YOUR INVITATION TO REFINER'S PLAYGROUND
April 23-24, 2026
Lake Lawn Resort, Delavan, WI 53115
262.728.7950
Ask for Refiners Playground rate
Cutoff date: March 22, 2026
Call or Book Online:
Group Code: 320
Password: Refine0426
________________________
SELF AS AWARENESS AWARENESS AS SELF
The one principal seen as essential in virtually all spiritual traditions is ACCEPTANCE. Opening to life as it happens. We are not guaranteed a certain feeling , i.e., peace, joy or serenity. In truth, anger, grief, awe, clarity and confusion all appear without demanding a special place in openness. Peace is not the marker of how far we’ve come. Inclusion is. Being allowed to be exactly as we are by what we already are.
( from Heloisa Moura, Non-Dual Explorer ).
Something remains unchanged regardless of our feeling. We might taste this place after a challenging situation has resolved itself or when the emotion of an event has dissipated. Yet this unchanging place is there before the difficult moment, during and after. It is available as a guiding source directing us to action we might otherwise miss. We just have to take our hands off the steering wheel. As if this is easy.
What are we ?
We hear it said that we are …” Spiritual beings having a human experience.” Many if not most of us have said this at some point. This is commonly accepted without much exploration. Yet the masters say that ‘ We are awareness having the experience of being a person. ‘Get that right I’m free. Get that backwards, I suffer.’ ( from Heloisa Moura, Non-Dual Explorer ). The original state is awareness. The body, self identity and experiences are things arising in awareness.
This is not a new concept. The most significant difference between people in our lives is not just behavior or personality but awareness. How much of our experience in any moment can we take a perspective on without becoming entangled in it. Those more reactive types are often triggered quickly and react without knowing this is what has happened. Creative types can often hold more of their experience in awareness before they act. They bring greater awareness to a moment before consciously deciding how to respond.
Stated differently, how much can we hold in awareness without being identified by it? Ultimately we go from complete ‘self absorption’ in early stages to complete awareness in later stages, without a self observing anything.
There are moments that still happen to each of us. They don’t arrive as false or wrong. They arrive as tension, with urgency, defense and resistance quickly mobilized within us. Awareness allows everything and resists nothing. When all is allowed we can see more clearly that our “less than” and “more than” identities are not actually tied to anything real and never existed at all as anything other than illusion masquerading as truth ( about a self which itself is seen as nonexistent ). We allow these moments to be as they are by what we already are.
Coming to see ourselves as awareness itself doesn’t mean we become passive doormats for whom accountability and responsibility no longer matter. Rather, with no self to defend or compensate for, with nothing to own and attach myself to, we relax into a state of being — our original state — in which other action may arise. When all experience is allowed, our essence is free to work without a plan. It follows its own guidance, its own knowing and opens us to actions that otherwise would be inconceivable to us.
We wish to explore these things with you in April. We are eager to be with you ( again ) in the Lake House at Lake Lawn Resort in Delavan, WI. Safe travels everyone.
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