Shalom Mountain

Last weekend, I was at Shalom Mountain for the third session of Shalom Retreat Leadership Training, where I learn more of the secrets of leading a Shalom Retreat. I've been talking about "The Mountain", as it is called, for a couple of years, so I thought I'd try to show a bit of it.

Never having done much with pictures - in fact, having a real block against them - I decided to try taking some of the trip, which is 6 hours from the DC area to the Catskills.

The drive is long, but when I get to Pennsylvania, the scenary repays me for some of the tediousness of the road. There are lots of small lakes along the route, along with bridges, quaint little towns, and lots of trees.

Finally, the magical house where it all takes place. This has been the site of Shalom workshops and retreats for 30 years. You can read about the history of it at shalommountain.com.

Inside, it is homey and friendly. Hugs are plentiful, long, and deep wherever you happen to bump into someone.

The atmosphere is loving, casual, and you feel at home easily. But the work is serious. Much of the philosophy is Jungian, but we do readings from many authors, from Ken Wilber to Starhawk. Types of workshops range from individual/family/couple/young people to sexuality/gay/lesbian/spirituality/Body Sacred. The leadership training I am in is for the "Shalom Retreat", the basic core workshop of Shalom that focuses on moving individuals through their blocks so they can live a fuller and more loving life.

I have one more weekend of training before this phase is over.

I will write about what I learned last weekend in a separate post. Hope you enjoyed this.

Comment posted by Roger Telschow
at 5/23/2006 10:08:00 PM
You did a nice job capturing some of the 'magic' that is Shalom Mountain, Gene. Thanks for the posting!

Happy Dog Meditation

A month ago, I was at Shalom Mountain, standing naked in the sun on a hill top, and fell into a state of joy and awareness of my surroundings. I let my attention be caught by any movement, any sound, any object. I was in a state of wordless joy for many minutes, and felt alive and at peace. I called it my "Happy Dog Meditation".

Picture a golden lab, fur rippling in the sunlight, alive, full of life. He is happy, tongue hanging, content. A bird passes overhead and his ears go up, his head whips around, and he is fully focused. Then he looks at you, happy again, wanting to play. You pick up a stick, and he goes wild, barking, jumping, eagerly waiting to run wherever you throw it. He whines with anticipation. There is no mind. There are no thoughts, no ponderings. There is no hesitation, no theorizing about the past or planning on the future. Everything is absorbed with eagerness, and he is happy.

So here's how to do the Happy Dog Meditation:

1. Observe everything. Don't control your attention, or focus on something to exclude other things - let everything grab your attention spontaneously, without any plan.

2. Empty your mind. Don't ask, "What was that?" Don't label what you see or hear, not even "Bird!" or "Squirrel!". Don't wonder why something is as it is. Let your mind rest.

3. Be happy. Let go of everything you think should be different than it is - don't wish for what is not, or resent what is. Be open to what you discover.

How do you know when you are no longer meditating?

1. There are words in your head. Every word will cause a fog to come over your eyes and ears, and you won't observe as clearly as before.

2. Your eyes blur or stop moving. When you are no longer looking or seeing what you are looking at, you have lost the present. Start looking again.

3. You become curious what something is, or why it is, or where it went, or how it might change. All these put limits on what you can see. Shed the limits, and observe.

Happy dog. Good dog.
Rub, rub.
Pant, pant.

My Life as Journey to God

This was a paper I was required to write for my ongoing training at Shalom Mountain, and I thought it might be of interest. I did *not* have a choice as to title! :-) - Gene

My life as journey to God

I would not have said my life was journing towards God a few years ago, as my conception of God was pretty unfavorable. Today, I see God more as life, as what is, as reality, as lack of denial, as awareness. And as such, my journey my entire life has been towards awareness and becoming more awake, towards the life within me, towards being able to tell the difference between reality and my fantasy.

I grew up fundamentalist, and God was a pretty nasty guy - vengeful, fearful, full of wrath. Suspiciously, God seemed awfully similar to my parents. God was not around very much when things were going well, or when I was discovering the world with delight - God seemed more designed to zap me when I strayed outside the invisible electric fence surrounding my little world - I never knew exactly where the line was, and the pain seemed arbitrary and unnecessarily harsh.

