Path of the
Obedient Heart
Workshops
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Path of the Obedient Heart Workshops |
Advanced Path of the Obedient Heart
Unleashing the Power of Gay Spirit
Path of the Obedient Heart ---
A unique opportunity to put your life into spiritual perspective, identify where you are right now in your own personal evolution, determine the next logical activity in your progression and find the sticking points preventing or delaying your growth. This workshop uses lecture, questions and answers, sharing, direct coaching and small group processes to stimulate self-awareness and provide assisted insight.
Discover, and then pass through the barriers setting between your thinking and the activities that will constitute your legacy. Feel, in a real and undeniable physical way, the blocks, thoughts, habits, and mental objections that prevent living from your heart and spirit. Experience one of life's most dramatic and effective historical practices for spiritual growth. Flogging is used to physically empower the acceptance and employment of your personal fetishes and other unique characteristics that enable the distinct destiny for which you were created.
All of life's growth occurs because of our experiences. We progress spiritually down our unique paths only when we are offered life's circumstances, and respond.
Our response can either be conscious or unconscious. We can react from the habits and values that we already have that have been developed over a lifetime, or we can look for the lesson and develop new responses. Growth is having new responses.
How much we know, who we know, how many seminars we've attended will never substitute for any of our spiritual growth. Growth isn't knowledge. Growth is a change in perspective that has either been discovered or forced on us from surviving life's experiences.
It is normal to spend the first part of our life unconsciously experiencing our destiny. It is also normal to eventually outgrow our unconsciousness and to become completely aware of life's influences on us. This switch from unconscious to conscious destiny is a transition that each of us must go through.
We don't normally invite this transition because it changes life's rules. These rules have guided us, even made us successful. We've already paid a high price to learn what has served us so well to this point, even gotten us through some very difficult and traumatic times. In this transition we're asked to release all the rules to become fully conscious of our path. The transition is in itself a path.
Path II provides experiences the ego can't control and experiences the ego can't hide from us for its purpose to keep us unconscious. When we can't hide from ourselves, we expose ourselves to who we are, and in so doing identify where we are along the inevitable path of our spiritual development.
Path II provides a clear mirror into which we can look, and after seeing ourselves more clearly, then decide what we want to do as a result of what we see there. Additionally, there is a resulting empowerment that comes from releasing the soul to express itself without the egotistic controls and confines of our expectations and current self image.
Part of the Path growth comes from discovering the wisdom, kindness, and intention of our spirit. Since we really are who are spirit is, when we learn to admire and then to love our spirit, we grow in self esteem. From the resulting confidence, we become able to qualify for the unique work of our destiny.
There is no potential for damage, neither physical nor emotional. Those who fear the truth either of who they are or where they are on their spiritual developmental path will choose to leave. Without prejudice and without judgment, that's OK. We have all found ourselves being afraid of who we are and of being afraid of knowing how spiritually developed we are. It is a part of our normal development.
It is a dramatic and substantial step in our lives to want to expose ourselves to the truth. It takes a lot of courage and conviction. This is an investment in who we are. Our soul wants us to know we're not who our egos say we are. It wants us to know we don't exist in our heads, we exist in our soul. Learning that is what marks the transition from unconscious to conscious destiny.
Path II is a safe and secure space where you are surrounded by people who care only about who you really are, not who you try to be. It is where there is support, encouragement and guidance to let go of our self-controlled selves so we can meet and/or learn to trust who we really are above all else.
Self development is a decision to let go of the neat, handy, well-managed tenets of our lives in exchange for the freedom to do in this world what no one has ever done before us. Without that freedom there is no possibility of finding our destiny. Our souls already know this. This is a chance for our minds to catch up.
No life's purpose, no destiny, is about us. All destiny is about others. We develop so that in the pursuit of being ourselves we find ourselves performing the activities that will aid others. We can't even expect to know which activities those are. The most stupendous actions might have the least impact. The slightest gesture made to someone unknown to us might dramatically change the world. So long as we can recognize the consequences of our actions, they are still trivial. When we can't see, nor understand, the consequences of action taken in honesty and with integrity, the effect is monumental.
Path II releases the soul's behavior, the strongest definition of our integrity. The release is performed in pairs where there is a partner who can accept what your soul intends. Learning to behave in integrity without the opportunity to control the outcome or perceived result is to discover who we really are.
In addition to all the other motivation, a sense of adventure is necessary., Like a two-year old who is playing in a big field full of lots of curious places, our soul seeks life's adventures in the same way. The soul sees it all as play. Only the ego's capacity to judge allows some activity to be classified as work.
