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On the other hand, how many people have you met who seem to be living a charmed life; who make their own good luck as they go; and who always seem to turn difficulties to their advantage

Not so many, right? But wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could actually learn to live a ‘charmed life’?

The truth is, you can. It’s a lot easier than you think. Anyone can do it. It begins with one single, simple skill: the ability to FOCUS.

How you focus, and where you direct your focus, determines just about everything in your life. And the best kept secret has always been that it really is much easy to change everything (by changing your focus in very specific ways) than you think.

You may have been taught that it’s difficult or impossible to change, that meditation is hard, that it takes years. But when you learn to change both how you focus, and what you focus on, you change everything. New attitudes, like new growth in springtime, change how you think, live, feel, and respond to the events of your life. Positive change becomes so easy you’ll wonder why you were so stuck before. Things start to go round and round again, but this time in a whole new direction.

I am not talking about having superhuman concentration. This is not about accepting someone else’s belief system, or putting your life on hold, or joining or subscribing to anything other than your own ability to change. It’s about learning to live by choice; it’s about mastering negative emotional habits so that you are no longer fighting a battle inside.

Now Live on Purpose, at Manzanita Village, is an immersion in simple essential skills for mindfulness and focus; exquisite tools that transform everything about how you can now move from feeling stuck, to knowing you can live a life of genuine celebration, internal wellbeing, and freedom.

Whether or not you think you know something about meditation, join us for this silent retreat to learn tools for mindfulness and change. Begin to use meditation not just as a way of passively observing, but to actively heal self-limiting beliefs, and persistent negative emotions. In these three days we will guide you through skills that you can easily incorporate into your life.

How is it that the simplest things are often made to seem like they are complex? Are you ready to unravel the tangle of the limitations from your past that tell you what you can and cannot accomplish? Click Here

No doubt my thoughts have as much to do with my own obtuse contrariness as they do with the truth of the matter. And certainly, anything that directs our collective attention towards the bigger picture of our planet is of incalculable value. If only for a day!

Our species is in population expansion overdrive. Our demand for resources – food, fuel, water, and weaponry – vies with our adaptive ingenuity in a ways that would have any extra-terrestrial spectator on the edge of their extra-terrestrial seat. Or perhaps they might be groaning in horror and disbelief. “How do you do it?” I can hear them say. “How do you manage to blind yourself to the long term consequences of your policies and activities; and then come up with apparently brilliant solutions, many of them almost as shortsighted as the problems they solve?”

“And the trouble with you spiritual practices,” they might add, “is they are almost as much of a problem. They have the nasty habit of becoming another way for you to avoid the consequences of your actions.”

“Elegant systems of denial and resignation, however time-honored they may be; do not seem to be any more valuable than the shrill pronouncements of the more ardent progressives and activists among you. They are just ways for you to not look at the big picture of what you’re doing to each other.”

So on this Earth Day 2011, pondering the pronouncements of my extra-terrestrial friends,  I turn off my computer, say a little prayer for the people of Libya, Syria, Azerbaijan, Yemen and  Japan, and for my friends who tackle violence and injustice head on, and for everyone I can think of or imagine, and take a long walk over the hills beyond our gate, marveling at the vibrancy and beauty of this extraordinary, resilient, and still vibrant planet we call out home, before returning to help prepare lunch for the dozen or so Taiwanese who are staying here this week for a retreat – their own way of celebrating Earth Day perhaps.

Just as we put up walls and a roof in which to take shelter and live, just as we put up fences to delineate ownership, make maps, make distinctions between categories we invent, and then forget that the source of our life is in the primordial crucible or mud, volcanic ash, oceans, and intergalactic dust, and completely without boundaries .. so too do we make self-limiting distinctions within our minds that lead us to completely miss all that we truly are, and can be.

You could write a book to unpack the idea of the wild. In fact there have been several. I am thinking in particular of Gary Snyder’s Practice of the Wild.

Join us for a retreat to learn ways to open to the simplicity of living from the innate and naturally wild capacity of mind.

A three day silent retreat with Caitriona Reed and Michele Benzamin-Miki at Manzanita Village.

http://www.manzanitavillage.org/meditation-retreats-california-information/2010/#Quick_Links_7

On retreats there are fewer distractions, and the accumulated days of the retreat give you enough time to address some of the initial difficulties, and to clarify what meditation is all about. You are in a supportive environment; and on a teacher-led retreat you have the guidance of an expert who can help you avoid some of the pitfalls that beginning meditation students sometimes encounter.

