The Enlightenment Intensive technique is taught in a workshop format over an evening to several intensive weeks. Most commonly, individuals come together over a three day weekend of self-reflection. It combines a three common meditation and clearing practices and is designed for the busy western mind to quickly shed its noise and muck.
The technique is designed to give you the best chance possible to have an enlightenment experience. Enlightenment or awakening to the truth of who we are, means to know ourselves fully beyond our lifestyles, personalities, beliefs, thoughts, traumas, emotions, suffering, beyond any experience.
Rather than a gradual psychological revelation, enlightenment occurs as a timeless experience, a state of pure being that brings us fully into the reality of the moment. Perhaps surprisingly, it can be the most simple of experiences. It is our most natural state. The truth is beauty beyond suffering, beyond hope, and it is waiting for you to know it completely.
You are in a GREAT place this very moment.
A place where love and you know no boundaries.
A place where radiant joy is an essential quality
of every experience.
You are the most enlightened person
in the whole world…
(…well it’s true)
Odds are you are simply not aware of it.
THE MIND IS THE VEIL between us and what is ultimately true. It is created by a suite of uncommunicated identifications. Basically, this means all the ideas we have about: who we are, our life, all that contrives our personalities, things that people have told us we are – make up our mind. Enlightenment Intensives, or EIs, focus your self-inquiry on clearing ideas associated with a specific aspect of the mind (e.g. who am I?) through contemplation and communication.
GLIMPSING ENLIGHTENMENT. In many traditions, the goal of meditation is to burn off the entire mind and eventually attain complete enlightenment. The goal in a 3-day Enlightenment Intensive is to drill through the mind to glimpse what enlightenment is. Experiencing the truth develops a love and longing like nothing else, which is the single best thing in speeding us along the path to permanent awakening.
THE QUESTIONS. During the Intensive retreat, participants contemplate one of four questions: Who am I? What am I? What is life? Or what is another? The questions are a way to target one specific aspect of the mind. Koans and meditation as tools to dissolve the mind are not new. But like other methods of meditation they can take weeks or years of focused meditation on their own.
DYADS. Rather than sitting in silence alone, the main contemplation exercise involves participants sitting face to face in pairs called dyads and communicating what arises in their meditation. When we meditate alone it is our own consciousness that brings us to the door of the Truth. When we join together in this work our collective consciousness gangs up on the illusion of the mind; it stands much less of a chance. The particular combination of contemplation and contact is what makes the retreat so effective in such a short time period.
SITTING, WALKING AND WORKING MEDITATION as well as rest and healthy meals are part of the daily schedule. Other than the dyad exercises participants remain in silence with each other; they can speak to staff at anytime. The work is challenging and rewarding. The hours are long and, to be honest, the first day is almost always a slog. The good news? There is only one first day and whatever the work, unveiling the truth is never a disappointment.
