Events
"Paul Weiss and his staff provided impeccable leadership and direction as we were swiftly brought into deeper levels of awareness of our true nature." -- R.H.
Upcoming events
Kinship with a More than Human World
Join Readings on Race for something different this winter: zooming out (and meeting over zoom), we will sit with broader perspectives on the "Human Race" in relationship with the non-human world. This podcast is part of a larger project, which you can learn about here.
Meetings will be Monday evenings (see dates below) at 7pm on Zoom. We will discuss 2 episodes every week. Find links to the podcast and other resources here.
About the podcast: Kinship With The More Than Human World podcast
"In various cultures around the world, human identity cannot be separated from our nonhuman kin. The landscapes we call home — grasslands and forests, mountains and rocks, rivers and oceans — are shared by nonhuman beings who may be considered relatives. Age-old myths and modern science reinforce these kinship relationships. From forest ecology to the human microbiome, emerging research suggests that being human is a complicated journey made possible only by the good graces of our many companions. Leading scientists, philosophers and writers illuminate ways in which “personhood” transcends the human species and shows how kinship practices can deepen our care and respect for the more-than-human world."
Mondays 7-8pm
Discussing two episodes each week. Contact the library if you need help accessing the podcasts. You can listen on Spotify, Google Podcasts. The first four have transcripts online and article links if you prefer to read.
February 13th
"1:Eye-to-eye animal encounters" and "2:Plants as persons"
February 27th
"3:When mountains are gods" and "4:Shapeshifting"
March 13th
"5:Kincentricity" and "6:Internet of trees"
March 27th
"7:Mind-bending world of mushrooms" and "8: Wisdom of the desert"
Kinship with a More than Human World
Join Readings on Race for something different this winter: zooming out (and meeting over zoom), we will sit with broader perspectives on the "Human Race" in relationship with the non-human world. This podcast is part of a larger project, which you can learn about here.
Meetings will be Monday evenings (see dates below) at 7pm on Zoom. We will discuss 2 episodes every week. Find links to the podcast and other resources here.
About the podcast: Kinship With The More Than Human World podcast
"In various cultures around the world, human identity cannot be separated from our nonhuman kin. The landscapes we call home — grasslands and forests, mountains and rocks, rivers and oceans — are shared by nonhuman beings who may be considered relatives. Age-old myths and modern science reinforce these kinship relationships. From forest ecology to the human microbiome, emerging research suggests that being human is a complicated journey made possible only by the good graces of our many companions. Leading scientists, philosophers and writers illuminate ways in which “personhood” transcends the human species and shows how kinship practices can deepen our care and respect for the more-than-human world."
Mondays 7-8pm
Discussing two episodes each week. Contact the library if you need help accessing the podcasts. You can listen on Spotify, Google Podcasts. The first four have transcripts online and article links if you prefer to read.
February 13th
"1:Eye-to-eye animal encounters" and "2:Plants as persons"
February 27th
"3:When mountains are gods" and "4:Shapeshifting"
March 13th
"5:Kincentricity" and "6:Internet of trees"
March 27th
"7:Mind-bending world of mushrooms" and "8: Wisdom of the desert"
Kinship with a More than Human World
Join Readings on Race for something different this winter: zooming out (and meeting over zoom), we will sit with broader perspectives on the "Human Race" in relationship with the non-human world. This podcast is part of a larger project, which you can learn about here.
Meetings will be Monday evenings (see dates below) at 7pm on Zoom. We will discuss 2 episodes every week. Find links to the podcast and other resources here.
About the podcast: Kinship With The More Than Human World podcast
"In various cultures around the world, human identity cannot be separated from our nonhuman kin. The landscapes we call home — grasslands and forests, mountains and rocks, rivers and oceans — are shared by nonhuman beings who may be considered relatives. Age-old myths and modern science reinforce these kinship relationships. From forest ecology to the human microbiome, emerging research suggests that being human is a complicated journey made possible only by the good graces of our many companions. Leading scientists, philosophers and writers illuminate ways in which “personhood” transcends the human species and shows how kinship practices can deepen our care and respect for the more-than-human world."
Mondays 7-8pm
Discussing two episodes each week. Contact the library if you need help accessing the podcasts. You can listen on Spotify, Google Podcasts. The first four have transcripts online and article links if you prefer to read.
February 13th
"1:Eye-to-eye animal encounters" and "2:Plants as persons"
February 27th
"3:When mountains are gods" and "4:Shapeshifting"
March 13th
"5:Kincentricity" and "6:Internet of trees"
March 27th
"7:Mind-bending world of mushrooms" and "8: Wisdom of the desert"
SOUNDheart Zoom Lunches
SOUNDheart Zoom Lunch Dates, Mondays12pm ZOOM beginning January 9th Join Sherene for lunch over zoom on Mondays for discussion and practices regarding our ability to maintain emotional integrity, moral courage, and attunement while engaging with personal, social, political, economic, and ecological conflicts. Part of our Membership Program
For the next several months we will be working with the concept of Presence. Each month we will focus on one of the 10 aspects of healing presence. Weekly discussion, meditation, and takeaway practices will be provided.
January: What is presence?
February: Non-Judging
March: Patience
April:Beginner’s Mind
May:Trust
June: Non-Striving
July:Acceptance
August:Gratitude
Sept:Generosity
October:Compassion
This program is also available in private sessions, please contact me for more info.
The Blessing Way
The Blessing Way
Our winter series begins Thursday, January 5 at 7pm
with Paul Weiss
Our word "bless" comes from the Indo-European root bhel, meaning to thrive or to bloom; which in its various journeys through the Latin and the Germanic also gives us the words blossom, blade (as in a blade of grass – bladen, the fruit of the earth), flower and flourish. It is about the natural abundance and affirmation of life. When we bless something, we offer our desire and support that it flower and flourish. We align with the innate abundance of being. As humans, we are consciously capable of that.
When we look at our own lives, we can see how we are also a part of the natural flow and abundance of life, and of the desire of life to come to its own fruition. But we may also see how many of our primary experiences, and our way of processing those experiences, has led to certain self-imposed shut-downs. The innate flourishing, or "Yes" of life within us, is confined by an accumulation of chronic "No's," understandably defensive or self-protecting patterns that result in restricting our affirmation of life, or affirmation of self. This chronic and sometimes subtle restriction of our life energy determines much of our physical imbalances as well as our psychological ills. And, of course, it affects the historical behavior of our species, our relationship to each other and to the planet.
