Advanced Manifestation Retreat this Friday-Sunday

Our annual Advanced Manifestation Gathering is coming up quickly — November 20-22nd at Ananda Ashram in Monroe, New York. In response to prevailing sentiment last year, we are extending the workshop an extra day; so it will be Friday evening, Saturday, and Sunday.

For the past number of years we have met every autumn at this magical place to become more clear, empowered, and focused, as well as to connect with others who have a resonant sense of purpose. Our goal is to get a clear vision of the coming year, develop a workable action plan with the aid of feedback from others, and to consciously connect with the deep archetypal currents of energy that are underpinning our individual lives.

I will be introducing a body/mind interactive sequence in which traditional Yoga and Qi Gong exercises can be consciously integrated into our “Life Alignment Project,” and will develop new and effective community practices for the coming year. The extra night will allow for more in depth dreaming, and dream vision work, opening us to further hear the voices of our unconscious and of our inner guidance.

The cost of the workshop is $295, the extra day included – there are no fees for this day except for the rental of space and, meals, and bedrooms at Ananda. As in there past, there are discounts for couples; and if there is demand for it, we will organize child care at Ananda. To insure your inclusion in the annual retreat, send a $50 deposit and an email saying “Yes Ananda” to info@rickjarow.com. Availability is on a first come, first served basis, and spaces are limited.

There are incredibly strong forces around us at this moment, coming from all conceivable directions. If there was ever a time to take a stand for our truth, our humanity, and our soul’s purpose – it is now. Working in community greatly amplifies our power and allows us to overcome the forces of inertia and distraction which try to rule our daily lives. Let us be together again in ever increasing intention and abundance, and let us brainstorm to create forms of working together that will support us through the times to come.

Yours in Peace,

Rick

Q:  What is covered at this retreat?

I could give you a rundown (focus, intention, accomplishment, community building, envisioning, empowerment, etc.), but none of this is conveys what really goes on at the Ananda retreat. In fact, I am tempted to restate the question as “What is uncovered,” for the “real work” here is to trust the process of collective awareness to manifest our true agendas.It is the collective energy of the group that constellates the workshop. Tuning in to the “spirit of the collective” allows the issues that are truly important to surface. By meditating, focusing, inquiring, and paying attention together, an alchemical process is created that allows each of us to crystallize what we have to do and how we can go about doing it at this moment in our lives. The vision is to lay foundations for an emerging culture; that means each of us working to live the most clear, authentic, and compassionate lives that we can.

 

RJ

Manifestation in the Time of Meltdown

Following is Rick’s contribution to the CIIS April newsletter. He will be leading two workshops at CIIS (California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco) the weekend of April 3-5, plus a public lecture Friday evening.  Details are available here.

With regard to our collective economic situation, the changes that have happened have had to happen, and there is no returning to business as usual. At best, bailing out a sinking ship is a stop gap measure. Even if it “works” we may just be able to get the vessel to a place where it can receive actual help. Let us be clear, however, that the Titanic of the inflated, consumerist, debt-driven, easy-money economy will remain at the bottom of the ocean. For those whose emotions and desires are controlled by the market economy and its endless flow of products and experiences, this situation is obviously frightening, but there is another side that is much more than just a silver lining.

Philosophies of “unlimited abundance” which have appeared in our midst, tend to deny these dark and difficult sides of our lives. As a result, in times of illness, loss, or economic challenge, many of us initially wonder, “What did I do wrong, where was I not aligned?” The answer is that you have done nothing wrong, that such challenges are a necessary and essential part of soulfulness. The premier American psychologist, William James, spoke of the “sick soul” and the “healthy soul” as two basic human types. The healthy soul (Walt Whitman was James’ example) need not dwell in the experience of the abyss, whereas the sick soul (Tolstoy, for James) evolves toward the light through passages into darkness. James did not make value judgments about these types, but understood that for many, times of loss and disorientation can indeed be most valuable times.

