The Refiner's Playground

The Refiners Playground community began in 2012. It was centered on the metaphor of life as a refining fire, where our dross is burned off to gradually reveal more of our essential nature. Presumably, if enough dross was burned off we would disappear, finally opening to the vastness of our  nature beyond the body. We have been, therefore, more concerned with what’s burning than with what’s building. This is the good news.

The bad news is most of us quite naturally resist the good news. We like our dross, thinking it defines us and gives us an identity. Our work, relationships, status, performance, health, body functions, acquisitions are all examples of especially attractive dross we find hard to release. In fact, we hold onto these aspects in some uniquely funny and absurd ways. It is akin to resisting gravity! We are, after all, resisting life itself; it will have its way with us whether we cooperate or resist. A second purpose of our community has been to explore and tell stories of our latest, absurd and most favorite failures to resist.

Thirteen years into this journey as a community there are a few things that seem clear and are becoming more clear with each passing gathering. 

First, we seldom know what things are for, why things happen as they do. We make judgements about what we feel are good or bad events but the truth is we don’t know. Instances that appear good may end up quite painful while great benefits and blessings may arise from events we thought would harm us.

Our tendency to assume we know what’s best for us and then judge accordingly removes us from the actual somatic experience of living. The moment becomes a concept — a disease, a termination, a death, divorce — to which we then assign emotion and meaning. It is a subtle but significant distancing of ourselves from what is actually happening. Even more subtly, we create our own flawed sense of separation and aloneness.

As we lock prematurely into presumed understanding and meaning we forget that what we see and hear is just one of an infinite set of possibilities of what could happen. Rather than assuming that what we experience is the only experience possible in that moment, we are learning to remain open and curious about the experience itself. We allow all experience while pushing away nothing. We stay on the playing field of life.

The stance of opening to and allowing all experinece has yielded surprising outcomes: hurricanes disappear, diseases vanish, difficult circumstances turn for the better, impossible conditions open up an extraordinary shift in mindset leaving those around us amazed (and a little bewildered). And, yes, sometimes little seems to change. Even here, we know we have at least invited all the forces in play to participate in the moment we are in. Perhaps this is enough.

It is said that humans are 60-70% water. We know this because water content can be measured. We don’t measure vastness content even though we originate in eternal vastness, return to eternal vastness and live lives which are infiltrated with vastness. It is the invariable variable which guides our burning, allows our becoming and permeates all experience. Where exactly is the weigh scale for this?

Come join us in our Winter gathering of the Refiners Playground. We expect this will be an intimate, exciting and raucous conversation among friends new and old.