I disgarded that concept of God when I was 25, and accepted the only alternative I knew - that the world was mechanical, following the laws of physics, and our minds and emotions were simply extremely complex instances of machines, ultimately with no more meaning than a machine.

Eventually, I saw that certain experiences - a sense of morality, seeking for purpose and fulfillment, etc., - could never be explained by science, even if they were nothing but the results of complex machines - that our experience, no matter what the theory said, was that these things were real and had rules of their own. In short, I started believing in a spiritual world - a world with its characteristics that acted quite independently of the physical world and our ability to predict and infer results. Whether or not it was all just composed of atoms became irrelevant, because whether or not it was, I had to deal with experience, not theory.

Eventually, I started to embrace a new meaning of God. Looking at the universe as experience instead of cause and effect, I discovered I already had an emotional relationship with the universe - I liked some of the things I encountered, didn't like others, and resented some things the universe had given me. I was already emotionally involved. Whether or not there was a God didn't matter; the fact is that I had to deal with what I experienced, and I experienced an emotional relationship with the universe.

Today, I feel that whatever is within me that keeps me searching, seeking, that keeps drawing me towards something higher, that has something to do with God. It is the life force that has moved evolution to this point of conscious creatures slowly waking up and seeking their purpose, and it is the life force that keeps me awake, seeking, alive.

How this affects my work with others, including the Shalom work, is this - I see healing as primarily a coming out of denial, becoming aware of what is inside of us, and embracing not only who we are but also the life force within us, calling us to something higher. God is simply what is, the Great I Am, and becoming honest and aware is to come to know God.

I think everyone has deep within them this pull towards health, wholeness, connection, a sense of oneness, as well as a pull to a personal destiny, a place in the universe, a reason for their life. The answers do not lie in physics or science - indeed, their answers lead to despair, because they of necessity must conclude everything follows meaningless laws, and we are helpless puppets to those laws. But our experience is otherwise - our experience is that we desire something higher, and the desire itself is something that is difficult to explain, other than through the evolutionary growth of awareness, consciousness, and desire for purpose that we see in ourselves.

The Shalom process, and those like it, help a person come face to face with a part of themselves they may have denied, and gives them the opportunity to know that part of themselves in a strong atmosphere of love and acceptance, instead of the self-loathing that often accompanies exposing our shadow. The love allows them to embrace what they perhaps otherwise could never have embraced, and come to know themselves a bit better, come to know the reality about themselves a bit better, which is to say, come to know God better. And it's my experience that as each of us comes to know ourselves better, we discover we are more similar than disparate - which means we are tending towards one reality, rather than each finding things incomprehensible to another. The resulting sense of oneness, of belonging, causes us to want more, and fulfills some of that need for purpose and direction in our lives.

So my personal journey to re-embrace God is closely tied to the work I do - which I see as helping others to do the same.

Comment posted by Gene
at 4/17/2006 5:28:00 PM
That is still very fragile. It is something I hope I'm learning. I am learning a bit to go more with the flow, to dance, to let there be a give and take between reality and my fantasy of what could be. There is an intimacy there of a sort, I suppose.

There is a lot I have to accept that I don't like - someone said peace is choosing what already is. If God is truly what is, then the greatest commandment becomes "Thou shalt love what is with all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength" - something I have certainly not achieved yet.

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 4/17/2006 4:33:00 PM
Your journey touches something deep in me in my own journey. But something you said puzzles me; the old God of your past only visited to pass negative judgement and your new God seems to be simply 'what is'. You said you have feelings, but does your new God express feelings towards you,too? I want to know - do you sense a personal intimacy of give and take with 'what is'?

Comment posted by Gene
at 4/17/2006 8:12:00 AM
Much more than in the past, although there is still some resentment, especially towards the church that taught such doctrine to innocent children. Obviously, I still have healing to do.

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 4/17/2006 8:08:00 AM
Have you reconciled yourself with having been raised fundamentalist? Are you able to visit the territory with a compassionate heart when you work with people who are wrestling with these issues?