It is a natural evolutionary consequence of our need for survival that we tend to give dominion to our negative interpretations of reality – what could go wrong; what is going wrong – over our more positive impressions. But it is also a necessity of this next more conscious stage of our evolution that we learn to recognize and take responsibility for our chronic and largely unconscious patterns of negativity – which reinforce chronic restrictions on the natural energetic flow of life within and around us. We must learn to exercise our capacity to bless. This is essential now not only to our own well-being, but also to the welfare of our families and communities, the welfare of our collective humanity, and the welfare of our entire ecology.
Hence, this is an issue that pertains to the health and to the full dimension of ourselves as physical, emotional, spiritual, and relational beings. Might it be worthy of addressing together?
* * * *.
This extensive evening program, running all winter, will explore minutely the roots and the practice of our spiritual and emotional capacity to bless – inwardly and outwardly. And it will explore as well all the subtleties of our chronic No, and those mechanisms of mind and emotion that naturally give rise to them and maintain them; even though it is not what our mind, body, heart, and soul really want. For these shut-downs not only restrict our daily well-being, they also restrict at the spiritual level our natural access to the infinite awareness and infinite dimension of life that is ours.
Our program will offer us both the "big view" and the "intimate view" in the course of our very careful reading and examining together of a contemporary spiritual text, or sutra, of my own composition, and which I have not yet shared out, variously called The Blessing Way Sutra or The Sutra of Yes and No. This poetic text first address the wholeness and perfection of our infinite source and its process of creation; how the natural arising of mind and its confusions turns this creative polarity into the duality of separation and negation, and how the traumas of our earliest experience further set the stage for our chronic self-limiting patterns. It then goes on to address at length the path of love, affirmation, devotion, and self-healing – the path of Yes – that can help lead us out of the fabricated maze of negation and suffering.
This program is intended as a tender, thorough, and provocative look at our human situation and at our ultimate capacity to "thrive" together. And it will be complemented by a Blessing Way retreat, offered here later this winter at The Whole Health Center.
Cost is $145. Or it is free to our members with a $25/month membership
SOUNDheart Zoom Lunches
SOUNDheart Zoom Lunch Dates, Mondays12pm ZOOM beginning January 9th Join Sherene for lunch over zoom on Mondays for discussion and practices regarding our ability to maintain emotional integrity, moral courage, and attunement while engaging with personal, social, political, economic, and ecological conflicts. Part of our Membership Program
For the next several months we will be working with the concept of Presence. Each month we will focus on one of the 10 aspects of healing presence. Weekly discussion, meditation, and takeaway practices will be provided.
January: What is presence?
February: Non-Judging
March: Patience
April:Beginner’s Mind
May:Trust
June: Non-Striving
July:Acceptance
August:Gratitude
Sept:Generosity
October:Compassion
This program is also available in private sessions, please contact me for more info.
Meditation Lab
Attunement and Intimacy, Our Saturday Morning Meditation Lab continues this winter at 8am on zoom.
with Paul Weiss.
Curious about Meditation Lab? Find a recording here.
Our Saturday Morning series begins on Zoom on January 8 at 8am
Attunement is a faculty of the brain-body very different from that of the thinking mind. While the mind routinely projects and processes a world of separation, relativity, and judgment, attunement unifies our awareness and allows intimacy with experience.
Attunement is also related to the faculty of interoception – our ability to "attune" or "listen" inwardly into our own bodies, into our own feelings and feeling states, or into the "essence" of this moment's experience. A natural capacity from which we are often distracted, this faculty is also essential to the depth and intimacy of our meditation and contemplation. Attunement is also essential to our capacity for emotional self-healing and, attuning outward, to the intimacy of our relationships. This echos our much stated concern for the conjoined development of both our integrity and our reciprocity.
At the first level of attunement, we are learning to tune our attention into this moment of pure experience without other mental distraction. Second, as we learn to hold and rest in that attunement, the heart and the body also come into coherence with that attunement – allowing for the rise of a more unified, and even infinite, field of experience.
Through this winter we will take our time together, using a variety of meditations and foundation exercises, to practice, deepen, and support our faculties of interoception and attunement. We will fine tune our capacity for interoception as a tool for cutting through the obstacles to meditation and for enhancing our capacity for healing. And for the greater integration of breath, body, mind, energy, and heart as a gateway to our infinite being.
As always, the Saturday Meditation Lab is intended to offer key instruction,
encouragement, and support to cultivating, deepening, and expanding your relationship to meditation – whether you are beginning or experienced.
This class is open to all unconditionally, though donations are needed and welcome.
You may join as a regular WHC member, or otherwise join weekly,
bookmarking a direct link to the class page on our website.
For questions: 207-288-4128 or info@thewholehealthcenter.org
The Whole Health Center.org.
Paul Weiss began his own zen practice in 1966, and has been teaching and leading retreats through The Whole Health Center since 1981.
The Blessing Way
The Blessing Way
Our winter series begins Thursday, January 5 at 7pm
with Paul Weiss
Our word "bless" comes from the Indo-European root bhel, meaning to thrive or to bloom; which in its various journeys through the Latin and the Germanic also gives us the words blossom, blade (as in a blade of grass – bladen, the fruit of the earth), flower and flourish. It is about the natural abundance and affirmation of life. When we bless something, we offer our desire and support that it flower and flourish. We align with the innate abundance of being. As humans, we are consciously capable of that.
When we look at our own lives, we can see how we are also a part of the natural flow and abundance of life, and of the desire of life to come to its own fruition. But we may also see how many of our primary experiences, and our way of processing those experiences, has led to certain self-imposed shut-downs. The innate flourishing, or "Yes" of life within us, is confined by an accumulation of chronic "No's," understandably defensive or self-protecting patterns that result in restricting our affirmation of life, or affirmation of self. This chronic and sometimes subtle restriction of our life energy determines much of our physical imbalances as well as our psychological ills. And, of course, it affects the historical behavior of our species, our relationship to each other and to the planet.
It is a natural evolutionary consequence of our need for survival that we tend to give dominion to our negative interpretations of reality – what could go wrong; what is going wrong – over our more positive impressions. But it is also a necessity of this next more conscious stage of our evolution that we learn to recognize and take responsibility for our chronic and largely unconscious patterns of negativity – which reinforce chronic restrictions on the natural energetic flow of life within and around us. We must learn to exercise our capacity to bless. This is essential now not only to our own well-being, but also to the welfare of our families and communities, the welfare of our collective humanity, and the welfare of our entire ecology.
Hence, this is an issue that pertains to the health and to the full dimension of ourselves as physical, emotional, spiritual, and relational beings. Might it be worthy of addressing together?
* * * *.
This extensive evening program, running all winter, will explore minutely the roots and the practice of our spiritual and emotional capacity to bless – inwardly and outwardly. And it will explore as well all the subtleties of our chronic No, and those mechanisms of mind and emotion that naturally give rise to them and maintain them; even though it is not what our mind, body, heart, and soul really want. For these shut-downs not only restrict our daily well-being, they also restrict at the spiritual level our natural access to the infinite awareness and infinite dimension of life that is ours.
