YOUR INVITATION TO REFINER'S PLAYGROUND
April 18-19, 2024
LAKE LAWN RESORT
2400 E GENEVA STREET, DELAVAN, WI 53115
TEL: 1-800-338-5253
(Cut off for Refiners’ room rate — March 17, 2024)
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HOLD ON DIE, LET GO SURVIVE, BE WITH THRIVE
Exploring a central paradox of the mystery
Every religion and every spiritual practice speaks of letting go. Life presents us with daily opportunities to practice letting go. Each night when we sleep we close our eyes not knowing if we will wake again. Additionally, each fear, each stressor, every event that causes us to clench and resist what is happening in our lives can be seen as a mini classroom where the lessen plan is ‘Letting Go.’The eastern masters have long taught us to move like nature itself, forcing nothing, moving around corners effortlessly flowing like wind, and water do with gravity, while resisting nothing. From the Sufi mystic, Hafiz, we have this story comparing our journey to a trip through the desert where things appear real but are not.
It Has Not Rained Light — Hafiz (1325-1390)
It has not rained light for many days.
The Wells in most eyes look
Drought-stricken.
Thus friends are not easy to find
In this barren place.
Where most everyone has become ill
From guarding nothing.
On this primal caravan
Careers and cities can appear real in this
Intense desert heat.
But I say to my close ones,
“Don’t get lost in them,
It has not rained light there for days.
Look, most everyone is diseased
From ‘making love’ to Nothing.
Here, life is seen as an mirage; things look real but are not. Importantly, there is an observation that we can get sick from guarding and ‘making love’ with nothing. Some of us know firsthand the truth of this observation. Careers, cities, and________add your favorites — loved ones, health challenges, financial hardships, social justice concerns, creative passions, troubling family dynamics, individual hopes and dreams. The counsel is the same: ‘Don’t get lost in them.’ Find a way to be with what is without getting lost in it.
To all of those we love and to each moment where we constrict and hold, life reminds us to let go and affirm: This is what we have. What we have is not an accident. Open, make space for and be with what is here.
The more firm we hold on the more we suffer. For those who learn to let go, there is a hidden discovery that leads to life: All that which we feel we must hold onto is itself held in a larger wholeness. As we release to this wholeness (the sacred, God, the universe, Source) a new, even more real life opens for us. There is a stillness that comforts us. We can see things as they are from the vantage point of wholeness, not from our own reactive perspective no matter how valid, vital and real we feel this perspective is. There is another way: sourcing our life from this wholeness. Always. Not only when things are falling apart.
In this Spring gathering of the Refiners Playground we want to explore the hidden wholeness that exists within all that tempts to constrict and cling to. How do we access this? What challenges get in the way? And, why does this hidden wholeness feel so familiar to us when we open into it? Please register quickly if you plan to join us. We are eager to be with you again for what we know will be a life affirming conversation among friends.
Upcoming Refiners Playground
July 18-19, 2024
Location: Boulder, CO
Hotel details to follow
October 17-18, 2024
Lake Lawn resort, Delavan, WI
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