I share from first hand experience the remarkable gifts that can come through illness and loss: insight, knowledge, true compassion, and the literal metamorphosis of consciousness from fixated to free. These things are hard to speak or write of, which is why I prefer to share the passage through the shadows in a meditative experience; however, one clear expression of this was set forth by C.G. Jung. When asked about his experience of “God” shortly before his death, Jung replied that for him, God appeared as everything and everyone that came across his path unexpectedly, unsolicited, and unwanted. Likewise, at the end of his essay, “Self Reliance,” Emerson challenges his readers by asking if they think that a new job, a new love, new found health or wealth will actually make their life any better. Nothing will do it, says Emerson, but “the triumph of principle.” 

Just what is this “principle” that allows one to deeply receive whatever life offers and transform it into positivity, knowledge, freedom, and peace? It is neither a mystery nor a “secret,” yet we tend to forget it in the clamor and din of events and illusions fostered by contemporary culture. In terms of Manifestation Work, this is a genuine opportunity–a chance to develop the strength of our own resourcefulness along with the living knowledge that our well-being does not depend upon banks or bail outs. For example, rather than getting caught up in media based hysteria, we can instead consciously work with the situation to learn to share and cycle resources, to find out what we are made of, and to deepen our existential commitment: our sense of why we have actually come here at this time. One way to do this is to process our Life’s Work by considering the following four key points of manifestation.

Well Being can be understood in a wider context as something that is for everything and everyone, not just for the separate individual, which pits “I” against others. This  does not mean we neglect our own personal well being, rather we open to see and feel how each is a part of all. If my own well-being is not contributing toward the greater well being, what good is it? The serious mistake of the “Secret,” and like minded programs, is to envision well-being uniquely in terms of individual aggrandizement, feeding on scarcity and egotism as opposed to opening to WHAT IS, which is always well, available, and which can be shared.

Community seems to be what we want and simultaneously fear. We have a long history of being put down by others, limited, oppressed, and abused — like the current back door attempt to dissolve gay marriages — and yet, the work of manifestation is magnificently amplified in community. A group of proactive people who are willing to set both viable and visionary goals and be accountable to them exponentially increases each person’s power to envision and create. Many of us have been doing this work for years, now is the time to make our mark and to demonstrate how we can mutually support each others’ authenticity and direction.

Sustainability can become a code word for new forms of self imposed poverty, which is why I prefer Bernard Lietaer’s term “Sustainable Abundance.” Indeed, abundance and sustainability go hand in hand as organically vibrant and self renewing technologies and organizational systems that foster creativity as well as clarity and discipline. In spite of meltdowns on the macro level, or more pointedly, as a response to them, we are asked to manage our own economy with intelligence, awareness, and compassion. Thoreau devotes a major chapter in Walden to “economy.” What that means in terms of inner work, as I detail in The Alchemy of Abundance, is expanding our sense of “energy work” to include awareness and management of the inflow and outflow of time, money, and resources in our lives. This can be done. The late Joe Dominguez (Your Money or Your Life) had people carrying around little notebooks to note down every single expenditure of the day (Gandhi, likewise, kept scrupulous accounts). The idea here is not to obsess over money, but to take on first chakra accountability, to be aware of what is actually happening on this level. In the Manifestation Work, we not only track expenses and income, we also track our energetic experience of giving and receiving. This allows us to raise our vibratory rate out of ignorance and panic and to begin to literally craft the life we are called to live.

Creativity need not be about making a “mud pie” that I can market or show to you to prove my self worth. It is the voyage to the deepest part of oneself to bring back what is most valuable, what reminds each of us of why we are here and that inspires us to remember, to put wholeness back together. Creativity and soul work both need time above all else, and creating more free time, more aware time, can be done. A first step, in this direction, is to monitor and reduce both the external use and internal capitulation of the words “should,” “ought,” and “have to.” This may sound pedestrian until you actually experience how these thought forms seep into your most subtle modes of thinking and feeling.

