Conversations:
A Beautiful Life
An Open Path Retreat with Pir Elias Amidon
12:00 pm October 25th - 3:00 pm October 28th, 2012
For more information or to register, click here
This advanced Open Path Retreat is about living a beautiful life. We will begin with reminding ourselves of the clear presence of “open awareness,” and return again and again to rest in its natural spaciousness. From this clear basis we will attune ourselves to the nature of beauty and its gift of aliveness. The recognition of beauty brings both the beautiful object to life — as when we experience music deeply — and it inspires aliveness within us.
Throughout this retreat we will learn to follow beauty and its living generosity, not only in nature and art, but in the delight of our being, moment to moment. We will also explore the character of the beautiful act — doing the beautiful — and how beauty is inseparable from justice and fairness. As a poet has said, “The key to ethics is aesthetics.” In this way our recognition of the nondual nature of being includes not only mystical realization, but personal, social, and political significance as well.
The Open Path is a non-sectarian, inclusive approach to what is often called nondual “awakening” or nondual awareness. This is the same awakening that is the heart essence of all mystical traditions, whether Sufism, Buddhism, Dzogchen, Advaita, mystical Christianity, shamanism, or any other authentic path. While some of the retreat participants will have completed a nine-month Open Path training, all who have been touched by direct realization—through formal teachings, spontaneous experiences in nature, experiences with sacred medicines, or during childhood, when the veils obscuring our basic nature are often less opaque—are welcome.
The retreat will include periods of direct teaching, guided meditation, individual practices, small group exercises, extended silence, and musical meditation. Participants are requested to attend the entire retreat, from noon on the first day to 3:00 PM on the final day.
Registration is $465
Early Registration (by August 24, 2012) is $415
Register Here
Elias Amidon is the spiritual director (Pir) of the Sufi Way. He has been an initiate of the Sufi Way for the past 42 years, and was appointed as the Pir of the order in 2004 by the previous Pir, Sitara Brutnell. His root teacher in the order was Pir Fazal Inayat-Khan. He has also studied with Qadiri Sufis in Morocco, Theravaden Buddhist teachers in Thailand, Native American teachers of the Assemblies of the Morning Star, Christian monks in Syria, and Zen teachers of the White Plum Sangha.
Co-editor of the books Earth Prayers, Life Prayers, and Prayers for a Thousand Years, he has worked for many years in the fields of peace and environmental activism in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and with indigenous tribes in Thailand and Burma on issues of cultural continuity and land-rights. He was instrumental in founding the Masar Ibrahim Al Khalil (Abraham Path), an international project dedicated to helping Middle Eastern countries open a network of cultural routes and walking trails through the region.
