What are People Saying About This Work?
Cheng Hsin is a Consciousness incubator for people who want to know the simple and honest truth about themselves.
It clears the space, leads you to the roots of yourself, and opens the path for a conscious and empowered human to emerge.
Cheng Hsin has changed my life. I'm not afraid to be afraid anymore, wow! I can rely on the Cheng Hsin principles to teach myself what to do. In short, I've learned how to learn. Cheng Hsin's consciousness work has changed my world around. I'm living more consciously than I ever had before and enjoying every bit of my life.
Rather than being taught a whole new set of rules to live by, I was showed a set of tools and all I needed to do was to investigate, stay honest, contemplate and keep on going from there. The more I do, the more I learn and the deeper I go.
Ralston is unparalleled in his ability to clearly articulate both the key questions to contemplate, and the life-changing insights one can gain from doing so. I’ve learned more from him than any other author.
It’s like you discovered the cure for cancer but nobody knows about it.
True innovators are, by definition, ahead of their time. Therefore, they remain largely unrecognized, except by a few. How many of us wished we had met Bruce Lee, sat in a session with Carl Jung, or walked around Walden pond with Thoreau?
Too late for that, but not too late to take notice of Peter Ralston. His creativity, commitment, and clarity shine through his teachings as he articulates higher principles based on direct experience and piercing insight.
A superlative martial artist and caring teacher, he has been to the mountaintop and bathed in the underground spring of Being. His insights speak to us all.
Thank you Peter for another excellent workshop! The Zoom experience far exceeded my expectations. I was worried about having to be on the computer all day long for 6 days and not being able to fully engage, but my assumptions quickly disappeared and I found I was able to focus deeply and experienced insights throughout the week.
I also wanted to acknowledge you and your work, and sharing this remarkable body of knowledge with the world through your workshops, classes, and books. Your work has meant so much to me since first being introduced to Cheng Hsin through Ethan and Brendan. This week uncovered many more realizations about what I’ve been up to, how I’m doing it, and the keys to experiencing something different. There’s nothing like your work and no other teacher that I’ve come across that offers the possibility to understand what’s truly going on and what can be.
Thank you so much!
Amy
Hi Peter,
First of all, I would like to express my gratitude that I feel towards you. I've told you before, but I have to say it again that your work has really changed my life in a profound way. I experience a freedom after these workshops that I've never had in my life. Thank you.
Both of the workshops were deeply impactful for me. The Zoom format was also working very well, better than I expected. I could maintain a very strong focus throughout and I actually felt that the gap between my life and this work was way smaller due to the fact that I did not change location. Because of this, I feel now that the transition from the workshop to normal life is also smoother than it was previously for me.
I even had no problem with the time zone, although I had to go to bed after 5am Hungarian time. There were only 2 times through the 9 days that the connection dropped for less than 2 minutes. Credit to Brendan and Ethan for handling this. The only possible improvement I could recommend is having more interaction between the live and the Zoom group (possibly having one extra chair and computer through which live people could do dyads with zoom people, rotating).
Brendan has been an excellent facilitator once again. What I observed this time is that he understands his depth of insight in different topics well and is honest about it and when he is unsure, he recommends asking you. I think this is a good dynamic.
Thank you again!
Hi, Peter and Brendan,
Thank you so much for the space of the Contemplation Intensive this fall - it was profoundly transformative. The realignment that I needed and a real feeling of being relaxed in the unknown. I really unlearned so much! 😀
Peter and Brendan,
Great workshops all of them, and amazing facilitation. My level of honesty and my understanding of it increased way more, and I feel tremendously empowered by it. I experienced the creation of self and other, and got language and the power and influence of it in my experience. And got a deeper Who.
So, thanks for your work and for facilitating all of that, greatly appreciated.
The work done at Cheng Hsin is invaluable. I can't express how much I've grown as a person. What I've come to recognize in my experience has transformed the way I live and how I relate to others, and I'm not even enlightened yet. I don't think there's anything more important than grasping the nature of my behavior, the way I experience life, and me. And no better place to do so than with Brendan and Peter. Their groundbreaking honesty, their facilitation skill, and their clear intent to have participants grasp the truth in their experience is an unmatchable stage for true insights and breakthroughs.
