| Introduction |
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| Mt. Baldy, CA, October 8, 2008 |
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Introduction to retreat themes and practices. The relationship between power and presence: finding peace under pressure. Exercise: pushing, resisting, giving way. How quickly power accelerates and takes over. Instruction in the primary practice.Fairy tale: The Journey Begins
| The Four Steps of Standing Up |
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| Mt. Baldy, CA, October 9, 2008 |
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Staying present in the experience of acceleration. Receiving feedback from the environment and adjusting. The Four Steps of Standing Up: 1) Show up. 2) Open to what is. 3) Serve what is true. 4) Receive the results. Exercise: Showing up in your body. Story: The thief, the samurai, and the warlord. Do what is required, no more. Primary practice, revisted. Fairy tale: The Two Inns
| Forming A Relationship With Power |
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| Mt. Baldy, CA, October 9, 2008 |
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Forming a relationship with power. The ethics of power: the warrior’s sword vs. the predator’s sword. Exercise: Taking the sword. Four ways of working. Five mysteries associated with power: power, balance, presence, truth, freedom.Fairy tale: The Straw, the Egg, and the Book of Knowledge
| Power and Opposition |
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| Mt. Baldy, CA, October 9, 2008 |
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Power and opposition. Engaging with power, you have no idea what you’re going to be called upon to do. In the experience of opposition: something in yourself that you’re not willing to admit or experience. Exercise: Walking the gauntlet. How training develops capacity to respond in complex situations. Fairy tale: The Sleeping Giants
| On Showing Up |
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| Mt. Baldy, CA, October 10, 2008 |
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On Showing Up. Revisiting the primary practice: not to ‘get it right’ but to experience what happens, the totality of your life. Balancing exercises: how slowly thinking happens, but the body knows how to maintain balance. Applications in meditation. Nothing undercuts a distracting story so well as returning to the body. Fairy tale: The Black Castle
| Opening To What Is |
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| Mt. Baldy, CA, October 10, 2008 |
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Opening to What Is. How familiar situations trigger old scripts, whose function is to dissipate attention. Exercise: Push hands, back-to-back. How triggered scripts corrupt intention. Power is the ability to implement intention, by staying present. Instead of focusing on what you want to do, include the entire situation.Fairy tale: The Old Witch and the White Bird
| On Posture |
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| Mt. Baldy, CA, October 10, 2008 |
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On posture. How we hold ourselves carries/conveys meanings. Posture exercises: Advance-retreat; rise-lower; widen-narrow.
| Serving What Is True |
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| Santa Fe, NM, October 11, 2008 |
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Serving What is True. Difficulties in serving what is true when it doesn’t accord with expectations and understanding. Fairy tale: The Old Man with Red EyesHow fairy tales describe internal realms of experience vs. the world of shared experience. Attention vs. Intention vs. Will. Exercise: 4-person flocks. Obstacles as simply features in the landscape to be negotiated.
| Artist and Critic |
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| Mt. Baldy, CA, October 11, 2008 |
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Exercise: Artist and Critic. If you live for respect, you give your life over to others. How the sense of urgency often accelerates things, and we get swallowed up in the acceleration. Evolutionary paradigms: providing the _conditions_ for certain things to evolve. Applications to meditation.Fairy tale: Black Sheep
| Receiving The Result |
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| Mt. Baldy, CA, October 11, 2008 |
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Receiving the Result. Whatever the outcome, work with that: The Four Steps of Standing Up as a way of living, continually cycling. Four stages of conflict: Pacification, Enrichment, Magnetization, Destruction. Balance, boundary, and the ethics of power. Obligation and the three bases of relationship. Courage. How power differs from other gestures (ecstasy, insight, compassion).Fairy tale: Ransom, Return, Recognition
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