Walking the WayWalking the Way means accessing our inner world by first connecting with this ‘me’ that we rub shoulders with each moment of our daily life without truly paying attention to it.
Understanding what this ‘me’ is about is not an easy affair because of well-established beliefs and their control on our capacity to move and be in life.
The fear of the unknown together with the fear of reconnecting with old wounds are also playing an important part which often counterbalances our willingness to steadily walk the way to free ourselves from these invisible veils that inhibits our life force.
To regain self-confidence as well as trusting our capacity to recover a full access to our inborn vitality a Warm-Hearted Approach is needed. Once self-confidence and trust are established, there comes a possibility to go beyond the personality realm with a more In-depth Approach.
The Embracing Our Inner Child and Embracing Maturity series of courses will support you to walk the way from unconsciousness to Consciousness. They will bring a well rooted and authentic transformation to those eager to live their lives from their true self. And for those who would like to go further, the Embracing True Nature series will bring them to experience what True Nature is.
This Warm-Hearted Approach is organized in a progressive way to enable a genuine connection with the various aspects of our personality. Recognizing, understanding and accepting the different aspects of this ‘me’ who is steering the dance of our life is what the Embracing our Inner Child and Embracing Maturity series are geared towards.
Since it is during childhood and more specifically during primal childhood that most of our beliefs, behaviour patterns and ideas about life, others and ourselves take shape, working with the Inner Child concept will help lifting the holding back that is often active on the expression of our feeling and our emotions.
The ‘Embracing our Inner Child’ series of workshops will support this understanding and recognition of our ways of functioning in life. When we recognize them for what they are and express them within a safe environment we gain in spontaneity, in creativity and most of all, in strength. Rooting ourselves in self-trust we regain our naturalness, our inborn joy.
Once self-trust is established, it becomes possible to strengthen our authenticity and face the various situations that life will bring forth from a more mature standpoint.
Gaining maturity in communicating with others, in expressing ourselves without projection as well as with our connection with sexuality is a challenge on its own. The ‘Embracing Maturity’ series of workshops will provide the space and the support to bring maturity to its full potential.
Regaining your integrity and with it the full spectrum and enjoyment of your life force is what these two streams of courses ‘Embracing our Inner Child’ and ‘Embracing Maturity’ can bring you to. Within the 10 Bulls of Zen iconography, this stage is referred to as Riding the Bull Home. It means being established in an authentic ‘me’, established in what some traditions call ‘a noble strength’ or ‘having a spine’.
« Mounting the bull, slowly I return homeward.
The voice of my flute intones through the evening.
Measuring with hand-beats the pulsating harmony, I direct the endless rhythm.
Whoever hears this melody will join me. »
Chan master Kakuan, excerpted from: The 10 Bulls of Zen
Having integrated the various aspects of what we refer to as ‘me’, it becomes possible to be in life in a more truthful way, in a more authentic way with ourselves as well as with others. It is a constructive and a letting-go phase. It is the necessary basis for the following step, a more In-depth Approach with the ‘Embracing True Nature’ series designed to challenge what we think and believe ourselves to be.
We are much more than this ‘me’ whom we generally identify with. The Embracing True Nature series is what this In-depth Approach is about since Walking the Way implies challenging our beliefs, challenging the reality that we think we are. We are not what we think used to emphasize a non-dual teacher.
The Embracing True Nature series with the Awareness Intensives retreats is based on the practice of self-enquiry which is the most suitable practice when we want to go beyond this incarnation that we are and experience True Nature.
Recognising and experiencing True Nature calls for willingness and courage as well as for trust and determination. Willingness and courage to open to what the present moment brings, trusting that this present moment is the door to directly experience True Nature.
This journey towards True Nature can only be held within the specific format of silent retreats to support the self-enquiry process used and the endeavour to be in a ‘yes’ to what is.
Re-discovering your source or ‘Buddha nature’ is what the Embracing True Nature series will lead you towards.
« Too many steps have been taken returning to the root and the source.
Better to have been blind and deaf from the beginning!
Dwelling in one's true abode, unconcerned with that without
The river flows tranquilly on and the flowers are red. »
Chan master Kakuan, excerpted from: The 10 Bulls of Zen
Individual sessions can be a privilege time frame that we can choose to give ourselves. Whether stand alone or complementary to the different proposed courses, they are also stages on the Way. Within a dedicated space they are an opportunity to expose an issue or a confusion which calls for clarification or resolution.
They can also be a time for sharing and understanding where we are at on the Way; a possibility of: ‘reviewing the situation’.
Individual sessions allow this intrinsic need of being listened to, heard and recognized to take place without judgement and with full acceptance of who we are in that moment.
« There are things that we never want to let go off.
However, bear in mind that letting go is not the end of the world.
It is the beginning of a new life. »
Zen Teaching