within....has stopped classifying nearly everything as safe/unsafe, good/not good, nice/not nice, beautiful/ugly, profane/sacred...

This rich tapestry of sound, taste, sight, knowing, feeling, living...is infinitely deep, wide...what would it be like to live in this symphony of a world for a whole day without a name for anything, just the Direct Experience moment-by-moment?