Now these are all just words, and most of us have had enough of them. Now is a time for action: I cannot reiterate forcefully enough that this so called “crisis” is the opportunity that we have been waiting for. It is an opportunity to share, to grow, and to carve out an honest, joyous, and sane way of living. It is an opportunity to live with intention and vision instead of apathy and apprehension. And above all, it is an opportunity to leap out of our pettiness and self absorption, to meet the expanse and embrace the alchemical marriage between “what is” and “what can be.”

Coming Out of the Cocoon

To be consciously in your “right place at the right time” requires a genuine release of egoic desire: the placing of one’s imagined self at the center of life, while trying to manipulate thought, other beings, and events to manifest some sort of pre-conceived outcome.

The idea of “creating one’s reality” is only creative when one’s process is awakened and in touch with Shakti, the divine energy of creativity and manifestation. In truth, we never really know if we will wake up the next morning; every day and every way is an act of trust and abandon.  Awakening to Shakti need by no means eradicate the ego, for its sense of separation and desire for experience is also a part of her play and has its own gifts to offer.

For too long, however, we have been trained to use ideas about our life to protect us from life itself: our projections, imaginings, and thought constructs build a cocoon that enfolds us in incompleteness. To open to the raw energy of presence and to the intelligent and beauteous unfolding in every moment is to leave the cocoon, and to feel so alive and vital, so connected with each and all, that there is no need for living in contraction, doubt, and hesitation.  Unfolding one’s wings and opening to “the Way” does not preclude pain or suffering, for these are purifying fires that burn away our misalignments and clear us deeply.  If the starting point is faith, then we can relax and know that we are always in the hands of a living and loving universe.

Opening freely to the fullness of presence, rather than dissolving the structures that support us (families, jobs, houses, communities), gives these structures the space to renew themselves–to morph in accordance with what it best for ALL.

Since we do not know what is best for us (not to mention for anyone else) we have a choice. We can continue with one effort after another to conjure up scenarios that ought to make us happy, or we can be happy just to be here, and let that joy reveal the path that we take. Such joy is real, and its path is miraculous, a way of grace and authenticity that ever affirms that we are here to share in the sweetness of the Creative Flow of Reality.

Announcing our New Website:  http://rickjarow.com – a comprehensive information station for the work of life alignment and manifestation, a place to “check in” (instead of checking out), and a place of remembrance. Also the Alchemy of Abundance BLOG (http://alchemyofabundance.wordpress.com), a docking station for shared inspiration, information, and renewal.

Announcing this year’s Advanced Manifestation Gathering at Ananda Ashram in Monroe, New York on November 22, 23rd. In the midst of political and financial chaos  – a calm and creative center, we continue to gather together. We become stronger. We claim the lives we were meant to live (“It is never too late to be what you might have been” – George Eliot).  We open to the Creative Source that can move our hearts, transform our circumstances, and guide us to our peace.

For more information on this workshop, email Sheri Bresson at manifestation44@cs.com

On Alignment

Alignment is not some romantic notion of harmony and lack of strife in one’s life. It is utterly serious; being nothing less than the complete giving over of oneself to the Higher Power, of total trust in the Way. “The Way” is not my way or your way, nor is the province of someone’s philosophy or teaching. It is the moment by moment revelation in each person’s life of what needs to be done, and even more importantly perhaps, of how this needs to be done. The willingness to meet the naked intelligence of creation with fullness, grace, and gratefulness, makes one’s life supremely and uniquely meaningful. It is the most precious gift that one can offer to one’s community, one’s children, and to the future in face of eternity.

Rick Appearing at the Power of Words Conference

If spending a September weekend in Vermont expanding your appreciation of, and facility for, creative & purposeful expression through language strikes you as time well spent… perhaps you’d enjoy this unique event.  Rick will be there, speaking on Saturday Sept. 13th (see summary below), and also offering a post-conference  AntiCareer workshop on Monday the 15th.  The event is hosted by Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont.