When we remember that we are best being who we really are, it is easy to see how becoming who we really are is the easiest way to go through life. All of the time, energy and investment in being what others have expected of us has been the difficult route. It's strange how strongly we'll argue for the right to live the hard way when honesty and integrity allows us a more efficient, rewarding and satisfying alternative.
The Path II experience is only one of the alternatives in life. No one makes a life out of a single experience. It takes many experiences to make a life time. Path II is a spiritually focused opportunity to consciously invite discovery into our lives. Only your soul knows what it will find.
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Advanced Path of the Obedient Heart ---
This is where the pattern of personal achievement is realized. An environment where words don't exist, and human logic is ignored to free the spirit within each of us to play, to work and to make conscious our destined purpose by learning to set aside, then free ourselves from the blocks that constrain our spirit. Experience for yourself why spiritually evolved human beings express that no academic pursuit has ever contributed to knowing who we are, nor to our spiritual growth.
It is natural to grow up developing a strong sense of what we own, even inevitable. Our very identity comes from the use of possessives like "I" and "me". Success is commonly measured by what we own. Our education is denoted by what Degrees we own. The reference we make to everything that we like to be associated with is always one of possession. We have "my" family, "my" church, "my" school, especially if we want to be known by it as in "My school is Harvard."
We can't convince the people we want to impress that we have achieved success unless we describe to them "my" car, "my" house, located where "my" address is..., and earned of course through "my" position in the company. If you want to measure the significance of someone in Western Culture it is necessary to list the possessions that have been accumulated, or over which that person has control.
It was recently pointed out to me that the word "personality" has as its origin the word "mask". After we have described all the physical things we own, next we describe the masks that we have created and maintained by which we are known. Because of the ownership and control we have over those masks we consider them ours. To know who we are we think that we need only add up the physical possessions plus the masks we own that constitute our personality. Together, we conclude that these things constitute what makes us special and, therefore, distinguishable from everyone else.
When it is our time to finally "get serious" about our spiritual development, we treat "our" soul with the same sense of possession. The same "my" reference is made to the soul to show the ownership that "I" have of "my" soul. The soul, thereby, becomes another of those things that we own like our arms, our family, our car, house, and personality.
Whenever we believe that we have ownership of something we feel a sense of option regarding it. When I own a car, I can replace it. When I own my body, I can choose either to exercise it or not. When I own my house, I have the option of remodeling it, or moving into a different one. We want to own because it gives us control. Without control, we think, we don't have the resource and opportunity necessary to find success.
Success is measured by the management of "our" resources. We look at what we put into the process and then measure what comes out of it. If the final product is better than the what we originally input, we are building additional success. So, it would follow that when our interest is in developing spiritually, we have only to manage our resources well and the result will an augmented spirituality.
We look spiritually for the same resources of time, the wise exercise of options, and the decision about what we are willing to part with to gain something else in the exchange. It is habitual to pursue our spiritual development with the same "buying decision" mentality and approach that we use when determining when we should buy anything. We review all the reasons to buy by listing the benefits we think will accrue to us and then review all the reasons that we shouldn't buy which includes the resources that we will have to part with. When the accumulative reasons to buy outweigh the reasons not to, we buy. When we find that the reasons not to are the heaviest, we don't buy, and it's that simple for us.
The whole implication in this "buying" process is that we are doing the buying for our own best interest and that we additionally know everything that's in our best interest. When we reach the point in our development that we are conscious about our pursuit of destiny, the unique path for which we were created, our purpose is no longer our own. Destiny never has ourselves as the object of our effort.
Destiny is about what we do for others. When that effort is performed honestly, in integrity, and from the order that we get from our Creator, happiness is given to us as our reward. That is not the same as having happiness as the objective of our effort.
Our habitual insistence on owning our soul is what makes this concept so very difficult to either understand or accept. The truth is that the soul that lives within each of us, OWNS us. It isn't the other way around.
The soul has always existed. The soul will never end. For a very short period of time, it comes up through the earth to take on the physical minerals, chemicals and liquids that will give the soul form. The acquisition of that which gives us physical form is referred to as nutrition. It is the method by which we add to the form, a form which began in our parents who were also the physical form of other souls.
Life is the process by which the soul manages our physical form to finally qualify that form to perform the Creator's work.
For the soul to be successful, it has had to select the parents, the environment, the genetics, the I.Q., the educational opportunities, the period in time, the talents, interests, weaknesses and strengths that will constitute the physical form we identify with. The soul has had to put up with potty training, learning to walk and talk, the challenges of childhood and adolescence. The appeal of drugs and alcohol and other "spiritual tranquilizers" from the soul's perspective has also been a necessary part of the development.
