YOUR INVITATION TO REFINER'S PLAYGROUND
JULY 16 - 17, 2026 BOULDER, CO
Comfort Inn &Suites
4777 North Broadway Street Boulder, CO 80304
720-896-4102
Cutoff Date for reduced room rate is June 15, 2026
If you call to make your reservation, ask for the Refiner’s Playground Group Rate
of $179/night
Call or Book Online
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LISTENING FOR THE VOICE OF THE GENUINE
Rainier Rilke once wrote that we grow up wearing a series of masks which we mistake for ourselves. Our family, church, mosque, schools, and friends all help build these masks. Our voice first passes through each mask and sounds different in each. It is hard to recognize the genuine article — me! Apart from the masks. American theologian and mystic Howard Thurman (1899-1981) observed there is something in each of us that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in ourselves. It is the only true guide we will ever need. Sometimes we need each other to help us listen. This is one of the real purposes in the Refiners Playground.
When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone,
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own…
( From Sweet Darkness, David Whyte )
The road to the genuine could use a little work. It is an internal voice, for starters, one that both drives what happens for us in the world and responds to what happens. My anger makes the world look angry. My confusion makes for a confusing world. My peace creates a lens through which the world appears to be a place where I belong. The external and the internal serve as mirrors for one another. Poet Mary Oliver cautions against listening to and being delayed by our “…Old voices which keep shouting their bad advice…”( from The Journey). Rumi declares “…Inside you is an artist you don’t know about — she’s not interested in how things look different in moonlight”… ( from Say Yes Quickly). Clearly among all the voices there is one which is genuinely ours. It has its own agenda for us. Look for it in the place where words no longer are needed…the voiceless voice.
We have a saying in the Playground that we are ok as we are, that all experience is to be allowed and our own resistance is something to pay attention to. It may be hard to imagine that prolonged periods of unrest, frustration and bitterness could contain within them the voice of the genuine. The great mystics of the last 800 years claim that everything is sacred…everything we say and do is sacred. Apparently, this includes those emotionally tough times we’d like to be done with. The universe says, “Not so fast!”
In this Summer version of the Refiners Playground we want to explore what we are learning about listening for our own, genuine voice in the sea of other voices and pressures. How do you ‘hear’ the voiceless voice? How do we discern our path from all the other variations? We look forward to another intimate and invigorating conversation among friends in the foothills of Boulder, CO.
Much love,
Jim and Dan
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