Dear Friends:
Sacred Mastery in a Time of Crisis
Join Carlos Warter, M.D., Ph.D. for this powerful event!
May 21 - May 26, 2009 in Oahu, Hawaii
For those of you who have participated before in our teachings, you know that each one is deeper than the previous because we are committed to the contribution of health, personal growth and opening of the heart.
To those who will attend for the first time, I invite you to a remembrance of your true search for the above vision, for I promise you that this Celebration will be expansive for all that which is in your hearts.”
.” -Zen quote
We often believe our hearts are open and we can feel much of what is going on in our lives. Yet to truly open the heart means we have to stop the thinking, the judging, the opinions, the analyzing, the questioning, the doubting, and just love. It's all that unconditional stuff. The act of doing this, takes practice and patience. Learning to meditate means learning to love. To love our self. To love all others. To love the oneness of all. To love more.
The connection you feel when you connect to this oneness is the most irresistible state of love you will ever feel. Makes it sound like it's worth the effort doesn't it? Maybe you've had glimpses of this - moments when you felt it, and your heart expanded. The beauty of nature in a spectacular sunset or a magnificent rushing waterfall, a child's innocent embrace, a long awaited accomplishment, an exhilarating sport or excursion, being with the one you love.
These can make you 'feel' in the biggest sense of the word. And the feeling can be described as wonderfully peaceful, coupled with a glorious uplifting, a lightening up of the heart. What these experiences all have in common is an external factor. Something had to be there, something had to be seen, in order to involve our senses. These 'things' serve to trigger this feeling.
Meditation serves the same purpose. It teaches you to connect with this feeling all on your own, without any outside stimuli. The source of that loving feeling is always within you. But what happens most often is that you don't know how to access it on our own. You wait for the triggers, look for the triggers, and in fact even seek out the triggers, because you believe they are the source.
When you quiet your mind, you are closing down the outside stimuli. You are holding the mirror up to yourself, deep within yourself, and waiting to see/feel the love. It's there, but the practice is necessary to learn to wait quietly, build patience, and stroke and nurture your loving heart.
Most of us have shy hearts and loud minds, and meditation serves to reverse this so we can truly feel the bliss and the joy and the 'highs 'we so crave in our lives. Now, meditation can be made to be much more complicated than what I have described. There are countless books, tapes, courses and workshops that deal with the core principles of meditation, and then expand upon them. They go into many, many aspects, avenues, theories, understandings, types, etc. It can be quite overwhelming for the beginner. But it's perfect for the intermediate student of meditation.
When you are beginning, the less said the better. Keeping it simple is very important, because the process of meditation is so simple. If it's not working, or if you want to know more about it, or you are ready to know more about it, then by all means read, study, learn. It's like taking the same route to the supermarket every day and then finding out there are other ways of getting there, other roads that lead there, other journeys you can take.
Study and practice of meditation has the potential to open up many layers of your heart. Everything in your life therefore opens up with it. Relationships bloom, work purpose is found, vibrant health is allowed, because love affects your belief system, your attitudes, your choices. Anger dissolves before it ever manifests, frustration mellows out, the pit of sadness and depression are filled up like never before. These are the promises of meditation. These are the long-term rewards. But in the beginning, meditation is simply quieting your mind so you can open your heart.
- Healthy personal growth is creative personal growth. It is about exactly what it says, growth. It is not about becoming more good or a "better" person, it is about gaining more autonomy, becoming more authentic, more genuinely who we are.
- Healthy Personal Growth leads to inner richness, the ability to have empathy, but it varies from the simple idea of 'being good'. A genuine person has no need to be malicious towards another, they would only harm themselves. But it is still not the same as 'being good'.
- Most religions seem to have some adjunct against the mistake of going after 'being good'. Christians say, 'The path to hell is laid with good intentions' and Buddhists say, 'It takes all the wisdom of the wise to undo the harm done by the merely good'.
- Whatever we are experiencing, we can grow through it if we accept it. There is no point, for instance, trying to be happy, if we are experiencing grief, but by embracing our grief, rather than pretending it is not there, we become deeper richer people. Likewise there is no point in pretending you love someone if you do not. You'll only confuse them and yourself.
- Healthy personal growth is about coming to trust yourself and finding ways to help you to change habits you would rather be rid of. It is about becoming real and more alive in every moment, regardless of what that moment is bringing.
- Healthy personal growth is about becoming more of who you are. Someone once said, people grow for the same reason as the amoeba...irritation! And perhaps that is so, but it is equally so that we grow because we have the potential to grow, without that potential we would not feel the irritation. By learning to trust our own inner resources we can let go of the irritation and become authentic creative beings.
- commune with yourself!
Meditation is a technique to help us relax, relieve stress and be in touch with our own essential selves and our own wisdom.
Meditation is a way to bring us back in contact with ourselves. Life is so busy. From the moment we are born we are busy being socialised into our particular social setting. What happens in our early life to a very great extent determines who we think we are. Even the language we learn to a great extent shapes us. People tell us who we are and if we are told it often enough we begin to believe it. Sometimes we develop a 'false self concept' because of this. We can believe we are this particular person and that we must remain as that person or we will be letting ourselves and others down. It can become very stressful.
Life is stressful and the more modern technology we have the more stressful it seems to become. Meditation offers a way out of this. It offers a way to quiet the constant chatter we have with ourselves, a way back inside to become centred and in touch with ourselves.
So often we are living in yesterday or tomorrow or even ten minutes from now. Meditation is a way of bringing ourselves here into the now, so that we may experience ourselves exactly as we are and we may experience what is going on as it is.
A simple form of meditation is as follows:
Kneel or sit cross legged with a cushion for support or if you find that uncomfortable sit in a comfortable chair. There is really no reason why you cannot meditate even lying down - though if you fall asleep, you will miss the experience! Assuming you are sitting, put your hands comfortably on your legs, palms up. For some reason this gesture seems to help the flow of energy within you. Just sit there for a minute or two and feel what your body feels like. Notice any tension and try to relax into that spot and accept it. After a couple of minutes, concentrate on your breathing. Don't try to change your breathing, just be with it, experience it and stay in this moment. Be aware of any feelings you experience but just experience them. There is no need to analyse them, just allow what is. If you notice yourself thinking, just bring yourself back to your breathing. Try this for ten minutes.
Many people find that when they first try to sit simply listening to their own breathing that it is very difficult to do. Really this is simply because we are all so used to our minds racing. When we meditate we begin to live in the present. We tend to live either in the past or worrying about the future and by so doing we miss out on the very moment we are living. Whatever we do, be it washing the dishes, talking with a friend, having an argument or making love, the goal of meditation is to bring us fully into that moment so that we can experience it most fully. Far from putting us into some kind of trance like state as some people imagine, meditation is a vehicle to help us be truly alive and experience life as it is happening.
This and much more through interpersonal , personal and transpersonal experiences is the program for this retreat.
On the cost, participant $1.111
Please be so kind and sign up as soon as you are clear. It will allow those of our team who participate in the planning service to create the best possible communications with participate to facilitate lodging, transportation car pool and to allow for those doing logistics to get the best opportunities for the events.
Thanks and Blessings,
Carlos
CARLOS WARTER M.D.
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