Our program will offer us both the "big view" and the "intimate view" in the course of our very careful reading and examining together of a contemporary spiritual text, or sutra, of my own composition, and which I have not yet shared out, variously called The Blessing Way Sutra or The Sutra of Yes and No. This poetic text first address the wholeness and perfection of our infinite source and its process of creation; how the natural arising of mind and its confusions turns this creative polarity into the duality of separation and negation, and how the traumas of our earliest experience further set the stage for our chronic self-limiting patterns. It then goes on to address at length the path of love, affirmation, devotion, and self-healing – the path of Yes – that can help lead us out of the fabricated maze of negation and suffering.
This program is intended as a tender, thorough, and provocative look at our human situation and at our ultimate capacity to "thrive" together. And it will be complemented by a Blessing Way retreat, offered here later this winter at The Whole Health Center.
Cost is $145. Or it is free to our members with a $25/month membership
Kinship with a More than Human World
Join Readings on Race for something different this winter: zooming out (and meeting over zoom), we will sit with broader perspectives on the "Human Race" in relationship with the non-human world. This podcast is part of a larger project, which you can learn about here.
Meetings will be Monday evenings (see dates below) at 7pm on Zoom. We will discuss 2 episodes every week. Find links to the podcast and other resources here.
About the podcast: Kinship With The More Than Human World podcast
"In various cultures around the world, human identity cannot be separated from our nonhuman kin. The landscapes we call home — grasslands and forests, mountains and rocks, rivers and oceans — are shared by nonhuman beings who may be considered relatives. Age-old myths and modern science reinforce these kinship relationships. From forest ecology to the human microbiome, emerging research suggests that being human is a complicated journey made possible only by the good graces of our many companions. Leading scientists, philosophers and writers illuminate ways in which “personhood” transcends the human species and shows how kinship practices can deepen our care and respect for the more-than-human world."
Mondays 7-8pm
Discussing two episodes each week. Contact the library if you need help accessing the podcasts. You can listen on Spotify, Google Podcasts. The first four have transcripts online and article links if you prefer to read.
February 13th
"1:Eye-to-eye animal encounters" and "2:Plants as persons"
February 27th
"3:When mountains are gods" and "4:Shapeshifting"
March 13th
"5:Kincentricity" and "6:Internet of trees"
March 27th
"7:Mind-bending world of mushrooms" and "8: Wisdom of the desert"
SOUNDheart Zoom Lunches
SOUNDheart Zoom Lunch Dates, Mondays12pm ZOOM beginning January 9th Join Sherene for lunch over zoom on Mondays for discussion and practices regarding our ability to maintain emotional integrity, moral courage, and attunement while engaging with personal, social, political, economic, and ecological conflicts. Part of our Membership Program
For the next several months we will be working with the concept of Presence. Each month we will focus on one of the 10 aspects of healing presence. Weekly discussion, meditation, and takeaway practices will be provided.
January: What is presence?
February: Non-Judging
March: Patience
April:Beginner’s Mind
May:Trust
June: Non-Striving
July:Acceptance
August:Gratitude
Sept:Generosity
October:Compassion
This program is also available in private sessions, please contact me for more info.
Meditation Lab
Attunement and Intimacy, Our Saturday Morning Meditation Lab continues this winter at 8am on zoom.
with Paul Weiss.
Curious about Meditation Lab? Find a recording here.
Our Saturday Morning series begins on Zoom on January 8 at 8am
Attunement is a faculty of the brain-body very different from that of the thinking mind. While the mind routinely projects and processes a world of separation, relativity, and judgment, attunement unifies our awareness and allows intimacy with experience.
Attunement is also related to the faculty of interoception – our ability to "attune" or "listen" inwardly into our own bodies, into our own feelings and feeling states, or into the "essence" of this moment's experience. A natural capacity from which we are often distracted, this faculty is also essential to the depth and intimacy of our meditation and contemplation. Attunement is also essential to our capacity for emotional self-healing and, attuning outward, to the intimacy of our relationships. This echos our much stated concern for the conjoined development of both our integrity and our reciprocity.
At the first level of attunement, we are learning to tune our attention into this moment of pure experience without other mental distraction. Second, as we learn to hold and rest in that attunement, the heart and the body also come into coherence with that attunement – allowing for the rise of a more unified, and even infinite, field of experience.
Through this winter we will take our time together, using a variety of meditations and foundation exercises, to practice, deepen, and support our faculties of interoception and attunement. We will fine tune our capacity for interoception as a tool for cutting through the obstacles to meditation and for enhancing our capacity for healing. And for the greater integration of breath, body, mind, energy, and heart as a gateway to our infinite being.
As always, the Saturday Meditation Lab is intended to offer key instruction,
encouragement, and support to cultivating, deepening, and expanding your relationship to meditation – whether you are beginning or experienced.
This class is open to all unconditionally, though donations are needed and welcome.
You may join as a regular WHC member, or otherwise join weekly,
bookmarking a direct link to the class page on our website.
For questions: 207-288-4128 or info@thewholehealthcenter.org
The Whole Health Center.org.
Paul Weiss began his own zen practice in 1966, and has been teaching and leading retreats through The Whole Health Center since 1981.
The Blessing Way
The Blessing Way
Our winter series begins Thursday, January 5 at 7pm
with Paul Weiss
Our word "bless" comes from the Indo-European root bhel, meaning to thrive or to bloom; which in its various journeys through the Latin and the Germanic also gives us the words blossom, blade (as in a blade of grass – bladen, the fruit of the earth), flower and flourish. It is about the natural abundance and affirmation of life. When we bless something, we offer our desire and support that it flower and flourish. We align with the innate abundance of being. As humans, we are consciously capable of that.
When we look at our own lives, we can see how we are also a part of the natural flow and abundance of life, and of the desire of life to come to its own fruition. But we may also see how many of our primary experiences, and our way of processing those experiences, has led to certain self-imposed shut-downs. The innate flourishing, or "Yes" of life within us, is confined by an accumulation of chronic "No's," understandably defensive or self-protecting patterns that result in restricting our affirmation of life, or affirmation of self. This chronic and sometimes subtle restriction of our life energy determines much of our physical imbalances as well as our psychological ills. And, of course, it affects the historical behavior of our species, our relationship to each other and to the planet.
