The Wuji retreat at the end of August which stands out for many reasons. We’ve had people traveling from as far as the Midlands before and I though we were doing well when one of guests traveled all the way down from Doncaster, but this retreat broke all records, one guest traveled all the way from Israel and another flew in from the Channel Islands. It’s really encouraging to see what is happening, people are coming across the website and are connecting with the message. They are relating to it and are prepared to go to great lengths to be part of this little project, which is very exciting. There’s a conscious gathering taking place, we are being drawn together.
My neighbour Ron came as my guest, it’s always good to have conscious neighbours you know. Lucky me. My eldest son came for the weekend along with his partner and my unborn grandson, it’s always good to have conscious parents, lucky baby. And my second son visited on Sunday with his partner Leonne who is making a documentary about mindfulness. I’ve got my whole family practicing and my friends and neighbours too and Paul brought his wife Sarah along so it seems this little bubble of consciousness is spreading.
As the summer months passed and our reputation has spread the retreats have been getting bigger and bigger and we have been full to capacity. The retreats have also been getting much more powerful, we seem to be attracting lots of guests who are bursting to break free, our guests are awakening fast, we are entering uncharted territory and our learning curve is sharp. But learning we are.
Learning can only really come after the observation, the solution can only really arise from honest acceptance of the mistake. Defending our mistakes, is the highest insanity which is guaranteed to keep us trapped in wrongness, so I won’t bother defending our mistakes. We’ve made mistake, countless mistakes, but mistakes from mindful awareness are welcome, we love them. We love mistakes because each one forms part of our new learning, and we can take steps to rectify the mistake and minimise the possibility of it happening again.
By rectifying a mistake I don’t mean doing it the way someone else wants it done, or seeing the situation from another person’s perspective or even making sure that we don’t upset people. I upset a couple of people on this retreat one lady got very angry. It is never our intention to cause harm, we are in the doing good, spreading love and healing business. We are not here to harm you, but we are not here to please you either, no most definitely not, on the contrary the truth can be very displeasing particularly when we are very attached to our illusion. If you are attached to the illusion then we will upset you. We are here to destroy illusion, to see beyond perspectives, so I refuse to go there and some people aren’t ready for that. I can’t get involved in perspectives and I have no desire to get you to see my perspective and I have no interest in exploring yours. This I’m afraid upsets some people who believe their perspective needs defending or worst still enforced upon reality.
Can you see that by definition a perspective is nothing more than an illusion, a perversion of the truth! A perception is an interpretation of truth clouded by our judgements, prejudices, and layers and layers of past conditioning. Your perceptions are not how things are, they are simply how you think things are and like most of our thinking it is almost certainly wrong. For the tiny minority who thought otherwise I offer no apology, no mistake was made.
The weather was very wet on the Saturday so we were confined to the big barn for most of the day. We had the fire going and it was warm and dry and there was plenty of space, so it wasn’t a problem, but it made for an interesting dynamic. The retreats have increased in strength as the summer has gone on and being together like that in the barn made it very intense. As the presence strengthened I noticed an increasing polarity developing within the group. Nearly all the group are really getting it, they are discovering that quiet space of awareness and the illusion was simply falling away. The experience so powerful that the ego has no energy to protest. For these people these weekends are a life changing experience. Once awareness has been known it can never be unknown, that knowing is permanent. Yes we can still get lost in unconsciousness and that will happen again and again but at some point awareness always returns. As it returns it illuminates our mistakes and that’s how learning happens. There really is no going back for long.
We are getting so many guests coming back for more and so many coming as a result of recommendations from previous guests that we must be doing a lot right and never a week goes by without someone telling us how this works has transformed their lives. But for a small minority the challenge to the ego is so threatening that they can react with considerable anger or defensiveness. Eager to protect their perception they’ll try to draw me into opinion and mind stuff. sometimes becoming frustrated when I refuse to go there. If I’ve triggered your anger to rise in this way then i don’t apologise for that, but I’m at a loss as to how we can do it differently. My job is to teach you mindfulness and mindfulness as we’ve already explored is not opinion or perspective it’s a state of awareness, its what happens when your mind is quiet and free from all this stuff. It’s a shame that this happens but that’s how it is and maybe some acceptance is necessary. Do I not teach mindfulness because for a small minority it’s too threatening? No of course not.
It was amazing weekend, I watched the illusion fall away as our guest became present, dropping in an instant issues and patterns of behaviour that they’ve held onto for years. Now that’s liberation. I can’t stop doing that.
The weather on Sunday was lovely and we were able to get out doors and make full use of retreat farm. One of the highlights for me was Richards chi kung session. Richard is like a orchestral conductor when he teaches chi kung, he conducts the silence, the focus of attention is on the empty spaces? Like all top conductors Richard knows there is no music without silence, music without silence, without space between the notes is just noise. Conducting is as much about the space as the notes, Richard knows that the space between the chi kung moves is more powerful than the moves themselves and he holds the space with his own attention timing it to conscious perfection..
There is a standing chi kung meditation called wuji. Wuji means emptines, it means silence, wuji means infinite nothingness it means oneness. Nothingness and oneness are not contradictions, space is infinite, it is the nothing that allows all things to be, the source of all things, the zero point where all things are one. As we stood holding the position watching the sun low in the sky shining through the mist, I got it. With the perfect timing of the conductor I got it, I experienced Wuji and disappeared in the mist. I wasn’t the only one either.
Thank you everyone who came on the weekend, it was the biggest to date, and a great success even with all the rain. Such a success that four of our guest booked themselves into the next retreat too.
