SDGT VII Year One
Initiating and Revitalizing Retreats offered onsite:
May 16-19, 2024 / November 7-10, 2024
In the beginning: STORY!
May 16-19, 2024 / Onsite Initiating Retreat
6:45pm Thursday to noon on Sunday
What is my story? How does what I believe about myself inform my search for meaning, authentic relationships, humility in the face of transcendence and commitment to my life’s work?
The words we choose
build the house in which we live.
Hafiz hhhhh
No matter the topic or the tradition, a richly storied life is one well lived. Always beginning again, starting with “story” situates our spiritual questing in the heart of how we speak of our relationship with self, with others, and that which we encounter as transcendent or divine.
Our SDGT Initiating Retreat offers an exploration of the multi-storied house in which each of us dwells. Highly practical and experiential, we’ll unpack our mystic maps and hone our deepening practices, meeting one another as welcome companions on a shared quest for soul depth and transformation. We’ll learn from one another, each of us offering what we can, as we come together for the sake of the world that we love.
Heart awareness: Opening to what is; Holding center in uncertain times.
November 7-10, 2024 / Onsite Revitalizing Retreat
6:45pm Thursday to noon on Sunday
This second retreat of Year One, given its timing, will attend to the impact of current political events. Contemplative living spirals steadily toward deep Heart awareness and a sensing of Spirit in and through all beings.
Wherever you stand,
be Soul in that place.
Hafiz hhhhh
By attending deeply to what is present, the barriers that usually obscure contemplative awareness gently release, and our usual life is transformed to a journey of connection in ever- deepening compassion. The meditations and experiences of this retreat are adapted from various spiritual practices, especially those of the contemplative Buddhist and Christian mystical traditions.
Sitting, chanting, reading, walking, listening, breathing: all simple devotions that open us to sense the being of interconnectedness. Out of the quiet grows the truth that the longing of our heart is from the one heart of all longing. We sit for the world. The world prays in us.
Online Sessions
Year One SDGT Four Saturday Zoom Days
for ongoing discovery, depth and integration.
• July 20, 2024
• September 21, 2024
• January 18, 2025
• March 15, 2025
Maps of Inner Knowing:
Ways and Means of Insight and Wisdom
The rules break like a thermometer,
quicksilver spills across the charted systems,
we’re out in a country that has no language
no laws, we’re chasing the raven and the wren
through gorges unexplored since dawn
whatever we do together is pure invention
the maps they gave us were out of date by years…
Adrienne Rich
Carl Jung, The Red Book Map of the Soul
During this first year the focus is on various inner maps of knowing, each offered by a primary presenting guide. Along with the other spiritual guides, the invitation is to learn and to reflect on our own experience.
The morning session is designed for presentation and exploration; the afternoon time is given to in-depth mutual discovery and concludes with a shared integration conversation.
This year we’ll delve into the usefulness of dreams and our inner archetypes as we explore emerging stories of cosmos, consciousness, and what we tell ourselves we know.
July 20, 2024
Maps of Inner Knowing
9:30am to noon; 1:30 to 4:00pm
Exploring
Cosmos and Consciousness:
Shifting from matter’s “Big Bang” to the unfolding of a universe in Soul.
Guided by Sr. Gabe
Taking the most expansive view we can, we will explore our individual deepening quest as part of a great cosmic unfolding and evolution of Soul. We continue to discover that all experience, all that is, is a great complex, ongoing, communal, energetic and alive “one thing”.
With S. Gabriele Uhlein as lead guide, prepare to be awed by some of the latest in cosmological meaning making, as well as emergent discoveries in consciousness studies. In this great saga, what is the role of Heart and Love? Of Human Intelligence? And ultimately, of Transcendence?
September 21, 2024
Maps of Inner Knowing
9:30am to noon; 1:30 to 4:00pm
The Power of Belief and Insight:
Keeping Our Inner Maps Up-to-Date.
Guided by Joanne Nelson
Moving attention inward we find another cosmos to explore: the creative potential of our dreams, our capacity for imagination, and the life-determining power of our values. Presented by Joanne Nelson, we will explore together the beliefs and insights that form our inner maps, directing our choices and shaping our lives from the inside out.
Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? What must I do to get there? These are the great human existential questions, to which every spiritual tradition worth its salt, offers certain beliefs in response.
Let’s explore together the way in which unexamined beliefs powerfully determine how we live. How do you know the truth of them? How do you choose? Why does it matter? What if belief shifted?
January 18, 2025
Maps of Inner Knowing
9:30am to noon; 1:30 to 4:00pm
Dreams and Dreaming:
Encountering Soul’s Images
Guided by Sr. Gabe
Welcome to the amazing multi-dimensional world of our inner dreamer. Grounded in depth psychology and using images from her own work, S. Gabriele Uhlein offers a spiritual pilgrim’s view of the dreaming Soul.
Referencing various sacred texts from multiple traditions, we’ll explore how dreams can serve to both deepen and widen our understanding of Spirit, Life, and the world with which we are entrusted.
Most importantly we’ll explore our own experience: Do you dream? Is there a dream you can recall? Who is the dream for? How have dreams and dreaming changed for you over the years?
And finally, does Earth dream?
March 15, 2025:
Maps of Inner Knowing
9:30am to noon; 1:30 to 4:00pm
Archetypes and Patterns of Consciousness:
How Did We Get Here? Now What?
Guided by Ron Moor
Is there turmoil? Are there conflicting world views in violent confrontation? Is the past, the old, cracking and breaking down? Can it be that we are collectively standing on the threshold of a transformation of consciousness itself?
Ron Moor will guide us in appreciating the many “beings” within our personal experience of human consciousness. Mythically alive within consciousness are great collective BE-ings: saints, heroes and villains. Potent archetypal symbols, icons and images be there as well. As it is in our inner experience, so it is too, in the culture at large.
Like the Swiss philosopher, Jean Gebser, let’s take the long view, exploring how transformation “becomes,” appearing first in small numbers of individuals; how chaos ensues as awareness grows; and how the emergent new begins to “be”. The future is calling NOW, and everything before us brings us into “BE-ing” in this moment, archetypes and ancestors at the ready!