The Art of Living Wakefully:
The Art of Living Wakefully:
Generating Peace Within:
Compassion, Simplicity, Patience
May 2, 3, 4, 2023 for Joy of Being Graduates Only
Generating Peace Within:
Compassion, Simplicity, Patience
May 2, 3, 4, 2023
For Joy of Being Graduates Only
There is an ancient story told about the Buddha shortly after he was enlightened. While he was walking down a dusty road, he met a traveler who noticed that this monk exuded an extraordinary energy. The traveler said to him, “You seem very special. What are you? Some kind of angel?” “No,” Buddha said. “Then, are you some kind of god? You seem inhuman.” “No,” he said once again. “Well, are you some kind of wizard? Some kind of magician?” “No,” the Buddha once again said. “Well, are you a man?” “No.” “Then what are you?” At this the Buddha answered, “I am awake.”
The word, “Buddha,” means one who is awake. Another way of saying this is, to be a Buddha is to be one who walks wakefully on this earth.
And what is it to “walk wakefully on this earth?” This is the key question we ask, after having awakened, after having seen newly with new eyes, after having faced one’s Self with truth and integrity, and honesty, after having discerned our thread and designed and lived and continue to live a life fulfilling our purpose on the planet, a life whose forms often constantly change as we live out our life. And so, with this ancient teaching from the Buddhist tradition, I invite you to participate in the next graduate retreat to The Joy of Being: The Art of Living Wakefully: Finding Peace Within — Simplicity, Compassion, Patience
Mark Nepo’s voice from Book of Awakening calls to us: “We must swim out past the breakers if we are to know the hammock of the deep. Stay on land or make it to the deep. It is the in-between that kills.”
The purpose of the graduate work to The Joy of Being has been, and is, to provide wide access to a descent into the depths, to that place wherein dwells “the hammock of the deep.” Emerging out of each graduate retreat, having seen and breathed the treasure of knowing ourselves and others deeply, having taken deep dives into reflective and thoughtful conversation and inquiry with each other, having lived into and opened ourselves into new capacities for meaning, for gratitude, for living in astonishment, we travel ever more wakefully, mindfully, enlivened, and in Presence in our days. Some of us cross thresholds that are now ours to cross, or create endings to aspects of our lives that are now ours to end, whether they be conversations, or ways of being, or relationships, or heartaches.
What I said in the very first Joy graduate retreat we ever designed still holds true:
“In The Joy of Being, you ignited the life embers inside of you into a fire and brought those embers into the light of day, designing and manifesting a life (and are, as yet, designing a life) that gives in-the-world expression to your Soul. You, yourself, know, that were those embers to go out, it would “signal some kind of inner death.” So, the necessity of sustaining that fire, while the world relentlessly goes its own way, and building that fire so that your next “epoch” of fulfillment may arrive, is critical for our pilgrimage, our journey, our Way. What is the inhabitation of your life calling for from you now to sustain (and, possibly, expand) its exhilaration? Who are you, now, and what is critical for you to bring to bear, to live as the creative artist, ripening your own life into its next stage?”
The specific purpose of our next graduate offering, The Art of Living Wakefully is that we gain profound access to living from the Peace that lives within each of us, through exploring, deepening, investigating, and inquiring into the three major principles taught by the Great 6th century Chinese master, Lao Tzu: simplicity, patience, and compassion. As he says in the Tao Te Ching, which can be translated as “The Book of the Way”
I have just three things to teach:
simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and in thoughts,
you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.
Attached is a resonant document, distinguishing each of these so-needed distinctions more deeply, through quotes, questions, and prompts.
Through living from simplicity, patience, and compassion, we have entrance into Peace. In this way, we infuse our life with Spirit, with remembering who we are in the midst of our days, that affects our everyday way of Being and Living, and that gives us access to waking ourselves up, re-imagining, re-perceiving, and re-inspiriting our lives, and the lives of others in our lives.
Writers in the wisdom tradition always speak to the heart as the source of our development. For example, Mathew Fox says:
“Creativity takes courage – courage to explore one’s deepest self and to let in the depths of the world’s struggles and joys, torments and agony. … Artists need encouragement, the building up of courage that community can lend us. The artist in each of us needs and deserves attention in order to build up the heart.”
And so, it is with the deepest honor and regard, that I invite you, if you have participated in The Joy of Being, into our next graduate Joy offering of The Art of Living Wakefully May 2, 3, 4, 2023.
It is a joy and a privilege to extend this invitation to you, and please know how deeply I (and others) value the treasure of being with you, touching, and being touched by you.
If you’d like to register, please click here.
If you would like more information, read on!
How does this work? (you might ask):
While self-reflection in solitude, exercises, writing, journaling, paired sharing, group sharing, and coaching are all part of how we work in behalf of embodying these distinctions, the work of Inquiry, Communion, Rigor and Laughter are at their soul a chief means for the revelation of Pure Wisdom. Through deep listening, which in turn gives rise to Deep Speaking, and Pure Dialogue, Community Inquiry brings each of us to a place none of us has been before and is created through the honesty of Speakers as we navigate the terrain of our own and each other’s intelligence, life experience (including failures and mistakes), joy, and heart.
Particulars:
While The Art of Living Wakefully is a live, three-day program, on May 2, 3, 4, 2023, we also fully intend to provide a year long conversation via email, where community members can share, contribute, explore, inquire, about the distinctions, and each other, throughout the year. Should participants wish to engage with each other through Zoom, in a debrief in the middle of the year, we offer that as well, as part of the offering.
The tuition for the retreat is $2250.00.
We intend that the retreats be intimate. Participants will be accepted on a first come, first served basis. Your verbal or written commitment to me that you will be in it, followed by a promise for a registration form from you within the week of your speaking and my hearing an acceptance, is sufficient to reserve you a space. To register, please fill out the registration form at the back of this packet.