It is a natural evolutionary consequence of our need for survival that we tend to give dominion to our negative interpretations of reality – what could go wrong; what is going wrong – over our more positive impressions. But it is also a necessity of this next more conscious stage of our evolution that we learn to recognize and take responsibility for our chronic and largely unconscious patterns of negativity – which reinforce chronic restrictions on the natural energetic flow of life within and around us. We must learn to exercise our capacity to bless. This is essential now not only to our own well-being, but also to the welfare of our families and communities, the welfare of our collective humanity, and the welfare of our entire ecology.
Hence, this is an issue that pertains to the health and to the full dimension of ourselves as physical, emotional, spiritual, and relational beings. Might it be worthy of addressing together?
* * * *.
This extensive evening program, running all winter, will explore minutely the roots and the practice of our spiritual and emotional capacity to bless – inwardly and outwardly. And it will explore as well all the subtleties of our chronic No, and those mechanisms of mind and emotion that naturally give rise to them and maintain them; even though it is not what our mind, body, heart, and soul really want. For these shut-downs not only restrict our daily well-being, they also restrict at the spiritual level our natural access to the infinite awareness and infinite dimension of life that is ours.
Our program will offer us both the "big view" and the "intimate view" in the course of our very careful reading and examining together of a contemporary spiritual text, or sutra, of my own composition, and which I have not yet shared out, variously called The Blessing Way Sutra or The Sutra of Yes and No. This poetic text first address the wholeness and perfection of our infinite source and its process of creation; how the natural arising of mind and its confusions turns this creative polarity into the duality of separation and negation, and how the traumas of our earliest experience further set the stage for our chronic self-limiting patterns. It then goes on to address at length the path of love, affirmation, devotion, and self-healing – the path of Yes – that can help lead us out of the fabricated maze of negation and suffering.
This program is intended as a tender, thorough, and provocative look at our human situation and at our ultimate capacity to "thrive" together. And it will be complemented by a Blessing Way retreat, offered here later this winter at The Whole Health Center.
Cost is $145. Or it is free to our members with a $25/month membership
Meditation Lab
Attunement and Intimacy, Our Saturday Morning Meditation Lab continues this winter at 8am on zoom.
with Paul Weiss.
Curious about Meditation Lab? Find a recording here.
Our Saturday Morning series begins on Zoom on January 8 at 8am
Attunement is a faculty of the brain-body very different from that of the thinking mind. While the mind routinely projects and processes a world of separation, relativity, and judgment, attunement unifies our awareness and allows intimacy with experience.
Attunement is also related to the faculty of interoception – our ability to "attune" or "listen" inwardly into our own bodies, into our own feelings and feeling states, or into the "essence" of this moment's experience. A natural capacity from which we are often distracted, this faculty is also essential to the depth and intimacy of our meditation and contemplation. Attunement is also essential to our capacity for emotional self-healing and, attuning outward, to the intimacy of our relationships. This echos our much stated concern for the conjoined development of both our integrity and our reciprocity.
At the first level of attunement, we are learning to tune our attention into this moment of pure experience without other mental distraction. Second, as we learn to hold and rest in that attunement, the heart and the body also come into coherence with that attunement – allowing for the rise of a more unified, and even infinite, field of experience.
Through this winter we will take our time together, using a variety of meditations and foundation exercises, to practice, deepen, and support our faculties of interoception and attunement. We will fine tune our capacity for interoception as a tool for cutting through the obstacles to meditation and for enhancing our capacity for healing. And for the greater integration of breath, body, mind, energy, and heart as a gateway to our infinite being.
As always, the Saturday Meditation Lab is intended to offer key instruction,
encouragement, and support to cultivating, deepening, and expanding your relationship to meditation – whether you are beginning or experienced.
This class is open to all unconditionally, though donations are needed and welcome.
You may join as a regular WHC member, or otherwise join weekly,
bookmarking a direct link to the class page on our website.
For questions: 207-288-4128 or info@thewholehealthcenter.org
The Whole Health Center.org.
Paul Weiss began his own zen practice in 1966, and has been teaching and leading retreats through The Whole Health Center since 1981.
SOUNDheart Zoom Lunches
SOUNDheart Zoom Lunch Dates, Mondays12pm ZOOM beginning January 9th Join Sherene for lunch over zoom on Mondays for discussion and practices regarding our ability to maintain emotional integrity, moral courage, and attunement while engaging with personal, social, political, economic, and ecological conflicts. Part of our Membership Program
For the next several months we will be working with the concept of Presence. Each month we will focus on one of the 10 aspects of healing presence. Weekly discussion, meditation, and takeaway practices will be provided.
January: What is presence?
February: Non-Judging
March: Patience
April:Beginner’s Mind
May:Trust
June: Non-Striving
July:Acceptance
August:Gratitude
Sept:Generosity
October:Compassion
This program is also available in private sessions, please contact me for more info.
Meditation Lab
Attunement and Intimacy, Our Saturday Morning Meditation Lab continues this winter at 8am on zoom.
with Paul Weiss.
Curious about Meditation Lab? Find a recording here.
Our Saturday Morning series begins on Zoom on January 8 at 8am
Attunement is a faculty of the brain-body very different from that of the thinking mind. While the mind routinely projects and processes a world of separation, relativity, and judgment, attunement unifies our awareness and allows intimacy with experience.
Attunement is also related to the faculty of interoception – our ability to "attune" or "listen" inwardly into our own bodies, into our own feelings and feeling states, or into the "essence" of this moment's experience. A natural capacity from which we are often distracted, this faculty is also essential to the depth and intimacy of our meditation and contemplation. Attunement is also essential to our capacity for emotional self-healing and, attuning outward, to the intimacy of our relationships. This echos our much stated concern for the conjoined development of both our integrity and our reciprocity.
At the first level of attunement, we are learning to tune our attention into this moment of pure experience without other mental distraction. Second, as we learn to hold and rest in that attunement, the heart and the body also come into coherence with that attunement – allowing for the rise of a more unified, and even infinite, field of experience.
Through this winter we will take our time together, using a variety of meditations and foundation exercises, to practice, deepen, and support our faculties of interoception and attunement. We will fine tune our capacity for interoception as a tool for cutting through the obstacles to meditation and for enhancing our capacity for healing. And for the greater integration of breath, body, mind, energy, and heart as a gateway to our infinite being.
As always, the Saturday Meditation Lab is intended to offer key instruction,
encouragement, and support to cultivating, deepening, and expanding your relationship to meditation – whether you are beginning or experienced.
This class is open to all unconditionally, though donations are needed and welcome.
You may join as a regular WHC member, or otherwise join weekly,
bookmarking a direct link to the class page on our website.
For questions: 207-288-4128 or info@thewholehealthcenter.org
The Whole Health Center.org.
Paul Weiss began his own zen practice in 1966, and has been teaching and leading retreats through The Whole Health Center since 1981.
