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RETREATS AND ECO-ADVENTURE
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THE RETREATS AND ECO-ADVENTURE FORUM IS A GREAT PLACE TO READ AND BE READ; ABOUT EXPERIENCES, OPINIONS AND ANY SUGGESTIONS ABOUT RETREATS AND TRAVEL LOCATIONS AROUND THE WORLD. READING ABOUT OTHER'S JOURNEYS CAN INSPIRE OR BRING HELPFUL INSIGHTS INTO OUR OWN EXPECTATIONS.
Directly below is our text entry box for sharing your experiences, recommendations and wisdom (name and e-mail are optional). The entire retreats and eco-adventure forum of entries begins below the entry box. Read on and enjoy!
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RETREATS AND ECO-ADVENTURE FORUM
Traveling up the California coastal road from Sausalito, we at enlightenup0.com came upon Green Gulch Zen Center at Muir beach. In the Soto Zen tradition, established by Sunryu Suzuki (ZEN MIND, BEGINNERS MIND) - it's in a little valley nestled in between the Pacific shore and the mountains heading back to Marin County's Mill Valley. We registered as "guest retreatants" and stayed in their Japanese style guest house. The Zen Center is a working zen facility with full time students and instructors. The guest retreatant program allowed us to experience the zen retreat, as participants, for one half of a day. This included morning meditation, three vegetarian meals, and one half day of work (gardening, kitchen work, chopping wood, etc.) with the residents. The second half of the day we had free for exploration. We walked back across the surrounding mountains/hills, with views of Muir Woods, to the small town of Mill Valley. We were minutes from downtown San Francisco and Pt. Reyes seashore was just up the road. But it was hard to leave the Zen Center, whose gardens supply organic vegetables to Greens Restaurant in San Francisco and with nearly private access to Muir Beach, which provides the perfect small and virtually unpopulated beach experience. The price was relatively inexpensive, the accommodations clean and zen (sparse, functional and mindful) and the food was vegetarian and wholesome and the morning meditation sessions were profound. Of all our experiences in the Bay area, this was the jewel!
The concept of a Mind-Body-Spirit Retreat in "paradise" got stretched a little when I attended an advanced Arica Training in Manhatten. Arica is a most thorough and scientific mystical school based on esoteric traditions and the inspirations (most notably the origination of the enneagon concept) of it's founder, Oscar Ichazo. Although Arica often has diverse and exotic locations for it's programs, this one in particular was to be purposely experienced in the heart of one of man's most complex creations.
The training program didn't include accommodations so I shared a set of unique and modest hotel suites ( imagine an Edward Hopper painting with a lot of happy people instead of the lonely soul) with other students. Specific dietary recommendations precluded our overindulgence in the city's myriad eateries. The program itself was intense. Like all Arica work, it focused on body, emotions, mind and spirit concurrently. As the days pass, energy is intensified, balanced, refined and transmuted to a focused spirituality. The use of Psychocalisthentics, Tai Chi and "Kath Generation", Yantra Meditation, Alchemy, Personality Analysis, Mantra, Breathing and Visualization Meditations led to a sense of clarity and serenity.
One of the exercises (Japa Walk) consisted of combining focused breathing with mantras on a half hour leisurely walk through the bustling city streets. Each step elicited a repetition of the seed syllable, representing a universal principal. Like all meditation I approached this exercise with no expectations. In the second week I was walking along the crowded street, doing my mantram and it suddenly clicked in! Everything and everyone suddenly became one thing. Not static though, but in movement and coordinated perfectly like a beautifully designed ballet. Myself included somehow with it and as a witness to it. It was an amazing experience, fostered by the complexity and unity of what I had previously perceived as the antithesis of planetary beauty.
The result of two weeks was powerful and I realized with the right tools, everywhere becomes the threshold to unity.
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