More info at http://www.goddard.edu/powerofwords

Liberating Yourself and the World Through the Spoken, Written & Sung Word
Sept. 12 – 15, 2008

Explore how we can use our words – written, spoken or sung – to make community, wake ourselves up, and foster empowerment, healing and transformation. Sponsored by the low residency Transformative Language Arts Concentration at Goddard College, this conference features workshops, talking circles, performances, open readings, and celebrations.

The Goddess of Speech and the Resonant Word ~ Rick Jarow, PhD

In the Vedic Scriptures of Ancient India, “Speech” was envisioned as a Goddess (named Vāc) who stood at the apex of creation. One who received her favor had dominion over both the gods and their realms through acquaintance with her secrets and powers. This presentation explores the intricacies of sacred speech and its corollary science, the practice of mantra (mantra-vidya). And in so doing, it challenges contemporary linguistic notions of the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign (and conventions of representation) by explicating the different levels and powers of the Word.

The Yoga of Work 3-day sale

If you appreciate Rick’s ideas on the subject of work, you might want to take advantage of a deep discount briefly extended by www.SoundsTrue.com on his audio program, The Yoga of Work.  Note: this offer is ONLY good until this Friday, July 25. Click the image below to jump to this product at ST.  (When you check out, simply enter code WN0708D into the “Coupon” box and click “Apply” to receive the sale price.)

The Yoga of Work By Rick Jarow 2 CDs, 2½ hours $19.95 NOW U.S. $7.98

Snow in the Dish

Where I live, the new year brought a blanket of fresh snow — a fitting metaphor for a clean slate, a new beginning.  January 1st offered the sweet scene of neighborhood kids sledding down the toboggan hill in the park.  Brightly colored sleds, hats and snowsuits sailing downhill accompanied by joyful sounds and bounding dogs triggered a nostalgic return to innocence that lifted my soul.

At home, out my back door, I noticed that the dish I fill with food for the local wildlife (as wild as it gets in the city) was piled high with snow.   Then, within minutes, I received email from a friend trying to connect with someone in Colorado, from whom she had yet to receive a response.  “He may just have snow in his dish,” she said, refering to the satellite dish he uses for internet connection. 

Hard to miss “snow in the dish” coming up twice in such short order.  I pondered how much snow many of us likely have in our receiver, perceiver and/or sender mechanisms:  frozen thought forms, emotions, and even outdated ideas of who we are in the scheme of things, keeping us frozen in our tracks when we dearly wish or need to move forward.

We’ve crossed a threshold on the calendar; what better time to pour a catalytic stream of liquid Light into frozen old consciousness, and cross a pivotal threshold in life?  It’s never too late to recreate.  The past is gone, and what’s ours to do now is to create luminous thoughtforms of how we want our lives to be, and then step into those thoughtforms and feel how it will feel to actually live that scenario.   Flesh it out as much as possible (no scrimping on the crucial emotional component), then release it to set up an energetic that the “universe will conspire” to fulfill by way of inspiration for your next step, or “chance encounters” with helpful people, and the like.   Caveat: any conflicting thoughts that may subsequently arise need to be canceled and replaced with the desire again, asap, or they’ll just reduce the established line of magnetic attraction to static.  Not helpful.

This is strategic synchronicity skill-building 101. 

Such ideas are likely well known to the readership of this blog, but some might be served by a reminder as I was, while pondering this snowy vignette. (Besides, it’s been quiet around here lately!)  A microwave dish full of snow blocks useful communications, and a plate full of snow leaves no room for fresh sustenance.   Could be time to do some dishes. 

Wishing you a blessed, delightful, abundant new year ~

Whitehawk

Naming It

Hello all:  It’s been ten months since the Rick Jarow AoA blog went live on WordPress. I’ve enjoyed witnessing this largely successful experiment that opened a channel between Rick and folks interested in his ideas re: manifesting the life and livelihood they desire. Many thousands of guests have visited these pages. Learning to engage life as a grace-full dance of energies instead of a glut of enemies to be conquered is gaining ground — as it must. (Now for this to trickle up our governmental food chain…) The discernment between these approaches is crucial; it’s all about the energy signatures we engage as co-creators of our manifest reality. Are energies flowing in harmonious collaboration, or fractured into opposing dualities much of the way?

