Retreats
with Saleem Berryman
While each of the educational retreats explore different topics
and pathways, they all have a common purpose: to open every part of our
mind and our heart to the shining and perfect truth of our essential nature,
and to support the development of our soul's capacity to live what we have
realized.
We are currently offering
4 educational retreats:
1. Discovering True Happiness
2. Opening into Direct Experience
3. Freedom, Fulfillment, and Fire
When a particular retreat is scheduled, you can find it
listed on the Schedule page. If you cannot find
the retreat you are interested in on the Schedule page, please feel free
to contact us to find out when and where we may
offer it next.
There is a brief application process for attendance at each retreat.
This provides an opportunity to clarify your intentions and expectations,
and to let us know of any special needs you may have. It also allows us
to attune to those who will be gathering for the retreat, ahead of time.
During each retreat we typically meet for 2 or 3 sessions per day.
The morning and afternoon session are usually 2 1/2 to 3 hours long. When
evening sessions are held, they usually go for about 1 1/2 hours.
Our time together often includes short presentations, time for questions
and discussion, demonstations and experiential work in pairs or small groups,
writing exercises, and short periods of contemplative silence.
All retreats are lead by Saleem Berryman.
He is assisted by his wife Courtney.
Friends and associates who have been deepening in this work for many years
are also likely to be present at retreats.
Discovering True Happiness
This retreat is an invitation to more deeply discover, and choose
to live from, the inherent happiness and peace of our being.
When we are seeing clearly we recognize that true happiness is an essential
quality of our own being…. and unhappiness is something that we may choose
to “do”, albeit unconsciously. We realize that emotional pain is not the
same thing as unhappiness, and it does not need to be avoided.
When our vision is distorted, we imagine that happiness is a state that
comes and goes and depends upon our experiences… and we imagine that our
unhappiness is something caused by our circumstances. We assume that there
is something we need to do or know in order to fix, change, or heal it.
Even when we have deeply realized unconditional happiness to be our very
nature, for most of us the mind continues to automatically react to what
we experience by seeking more of what it thinks will bring happiness, and
by trying to avoid the emotional pain that it incorrectly equates with unhappiness.
The capacity to be aware of this reactivity without being moved by it, is
the heart of deepening in true happiness.
Themes of this educational retreat include:
• investigating the root causes of unhappiness.
• realizing where and what unconditional happiness is.
• unearthing commonly held beliefs about happiness and unhappiness that
generate suffering.
• discovering the choice to be unhappy about, or happy with, what is.
• how to directly experience whatever we are feeling, without using our
willingness to feel as a new strategy to change or resist what is here.
Opening into Direct Experience
It is possible to realize beyond a shadow of a doubt that who and
what we truly are is unconditionally free, whole and perfect. From this
ground of true being it is also possible to welcome and trust our moment-to-moment
experience which at times includes pain, feelings of lack and limitation,
stress and unhappiness. In this sacred meeting of divine presence and human
nature healing happens, realization deepens, and authentic expression unfolds.
When we are liberated from the imagined need to judge, change, or hold on
to our moment-to-moment experience, we can welcome the tendencies to reject
or grasp as opportunities for a deeper unveiling of what is already free.
Miraculously, the direct experience of any moment as it is, reveals wholeness,
fulfillment, and oneness with all life. Conversely, when we attempt to resist
and control our present experience we are left feeling divided, unfulfilled
and separate from our essential nature and all of life.
In this retreat we will examine some of the most basic ways we habitually
and unconsciously create distance between ourselves and our experience,
and then suffer the sense of being separate and needing to make effort.
And, we will be invited to open into “direct-experience”, which is the doorway
to the fullness and bliss of being as we truly are.
An additional intention of this retreat is to expore elegant and powerful
ways to effortlessly transform the patterns of our everyday life experience
in ways that best express our deepest truth.
Themes of this educational retreat include:
• the liberating approach of direct experience and feeling attention
• experiential insight into the root causes of suffering
• the clear seeing and release of outdated survival strategies based on
unhappiness.
• liberating resisted emotions and states... and liberating resistance itself.
• including and transcending the duality of mind.
• the essence and art of inquiry.
• liberating stressful and limiting beliefs.
• learning how to elegantly access and empower inner resources for healing
the body, mind, and spirit – and and to live more fully as the truth of
who we are.
Who this retreat is for:
• Anyone who wishes to more fully enter the living stream of their own life,
and learn to trust the intelligent emergence of life lived one moment at
a time.
• Anyone who would like to experience greater freedom, ease, and empowerment
in any area of their life.
• Anyone who would like to gather with others who share the sacred intention
of unveiling greater clarity, peace and happiness for all.
• Healers, guides, and educators of the body, mind , and spirit who would
like to accelerate their own deepening and education.
Freedom, Fulfillment,
and Fire
This retreat is offered for those who experience any kind of chronic
pain, illness, or physical limitation who would like to realize greater
freedom and fulfillment within the trials and limitations that these conditions
impose. Health care professionals & family members are also encouraged
to attend and invited to discover a deeper capacity to support others who
are in the midst of the transformational experience of long term pain and
limitation.
When chronic pain or illness strikes, it is like being near (or even in!)
a fire that is burning too hot without being able to pull away from it.
The universal reaction to such a situation is to meet the fire with fear
or anger, and with a variety of fear or anger driven strategies to seek
release from the pain and perceived danger of the flames. Our unhappiness
with what feels bad and has brought significant loss often seems entirely
justified given the severity of our experience. However, when we discover
(and trust) the peace and ease of surrender, another way of being with illness
is revealed. We are now graced with the awareness of our capacity to meet
the physical and emotional pain of illness with peace, happiness, and love.
While healing on all levels is valued and will be explored during our time
together, finding what is already healthy, whole, and complete within the
experience of illness and pain is the prime directive of this retreat.
Themes of this educational retreat include:
• discovering our radical capacity to open to everything.
• realizing that we can be truly happy and at peace with pain, disease and
limitation (however irrational this may sound) as we support our healing
by what ever means we are inspired and able to pursue.
• liberating unconscious beliefs related to our pain or illness that cause
unnecessary suffering.
• welcoming, including, and transcending the negative mind that tries to
help us feel better or to be safe by worrying, doubting, discouraging and
negating.
• examining the medicine and the poison of various models, metaphors and
beliefs about health and healing, illness and wellness.
• learning to perceive our experience in ways that are the most empowering,
useful, and truly healing.
• trusting the intelligence and benevolence of the process of life.
In addition to the retreats above, you may want to read about our other
Offerings, or read about Saleem's
background and experience.
We welcome you to contact us at: info@livingintruth.com
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