The Deepening Practice Training is designed to provide spiritual training in a monastic setting for serious students practicing in the world.  The program is divided into two phases. 

The first phase consists of a one-month “Basic Training Retreat” during which a student is provided with the tools of awareness practice, an environment that supports practice with these tools, and the guidance of Cheri Huber and the resident monks as the student learns to incorporate awareness practice into daily life.  A full description of this phase follows below.  The Basic Training Retreat will benefit both beginners and long-term practitioners: the deeper a student’s practice, the deeper the experience that will result from the training.  For this reason, the training may be repeated indefinitely, either as a preparation for the next phase or as a means of support for a student’s increasing awareness. 

The second phase will consist of four week-long trainings in the art of spiritual facilitation. During these retreats a student will continue to deepen practice and learn how to offer awareness practice to others.  This phase of the program will be offered in 2008.

When both phases have been completed, students will receive a certificate of completion and official permission to take the practice into the world as a facilitator, under the continued guidance of the Monastery.

The Basic Training Retreat

The Basic Training Retreat will be offered within the Privileged Environment of the Monastery, an environment created to maximize awareness and minimize distraction, in which the student focuses on the processes that create suffering, and on the possibility of living in freedom.  During the retreat, the Monastery will offer a specialized workshop curriculum providing training in:

• Formal sitting meditation
• Attention and awareness skills
• The five basic processes of awareness practice: beliefs and assumptions, projection,
              aspects of the personality, disidentification, and centering
• Working meditation
• Process mapping
• Reflective listening

In addition the Monastery will offer the following supports:

• Three to five group meditation periods daily
• Three group discussions with the monks per week
• Individual guidance three times a week with a resident monk 
• Participation in one retreat with Cheri Huber

Outside of workshops, groups, and guidance, the student will practice in the monastic silence alongside the monks, following a daily schedule similar to the one the monks follow when not on retreat.  Built into the schedule will be meals, working meditation, and time to rest.  Every aspect of the environment, every moment of the day and night, is designed to focus the student’s attention on awareness, so that practice may deepen according to the willingness brought to this process.

Note that we require all participants to attend the entire month. It will not be possible to begin late or leave early.

For Your Consideration

This program has been created for serious spiritual students only.  Participants in the one-month Basic Training may expect to be physically and emotionally challenged to a degree that is unusual outside of a monastic setting.  Much of the time will be spent doing work that maintains the community.  Students will not be permitted to socialize or to form any sort of personal relationships with other students or with the monks.  Celibacy is required.  If the student chooses, he or she may make one phone call per week to someone outside the Monastery, but otherwise no contact with the outside world will be available.  Students typically do not leave the property during the month training except for solitary walks as time allows. 

It should also be understood that a commitment to the Deepening Practice Training implies an agreement to accept and to follow the guidance of the Monastery in all matters while on the property.  In this and in all things it will be essential that students bring with them an uncompromising willingness and desire to go beyond suffering; without this, there will not be success.

Qualifications

Applicants are required to have completed at least two retreats in this practice:

1. A There Is Nothing Wrong With You retreat, either at the Monastery or elsewhere
2. A retreat involving working meditation

In addition, applicants are required to be in good physical, mental, and emotional health, used to regular exercise, and to have a committed meditation practice.

Costs

The cost of the one-month Basic Training is $1000.  This is the minimum we can charge and still maintain the Monastery financially while we offer the program. We are grateful for donations beyond this amount, and we ask students to consider if there is a way they can find to bring a donation with them to leave at the end of their training to help support the Monastery in its next endeavor.

Due to extensive preparation involved for a retreatant to be at the Monastery for a month, we require a one-month cancellation notice. Registration pledges will not be refunded if you cancel less than one month before the retreat, fail to attend, or leave early.

Students are also expected to cover any expenses they may incur while at the Monastery beyond food and housing.  We ask that each person bring with them all the toiletry items, medications, etc., that they will need during their stay.

Each student is responsible for his or her own health care. 

To Register

Visit the retreat page and follow the registration instructions:

August 1-31, 2008