The Blessing Way
The Blessing Way
Our winter series begins Thursday, January 5 at 7pm
with Paul Weiss
Our word "bless" comes from the Indo-European root bhel, meaning to thrive or to bloom; which in its various journeys through the Latin and the Germanic also gives us the words blossom, blade (as in a blade of grass – bladen, the fruit of the earth), flower and flourish. It is about the natural abundance and affirmation of life. When we bless something, we offer our desire and support that it flower and flourish. We align with the innate abundance of being. As humans, we are consciously capable of that.
When we look at our own lives, we can see how we are also a part of the natural flow and abundance of life, and of the desire of life to come to its own fruition. But we may also see how many of our primary experiences, and our way of processing those experiences, has led to certain self-imposed shut-downs. The innate flourishing, or "Yes" of life within us, is confined by an accumulation of chronic "No's," understandably defensive or self-protecting patterns that result in restricting our affirmation of life, or affirmation of self. This chronic and sometimes subtle restriction of our life energy determines much of our physical imbalances as well as our psychological ills. And, of course, it affects the historical behavior of our species, our relationship to each other and to the planet.
It is a natural evolutionary consequence of our need for survival that we tend to give dominion to our negative interpretations of reality – what could go wrong; what is going wrong – over our more positive impressions. But it is also a necessity of this next more conscious stage of our evolution that we learn to recognize and take responsibility for our chronic and largely unconscious patterns of negativity – which reinforce chronic restrictions on the natural energetic flow of life within and around us. We must learn to exercise our capacity to bless. This is essential now not only to our own well-being, but also to the welfare of our families and communities, the welfare of our collective humanity, and the welfare of our entire ecology.
Hence, this is an issue that pertains to the health and to the full dimension of ourselves as physical, emotional, spiritual, and relational beings. Might it be worthy of addressing together?
* * * *.
This extensive evening program, running all winter, will explore minutely the roots and the practice of our spiritual and emotional capacity to bless – inwardly and outwardly. And it will explore as well all the subtleties of our chronic No, and those mechanisms of mind and emotion that naturally give rise to them and maintain them; even though it is not what our mind, body, heart, and soul really want. For these shut-downs not only restrict our daily well-being, they also restrict at the spiritual level our natural access to the infinite awareness and infinite dimension of life that is ours.
Our program will offer us both the "big view" and the "intimate view" in the course of our very careful reading and examining together of a contemporary spiritual text, or sutra, of my own composition, and which I have not yet shared out, variously called The Blessing Way Sutra or The Sutra of Yes and No. This poetic text first address the wholeness and perfection of our infinite source and its process of creation; how the natural arising of mind and its confusions turns this creative polarity into the duality of separation and negation, and how the traumas of our earliest experience further set the stage for our chronic self-limiting patterns. It then goes on to address at length the path of love, affirmation, devotion, and self-healing – the path of Yes – that can help lead us out of the fabricated maze of negation and suffering.
This program is intended as a tender, thorough, and provocative look at our human situation and at our ultimate capacity to "thrive" together. And it will be complemented by a Blessing Way retreat, offered here later this winter at The Whole Health Center.
Cost is $145. Or it is free to our members with a $25/month membership
SOUNDheart Zoom Lunches
SOUNDheart Zoom Lunch Dates, Mondays12pm ZOOM beginning January 9th Join Sherene for lunch over zoom on Mondays for discussion and practices regarding our ability to maintain emotional integrity, moral courage, and attunement while engaging with personal, social, political, economic, and ecological conflicts. Part of our Membership Program
For the next several months we will be working with the concept of Presence. Each month we will focus on one of the 10 aspects of healing presence. Weekly discussion, meditation, and takeaway practices will be provided.
January: What is presence?
February: Non-Judging
March: Patience
April:Beginner’s Mind
May:Trust
June: Non-Striving
July:Acceptance
August:Gratitude
Sept:Generosity
October:Compassion
This program is also available in private sessions, please contact me for more info.
Meditation Lab
Attunement and Intimacy, Our Saturday Morning Meditation Lab continues this winter at 8am on zoom.
with Paul Weiss.
Curious about Meditation Lab? Find a recording here.
Our Saturday Morning series begins on Zoom on January 8 at 8am
Attunement is a faculty of the brain-body very different from that of the thinking mind. While the mind routinely projects and processes a world of separation, relativity, and judgment, attunement unifies our awareness and allows intimacy with experience.
Attunement is also related to the faculty of interoception – our ability to "attune" or "listen" inwardly into our own bodies, into our own feelings and feeling states, or into the "essence" of this moment's experience. A natural capacity from which we are often distracted, this faculty is also essential to the depth and intimacy of our meditation and contemplation. Attunement is also essential to our capacity for emotional self-healing and, attuning outward, to the intimacy of our relationships. This echos our much stated concern for the conjoined development of both our integrity and our reciprocity.
At the first level of attunement, we are learning to tune our attention into this moment of pure experience without other mental distraction. Second, as we learn to hold and rest in that attunement, the heart and the body also come into coherence with that attunement – allowing for the rise of a more unified, and even infinite, field of experience.
Through this winter we will take our time together, using a variety of meditations and foundation exercises, to practice, deepen, and support our faculties of interoception and attunement. We will fine tune our capacity for interoception as a tool for cutting through the obstacles to meditation and for enhancing our capacity for healing. And for the greater integration of breath, body, mind, energy, and heart as a gateway to our infinite being.
As always, the Saturday Meditation Lab is intended to offer key instruction,
encouragement, and support to cultivating, deepening, and expanding your relationship to meditation – whether you are beginning or experienced.
This class is open to all unconditionally, though donations are needed and welcome.
You may join as a regular WHC member, or otherwise join weekly,
bookmarking a direct link to the class page on our website.
For questions: 207-288-4128 or info@thewholehealthcenter.org
The Whole Health Center.org.
Paul Weiss began his own zen practice in 1966, and has been teaching and leading retreats through The Whole Health Center since 1981.
The Blessing Way
The Blessing Way
Our winter series begins Thursday, January 5 at 7pm
with Paul Weiss
Our word "bless" comes from the Indo-European root bhel, meaning to thrive or to bloom; which in its various journeys through the Latin and the Germanic also gives us the words blossom, blade (as in a blade of grass – bladen, the fruit of the earth), flower and flourish. It is about the natural abundance and affirmation of life. When we bless something, we offer our desire and support that it flower and flourish. We align with the innate abundance of being. As humans, we are consciously capable of that.
