Exploring Stillness Within Retreat Feb 23-25th
Eckhart Tolle has provided the world with hundreds of talks, pages and pages of writing and lots of animated antics leaving us laughing out loud. We’ve grown to love his unique expression but also many of his talks have supported us to go deeper and experience less of everything, and more of just this, being in this moment. The weekend gathering was comprised of a number of informative recorded Eckhart Tolle talks, but with a focus on guided meditative sessions, Kim Eng’s breath and movement practices for releasing blockages or stilling the physical body, and a few new ways to explore awareness as a group.
The agenda included some structured sessions balanced against open spaces in the schedule. People took that time and used it well – for deeper quieting, presence and even some inner ‘un-doing’! Funny though, I have to say that the thing I will remember most from the event was a magical moment where we all found ourselves gathering on a break – in one of the guest rooms, sitting everywhere – asking that question: can there really be ‘no self’? Just a fullness of everything? A great mysterious happening? How is it that Eckhart can describe these propositions without sounding the least bit shocking?
There were many gleanings that attendees highlighted as ‘takeaways’ to extend the sense of still freedom beyond the weekend.
1. We looked at ways to access stillness more deeply such as noticing the breath, sensing inner aliveness, noting the details of awareness and how it changes, and exploring and deepening the spaces between thoughts.
2. Finding ways to embrace natural pauses in our day, the car stops, the coffee lineup, arriving home, finishing a meal – taking these pauses a bit further by settling into stillness – and not moving to the next action until truly guided by an inner impulse (rather than compulsive thinking/efforting to get the next thing done). And seeing what happens if a decision is not consciously made about the next direction… does a direction seem to appear without ‘us’ managing it?
3. Being with nature and softening our sense of constrained focus to take in the whole system of alive energy… letting ourselves really be with it, loving it and sensing the symphony of existence around us…. Feeling somehow an underlying intelligent current within that system…
4. Loving what is, not fighting with the circumstances that arise but seeing them as a perfect coalescence of learning opportunities custom made for each of us (rather than poor rotten luck).
5. The Krishnamurti book: First and Last Freedom was explored during an inquiry session on suffering – and how any resistance, desire to shift or remove it can only serve to strengthen or maintain our anguish. Rather, K points to using open awareness (or looking) to see what suffering really is, noticing the whole system of thought and belief and through spacious being with it – fully – allowing it to express and possibly change or sometimes, to just dissipate gently out of existence.
6. Finally, we heard a bit about Eckhart’s sense of humankind’s unfoldment and evolution, with present moment stillness as the gateway and propulsion system for a new kind of human – a deeper expression of that which we already are.
An exceptional weekend with an exceptional group of people! Thanks to KECC for hosting this event!