Thank you both for your work,
Eugenio
Dear Peter Ralston,
I hope you are doing well.
I would like to thank you for your teaching and all my experiences in the workshop. Also, I want to thank Brendan, who guided me into the workshop deeply, and participants and apprentices who were willing to be my partner. It gave me a paradigm shift change and courage as I am being. I decided to join the workshops (C&R, ENB) at the beginning to see Alex (my husband) and understand him and his work more closely. But I found myself trying to reach out to the truth, the nature of being, and 'who am I' during the workshop. It was not easy but definitely worth it.
There was no doubt about joining the upcoming spring retreat! But in that time, as I will be in the middle of the spring semester at the university, only for 2 weeks will be available to participate in the retreat.
Thank you again for allowing me and Alex to be together and stay at your place over the Christmas holidays!
Yunah Lee
PhD Nursing, MSN, RN, South Korea
Hi Peter
A short note to express my thanks to you for sharing your work through these amazing workshops.
I chose to participate via zoom. I was initially concerned that spending 12 hours each day in front of a computer screen for 3 1/2 weeks would be exhausting and frustrating. That turned out to not be true as I found my experience of the workshops to be truly excellent. I believe it was the significant amount of work we did in the diad format that created the positive difference from what I had initially expected.
The content and exceptional organization of each workshop took my understanding of the materials to significantly greater depths than I had achieved through studying your books. Brendan was an excellent facilitator. His success was achieved in encouraging each participant to reach deep in their experiential learning as he patiently worked with each of us to gain clarity on points where we became stuck. The daily group meetings with yourself offered an excellent opportunity to clarify and discuss the materials presented. The experiences and insights I achieved through the 2020 Fall Retreat have changed my understanding of self and the world I perceive.
I would encourage participants to come prepared to work hard through experiential learning and they will be truly awestruck by the depth of understanding achieved. Peter’s penetrating work presented through these masterfully designed workshops are a must if you are seeking the truth.
I look forward to joining you and Brendan again at a future workshop.
A big thank you to both of you!!
Hi Peter,
Hope you are well.
I am re-reading both your books, The Book of Not Knowing and Zen Body-Being, I have done so many times now. It feels like coming home although at the same time brand new. So many new insights land each time.
You might remember I’m working hard on my golf swing and you sent a very helpful email re: feeling-awareness. Golf is my Abdul’s camel and I love it. Whilst exploring, in a state of relaxed openness, all of a sudden there it was relaxation whilst pushing into ground. A complete game changer. I guess it was always already there but no doubt I wasn’t sufficiently relaxed. It feels amazing, so effortless and a big jump in club head speed.
I had a similar experience yesterday with my Strength and Conditioning training—which I started in lockdown so I’m 9 months in. I relaxed back into a dumbbell dead lift pushed into the ground and the weights seemed to almost lift themselves, 44kg personal best.
So glad I turned to your books again to facilitate this expedition in the unknown. Thank you.
Merry Christmas! 🎄
Lynn Exley
The Mindful Golfer
The understanding that everything is the way I am holding it was fundamental in shaking my normal sense of affairs and preparing a new openness to something beyond my thinking and feeling.
Jurgen Brandt
Germany
Dear Peter, I wanted to write to you with a big Thank You for your knowledge, support and understanding at the CSW in Nijmegen. It really was a wonderful environment to be in for the week, although challenging and intense at times, I had a number of “a-ha!” moments throughout the week.
I have since been looking at everything I do with this freedom in mind and reminding myself that what I do and who I am is not these feelings that come with the situation I find myself in, but someone who is free in every moment to choose what to do and how to feel about situations, without the beliefs that come up when I find myself in that moment. When I ask who or what I am, I have an overwhelming feeling of just being free.
Many Thanks and Best Wishes!
Claire
Singer and Songwriter, Goucester, UK
Peter, Brendan,
Thank you for facilitating the ENB and TSW this year. It was my second time attending those workshops and I got as much out of them if not more this time around. I am sure next time will take me even deeper.
