The Cheng Hsin Spring Retreat
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To enroll yourself in these workshops is to take action that speaks louder than words about your personal commitment to awakening.
Cheng Hsin Consciousness work is INTENSE and DEMANDS your attention, energy, and commitment. The only other requirement is to be there. If you’re up for a mind-blowing adventure, consider yourself invited to these powerful events.
We question not for an answer, but to experience the truth.
The New Spring Retreat starts with the famous Experiencing the Nature of Being Workshop (ENB) and three other consciousness workshops. All of these workshops have been created by Peter Ralston and are facilitated by Brendan Lea with daily visits by Peter Ralston.
The most central and indispensable consciousness workshop is Experiencing the Nature of Being (ENB). It is the foundational must-do workshop that should be repeated several times. It is the workshop that most closely relates to the material expressed in The Book of Not Knowing. The ENB is required for more advanced workshops and empowers one’s study of all other workshops. Following the ENB is the Ending Suffering Workshop (ESW), you can guess what it is about, and it really does work! This is followed by the very advanced Transcending Life and Death Workshop (TLD), it is not just a philosophical look into these matters but a real encounter of the reality of life and death—it is not for the faint of heart. We end the line up with lots of contemplation in the Insight and Enlightenment Workshop (IEW).
Too often, the work of understanding ourselves amounts to little more than exchanging one set of beliefs and opinions for another. Many give up, thinking that they have exhausted all possibilities of encountering a truly powerful, transformative event. These workshops represent such a possibility.
As always, the month-long format provides a comprehensive study of interrelated facets of the Cheng Hsin work. The beauty of the consciousness work is that it offers a means to investigate the very process by which we experience self and life. The beauty of the martial work is that it is unmatched for providing crucial feedback about our patterns and limitations in thinking and learning (which is now studied in the Winter Retreat).
In such a concentrated environment of continuous learning, students not only have the chance to investigate at much greater depths, but the effects of their study will accumulate exponentially.
Use the buttons below to get a brochure, learn more about workshops, or register.
Experiencing the Nature of Being
(Week One)
This workshop was designed by Peter as a concentrated experiential inquiry into the nature of Being. This is the central and most essential consciousness workshop we do.
If you look in the dictionary, you’ll read that ontology is the study of being, of existence. It is a deep and complex field, with various aspects frequently under debate by philosophers, scientists, and theologians. This is a central aspect of our consciousness work. Move beyond the habits of perception that limit us in our abilities, our relationships, and our lives.
Consciousness work is not about acquiring knowledge. Instead, within the framework of this unique, hands-on experiential workshop increased consciousness starts to become real, not just heard about.
This workshop is a unique opportunity to confront beliefs and concepts, and transform the very mechanisms that determine your experience, your actions, your relationships, and your abilities.
As a participant you will:
- Learn to make a distinction between conceptualization and actual experience.
- Discover that you can remove concepts and beliefs from anything—from yourself, another person, an object, or a situation—resulting in a much more genuine and authentic experience of what’s there.
- Be guided in opening up to experience your most authentic self—beyond your history, self-image, ego, intellect, emotion, or any other aberrating factor.
- Realize how changing from a dynamic of reactivity to one of free responsiveness can create alternatives to manipulating or being manipulated by others.
- Investigate the very foundations of mind, being, and reality.
- You will experience with increasing depth and clarity the real make-up of your existence, and move toward an understanding that surpasses the limits of thought. Here, you will discover a possibility of freedom and creativity that was, literally, inconceivable before now.
To enroll yourself in this workshop is to take action that speaks louder than words about your personal commitment to awakening.
Cheng Hsin Consciousness work is INTENSE and DEMANDS your attention, energy, and commitment. The only other requirement is to be there. If you’re up for a mind-blowing adventure, consider yourself invited to this powerful event.
We question not for an answer, but to experience the truth.
