Will we see you at Wake Up 2014?!
Friends we are so happy to announce and invite you to the 2014 Wake Up Festival!
The Wake Up Festival is a five-day immersion experience in personal and collective transformation. It’s the largest and only festival of its kind, uniting renowned spiritual teachers, bestselling authors, healers, scientists, poets, yogis, and lovers of life within the context of an open-hearted, uplifting community.
The Wake Up Festival is not your usual “festival.” It’s not about outer activities; it’s about inner exploration and discovery. We think of it as a feast of life-changing insights with just the right amount of practice to enable us to truly embody what we learn. You’ll be invited to approach awakening through meditation, personal writing, qigong, yoga, dance, shadow work, and more. And we will do it as individuals each supported by our Wake Up community.
Confirmed presenters include Jack Kornfield, Elizabeth Gilbert, Rick Hanson, Jill Bolte Taylor, Mark Nepo, Snatam Kaur, Malidoma Somé, Robert Augustus Masters, Bruce Tift, and many others.
We hope to see you all in August. Save $200 if you register by May 1st!
Holding Your Experience
Will you make a commitment to no longer abandon yourself and your present experience? That no matter what thought, feeling, emotion, or sensation arises, you will offer it a home within you, setting aside the conclusion that it is a mistake, a problem which must be fixed, or evidence that something is wrong with you?
Begin with a sacred pause, touching whatever is there, and state your intention to stay close. Offer a heartfelt “yes” to your experience and allow it to be exactly as it is, cutting into the momentum of billions of lifetimes of turning from the orphaned ones knocking on the door of your heart. Call off the war with yourself, and see that arguing with reality will only ever lead to suffering for yourself and others.
From this ground of seeing and allowing, you could then enter into the most radical act of all: to meet whatever arises in your experience with what Rumi calls a mighty kindness. While it seems so simple, it is in fact a revolution in practice. Open your heart to your rage, your shame, your despair, and your sadness, gently holding and cradling it as you would a sweet little baby, unconditionally receiving it as a raging expression of reality exactly as it is. See that it, too, is path—come only to awaken one of the qualities of love within you.
It is through this wild kindness that you may finally see just how much space there is around your experience, how whatever appears—while very vivid, colorful, energetic, and even disturbing—is luminously transparent, and not nearly as solid as it seems. It is in and through your intimacy with your embodied, present experience that it will self-liberate, without any effort on your part, into the pristine, primordial awareness and love that you are.
Embodied Vulnerability and Non-Division
Recorded live in our Boulder studios for the Self-Acceptance Project, Bruce shares with Tami (and viewers around the world) the importance of both psychological and spiritual approaches to the journey of freedom, love, and awareness. In my experience, Bruce is one of the most gifted and innovative therapists out there and someone I feel honored to call a friend and mentor.
As part of our free, 12-week video event series, I invited 23 psychologists, psychotherapists, neuroscientists, and spiritual teachers to speak with my friend and longtime colleague, Tami Simon, to ask the tough questions, and to explore the the relationship between self-acceptance and the larger spiritual journey.
All episodes of the Self-Acceptance Project are now posted and can be accessed as video or audio downloads, or can be streamed at no cost from the comfort of your own home. Our deep gratitude to the 35,000+ of you who registered for the series; we hope you enjoyed and benefited from it.
It is our intention to bring you more high-quality content in this area over the months and years to come. Our next series will focus on Deepening Intimacy, launching in the new year.
http://youtu.be/453_hzuzZ0I
Wake Up or Bust!
As I write this blog post we’re days away from the 2014 Wake Up Festival, and I’m thinking about all of the things I have to do before heading up to Estes Park for four days of camping and “WUFing” as we like to call it. But I’m also thinking about what my intentions are and why I am excited to be fortunate enough to be able to attend. Having experienced the last two Wake Up Festivals, I’m looking forward to immersing myself in the unique energy field that is created by all of the participants. You can feel it the second you get out of your car on the grounds of the YMCA. It’s as if the coming together of several hundred people with the shared intention of becoming more conscious, present, and authentic generates the perfect environment in which such aspirations can become reality. It’s powerful and infectious. And it needs to be if it’s going to fuel changes that continue long after the conclusion of the Wake Up Festival. After all, it’s one thing to spend a week practicing with others but another matter to live what we learn when we return to our everyday lives.
So as I deal with the details of packing and travel and so on, I hope that I’m able to remember why I’m going in the first place, to go with the flow once I get up there without attachment to programs and agendas, and to stay present with the beautiful people and surroundings. And if I’m lucky, the energy of transformation that all of us create will indeed support positive developments for each of us as we move toward the end of another year.
A wildness that wishes to be resurrected through you
Love is inviting you in every moment to undress, to remove your clothing and stand naked in this world. But to accept this invitation you must leave the known. You must set aside your hopes and fears, your quest for safety, and your fantasies of awakening and resolution. And allow love to dismantle you. You will never find ground, security, certainty, or surety in the fires of love, but there is something much more majestic being offered. There are billions of unique cells which have assembled to form your one, untamed heart. It is not a resting place you are after but for a wildness to be resurrected through you.
October New Releases and Giveaway
BOOKS TO SOOTHE YOUR SOUL
Raising Resilience by Christopher Willard, PSYD
In every spiritual tradition, we find teachings on the virtues and qualities that we most want to pass on to our kids—such as generosity, kindness, honesty, determination, and patience. Today, a growing body of research from neuroscience and social psychology supports these teachings, offering insights into cultivating these virtues in ourselves and in our families. Raising Resilience is a practical guide for parents and educators of children from preschool through adolescence, detailing ten universal principles for happy families and thriving children.
It’s Ok That You’re Not OK by Megan Devine
In It’s OK That You’re Not OK, Megan Devine offers a profound new approach to both the experience of grief and the way we try to help others who have endured tragedy. Having experienced grief from both sides—as both a therapist and as a woman who witnessed the accidental drowning of her beloved partner—Megan writes with deep insight about the unspoken truths of loss, love, and healing. She debunks the culturally prescribed goal of returning to a normal, “happy” life, replacing it with a far healthier middle path, one that invites us to build a life alongside grief rather than seeking to overcome it.
The Complete Peaceful Warrior’s Way by Dan Millman
For millions of readers, Dan Millman’s Way of the Peaceful Warrior has ignited life-changing shifts. And in the decades since he wrote this iconic book, his work continues to evolve. In this in-depth audio learning program, Dan shares the full scope of his insights and tools for those seeking practical wisdom leading to a peaceful heart and warrior’s spirit.
How to Consciously Live the Peaceful Warrior’s Way—a Spiritual Path in the Modern World.
Looking for some eye and ear inspiration?