Early on, Rick encouraged me to contribute some writing in this space, and I have shied from doing so. Recently, though, I’ve been feeling, observing, and experiencing a few things along a certain theme that I thought I’d share, before the maiden year of the AoA blog closes out. So, while Rick is busy manifesting elsewhere, here’s my offering to the Alchemy of Abundance crucible – involving a manifestation journey of my own. Perhaps there’s something in it for you.

For over a year, I’ve had a slippery hold on a vision for a project I’d like to manifest. Like most creative projects in “this Now,” this one involves a website. In fact, the website is the core aspect; the sun around which numerous planets and satellites would revolve in mutually supportive alignments. The mere expanse and complexity of this project intimidated me, and moreover… the working title I had for it didn’t ignite me. This might not block most people, but I realized recently, looking back at other creations, that I seem to need to name a thing I want to call forth — its signature, or mantra, so to speak — before I can successfully manifest it. So the project kind of sat there, orphaned, burdened with a boring name.

These past couple of months I’ve given more attention to this situation, this name issue, and spent more time focusing on the nature of “the being” trying to come into manifestation. What is trying to emerge here? Who would the primary players be? What is the important service I’m feeling called to provide by way of it? What is the primary theme that is up for me that I dearly want to energize through this expression? I keyed in on the primary theme (not as easy/obvious as one might expect) and then a primary word, and then played with that word, in all kinds of forms and pairings with other words, for several weeks. THE name remained elusive. On occasion I thought I might be on to something, only to find that the domain was already taken, or the vibration just didn’t quite resonate in some other way. On and on.

Last week: a breakthrough…

I finally invented a word that had all the elements I was searching for. It clicked for me, and I committed to it. Got the domain (one of the bennies of coining a word: no one scooped me :). As it happened, the next day I had a standing date with a highly creative and intuitive friend to brainstorm this project, which until then had been limping along with its un-sexy, cold-oatmeal label. I tentatively unveiled the new name to Peter; he loved it. He instantly “felt into its field” (an interesting process to see), and worked out the numerology for good measure. He gave it his enthusiastic thumbs up, wants “in,” and he may well be a connector to other collaborators for the project. We spent a few hours brainstorming a rough blueprint for the website.

The next hurdle: how to manifest this awesome, highly sophisticated, complex website without the funds I’d need to engage a stellar web developer? Fund-raising is not, shall I say, my greatest gift. Peter, bless him, said something that rang brilliantly for me. He said, “Pray to it.” My first response was — I blanked. “Pray to… ?” I didn’t get it in the first few seconds. He went on to suggest I “pray to” the newly-conceived entity (the name of which I’m not ready to divulge), asking it what it needed and wanted, to be “brought through” optimally.

I lit up, feeling this piece was Major. I began talking to the god of ****** immediately, and I have to say, this process marked an energetic watershed moment. I felt a luminous new “soul” stirring in the heavens, and, in response to my celebration of, and love for, this new entity and all it could become, it is “gathering” as surely as a magnificent cloud forms in the sky, or a yearned-for baby gestates in the love-drenched chamber of its mother’s womb. For me, it’s taken on a joyousness almost as exciting as the prospect of sacred union with a new lover.

Ok, maybe not that exquisite. But definitely life-affirming.

The very next morning, I visited a community website I frequent for non-local kindred connection. The first thing to greet me was a new post from a web developer offering her services GRATIS to people in our cyber-pod who want to develop community-encouraging websites. I emailed her, explaining the breadth of my “baby” with its community-building aspects, half expecting to scare her off… or at least hear back that it was too much for her to consider without remuneration. To my amazement, she countered that she’s up for it, and is now awaiting my next move (a complete design blueprint). We shall see how this goes, but so far — since creating the all-important name for this “big step” for me — the universe has responded with grace and amazing ease. The rightly named concept seems to have a certain magnetism to it; it is attracting what it needs to move forward. So the next chapter of my odyssey could be called Dreaming it Awake, as we evoke this entity through the causal plane – the imaginative realm — into physical Form.