- Laurence

More from the Mountain

I continue to glow from my weekend. It is so powerful to me to be among other leaders, each person struggling with their own vision, each person loving and supporting the others, each striving to follow their heart's desire.

During the weekend, we took turns leading a mat trip (part of the format of a Shalom retreat), and being lead. Each leader, people who are trained, wise, adult, capable, when they got on the mat, went into their issues, and cried, or wrestled with their relationship with their mother, or raged against a significant other, or whatever. The lesson to me is, that each leader is fully human. We do not resolve all our personal issues before we become leaders - we learn how to be conscious and loving of them, so we can do the same with those we work with. Leaders are on no kind of a pedestal of their own making, because we are all poiently aware of our own vulnerabilities, our own dark side, our own divergence from our values. The thing we learn the most is to love ourselves, and each other, in our imperfection and pain, in our fear and anger, in our shadow and inadequacy. And when we can do that, we can lead, because it is that full acceptance that people need, not the right technique, or the right answer, or the right technique or tool. Those things are great, but as long as we believe we can't be loved until we are fixed, we will never be at peace.

One of my personal revelations this weekend was the concept of being on a journey. I started my personal growth in the recover (12-step) movement - and I still look at my life that way - I am recovering from early childhood abuse and trauma, I am recovering from my dissociation, from wounds and fears and hurts. They see it differently - we are not recovering, we are on a journey. All that has happened to us is part of the journey. This is relevant to our previous discussion on meaning and purpose in life.

Suppose I want to go to the store for eggs. I know my destination, and I know the approximate path I will take. I think of the most efficient route, and set out, each turn predetermed by my plan. I get there, make my purchase, and return home, with each step coreographed in advanced.

Contrast that to going for a walk. I have no predetermed destination, no path other than maybe a vague idea of how to start, no decision made ahead of time about which way I will turn or what I will try to see. As I walk, different things influence me in the moment - a desire to be in the park arises. a street is too busy, and I find I want more quiet, and head for a quieter street. A curiosity comes to me of what is in that graveyard I remember driving by. Each time, in the moment, decisions are made based on what arises within me. I am choosing based on what is within me each moment, with no prior "should", need, destination, goal, or purpose. The walk is now a journey, not a task. When I will look back on it, I may learn something about myself and what I desire, specifically because it was
*not* planned, and because I made my decisions in the moment, as the spirit moved me.

I am thinking, maybe this is where we get purpose in life - not from having some grand goal and plotting our way towards it, but to sensing the flow of life within us, each moment, paying attention, and making decisions based on that inner urge, that small still voice. Our purpose is to do that, to live by that voice, to be a creature in tune with that flow, not to reach a specific destination.

What a relief from the demands I place on myself to be great, to write books that will make me famous, to be the guru, to be a famous Shalom leader, to solve people's problems, heal them, and set them on the right path. If my only chore is to hear the sweet voice within and follow that urge, I still will experience pain on the path, and confusion and grief - but I will be connected with something deep within me that gives me life.

Okay, that's long enough a blog post. I am blessed in many ways - by my dear friends in my community, by discovering Shalom and so many other wonderful supportive groups, by the revelations I have come to in my wanderings, by the individuals in my life that mean so much to me. My thanks to all of them for being there.

Friends

Tomorrow I take off for Shalom Mountain, a wonderful, magical place in the Catskill Mountains, where people grow, learn, heal, and find deep connections with each other. Ironically, I am going to the Wild Man retreat while still considering the offer of the Amazon native to live in his village in the jungle.

I feel extraordinarily blessed with friends. Shalom is a place I made many friends during my training there last year, and I am looking forward to seeing some of them again. And the community that has formed around the Sunday night gatherings warms my soul and feeds me. My life is rich with friends, lovers, support people, community. I think of how many people out there live lives very alone, maybe hoping for one person who will take away all their loneliness, and I feel lucky for the life I have found.

I often forget, and start to believe I am alone again, as was true for much of my life. At times like that, I withdraw and quickly fulfill my own prophesy. But today, at least, I remember, and I am grateful to every one of my friends for being in my life.