One of the biggest takeaways for me was to finally get what survival is (aka life) while looking into how pain and pleasure work to craft my experience. Other highlights included insights into what language and perception are, into how judgements perpetuate the confusion between the person and who others really are, and into the activity of my internal dialogue which allowed me to de-identify at least partially from it. I gained clarity about many other aspects of this work and, as importantly, noticed some areas where I thought my understanding was clearer than it actually is.
I am deeply grateful for your contribution with crafting this work, sharing it with us and assisting us to stay on track with it.
Peter,
I had a great experience at the ENB workshop last week. I am very new to consciousness work and honestly was not sure what I was getting myself into. I came away feeling much more grounded. And I now I feel both that pursuing consciousness is perhaps the most meaningful pursuit one can undertake in life, and that I am completely intimidated by the task ahead of me. I can see how fucked I am, but am eager to take the plunge all the same 😊
The specific topics that resonated the most with me were the experiences I had during the seeing an object for-itself, turning in, and non-judgement exercises. I caught a glimpse of what experience is like with some of the concepts and meaning removed. I experienced how much dominance my conceptual mind has over my experience. In addition I found it incredibly challenging to generate even a glimpse of something for-itself. This really helped me understand the difference between a concept of experience and actual experience, and made me more aware of how little experience I actually have.
I thought Brendan was terrific. I was initially disappointed when I learned that you do not lead the full workshop yourself. But I think Brendan did a wonderful job articulating the content, putting his own (often humorous and engaging) take on it to help people understand, and also pushing people outside their comfort zone when he needed to. He also helped create a really terrific atmosphere with the group where everyone was intentional about the work without taking it too seriously. That environment was very conducive to my participation.
I have been thinking on the concept of honesty intently for two years now and this call finally came clear to me after the ENB workshop. It is not what I thought I would get out of it, but it is what I got.
Thanks again for sharing your consciousness with all of us. I hope to see you again soon for another workshop.
Ed
Managing Director and Partner, Boston Consulting Group, Chicago, USA
Hi Peter,
Thank you again for another opportunity to contemplate, in person, with your particular teaching. Nowhere else is the truth emphasized as you do. In any case, nothing beats getting off the grid for intense contemplation.
Brendan was a rock star again, while conducting the IEW workshop. He makes the whole event run like clockwork, allowing us to stay focused. Sara is a nice addition to the staff, too.
As far as who I am, I continue to contemplate it. You gave me a hint on day four: don’t think in terms of here, or there. I immediately started thinking too much, again, and didn’t notice that location is irrelevant to experience me.
Your tenth man story hit me differently today. It occurred to me that I can’t find anything other than a direct experience of who I am. I started laughing, as if I were reacting to a trick question. No matter how small, or large, I make my awareness, it’s me doing it.
Thank you for teaching. Nothing is more important than this work.
Scott Martin
Experimental Test Pilot, South Carolina, USA
Hi Peter,
It's been about 10 days since the Being Complete Workshop ended and I wanted to let you know how everything is going and what stuck from the workshop.
Mostly, I notice myself causing my own suffering more than I did before. Whenever some form of suffering comes up, I just check to see if conceptual activity is going on and it invariably is.
Something else that has stuck with me is that basically everything I do is to resolve myself. From the big decisions I make about my life, to the unimportant things I do minute to minute. The dynamic is so crazy it almost makes me laugh... almost. Realizing a bit of how screwed up my mind is gives everything a more lighthearted feel because I realize I am looking at life through a comically messed up lens.
One last thing that has come up for me is how I think "this is just the way life is". I confuse the way I relate to things or people for the way those things or people are. This view closes me up from the possibility of relating to things differently, takes responsibility for my emotions, thoughts, and actions off of me, and makes me feel at the effect of outside factors.
Noticing myself do all these things with more clarity has made an opening for me to question them, observe them, and to some degree stop doing them. Thank you for the workshop and am excited, albeit a bit scared, for the apprenticeship.
