Integrating the inner foundation of confidence, persistence and ease

How would it be to live your life with an honest-to-goodness confidence in yourself? To be able to see what needs to be done and take action in the simplest, most efficient way.

Life can be this way when true will is operating. “True will” – what is that? As it turns out, it’s quite different from what we usually experience or think of as will.

Our conventional concepts of will are often around ‘willpower’ or ‘iron will’–concepts which conjure up a hardness, as if ‘life is hard’ and we need to work hard, control everything, and be forceful to deal with it effectively.

Is this really true? External events over the last couple of years have really challenged this idea of us ‘having control’!

Discovering and developing true will can give us the confidence to relate and respond to reality in a more direct, grounded and realistic way. True will gives us more determination but with ease rather than hardness. It is an unshakeable inner support for being who we really are ….

As AH Almaas writes “…true will is like the grounding, the implicit grounding that serves as a confidence that things will flow. It’s hard to describe exactly, because I’m talking about it as if it is something you think in your mind. It isn’t; that’s why I use the word “implicit.” It means you function from an innate feeling and understanding that things flow. True will is right in this moment; it’s a complete openness to what’s happening right now.” (Diamond Heart Book Two: The Freedom to Be)

In this five day retreat, we will look at the obstacles to true will, how we became disconnected from it, and how our current patterns continue to disconnect us. By exploring these patterns with openness, curiosity and compassion, we can understand and release them, making way for the presence of will, our essential will, to arise within us.

By participating in this retreat , you have the opportunity to gain:

• an understanding of how you block your true will
• a clearer sense of what essential will is
• a greater capacity for persistence and determination
• more confidence, resilience and inner solidity
• a greater capacity to stay the course in life and on the spiritual journey

This five-day retreat uses an experiential approach that includes teacher talks and spiritual practices such as open-ended inquiry, meditation and awareness practices.

Teaching sessions generally start with meditation followed by a specific teaching related to the theme of the retreat. You will have the opportunity to deepen your personal exploration through experiential exercises, usually in pairs or triads and sometimes in a small group, before re-joining the large group to process what has emerged in response to the teaching.

Each retreat day is divided into two, three-hour sessions with a 2-hour break for lunch.

EVENT DETAILS
Teachers: Anne Laney, Jane Armytage, Ashley Wain, Frances Haynes, Grant Trewenack, Renee Rudd and Ian Cox (Learn more about our teachers)

Dates: 14 – 18 October 2023
Cost: TBC
Venue: Sydney University Village, Newtown, and online for those unable to attend in person
Open to: General public and those considering joining the new Diamond Approach Australia ongoing retreat group 8 (DAA8)