I really could go on; this topic brought up so many other vignettes that would fold beautifully into this article, but this is a blog, after all, where “concise is nice.” So I’ll wrap up by sharing that this naming thing has opened out into incentive to audit other areas in my life, as I scan for fragments that might be dangling like amorphous orphans; neither embraced nor even acknowledged because they haven’t even been identified (named) in ages, withheld from their next level or mode of expression… just occupying neglected space beneficial to neither them nor myself. I’m watching now with fresh eyes for forgotten skills and dreams to re-identify and call forward if appropriate, or relationships that haven’t been honored or nourished; “not bothered with.” Maybe there’s an innocent soul in here somewhere waiting to be called home if I’d only remember and speak her name; re-calling my childhood nickname was poignant. Acknowledging that she IS STILL an actual living, buoyant entity, still seeking her outlet, but energetically trapped behind some door of my conditioned/conditional adult psyche provided a powerful shift.

I’m just now also recalling Rick’s Bad Vilbel CD, in which he chants, “What’s in a name?” in the male’s meditation. Apparently, I’m recently finding — or remembering — Quite a lot!

I wonder if you were to scan your life on a search and rescue mission for such golden nuggets, and named them (realizing them again), and asked what they wanted or needed to serve their evolutionary journey (perhaps honoring them for the first time), what might unfold next?

Just thoughts…

~ Laurie

PS – Of possible interest — One of the shining spirits at the recent Prophets Conference in LA (besides Rick of course ;-) was Lynn Twist, the author of The Soul of Money. Lynn’s keynote on sustainability and abundance was quite moving and thought-provoking. A few audio files of her are available for listening at the Global Dialogue Center website; you might enjoy them: www.globaldialoguecenter.com/collections/moi/lynne-twist-moi.shtml. She speaks on Money, Sustainability, Abundance and You. Her website is linked there as well. As far as perspectives on our relationship with money — and humanity’s priorities in general — Lynn’s observations are worth looking into.

A Light on the Hill: Accomplishment in Flow

Among other things, we have been exploring on the BLOG the relationship between “loving what is,” and moving toward “what can be.”

Recently, I had the privledge to spend some time at Light on the Hill, a wonderful retreat center in Van Etten, New York, run by Larwence Muscat and Alice McDowell. I have been coming regularly to Light on the Hill for over 12 years, and during that time, I’ve witnessed an extraordinary manifestation: the conception, construction, and execution of a wonderful building, the “Inner Light Lodge,” that holds a powerful sacred space for workshops, can comfortably lodge over 30 people, has a first class kitchen, a breathaking view, and a palpable aura of luminescence all around it. Since the Lodge was completed over a year ago, various groups have flocked to the center, which is powerfully facilitating high quality of consciousness transformation work.

I know how many people dream of building holistic centers, and I know that Omega Institute’s workshop, “How to Start a Holistic Center,” draws huge numbers of participants each summer. But I also know how few of these dreams ever materialize, and how those that do materialize often wind up struggling with, and cowtowing to, the money economy that they wished to rise above. One thing I have noticed about Alice and Larry over the years is that even as their center grew, they were not consumed by it. They remain relaxed, open, and receiving to all who come by. So I asked them one evening about this question of manifestation in terms of the Lodge. 

Creating Open Flow

Hello all,

I just finished reading a study that was done at Vassar (where I teach) and a few other like colleagues on exactly how people are spending their time, and on why there seems to be so much less of it these days.

If anyone is interested, I can publish the link.

I would like to start a serious conversation about how we can open to more “creative time,” which to me means unplanned, open flow.

Rick