WILD ZEN RETREAT TESTIMONIALS

WHAT IS YOUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF IVAN’S APPROACH?

• the teachings

• therapy, breathwork

• shamanic work

• integration

How did it (they) work for you?

Preamble (This section can be skipped for my answers to the above 4 points. I’m setting their context using my meta-consciousness of my experience.)

Now I arrive at the both the simplest and most difficult of answers among the three questions. I beg you to indulge me your attention and any feedback of what I say here or said at Loon Lake. After all, each of us have blind-spots that can hold us back from our potential and a loving brother (or sister) would gently point them out.

I try not to use glibly the word teach. I instruct for a living which is different from ‘teaching’. Instructing is simply giving step-by-step direction to a group who should all arrive at the same outcome. Teaching, on the other hand and if it is done well, uses much more than directing as a strategy. It does not simply follow a step-by-step plan. It does follow a strategy that can be change within the dynamics group interaction. Teaching accommodates among other strategies sharing among a group. Moreover, teaching allows for a wider range of both intentional and unintentional outcomes. While teaching should offer an outcome, it seen more as a guiding process rather than directing. The most important principle in teaching a group, especially adults with substantial life experiences, is it must accommodate a diverse set of world views and the experiences that informs it.

In Ivan Rados WILD ZEN setting, it was able to accommodate so many world views among the group. These world views are as unique as a snowflake that are shaped by culture, family, language, space, institutions, experiences, and perhaps the ‘unsensed’ spirit realm as I infer from Ivan’s teaching. Similarly, two people who come from the identical set social influences enumerated above may respond quite differently from their identical world view.

Teaching is something I try to do both practically and spiritually in my all my different kinds of relationships. I try to fit the lesson or topic discussed within a wider framework such as humanity, spirituality, and our global environment. For me, teaching uses primarily my mind which Ivan has taughtus to not allow it to be the master. This principle is not new to me. There is also teaching from the heart in which I doubt mine does well. I must stress here that I also teach with my heart because sitting in the seat of authority, I am aware of the pupil’s expectations that I must bear them. Authority should always begin and end with love and never be self-serving. Authority is seated on wisdom that cannot always be explained nor understood unless one is conscious of their experience. There are many wonderful spiritual leaders who have taught us this.

I believe Ivan can be counted among them. I saw his face when I aroused prematurely from my second journey as he paced about the Maloka wondering what happened to one of our brothers. He had to wear the mantle of authority and seek within himself a different kind of wisdom to deliver our brother’s safety. He journeyed through his mind, heart and soul while he traversed the mountainside through the evening but he stayed primarily in his heart.

Throughout the weekend with Ivan, I could feel and hear that he was teaching from his heart which I’m sure everyone did. His passion and earnest hold out promise to us that if we seek inward rather than outward we will find exactly for what we were looking. With this inward focus, I arrive at my summary of the experience. While I enjoyed and was informed primarily by my first medicine journey, I heeded Ivan’s teaching. The medicine journey is not the sole answer. It’s not the magic bullet. For us to become enamoured by its powerful expereince is simply another form of escapism. I’m not saying escapism is a bad response to life. All humans need to escape occasionally. It’s just a waste of a life to seek constantly relief from your own life and ignore the wisdom offered by our heartfelt pain, frustration and suffering. Our hearts are trying to tell each of us something and we must be shown gratitude.

To seek healing through the medicine only is like getting a troublesome car started with a boost, a spray of eather or a jiggle of some automotive wire. Without doing the work keeping the car running such as diagnosis, replacing a part here and there, or simply taking it to a mechanic, the car will simply ‘die’ again. (Now, I would like to take my life into a life mechanic and say, “Fix it!”, but there isn’t a life mechanic last time I checked. But, this is why we form relationships and connection. They help inform us toward a happy life.)Teachings

The following are my black-white points of Ivan’s teaching:

• Owing and loving your ‘shit’

This is where the retreat began. Embracing this task permits us to claim our power and move us toward exactly where we need to go.

• Power begins and ends with taking responsibility for your shit.

Even when your shit was given to you by somebody else, it’s still your shit. The beauty in owing it, is you can look at it again and choose to hang onto it or let it go. This includes the shit your spouse, brother, sister, boss, friend or some stranger who you met for 10 seconds and will never see again.

• Power is neither positive or negative; rather it resides in the middle somewhere between the two.

This one I do not understand nor can feel. My power unfortunately is intertwined with my anger which is not a good emotion to constantly accompany me through life.

• Breathing is the power of now

Next to the medicine, this was a powerful experience. I believe I ended up with the same affect/effect as the medicine. I emptied myself which I alluded in an earlier posting was probably the theme of my retreat.

• I was enamoured by what I may have heard or misheard Ivan’s use of the word ‘fractal’

This led me to research it . While Ivan didn’t expand on it, I believe why this word is so pivotal for me. If I were to surmise it’s importance, then a fractal complexity can overwhelm the ego (mind) but not the heart.

The following points were gratefully received from Joel who took notes from Ivan Rados and heard by me during our sessions with Ivan.

• Embarrassment is ego-influencing.

• What is unconscious to me is conscious to others. This can be a pivot of manipulation of me.

• Love equates to self-awareness

• The mind performs the following tasks well: Designate - Indicate - Communicate - Create

• The mind is poorly adapted to loving.

• Love is the ultimate acceptance of self and others

• My thoughts are not me

• My feelings are not me

• My experiences are not me

• Do not define yourself through your mind

• There are so many managers for the mind; be aware of your manager.

• The mind is actually an illusion. There is no mind; there is only thought.

• The mind is like a tube through which flow thoughts

• The tube is also the connection between me and the divine. I allow whether to permit thoughts to flow through or other phenomena.

• Emotions are an interpretation of the mind

• Emotions come from the mind and your heart reacts by feeling them.

Just the few phrases are departures from other teachings offered by Eckhart Tolle, Sam Harris, Dr Gabor Mate to name a few people I have read and intently heard through podcast. I think one gap I at the center of my radar which wasn’t address is the practice of accountability to myself and my relationships, both intimate and arm’s length. There are now more questions than answers but at least now the questions feel different and worthy of seeking answers.

For right now, I believe I am called to empty myself. I don’t have to pick and choose what to empty. I simply need to breath with focus and let out the boulders so that room can be made in my heart for more empowering feelings and impetus in my life. The ultimate goal which was unrealistic in the first place was to heal from the profound hurt of not being loved by the woman who has been beside me for 40 years. However, I believe the retreat has provided me enough tools to use daily toward that healing, no matter how long it takes.

—OSCAR