Dear Friends,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I will be participating in a New Year’s Retreat with Susie Harrington this weekend. (Not to worry – I have posts queued up for the next couple of days! But I won’t be monitoring emails or messages Friday evening through Sunday afternoon.<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the things I love about retreats with Susie is the way she starts them. (You can listen to an example in the first few minutes here.<\/a>) I will borrow from her to start our month together…<\/p>\n\n\n\n So welcome!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Welcome all<\/strong> of you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I hear those words from Susie, I get almost teary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’m sure many folks know the experience of only allowing certain parts to be present in different circumstances – when I’m the daughter, the co-worker, the cyclist, the grocery shopper, the dog caregiver, the meditator, …<\/p>\n\n\n\n Susie invites the question: What is it like to welcome all of you – to make space for all aspects of yourself? To not have to be any particular way. To include all of yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That’s our invitation for our time of practice this month, if only for the few minutes you meditate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Susie explains that part of our practice is to cultivate enough of a sense of safety that we can let down our guard with ourselves so that we can completely show up. To develop a kind, curious relationship with what’s here. And not about fixing, changing, making things different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Do you get the little voice, like I sometimes do, “yeah, but…” and then list a litany of things that range from personal inconveniences to systemic injustices to world catastrophes. Of course that’s true too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is suffering. There is happiness. And everything in between.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We start by being aware of the relationship we are having with the present moment – whatever is arising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we can be in a wise and compassionate relationship to the present moment, that opens up possibilities. We no longer need to react from our habit patterns and conditioning. Instead, we can have a breath and try to discern – what’s the most appropriate thing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n In that space, there’s choice, creativity, possibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The theme of the retreat talks I’ll be using for inspiration this month is “Finding the Heart of Wisdom<\/a>” with Jill Shepherd<\/a> and DaRa Williams<\/a> – and I think Susie’s welcoming is aligned with that spirit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So welcome! All of you is welcome here. I’m glad you will be part of this month together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All the emails will be archived to this blog: I\u2019m grateful for the guidance and support from Jeanne Corrigal<\/a>, the guiding teacher for the https:\/\/saskatooninsight.com\/<\/a>. I also wish to acknowledge my gratitude to many other special teachers, including Susie Harrington<\/a>, Rachel Lewis<\/a>, Adrianne Ross<\/a>, Andrea Fella<\/a>, bruni d\u00e1vila<\/a>, Jill Shepherd, Vince Fakhoury Horn<\/a>, and numerous teachers who generously make their teaching available through Dharma Seed<\/a>, Audio Dharma<\/a>, books, and other resources. I\u2019m also fortunate to have admirable friendships with practitioners in various meditation groups – they inspire me! (Any errors or misunderstandings are my own.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stay tuned for the first email\/post tomorrow!<\/p>\n\n\n\n With warmest wishes, Dear Friends, I will be participating in a New Year’s Retreat with Susie Harrington this weekend. (Not to worry – I have posts queued up for the next couple of days! But I won’t be monitoring emails or messages Friday evening through Sunday afternoon.) One of the things I love about retreats with Susie is the way she\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[302],"tags":[51,70],"class_list":["post-1244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jan-2022","tag-susie-harrington","tag-welcome"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1244"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1666,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1244\/revisions\/1666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Comments are open on the newer posts, and you are invited to share your thoughts and feedback on the posts, or reply by email too. I love to hear from you – and we learn best when we learn together!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Andrea Grzesina
andrea@grzesina.net<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"