A Love Letter to My Last Retreat (and Everyone Who Was There)

When a community comes together with the shared intention to slow down, to tune in, and to transform in some way – be it through receiving something that was needed or timely, letting go of something that no longer serves, or opening to a new experience entirely – magic arises and weaves its way through all of us.  Every time.  At least that’s my experience of being on retreat.   And it was certainly my experience of my last retreat, led by my dear friend and teacher, Riyaz Motan, at Land of Medicine Buddha this past April.

This is a love letter to that retreat.  And to all those who were there, co-creating a profound container for connecting more deeply with ourselves, each other, and nature, as well as a powerful catalyst for so many when we returned home.

In my closing three-minute share, I mentioned that one of my awakening practices was to express my gratitude.  Not just to feel it but to say it out loud, to whomever or whatever evoked it.  The secret behind it, perhaps not so secret with this crew, is that I receive as much, if not more, when I do.  Time and again, I am catapulted into a beaming, open-hearted state, one that I experience as a remembering of a multicolored, multi-faceted, diamond heart of awakening that I fell into many years ago.  That’s why I view expressing gratitude as an awakening practice.  It seems to act as a portal for my heart to return to the echoes of that incredible state of being.  So while I stumbled into this powerful practice years ago, once experienced, I am drawn to continue it in my daily life whenever I have the chance.    

So this is about that.  Expressing my gratitude to all of you.  I am sending you a sincere, deep, heartfelt thank you, wishing I could do it in person, but instead trying to imbue this written version with that same energy. Thank you. I’ve been on a lot of retreats, each one useful, purposeful, transformative in some way.  But this one was special.

I keep realizing in new ways just how special as I’ve been integrating my retreat experience and hearing many of your stories post retreat. And so I began to get curious about the “how” of it all, in the hopes of learning from it, discovering the magic formula that could recreate those conditions again, on retreat and in daily life.  How DID we co-create the conditions for this kind of transformative experience to occur?  What were the ingredients in that alchemy?   If only we could bottle it!

Here’s what I’ve come up with so far and I would love to hear any insights or wisdom you might have to further the understanding:   Fire. Intention. Heart. Nature.

All during the retreat, I kept getting cooking metaphors.  Riyaz was cooking, for sure.  A spiritual master chef – love embodied and expressed with an element and energy of fire.  For me, he was on fire with his teaching, resting in not knowing and trusting in Being to channel wisdom with a kind of passion I hadn’t seen before. I’ve always experienced Riyaz as grounded and wise. On this retreat, he added fire to create something even more potent. I suspect fire has become part of his recipe. Something about it resonates in the way he teaches now, with an immediacy or urgency running through it: be, do, live – now. We don’t know how much time we have. I think the fire that he’s walking through and his lived message in that, ignited something in the rest of us. Something in me started to light up and burn brightly too. 

I’ve long believed in the power of intention.  And I’ve seen it time and again when people gather with shared intention, they create a powerful energetic field.  I think we created a “meeting in Truth” field with our individual and collective intentions.  The one that Rumi wrote about “out beyond ideas.”  This retreat, I am certain that we met, sat, and played in that field.   Any time we deviated, someone in the group would call us out and point us back to present-moment, heart centered, authentic being and relating.

Back to the cooking metaphors, I realized sometime else over the weekend, that if Riyaz was the chef, then our sangha was the secret sauce. And I felt a delight in that. Secret sauce made of heart – sincere, authentic, transparent, vulnerable. And also strong, wise, creative, playful. It’s easy to say, but the recognition and felt experience in the moment that every single one of us was a vital, essential ingredient in that secret sauce astonished me.  All of us had to be there and all of us had to show up with our hearts open, willing to receive and let go and meet for it to happen. A direct experience once again of the preciousness of each of our human lives and what is possible when we live from and as our essence.

And finally, nature. The trees. And the clover. And the rain. And those crazy Angel’s Trumpet flowers. But especially the trees. How do we even fathom what the redwoods brought to the equation?  Ancient, wise, benevolent.  Our elders.  Holding us and loving us, quietly yet powerfully.  So much so that they entered our journeys, our dreams, our conversations. Their energy was palpable and woven throughout the weekend.  Nature reminding us of our wholeness and non-separateness, opening us up to that truth and to the parts of ourselves that needed welcoming home.     

So fire, intention, heart, and nature.  Essential ingredients in our alchemy. I’m sure there are more.

My musings are the long way around, the scenic route back to my thank you.   Thank you for showing up.  Thank you for opening your hearts.  Thank you for being vulnerable.  Thank you for reverberating all weekend with the energy and expression of your human and your being in the space of the Pine Room, the Gompa, the dining room, and the woods.  I fell in love with every single one of you over the weekend.  And I celebrate the magic that was created through us.     

You were all key ingredients in the secret sauce that, along with Riyaz and his teaching, evoked what has followed for me.  A big shift, stepping into my bodhisattva vow and name in new ways. A lot of cooking of my own.  And I know I’m not alone in that. I’ve heard the ways the retreat has impacted some of you too. And I’m so here to support those movements in whatever ways I can.  

My great remembering and appreciation from the weekend is that sangha really is the secret sauce. Practicing in community is powerful. We awaken together. With and for each other.

With love and gratitude for each of you and for the opportunity to be on retreat.

Until next time,
Joryu Myosei