When we look at our own lives, we can see how we are also a part of the natural flow and abundance of life, and of the desire of life to come to its own fruition. But we may also see how many of our primary experiences, and our way of processing those experiences, has led to certain self-imposed shut-downs. The innate flourishing, or "Yes" of life within us, is confined by an accumulation of chronic "No's," understandably defensive or self-protecting patterns that result in restricting our affirmation of life, or affirmation of self. This chronic and sometimes subtle restriction of our life energy determines much of our physical imbalances as well as our psychological ills. And, of course, it affects the historical behavior of our species, our relationship to each other and to the planet.
It is a natural evolutionary consequence of our need for survival that we tend to give dominion to our negative interpretations of reality – what could go wrong; what is going wrong – over our more positive impressions. But it is also a necessity of this next more conscious stage of our evolution that we learn to recognize and take responsibility for our chronic and largely unconscious patterns of negativity – which reinforce chronic restrictions on the natural energetic flow of life within and around us. We must learn to exercise our capacity to bless. This is essential now not only to our own well-being, but also to the welfare of our families and communities, the welfare of our collective humanity, and the welfare of our entire ecology.
Hence, this is an issue that pertains to the health and to the full dimension of ourselves as physical, emotional, spiritual, and relational beings. Might it be worthy of addressing together?
* * * *.
This extensive evening program, running all winter, will explore minutely the roots and the practice of our spiritual and emotional capacity to bless – inwardly and outwardly. And it will explore as well all the subtleties of our chronic No, and those mechanisms of mind and emotion that naturally give rise to them and maintain them; even though it is not what our mind, body, heart, and soul really want. For these shut-downs not only restrict our daily well-being, they also restrict at the spiritual level our natural access to the infinite awareness and infinite dimension of life that is ours.
Our program will offer us both the "big view" and the "intimate view" in the course of our very careful reading and examining together of a contemporary spiritual text, or sutra, of my own composition, and which I have not yet shared out, variously called The Blessing Way Sutra or The Sutra of Yes and No. This poetic text first address the wholeness and perfection of our infinite source and its process of creation; how the natural arising of mind and its confusions turns this creative polarity into the duality of separation and negation, and how the traumas of our earliest experience further set the stage for our chronic self-limiting patterns. It then goes on to address at length the path of love, affirmation, devotion, and self-healing – the path of Yes – that can help lead us out of the fabricated maze of negation and suffering.
This program is intended as a tender, thorough, and provocative look at our human situation and at our ultimate capacity to "thrive" together. And it will be complemented by a Blessing Way retreat, offered here later this winter at The Whole Health Center.
Cost is $145. Or it is free to our members with a $25/month membership
SOUNDheart Zoom Lunches
SOUNDheart Zoom Lunch Dates, Mondays12pm ZOOM beginning January 9th Join Sherene for lunch over zoom on Mondays for discussion and practices regarding our ability to maintain emotional integrity, moral courage, and attunement while engaging with personal, social, political, economic, and ecological conflicts. Part of our Membership Program
For the next several months we will be working with the concept of Presence. Each month we will focus on one of the 10 aspects of healing presence. Weekly discussion, meditation, and takeaway practices will be provided.
January: What is presence?
February: Non-Judging
March: Patience
April:Beginner’s Mind
May:Trust
June: Non-Striving
July:Acceptance
August:Gratitude
Sept:Generosity
October:Compassion
This program is also available in private sessions, please contact me for more info.
The Blessing Way
The Blessing Way
Our winter series begins Thursday, January 5 at 7pm
with Paul Weiss
Our word "bless" comes from the Indo-European root bhel, meaning to thrive or to bloom; which in its various journeys through the Latin and the Germanic also gives us the words blossom, blade (as in a blade of grass – bladen, the fruit of the earth), flower and flourish. It is about the natural abundance and affirmation of life. When we bless something, we offer our desire and support that it flower and flourish. We align with the innate abundance of being. As humans, we are consciously capable of that.
When we look at our own lives, we can see how we are also a part of the natural flow and abundance of life, and of the desire of life to come to its own fruition. But we may also see how many of our primary experiences, and our way of processing those experiences, has led to certain self-imposed shut-downs. The innate flourishing, or "Yes" of life within us, is confined by an accumulation of chronic "No's," understandably defensive or self-protecting patterns that result in restricting our affirmation of life, or affirmation of self. This chronic and sometimes subtle restriction of our life energy determines much of our physical imbalances as well as our psychological ills. And, of course, it affects the historical behavior of our species, our relationship to each other and to the planet.
It is a natural evolutionary consequence of our need for survival that we tend to give dominion to our negative interpretations of reality – what could go wrong; what is going wrong – over our more positive impressions. But it is also a necessity of this next more conscious stage of our evolution that we learn to recognize and take responsibility for our chronic and largely unconscious patterns of negativity – which reinforce chronic restrictions on the natural energetic flow of life within and around us. We must learn to exercise our capacity to bless. This is essential now not only to our own well-being, but also to the welfare of our families and communities, the welfare of our collective humanity, and the welfare of our entire ecology.
Hence, this is an issue that pertains to the health and to the full dimension of ourselves as physical, emotional, spiritual, and relational beings. Might it be worthy of addressing together?
* * * *.
This extensive evening program, running all winter, will explore minutely the roots and the practice of our spiritual and emotional capacity to bless – inwardly and outwardly. And it will explore as well all the subtleties of our chronic No, and those mechanisms of mind and emotion that naturally give rise to them and maintain them; even though it is not what our mind, body, heart, and soul really want. For these shut-downs not only restrict our daily well-being, they also restrict at the spiritual level our natural access to the infinite awareness and infinite dimension of life that is ours.
Our program will offer us both the "big view" and the "intimate view" in the course of our very careful reading and examining together of a contemporary spiritual text, or sutra, of my own composition, and which I have not yet shared out, variously called The Blessing Way Sutra or The Sutra of Yes and No. This poetic text first address the wholeness and perfection of our infinite source and its process of creation; how the natural arising of mind and its confusions turns this creative polarity into the duality of separation and negation, and how the traumas of our earliest experience further set the stage for our chronic self-limiting patterns. It then goes on to address at length the path of love, affirmation, devotion, and self-healing – the path of Yes – that can help lead us out of the fabricated maze of negation and suffering.
This program is intended as a tender, thorough, and provocative look at our human situation and at our ultimate capacity to "thrive" together. And it will be complemented by a Blessing Way retreat, offered here later this winter at The Whole Health Center.