Participant Comments from other Joy of Being Retreats:
The annual retreat with our leadership group is an opportunity for me to step away from the day-to-day doing of my life and to “let my life speak,” as Parker Palmer says. In our recent time together, I discovered transformative opportunities in multiple domains of my life that hadn’t surfaced in my day-to-day.
I discovered I was becoming drained from the demands on my time from colleagues, friends, and family. And with the support of my leadership group, I discovered that the requests for time were really a request for a deeper foundation of relatedness. And by connecting more deeply, through heart-led communication, the real desire behind these requests could be met and relationships transformed. I am committed to “heart” leadership and expressing passion and compassion during my interactions.
I discovered that my team was requesting more from me in terms of leadership. I committed to uncovering and articulating a vision for our company that aligns with my deepest intentions—and not holding back.
At home, I committed to spiritual practice with my family. Along with my regular meditation practice, my spouse and I are meeting weekly to connect spiritually, through a spiritual podcast or dharma talk, much to my wife’s delight.
Thank you, Amba and my retreat partners, for your profound wisdom and support!
Eric Cress, Founder, Urban Development Partners
By exploring three words—Faith, Fierceness, and Fluidity—this course brings the conversation into the fiery center of our lives. It is at the heart and the root, a more directly spiritual course than the others I’ve taken, with a lot of room for shared discovery. The biggest takeaways for me were a deepening access to Presence and a deepening wisdom into the ongoing nature of Development. This is meaty, graduate-level stuff. Highly-recommended.
Ryan Joy
I have been living fully into my unique expression and purpose since taking the Joy of Being I nearly two years ago. I have used the powerful openings and rigorous framework to hone my domains and stands and most importantly eliminate activities that diminish my expression. The Joy of Being II was truly a master level conversation with Amba and the other participants as we plumbed the depths of faith, fierceness and fluidity. These distinctions and the profound sharing from the community opened a tremendous amount of space for me “to stride deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing I can do — determined to save the only life I can save.”
Rich Duncombe, Hewlett Packard
My experience was that it was a natural progression of conversation from Joy I. It is deeply personal work but enveloped and nourished in the space of a loving community of people. Together we journeyed and discovered new territory that gave us access to reexamining our domains and lives with more intention and clarity. I learned that everything is right in front of me or within me. However, there are layers of “stuff” that I need to whack through in order to see the simplicity of living with my stands and commitments as my North Star.
With love and gratitude,
Susan Allen, Owner, Town and Country Markets
Joy of Being II for me was all about moving out of my comfort zone and reaching deeply into my courage and integrity. I came in thinking I was complete with this work and left knowing that I still don’t know what I don’t know. My experience during Joy of Being II was profound and it put me back on the path of development with newly found fierceness and courage.
Teresa Gutierrez, Practitioner, Mary Bridge Children’s Therapy Services
For me, Joy of Being II was a deep and rich conversation into faith, fierceness and fluidity. The knowing of these things…the knowing of them, in the sense of being faith, of being fierce and being fluid, experiencing an intimate relationship and awareness of them was an opening for me into wholeness, into being One with everything that exists. And a realization that oneness is love.
DW Green, Founder and President, DW Green Company
For me, Joy of Being II was less about learning distinctions, and more about living deeply within them. Ever more present, ever clearer about my intentions, ever more focused in what I will and will not allow into my life. It’s a gift to find a place designed to clear the debris of your life and shore up your foundation.
Thank you.
Ron Nakata, Owner, Town and Country Markets
Participant Comments from the Retreat Community:
Continuing with the Joy of Being retreats has been a marvelous opportunity for me. To say they have directly contributed to my life would be an understatement. The Joy retreats have opened up so many wonderful journeys into words, distinctions, opportunities, and shifts in my life. Together the community takes different cuts into three different words/phrases. At a glance one might wonder how can one entire day be spent on one word or phrase. By end of the first day I realized that it is only the beginning of my new found understanding of how these distinctions show up in the world around me and how many other delightful and challenging doors are now open. If you do choose to continue to with this course I would suggest that you pack curiosity, humility, vulnerability, transparency, and love.
Joel Larway
Market Director, Town and Country Markets
I first experienced The Joy of Being in 2009 and have been living into the space that it created ever since. I have revisited and refined my life design many times as I have uncovered new insights in this “undiscovered territory.” The graduate retreats always accelerated and deepened my inquiry in ways that I could not. Beyond that, there is nothing better than opening myself and being received by others committed to the same fundamental question of their purpose. I have had the honor of working with Amba for over 30 years and there is no better way to experience her wisdom and loving support than in the graduate community.
Rich Duncombe,
Managing Director, Innovation Catalyst Group
If Joy of Being gives you a life map, then the graduate community joins you on the path. This community of wise partners lightens the way, exposing the crossroads in your life that you might otherwise pass without notice. The graduate community is a family of trained coaches. We support each other throughout the year. My community of graduates repeatedly transforms my perspective on life and, in turn, I practice transforming there’s, such that I am able to employ the practice in my daily life for the benefit of myself and others.
Eric Cress
Founder, Urban Development Partners
I was recently asked the question, “What are some of the things you can’t live without in your life?” Coffee came to mind first. And then, amazingly, the retreat community came to mind next – not that it came to mind, but rather popped up directly from my heart. What makes the retreats so powerful are both the topics of exploration and the community exploring them together. The distinctions explored at a retreat (for example – love, faith, integrity) are daily engagements. As such, your life will be profoundly different after engaging in a retreat conversation. Like all Amba’s offerings, through rigorous exploration, you grow exponentially – broadening and deepening your way of being.
James Bailey
Owner, Perspective Wealth Partners