In Your Relationship (and Everyday Life!)
This is how love ripens us -- by warming us from within, inspiring us to break out of our shell, and lighting our way through the dark passage to new birth.
-- John Welwood
June 6th-8th, 2008
In previous generations, our ancestors could explore the deeper mysteries of life and spirit in the seclusion of hermitage or monastery. Many societies accommodated the spiritual seeker with built-in structures of church and community, and throughout Asia it was a respected practice for an elder who had completed householder duties to withdraw from the tribe and wander in the wilderness in "earnest quest".
We moderns do not have it so easy. Not only have the old ways become irrelevant in our fast-paced pursuit of individual freedoms, there simply are no more caves left to retreat to! Ours is a landscape of edges and fences, where every woman and man is left to figure out the Great Matter for themselves, a proposition that would have struck our ancestors as the greatest of follies.
And in this new wilderness of "anything goes", men and women come together in their relationships, face to face with all their gods and demons. What to do?
Join us for this timely and magical weekend of re-uniting with Spirit, as we mutually create a safe haven of trust, and explore opening to being together with our partners, instead of merely being together. Using breath and meditation, movement and sound , you will deepen into your unique capacity for open-heartedness and acceptance. With exercises that you can easily learn and practice on your own (and with your partner!), we will gently wake up the Sacred Energy of Life, including sexuality, and practice the amazing opportunity for wholeness and intimacy that relationship offers. This will be a loose-fitting, fully-clothed event.
- Foster a positive, exciting and ecstatic adventure with your beloved partner
- Awaken your senses, transform old patterns, heal sexual and emotional wounds, and discover how to transform negative feelings to empower your relationship
- Enhance your sensuality,sexuality, intimacy and love
- Nurture yourself in a peaceful retreat setting in the picturesque canyons and mountains of Clarkdale (one hour from Prescott, twenty minutes from Sedona)
- Recapture the "Honeymoon Glow" and keep it alive for a lifetime of loving
$275 per couple!
(Until May 23, $300 afterwards.
Registration closed May 30)
Easy on-line registration HERE
Glenn Bourdot and Diana Owens, Prescott AZ, February 2008
Diana is a licensed clinical social worker, certified sex therapist, relationship coach, trained yoga teacher and certified Sky-Dancing Tantra teacher. Glenn is a musician, writer, and trained Mankind Project facilitator with over 30 years experience in Re-Evaluation Counseling. He is also a Sky-Dancing teacher-in-training. Diana and Glenn are life partners, committed to co-creating a joyful and peaceful world, and dedicated to realizing that
this very moment is their Heart's desire.
And yours.
or call Diana at 928-445-7501 (lovingwaydiana@gmail.com)
or Glenn at 507-649-2488 (gbardo@yahoo.com)
The meaning of sexuality is our capacity to love fully...Our sexual energy heightens our ability to express ourselves fully and lovingly moment to moment and to unite with another. We all have this capacity and can live intimately every moment through this process. As we do this, we start identifying the blocks to our loving, wounds we have that influence us to close down or numb out. This becomes a spiritual path where we have the opportunity again and again to choose to continue to open up and love. This is the heightening of consciousness which is what spirituality is.
Relationship is a very advanced practice and not for the faint of heart. It’s one thing to practice compassion or loving kindness sitting alone on your meditation cushion. It’s quite another to keep your heart open in the face of conflict or dissatisfaction with your loved one. In the fire of relationship, we are challenged to actually put into practice all the great spiritual teachings. We must learn compassion for ourselves and for the other. We must learn forgiveness. We must loosen our own attachments to how we think life should be. We must learn to release one another from fixed opinions, surrender judgment and come ready to meet each moment fresh – without the baggage of history, blame and hurt.
http://sacredunion.com/site/?page_id=110
My relationship with my partner is just as fraught with tangles and triggers as any other relationship I have ever been in. This seems to be the nature of relationship - working out these tangles. In the past, when the tangles got too bad, it seemed like the only solution was to find someone with fewer tangles. Well, I have come to see there is no such being. We are all eternally tangled. So, how do we stay in relationship and keep it alive?
http://www.tantraforwomen.com/article5.html
Love becomes a path of awakening — rousing us from the sleep of old, unconscious patterns into the freshness and immediacy of living more fully in the present, in accord with who we really are. -- John Welwood (from a review of the film"Innocence")
http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/films.php?id=3089
Like the sun's rays that cause the seed to stir within its husk, love's radiant energy penetrates the facade of the false self, calling forth resources hidden deep within us. Its warmth wakes up the life inside us, making us want to uncurl, to give birth, to grow and reach for the light. It calls on us to break out of our shell, the personality-husk surrounding the seed potential of all that we could be. The purpose of a seed husk is to protect the tender life within until the time and conditions are right for it to burst forth. Our personality structure serves a similar function. It provides a semblance of security, as a kind of compensation for the loss of our larger being. But when love's warming rays start to wake us up, our ego-shell becomes a barrier restricting our expansion. As the germ of life swells within us, we feel our imprisonment more acutely.....The brighter love's radiance, the darker the shadows we encounter; the more we feel life stirring within us, the more we also feel our dead spots; the more conscious we become, the more clearly we see where we remain unconscious. None of this need dishearten us. For in facing our darkness, we bring to light forgotten parts of our being. In recognizing exactly where we have been unconscious, we become more conscious. And in seeing and feeling the ways we've gone dead, we start to revive and kindle our desire to live more expansively.
John Welwood
Love and Awakening : Discovering the Sacred Path of Intimate Relationship,
Awareness born of love is the only force that can bring healing and renewal. Out of our love for another person, we become more willing to let our old identities wither and fall away, and enter a dark night of the soul, so that we may stand naked once more in the presence of the great mystery that lies at the core of our being. This is how love ripens us -- by warming us from within, inspiring us to break out of our shell, and lighting our way through the dark passage to new birth.
John Welwood
Love and Awakening : Discovering the Sacred Path of Intimate Relationship
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