Cost is $145. Or it is free to our members with a $25/month membership
True Heart/True Mind Intensive
The True Heart/True Mind Intensive serves as a living laboratory – or greenhouse – in which people can grow in direct conscious knowledge of who they are. It serves not by teaching us how to do something more and more perfectly, how to meditate more perfectly, how to be more perfectly enlightened. It serves by opening a space wide and deep enough for us to test the waters of our own existence, to try and fail and try again at all the beliefs, strategies and demands that normally motivate our approach to experience – until the membrane of our seeking becomes so threadbare and obsolete that we suddenly find ourselves inhabiting an unencumbered space. Enlightenment is not ultimate success at something we’re trying to do. It is the ultimate failure. It is our default position that has always been true after we have exhausted all the other possibilities. The mind will always want to make it a thing. But there is no thing. The heart that falls back on itself has nowhere to stop falling.
Cost: $645.00, $125 deposit due upon registration Scholarships available.
please contact info@thewholehealthcenter.org for more information or to register.
SOUNDheart Zoom Lunches
SOUNDheart Zoom Lunch Dates, Mondays12pm ZOOM beginning January 9th Join Sherene for lunch over zoom on Mondays for discussion and practices regarding our ability to maintain emotional integrity, moral courage, and attunement while engaging with personal, social, political, economic, and ecological conflicts. Part of our Membership Program
For the next several months we will be working with the concept of Presence. Each month we will focus on one of the 10 aspects of healing presence. Weekly discussion, meditation, and takeaway practices will be provided.
January: What is presence?
February: Non-Judging
March: Patience
April:Beginner’s Mind
May:Trust
June: Non-Striving
July:Acceptance
August:Gratitude
Sept:Generosity
October:Compassion
This program is also available in private sessions, please contact me for more info.
Meditation Lab
Deepening Our Practice of Meditation
Attunement, Intimacy, and Devotion. Our Saturday Morning Meditation Lab continues this winter at 8am on zoom with Paul Weiss.
Curious about Meditation Lab? Find a recording here.
Our Saturday Morning series begins on Zoom on January 8 at 8am
Attunement is a faculty of the brain-body very different from that of the thinking mind. While the mind routinely projects and processes a world of separation, relativity, and judgment, attunement unifies our awareness and allows intimacy with experience.
Attunement is also related to the faculty of interoception – our ability to "attune" or "listen" inwardly into our own bodies, into our own feelings and feeling states, or into the "essence" of this moment's experience. A natural capacity from which we are often distracted, this faculty is also essential to the depth and intimacy of our meditation and contemplation. Attunement is also essential to our capacity for emotional self-healing and, attuning outward, to the intimacy of our relationships. Devotion calls on and deepens our integrity and activates our reciprocity, which are both essential to each other.
At the first level of attunement, we are learning to tune our attention into this moment of pure experience without other mental distraction. Second, as we learn to hold and rest in that attunement, the heart and the body also come into coherence with that attunement – allowing for the rise of a more unified, and even infinite, field of experience.
Through this winter we will take our time together, using a variety of meditations and foundation exercises, to practice, deepen, and support our faculties of interoception and attunement. We will review our earlier Taoist mind/body meditations for healing and for circulating life energy. We will look at the practice of prayer as a tool for unifying the psyche. We will fine tune our capacity for interoception as a tool for cutting through the obstacles to meditation and for enhancing our capacity for healing – and for promoting the greater integration of breath, body, life energy, mind, and heart as a gateway to our infinite being.
As always, the Saturday Meditation Lab is intended to offer key instruction,
encouragement, and support to cultivating, deepening, and expanding your relationship to meditation – whether you are beginning or experienced.
This class is open to all unconditionally, though donations are needed and welcome.
You may join as a regular WHC member, or otherwise join weekly,
bookmarking a direct link to the class page on our website.
For questions: 207-288-4128 or info@thewholehealthcenter.org
The Whole Health Center.org.
Paul Weiss began his own zen practice in 1966, and has been teaching and leading retreats through The Whole Health Center since 1981.
The Blessing Way
The Blessing Way
Our winter series begins Thursday, January 5 at 7pm
with Paul Weiss
Our word "bless" comes from the Indo-European root bhel, meaning to thrive or to bloom; which in its various journeys through the Latin and the Germanic also gives us the words blossom, blade (as in a blade of grass – bladen, the fruit of the earth), flower and flourish. It is about the natural abundance and affirmation of life. When we bless something, we offer our desire and support that it flower and flourish. We align with the innate abundance of being. As humans, we are consciously capable of that.
When we look at our own lives, we can see how we are also a part of the natural flow and abundance of life, and of the desire of life to come to its own fruition. But we may also see how many of our primary experiences, and our way of processing those experiences, has led to certain self-imposed shut-downs. The innate flourishing, or "Yes" of life within us, is confined by an accumulation of chronic "No's," understandably defensive or self-protecting patterns that result in restricting our affirmation of life, or affirmation of self. This chronic and sometimes subtle restriction of our life energy determines much of our physical imbalances as well as our psychological ills. And, of course, it affects the historical behavior of our species, our relationship to each other and to the planet.
It is a natural evolutionary consequence of our need for survival that we tend to give dominion to our negative interpretations of reality – what could go wrong; what is going wrong – over our more positive impressions. But it is also a necessity of this next more conscious stage of our evolution that we learn to recognize and take responsibility for our chronic and largely unconscious patterns of negativity – which reinforce chronic restrictions on the natural energetic flow of life within and around us. We must learn to exercise our capacity to bless. This is essential now not only to our own well-being, but also to the welfare of our families and communities, the welfare of our collective humanity, and the welfare of our entire ecology.
Hence, this is an issue that pertains to the health and to the full dimension of ourselves as physical, emotional, spiritual, and relational beings. Might it be worthy of addressing together?
* * * *.
This extensive evening program, running all winter, will explore minutely the roots and the practice of our spiritual and emotional capacity to bless – inwardly and outwardly. And it will explore as well all the subtleties of our chronic No, and those mechanisms of mind and emotion that naturally give rise to them and maintain them; even though it is not what our mind, body, heart, and soul really want. For these shut-downs not only restrict our daily well-being, they also restrict at the spiritual level our natural access to the infinite awareness and infinite dimension of life that is ours.
Our program will offer us both the "big view" and the "intimate view" in the course of our very careful reading and examining together of a contemporary spiritual text, or sutra, of my own composition, and which I have not yet shared out, variously called The Blessing Way Sutra or The Sutra of Yes and No. This poetic text first address the wholeness and perfection of our infinite source and its process of creation; how the natural arising of mind and its confusions turns this creative polarity into the duality of separation and negation, and how the traumas of our earliest experience further set the stage for our chronic self-limiting patterns. It then goes on to address at length the path of love, affirmation, devotion, and self-healing – the path of Yes – that can help lead us out of the fabricated maze of negation and suffering.
This program is intended as a tender, thorough, and provocative look at our human situation and at our ultimate capacity to "thrive" together. And it will be complemented by a Blessing Way retreat, offered here later this winter at The Whole Health Center.