You might be needing a little tranquility round about now and just by taking the time to slow down and put aside distractions — even temporarily putting aside the things that may be important — can give you some new perspectives and help you tap into your internal resources of energy and tranquility. You will then go back to your everyday life refreshed and renewed. Coming to a retreat center like Manzanita Village, where the air and water are pristine, and where your surroundings are spacious, has a measurable beneficial effect on your physiology and mental state. Even without the meditation you would feel renewed. Add to that the gentle discipline of focusing and mindful attention, and after a few days you will feel like a new person.

You CAN teach old dogs new tricks. Meditation is easier than you think. Human beings are amazingly skilled at learning. I don’t just mean learning new information. I mean learning new skills and strategies. It’s easier than you think. Who said it’s hard to teach old dogs new tricks! We do it all the time – and we’re old dogs ourselves, I’d even go so far as to say we have a passion for learning new things!

Here’s an analogy … if someone showed you a shortcut that took fifteen minutes off your daily commute, how long would it take you to use the shortcut? You’d start immediately, right?

When you understand the immediate –as well as immediately accessible – benefits of tools you will learn for focusing and meditating, you will want to be using them right away. And we’ll also show you how to overcome the inertia you may have in regards to with learning new patterns of behavior.

Do you know how many days it takes to learn a new habit? We’ll tell you that too.

Strangely, this does not make you less able to deal with the ‘realities’ of everyday living. On the contrary, you tend to make fewer distinctions between the dualities and abstractions that people have been so fond of. Which is why the greatest truths may have once gone over your head, inaccessible to you, when you looked for such things outside of yourself.

Which is why also, “spiritual” or personal realization is to be found in the world. There is no outside – except in the dreams of idealists and spiritual desperadoes.

The Wisdom of insecurity is simply the ability to relax, to enjoy your life. What a radical thought!

“No I must suffer more to gain the necessary benefits,” says a little voice inside you.

Well, it’s your choice. Like almost everything else in your life. And if it’s not, then ask what can change now, when you choose to designate it as such – life by choice. No one else’s – your own. It’s as simple as that. What a relief! Nothing and no one to blame any more. If you think that might free up a whole lot of energy you’re right.

One of the great masters of Budo (a physically demanding Japanese dance and performance-art form) didn’t take up the art until after he was seventy.

Thomas Edison went to school for a total of only three months then went on to become the man we consider the most brilliant inventor and engineering innovator of all time. The original business of Richard Branson, which have made him one of the richest men in the world, was named Virgin because everyone in the company, including himself, was completely new to business.

Neurolinguistics (NLP) is based on studying how we make change, internally and externally, and how we make, and can change, the meanings we make of things.

It’s not a religion, or a cult, or a sales technique. Originally it was developed by modeling such luminaries as Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, Milton Erickson, and Gregory Bateson.

As someone who has been passionately interested in the nature of change for as long as I can remember – as a Buddhist teacher, as a poet, as a clinical hypnotherapist, and as a women of transsexual experience – my passion for Neurolingistics has reawakened because I have come to it as the tool par excellence for implementing effective person change in any area of your life or work, and as the ideal compliment to any personal or spiritual discipline for change.

- I hope you can join us for our upcoming trainings  http://www.nlpalchemy.com

Typical Retreat Days include meditation, Dharma talks, discussion, and movement; with some unstructured time for hiking, reading, and resting. In addition to traditional retreats we also offer workshops with specific themes —creativity, creative-writing, martial-arts, deep-ecology, as well as queer-specific themes and retreats for transgendered people, as well as for people of color and of mixed-race.

Although we are a Buddhist inspired center and offer traditional Dharma practice, we are ecumenical in spirit, inquisitive by nature, and averse to those who espouse a singular point of view. We hold to the basic Buddhist Precepts and also recognize that “the understanding we presently posses is not changeless, absolute truth”.

The teachings given here are flexible and practical. The style in which they are presented is non-coercive, non-hierarchical, and creative, and always honors the wisdom that we understand to be inherent in every person. As a result of our open approach there is a natural sense of community that is felt on every retreat, no matter how long or short it is.

All of our work is informed by the traditions of Socially Engaged Spiritual Practice. We have conclude 2 two-year programs for social activists, and next year we will be initiating our SANCTUARY II program.