YOUR INVITATION TO REFINER'S PLAYGROUND
October 17-18, 2024
LAKE LAWN RESORT
2400 E GENEVA STREET, DELAVAN, WI 53115
TEL: 1-800-338-5253
(Cut off for Refiners’ room rate — September 25, 2024)
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SAYING ‘YES’ TO YOUR PATH ALL OF IT
“Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called ‘the love of your fate.’ Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, ‘This is what I need.’ It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment—not discouragement—you will find the strength is there.
Any disaster that you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege!
This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow. "Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see that this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.” ( From "A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living". 1995)
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This a kind of radical aliveness. Openness to life and acceptance of everything that comes our way directly confronts a belief hardwired into our consciousness: the belief that we know what’s best for us. When this belief operates we naturally judge experiences as good or not good, ok for us or a threat to us. This core belief is held so deeply within us that we don’t even see it as a belief, as something we could change. We assume it’s just the way things are — we know what’s best. Letting go of this belief is a courageous act, one we often reluctantly consent to only after we have exhausted every other option. Life happens whether we want it to or not.
The mindset Nietzsche describes, however, goes far beyond reluctant acceptance of our fate. This stance welcomes everything as an opportunity, a challenge, a gift that shapes and strengthens us in essential ways. Love is the driving force; an abiding love for our own fate and path. Fundamental aliveness, our aliveness: we celebrate the experience of being human and the beautiful and terrible things that happen here. What’s seen as positive or negative loses its meaning; all is for us.
In this Fall gathering of the Refiners Playground we want to explore what we are learning as well as struggling to learn about this life stance. We expect this to be a rich, intimate gathering of friends, fellow light warriors and wounded healers. Bring sweaters and layers — it’s time for a bonfire again.
WHAT IS THE REFINER'S PLAYGROUND?
We are an open community of spiritual explorers who meet on a quarterly basis to share our current learning, questions about and experiments on the nature of reality. In particular, we seek to know the True Self directly while examining all of the hilarious ways we try to be something other than this! Our two day retreats are typically attended by 18-20 people from around the country. The dialogue is rich, at times profound, always compassionate and frequently hilarious. Come as frequently as you like and stay for as long as you like.
WHAT HAPPENS IN A TYPICAL GATHERING?
We meet in groups that range from 18-20 people. We share our stories of what we understand through direct experience and/or are currently learning through our own active experiments on the nature of being. There are no long-winded speeches or dazzling intellectual discourses. We tend not to agree or disagree with each other and seldom give others advice. We have no front of the room instructors or teachers as we all serve this role. We find that when we share our experiences with one another, as co-explorers- we each become more clear and confident about taking our next steps.
WHAT WE CURRENTLY KNOW
People who most benefit from the "Playground" are those who have:
A life long yearning to know what is true about themselves and the universe.
Grown tired of the typical self-help menu with its implied assumption there is some "defect" in us that requires improvement.
Believed more licenses, degrees or certifications will leave them finally and forever feeling "enough".
Many years' experience feeling alone, judged, misunderstood and have simply grown tired of this. And even more tired at having contributed to or led the charge themselves!
If you have experience with any of the above, welcome to the club! You will likely enjoy the solid food of the "Playground". The hard truth is that no amount of suffering or achievement can satisfy the deeper longing tugging at our soul. Our secret desire is wholeness and only our essential nature knows how to weave the fragments we present it into a coherent whole. Our hard work and effort to fix ourselves usually make matters worse, or at least continues the entertainment.
There is another way.
WELCOME
You are welcomed to come for as many sessions as you like and can leave whenever you like. Regardless of how much experience you have with deeper work, you will likely find in the Refiner's Playground a quality of dialogue and loving presence unlike anything you have ever experienced before.
INVESTMENT
$695 per session (includes breakfast and lunch). $2,495 when you sign up for the next four events. A savings of $285!
Bring a family member, partner, significant other at no additional cost!
Your Trusted Guides
Jim and Dan bring a half-century of experience wading around the inner landscape of human experience in ways that result in greater light, buoyancy, presence and power. We each have our unique spiritual path. We come in not as experts or even as facilitators who speak from the front of the room but as guides who walk alongside. We're aware of the terrain but cannot predict what will happen. Hence, the focus on playful experimentation.
The Refiner's Playground is:
“Time to lay down the armaments we use to fix ourselves and to come home. There is an un-changing center within us that isn’t concerned with anything other than NOW. I often see and recognize the Essential that lurks beneath those moments we naturally resist. I speak directly to it and am learning how to move with it and allow it more play in myself and in us. I am here to usher in an intimate, liberating partnership with the Essential in each all of us! We ARE this!” - Dan Holden
The Refiner's Playground offers us:
“A unique opportunity to embrace the perfection each life experience offers in burning away the dross of our deluded self perceptions, allowing the true, infinite, essential beings that we are to find fuller creative expression now. I am here to playfully master the art of finding, mining and refining the very best in us, allowing it to creatively express itself in response to the perfect challenge or opportunity that presents itself in each moment.” - Jim Anderson