Men's Soul Tavern Retreat Preparations
“We’re in a free fall into the future. We don’t know where we are going. Things are changing so fast. And always when you are going through a long tunnel, anxiety comes along. But all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a voluntary act. It’s a very interesting shift of perspective….joyfully participate in the sorrows of the world and everything changes.”
– Joseph Campbell
Saying ‘Yes’ To It All
Preparing For Your Men’s Online Soul Tavern Retreat
For this upcoming retreat, we will be working with content from two book and one webpage:
1. The first reference is from the latest work of James Hollis – Living Between Worlds: Finding Personal Resilience In Changing Times (2020). Hollis encourages us to encompass the relationship between our inner struggles and the rapidly shifting realities of modern human existence. He reminds us that the path through for us will always rely on our connection to a reality larger than ourselves.
Read – Chapter 8 – Navigating Changing Times – Hollis. This is a PDF copy of that chapter, if you don’t already have the book.
2. The second reference is from Connie Zweig’s book – The Inner Work of Age: Shiftiing From Role To Soul (2021). This book is a resource for how to reorient by turning within, attuning to your soul’s longing and cultivating a deeper shift in awareness.
Read – Chapter 6 – A Review Of Your Lived & Unlived Life – Zweig. Using the hero’s journey model, you can turn within by reading this PDf, and do some honest self-examination about where you have been, to help shape where you need to go from here.
3. From the Quality of Life Project – read this one page of Joseph Campbell passages related to the notion of ‘Saying Yes To It All‘.
PLEASE NOTE: Plan to bring a JOURNAL to the retreat, to record important encounters and insights that emerge in unexpected ways during our conversations and self-reflection times.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Listen to this moving conversation from the most recent episode of the podcast “On Being” – called Loss, Yearning and Transcendence. Krista Tippett talks with the musician Nick Cave.
In the Absence of the Ordinary. This is a short but excellent ebook by Francis Weller that reflects in depth wisdom that is very sympatico with the Hero’s Journey model of transformation.
“…the Buddhists say the way of living in the world is joyful participation in the sorrows of the world. It’s the way of the one who is grounded in eternity and moving in the field of time. The field of time is the field of sorrow. Life is sorrowful. How do you live with that?
You realize the eternal within yourself and participate with joy in the sorrows of the world out there. You play the game. It hurts, but you know that you have found the place that is transcendent of injury and fulfillments. You are there and that’s it.”