When we are pleased with the result of what the soul that occupies us has done, we take the credit and claim success for ourselves. The soul can only smile at such arrogance. With it's planning which began back before we were in this world, and all of the influences that it arranged for so we could make it through life, it has to be amused that we would then try to take credit for all that has happened.
The soul spends it's time moving within us on this earth making us ready for the moment when we can finally become conscious of what it is doing. That awareness comes in the form of a question presented to us which asks whether we will act for the Creator to do that which we can't see to be in our egotistic best interest, or, whether we will continue to pursue the success the soul has already given us.
That question looks much harder when we think that we are sacrificing our personal efforts for someone else, even when that someone else is our Creator. Recognizing that everything that we have has already been a complete gift from the soul inside, we should be a lot more prepared to let go of a control we never had over our life.
Accepting that the soul owns us makes it a lot easier to say "yes" to the destiny question about acting for the Creator's purpose instead of our own. Holding onto the false belief that our successes have been through our own doing, over which we have had control, makes it feel like we're giving away everything. Seeing the soul as our possessor allows us to see the process as the inevitable return on investment that the soul has made in us for as long as we have been alive.
It isn't coincidental that those men and women that we recognize has having achieved their destiny don't take any of the credit for what they do. The thought isn't one of an altruistic reasoning that concludes that that's what should be said. The thought is the conscious or unconscious recognition that the soul owns them, and they finally allowed the soul to have its way, to accomplish its mission, to develop the way it incarnated to develop.
Happiness, from the vantage point that the soul owns us, isn't any more demanding than letting the soul do whatever it wants to do whenever it wants to do it. Happiness becomes a function of simply not standing in the way of the soul, objecting to its desires and functions.
The soul doesn't need our reason, logic, and understanding to know what to do. It doesn't need our input about what is right and wrong. It has a connection to the Creator that lets it know everything it needs to know, to do everything it needs to do to achieve the purpose for which it is here. It has all the resources it needs to direct what we call "our" destiny.
From the soul's position, it is doing what it came here to do. Destiny is our observation of its activity. To the soul, destiny is pretty ordinary stuff. To the ego of the human observer it looks like a miracle.
Our challenge is to learn how to let go, and let the soul do its work. It is the only challenge that matters in the bigger scheme of things. Everything else is merely preparation for that.
Life is never going to look simple to us, but it will become effective through the efforts we make if we will accept this simple truth that the soul owns us. That acceptance will give us the courage to let the soul experience what it wants to experience. That acceptance will allow us to see the triviality of what we understand, and its insignificance in learning who we are and what we are supposed to be doing with our lives. Life is not about understanding. Life is about experiencing.
Take a quiet moment. Examine your life in light of the soul owning you. Witness how much more sense everything that has happened in your life makes. Consider how much less it looks like we're risking when we view the soul as being the possessor instead of our possession.
Finally, the only abilities we need are to have moral certainty in every situation and the capacity to express unqualified love. When we allow the soul to give us that capability, we will be rewarded with happiness for letting it do so.
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Mummification is a gentle all encompassing method of bondage that directs you into a powerful interior experience. Your body will be safely wrapped in layers of plastic and laid down. The effect is one of being fully embraced in a warm and supportive environment. Time allotted to integrate and share.
Mummification Days begin with a short introduction.
We discuss technique, what you might expect to feel and safety
precautions. All your questions are answered. Then the group will
be split in half and, with permissions from each of you, your
body will be wrapped in layers of plastic film and at your option,
blindfolded and laid down.
Experienced instructors assist you and direct your partner throughout
the session. Your partner provides support and offers a variety
of physical stimuli. After two hours, or when you are ready, you
are slowly and meticulously released. We share our experiences
and break for lunch. During the afternoon you will each change
partners and repeat the process.
Participants experience a wide range of sensations and feelings
that include joy, excitement, overcoming fear, peace, sensuality,
quiet, rebirth, presence, distance, and others. All of your experiences
are respected and held in a sacred space.
The day is conducted at a rustic retreat in the foothills of the
San Gabriel Mountains in nearby Sierra Madre, CA. The atmosphere
is relaxed, private and close to nature. We provide refreshments
and a light lunch between sessions. There is nothing to provide
but yourself.
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Unleashing the Power of Gay Spirit ---
This workshop offers the opportunity to engage in an exciting exploration of the meaning and purpose of our lives as gays and lesbians, individually and collectively. Lecture, discussion, guided meditation, and experiential exercises inspire participants to experiment with reframing-framing past experiences in ways that liberate and empower them. Exposing homophobic myths and assumptions frees us to integrate our gifts and talents and move from a defensive political agenda of survival to a mature proactive, passionate embrace of our destiny.
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