Cost is $145. Or it is free to our members with a $25/month membership
Meditation Lab
Our Saturday Morning Meditation Lab continues this winter at 8am on zoom with Paul Weiss.
Curious about Meditation Lab? Find a recording here.
As always, the Saturday Meditation Lab is intended to offer key instruction,
encouragement, and support to cultivating, deepening, and expanding your relationship to meditation – whether you are beginning or experienced.
This class is open to all unconditionally, though donations are needed and welcome.
You may join as a regular WHC member, or otherwise join weekly,
bookmarking a direct link to the class page on our website.
For questions: 207-288-4128 or info@thewholehealthcenter.org
The Whole Health Center.org.
Paul Weiss began his own zen practice in 1966, and has been teaching and leading retreats through The Whole Health Center since 1981.
Embracing the Jesus Story –Myth and Ministry
Embracing the Jesus Story –
Myth and Ministry 7pm
with Paul Weiss
In the 1950s, a best selling book about Jesus was entitled The Greatest Story Ever Told. And whatever one thinks of the story (or the book), one has to admit it's a pretty amazing story. Those not brought up within the Christian churches, or who have been alienated from them, may have limited receptivity to the way the "Jesus story" has been presented, and to the seemingly surreal myths surrounding it – right down to our seasonal hoopla around the nativity and its events. But that would be an unnecessary loss. For aside from whatever value we may place on Jesus' essential teachings, and aside from our ancient and primal celebration of the returning light at this time of year, there is something very deep that speaks to us out of the "myth," if we let it; something about the nature and nurture of our own souls.
When I use the word "myth," it is never in a deprecating way. For myth can often offer a deep truth that the mind cannot adequately fathom, but in a way that the innocence of the heart or the soul can participate in and be enlivened by. In fact, the Jesus story, including its mythic aspect, has a lot to tell us about the nature and unfolding of our own souls – just as the Buddha-story does in a different way.
In this 3 part Thursday series, December 15, 22, and 29, we will examine, and hopefully celebrate, the Jesus story as a story of our own souls. We will see what the Myth has to contribute to that story, and what the Ministry has to contribute to that story. We hope this series will add a little more light to our season.. And it will also be a precursor to our subsequent winter-long programming; including our coming examination of our human condition and our human possibilities, entitled The Blessing Way.
This program is available free to all on our open zoom link. please use the passcode: hi
Please consider becoming a supporting member for just $25 monthly,
which gives you free access to (and savings on) all our members’ programming.
Otherwise please consider making a donation here.
Embracing the Jesus Story –Myth and Ministry
Embracing the Jesus Story –
Myth and Ministry 7pm
with Paul Weiss
In the 1950s, a best selling book about Jesus was entitled The Greatest Story Ever Told. And whatever one thinks of the story (or the book), one has to admit it's a pretty amazing story. Those not brought up within the Christian churches, or who have been alienated from them, may have limited receptivity to the way the "Jesus story" has been presented, and to the seemingly surreal myths surrounding it – right down to our seasonal hoopla around the nativity and its events. But that would be an unnecessary loss. For aside from whatever value we may place on Jesus' essential teachings, and aside from our ancient and primal celebration of the returning light at this time of year, there is something very deep that speaks to us out of the "myth," if we let it; something about the nature and nurture of our own souls.
When I use the word "myth," it is never in a deprecating way. For myth can often offer a deep truth that the mind cannot adequately fathom, but in a way that the innocence of the heart or the soul can participate in and be enlivened by. In fact, the Jesus story, including its mythic aspect, has a lot to tell us about the nature and unfolding of our own souls – just as the Buddha-story does in a different way.
In this 3 part Thursday series, December 15, 22, and 29, we will examine, and hopefully celebrate, the Jesus story as a story of our own souls. We will see what the Myth has to contribute to that story, and what the Ministry has to contribute to that story. We hope this series will add a little more light to our season.. And it will also be a precursor to our subsequent winter-long programming; including our coming examination of our human condition and our human possibilities, entitled The Blessing Way.
This program is available free to all on our open zoom link. please use the passcode: hi
Please consider becoming a supporting member for just $25 monthly,
which gives you free access to (and savings on) all our members’ programming.
Otherwise please consider making a donation here.
Meditation Lab
Our Saturday Morning Meditation Lab continues this winter at 8am on zoom with Paul Weiss.
Curious about Meditation Lab? Find a recording here.
As always, the Saturday Meditation Lab is intended to offer key instruction,
encouragement, and support to cultivating, deepening, and expanding your relationship to meditation – whether you are beginning or experienced.
This class is open to all unconditionally, though donations are needed and welcome.
You may join as a regular WHC member, or otherwise join weekly,
bookmarking a direct link to the class page on our website.
For questions: 207-288-4128 or info@thewholehealthcenter.org
The Whole Health Center.org.
Paul Weiss began his own zen practice in 1966, and has been teaching and leading retreats through The Whole Health Center since 1981.
Embracing the Jesus Story –Myth and Ministry
Embracing the Jesus Story –
Myth and Ministry
This end of the year series begins Thursday, December 15 at 7pm
with Paul Weiss
In the 1950s, a best selling book about Jesus was entitled The Greatest Story Ever Told. And whatever one thinks of the story (or the book), one has to admit it's a pretty amazing story. Those not brought up within the Christian churches, or who have been alienated from them, may have limited receptivity to the way the "Jesus story" has been presented, and to the seemingly surreal myths surrounding it – right down to our seasonal hoopla around the nativity and its events. But that would be an unnecessary loss. For aside from whatever value we may place on Jesus' essential teachings, and aside from our ancient and primal celebration of the returning light at this time of year, there is something very deep that speaks to us out of the "myth," if we let it; something about the nature and nurture of our own souls.
When I use the word "myth," it is never in a deprecating way. For myth can often offer a deep truth that the mind cannot adequately fathom, but in a way that the innocence of the heart or the soul can participate in and be enlivened by. In fact, the Jesus story, including its mythic aspect, has a lot to tell us about the nature and unfolding of our own souls – just as the Buddha-story does in a different way.
In this 3 part Thursday series, December 15, 22, and 29, we will examine, and hopefully celebrate, the Jesus story as a story of our own souls. We will see what the Myth has to contribute to that story, and what the Ministry has to contribute to that story. We hope this series will add a little more light to our season.. And it will also be a precursor to our subsequent winter-long programming; including our coming examination of our human condition and our human possibilities, entitled The Blessing Way.
This program is available free to all on our open zoom link. please use the passcode: hi
Please consider becoming a supporting member for just $25 monthly,
which gives you free access to (and savings on) all our members’ programming.
Otherwise please consider making a donation here.