Kindness and the path beyond ego

Luminous Tenderness: a Retreat on Essential Compassion

The Diamond Approach path is a spiritual teaching that recognises the inherent synthesis between the spiritual and psychological, the ego and essence, the psyche and spirit. Here, the ego is not rejected or dismissed. We recognise that when it is approached with kindness, explored with openness, and understood for what it really is, our ego self becomes a portal that can open us up to the deeper truths of our spiritual nature.

Loving kindness, essential compassion, is needed for this process, and it is one of the treasures of our spiritual nature that can develop through it.

During this four day retreat, we will immerse ourselves in Essential Compassion, and its role in the inner journey, into a deep understanding of our historical self, and through it to the discovery and development of our essence. We will look at how we move from one to the other, distinguishing the building blocks of our ego, and the thresholds within it through which our deeper nature can flow.

Compassion, the living presence of loving kindness, is the miraculous ingredient that opens the heart. It helps us to open to our hurts, and move through them. It carries us, surely and directly, into the truth of who we are, the inexhaustible richness of Being.

In this retreat, we will explore the nature of this central quality of our human essence. We will illuminate and work through some of the important obstacles to experiencing it directly, and to expressing its exquisite tenderness and beauty in our inner journey and our daily lives.

Whether you are newly on the spiritual path, or have already had meditative or transcendent experiences, this work can help you open up, and reveal how to be free in this world while knowing you are beyond it.

From your experience of participating in this retreat you may discover:

• the nature of essential compassion
• how it differs from our usual ideas of compassion
• how it is blocked by particular emotional issues
• the role compassion plays on the inner journey
• how to work with and move through experiences of pain and hurt
• how your ego developed in relationship
• the impact those internalised relationships have on your life now
• how to recognise when resistance arises on your inner journey and how to approach it
• the ego’s inherent tendency to look to the outside or to another to fill important needs and the dissatisfaction this can bring
• how deep fulfillment can arise when you are open and curious about your dissatisfaction or emptiness
• the deeper truths of your spiritual nature.

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

Teaching sessions generally start with a meditation practice 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.

The day is divided into two, three-hour sessions with an hour and a half break for lunch.

We’re excited to be able to meet safely in person again! The retreat will be held in Sydney, at the Woolcock Institute in Glebe. It will also be live-streamed over Zoom, however, we encourage those of you who are able to attend in person.

EVENT DETAILS

Who: Jane Armytage, Ashley Wain, Frances Haynes, Grant Trewenack

https://diamondapproachaustralia.com/our-teachers/

Date: 6 – 9 October 2022 (4-days)
Orientation for students joining a retreat for the first time: Tuesday 4 October, 6-8:30pm on Zoom

Cost: $660 (incl. GST)

Location: The Woolcock Institute, Glebe, Sydney NSW or live streamed via Zoom

Open to: General public and those considering joining the new Diamond Approach Australia ongoing retreat group 8 (DAA8)