Joy of Being II: Faith, Fierceness, and Fluidity

The task is simple and takes a life pilgrimage to attain, to inhabit our life fully, just as we find it, and in that inhabitation, let everything ripen to the next stage of the conversation. We do this because that is how we make meaning and how we make everything real. The core act of leadership must be the act of making conversations real. The conversations of captaincy and leadership are the conversations that forge real relationships between the inside of a human being and their outer world, or between an organization and the world it serves. All around these conversations, the world is still proceeding according to mercies other than our own. This is the ultimate context to our work. The cliff edge of mortality is very near. We must know how easy it is to forget, how easy it is to drift onto the rocks and put our lives to hazard. Everything is at stake, and everything in creation, if we are listening, is in conversation with us to tell us so. 

It seems to me that every human life has the elements of a sea voyage, of a journey and an arrival. That every human life is also like a vessel that contains innumerable other lives for which we have a deep responsibility. That this vessel journeys from one unknown sea to another as we go through important epochs of our lives, and that every soul’s journey in the world is like a captaincy – that is, an identity which is necessarily attentive, powerful, and responsible, but not fixed, more like a meeting place of the elements in which the known vessel and the unknown sea must join in vital conversation. Out of this conversation we create a directional movement in the world that not only ensures our survival but creates exhilaration, the wind on our face, an immersion in the present whilst we simultaneously experience the joy of speeding toward our destination. 

With this profound and, very poignant speaking, from Crossing the Unknown Sea, by David Whyte, we begin our next voyage into our soul’s journey in the world, our next meeting place in which the vessel that we are and the next, unknown and vital sea must re-distinguish themselves, must re-shape themselves in our own mind and creative brush strokes. What are the Core conversations that bring us alive, create exhilaration, and blow the wind in our joyful sails of embracing our designed lives, knowing that we are on course, and that our compass is still tuned to our own north star? What are the conversations, inquiries, distinctions and principles that allow our Being to blossom into its fullness?

And so we come to the graduate conversation that follows and is borne from The Joy of Being a Life Worth Living: Faith, Fierceness, and Fluidity: Music of exhilaration for our Soul’s Journey.  

In The Joy of Being I, 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 nature of the calling can change over time, taking a person down pathways never anticipated. The calling opens new territories within the heart; this in turn deepens the calling itself. The faces of the calling change; what at the beginning seemed simple and clear can become ambivalent and complex as it unfolds. To develop a heart that is generous and equal to this complexity is the continual challenge of growth. This is the creative tension that dwells at the heart of vocation. One is urged and coaxed beyond the pale regions into rich territories of risk and promise. 

Joy of Being II: Faith, Fierceness, and Fluidity is a threshold crossing conversation, a retreat, into these regions of rich territories of both risk and promise and enables a living from and living with and being called by one’s calling. We engage the question: What are the essential principles, distinctions, and stands, that are critical to cultivating “a heart that is generous and equal to the complexity” of life?

Within Faith, Fierceness, and Fluidity live: senior inquiries, explorations, exercises, dialogue, and engagement with wisdom tradition distinctions that live along the path, some of which are — 

· Faith
· Fierceness
· Fluidity
· Surrender/ Trust
· Intentionality
· Grace and Gratitude
· Courage/Wholeheartedness
· Divine (unending) Love
· Patience (in the Unfolding is the way)
· Crossing Thresholds ongoingly; living at our edge
· Generosity; Forgiveness
· Curiosity; Beginner’s Mind
· Humility
· Acceptance
· Community/ Belonging
· Compassion
· Meaningful practices
· Lighting the spark of possibility for others
· Radical internal Simplification

Through these inquiries, practices, exercises, dialogue, self reflection, writing, and coaching, this conversation will take a deep dive into each of these, enabling us to live from, inhabit, and embody these distinctions in such a way that our course stays true, attending to our soul’s calling to keep dancing and listening to the Thread, the Original Presence that doesn’t change. 

We place Faith first as that, is, perhaps one of the – if not the — most Essential and Powerful navigating tool – the most essential igniting force for living out our purpose in a world of Change. This conversation opens up new ground to plant your feet onto. 

The nature of Faith and the Essence of it are distinguished in the conversation itself. At this point, you might be asking, Faith in What? I say — 

Faith in knowing that you can count on you to live from your Core; Faith in knowing that your Domains, your Created Environments in Life are a Call for you to express your purpose and your essence, or, if not, they get destroyed and re-created; Faith in cultivating a heart the is equal and generous to the continual challenge of growth, Faith in the way YOU belong to the world, Faith in your Courage, your life, your wholeheartedness: Faith in your own integrity, in gratitude and Grace…Faith in the power of intentionality to fulfill your life while surrendering to knowing that the Source/Spirit that you are is in Absolute Partnership with Spirit; Faith in your Power to Create, to make and unmake a Life, Faith in process of radically simplifying your life, down to the bare bones of what will give you the most spaciousness and freedom, Faith in the fierceness of committing to your Selfhood, Faith in the Heart, in the being conscious of and present to your Core….Faith that you can stand by the center of your life and (both not look back) and listen for what that center asks for from you…Faith that you will and can Let your Life speak; Faith in the always present support from the Invisible world. 

From Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation: 

A door opens in the center of our being and we seem to fall through it into immense depths, which, although they are infinite, are all accessible to us; all eternity seems to have become ours in this one placid and breathless contact. God touches us with a touch that is emptiness and empties us. God moves us with a simplicity that simplifies us. 

The Joy of Being a Life Worth Living II gives us profound access to simplicity. 
 

What are the Graduate Retreats? 

The graduate retreats are for The Heart of Leadership and The Joy of Being graduates. The retreats are founded in inquiry as the passageway for transformation. We explore, together, in interactive dialogue, practices, exercises, self reflection, writing, contemplation, thinking together, and some coaching, what will forward us to inhabit each of the distinctions, enabling us to live from and embody these distinctions in such a way that our course through life stay true, attending to our soul’s calling to keep dancing and listening to the Thread, the Original Presence that does not change. The retreats provide a profound Bridge from Knowing to Living. 

Each of the retreats to The Joy of Being a Life Worth Living provides a structure for fulfillment for your own, ongoing, sustaining and deepening of yourself in development and keeping the bulldogs of complacency and gilded cages away from your door. They are an incubation period you give yourself, a going below the source to come back above the surface, a winter time, where the earth slows down so that new buds can open in the spring; a re-newal, a re-fresh, a re-kindling.  
 

Particulars

Joy of Being II: Faith, Fierceness, and Fluidity: Music of exhilaration for our Journey, takes place in the gracious setting of The Clearwater Resort Hotel and Spa on the Agate Passage, January 13, 14, 15, and February 4, 2016. The program is for graduates of The Heart of Leadership and The Joy of Being a Life Worth Living only. 

The cost of the program is $1795. Participants are responsible for their own lodging at the Clearwater. 

If you have any questions about this program, or know that you would like to register, please contact us.

Here is what previous participants have articulated about their own work in The Joy of Being II: Faith, Fierceness, and Fluidity…

Previous Participant’s Comments

“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, 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 
 

“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. 

I’d like to express my appreciation and gratitude to my retreat mates, to Amba and to Ruth for a transformational experience.”

DW Green
 

“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