Ending Suffering Workshop
(Week Two)
The Ending Suffering Workshop (or ESW), delivers powerful understandings that will change one’s life, eliminating all unnecessary suffering and allowing you to experience being a complete and whole person without defect or needing something you don’t have.
Within this workshop, we create the experience of living life as a real and powerful activity, and not as a plethora of rather unbalanced and crazy, or at least unneeded, mental and emotional activities that in the end cause the vast majority of your suffering, as well as a sense that your person and life are somehow incomplete and not as they should be.
It is a very powerful new workshop that really everyone should do. It will change the rest of your life in regards to all those things you do, often unconsciously, that create suffering in so many ways—feeling incomplete, dissatisfied, depressed, fretting, despair, disappointment, upset, unsettled, helpless, unloved, isolated, and on and on. If this sounds like something you’d like to take on, sign up for the Ending Suffering Workshop.
Transcending Life and Death Workshop
(Week Three)
This is the big one! We have excellent workshops on what dominates your life, how experience is created, even changing your experience of life. But thus far, we haven’t done a workshop on the central and most primal issue of life and death.
Even without enlightenment, by getting free of our deep and overwhelming assumptions about life and the meaning of life, and confronting the overlooked and resisted realities of death, we can proceed to confront and create a new relationship, understanding, and experience of life and death.
Note: The Experiencing the Nature of Being Workshop is highly recommended before doing this workshop, and we also recommend doing the Transcending Self Workshop at some point prior to tackling this one, and that you follow your TLD immediately with the Insight and Enlightenment Workshop.
Insight and Enlightenment Workshop
(Week Four)
Contemplation Intensive meets Ontological Workshop. In this workshop, roughly half the time will be devoted to pure contemplation, primarily in the form of dyads with a partner (Contemplation and Communication Exercises). The other half will be exercises, guided meditations, talks, and dialogues given by Peter about subjects aligned with this contemplative effort. Such a two-fold approach both opens and grounds our work. Some of what will be addressed: Let go of unnecessary attachments Open up beyond mind Wonder: What is a body? Get to the source of your perceptions. Look into your very “soul.” Discover the illusions of self and life. Undertake the koan of Now Transcend the separation conundrum. Approach the Absolute nature of existence directly.
*Note – The Insight and Enlightenment Workshop is available to everybody with no prior experience required.
The Retreat Space
This retreat will be held on a private 14 acre property. Breaks should be refreshing and relaxing. The schedule leaves some room for swimming and introspection as you reflect on the work and soak in the experiences of the day.
What’s Included:
The cost of the martial sections includes instruction, room and board, a huge space with good mats. For those with the courage to participate in the consciousness work, the cost includes room and board plus a guided tour of your own consciousness by one of the most riveting and focused teachers you will ever encounter.
The Center
Our center includes a 40×80 foot hall with kitchen, showers, sinks, and toilets. Participants will be housed in the building, or in large tent-cabins, and provided with a huge cot, foam, sleeping bag, pillow and lights. There is also a large swimming pool and hot tub.
Signing Up:
To secure the most inexpensive fee available, a non-refundable deposit is due far in advance. For exact dates and amounts go to registration, and for dates see the Schedule of Events.
Spring Retreat On Zoom
We have been working to create a way for people to participate in the workshops online. So far it works. If you want to participate in these workshops online you will need a computer and the newest Zoom application. If you have never used Zoom it would be good to try it out and get to know how it works beforehand.
The times for the workshops will generally start at 8am and end around 9 or 10pm, Central Standard Time in the USA. So depending on where you live you will have to adjust your sleeping schedule and perhaps be up much of the night and sleep during the day. Best to start that shift a few days before the workshop.
Making this alteration to your sleep schedule and having to sit in front of a computer for about 8 hours a day (with many breaks) is the down side. The upside is you don’t have to travel and during the pandemic can remain at home. If you are willing to make these adjustments then join us in the Spring Retreat.
More details will be sent if you sign up and click the Zoom option.
*ZOOM Spring Retreat Registration
*Zoom is not available for martial arts
