The Core Conversation: Essential Steps for Difficult Times with David Whyte
Date: Friday & Saturday, February 17 & 18, 2012
Time: Friday 7:00-9:00pm; Saturday 12:00-6:00pm
Cost: Entire Weekend: $125
Friday Only (2/17): $49
Saturday Only (2/18): $115
During times of outer stress or economic hardship it is tempting to give up on previous hopes and ideals and withdraw into the basic anxieties of survival. This workshop will be a time to revisit the core conversations of our lives and look at the essential elements that make up our particular approach to life. We will look at the way outer successes can often lead to a fatal preoccupation with peripheries in which we lose both focus and a sense of real satisfaction, and the steps necessary in returning home to saner simplicities. We will also look at the way adversity in the outer world can be a friend to us, turning us away from secondary preoccupations and turning us to a more focused but more foundational ground from which to take the next step.
This workshop will also look at the disciplines inherent in creating a perceptive mind equal to the breadth and depth of the world that surrounds us. It is appropriate for all, but will address living with stressful responsibilities that can easily put us on the defensive, slowly inducing us to create identities that are good at keeping things at bay but not so good at meeting them with courage and conviction.
Through poetry - both his own and others’, and conversation, David will inspire and challenge. Participants will have time to engage in conversations with each other and consider the next practical steps they can take in their lives.
Visitors to San Diego: Stay at our award-winnning hotel!
Same ownership as La Jolla Yoga Center
Hampton Inn
San Diego / Kearny Mesa
5434 Kearny Mesa Road
San Diego, CA 92111-1303
(858) 292-1482
Mention La Jolla Yoga Center for preferred rates.
David Whyte and Size Two Shoes at LJYC:
As the room quiets in anticipation of David's arrival on stage, the room fills with the beautiful harmony harkening back to the mysterious sweetness of the Gregorian chant. The room illuminates and we are all immediately transported to that other more serene mystical state. Our senses heightened, hearts opened, we are ready to hear the wisdom from the deep wells from which David Whyte speaks.
The two "lads" from Ireland, who call themselves Size2shoes, when not going by Owen and Moley, share their soulful stylistic variety of music-- from chants to Irish pop, throughout the weekend, inviting us to participate, while energizing and enveloping the crowd.
David challenges us to have true conversations with ourselves (and others) rather than just corroborating the same old stories we tend to tell ourselves. Instead, he encourages us to make a different kind of identity; the kind we make by paying closer attention to life, ourselves, and others, as we actually are. We often inhabit stories that no longer serve us. The first step is to stop telling ourselves the same old story. Spaciousness is needed, quiet, psychological space, stillness. To have a real conversation some silence, vulnerability, and attentive caring is needed. We tend to stay on the periphery rather than engaging in the core conversation.
It is essential to keep an invitational quality to the conversation, with ourselves and with others. Our ability to engage in the world authentically in a meaningful way is not just automatic. We need to be attentive and answer the questions that have no right to go away. What invites us out into the world? Notice what experiences bring us alive and which ones feel like they are too small for us to live? We acquire this kind of information not only by using our intellect but using our faculties of caring attention. Caring, so our deeper voice will not shut down from a more coercive, controlling relationship with our deeper self.
We have so many seasons in our lives; knowing what particular harvest is available at each threshold in our life becomes essential if we are to engage effectively in the service of fulfilling our dreams and stay in the relevant core conversation that makes up a meaningful life. What is calling me now at this particular time that I have somehow prepared for, perhaps without my knowing? Often, if we are not paying attention, we are acting like we are in a past season instead of the one we are currently in.
What keeps us in the past story, where we are almost impersonating ourselves? Is it that we are afraid of change, of giving up our old well-rehearsed story, or that we can't believe what we are actually involved with so we are looking for counter-evidence that keeps our old story playing. We need to trust this: that which is truly real, we cannot give away, so we can let go of that which is no longer relevant to the person who we are becoming in the new season that beckons us.
What is the nature of the invitation and am I afraid of what would happen to my life if I allowed that part of me to speak? David encourages patience with these questions, not trying to make things happen too early, but allowing them to really ripen so they are ready to come off the tree as an apple does when it is just right. Trying to make decisions and force things too soon is counterproductive. Instead, he suggests a way of radically letting alone of the self, not harassing it for answers, but trusting in the conversation. All you have to do is start the conversation, ask the questions, and stay close in to the core conversation with close compassionate attention.
In his new poem called Winter Apple, he encourages this waiting and ripening. "Let the apple ripen beyond your need to take it down...wait longer than you would, go against yourself... Notice who you are becoming through your waiting. Treat your inner self like the otherness and make a sincere invitation until it becomes your voice..."
With his combination of fierce intensity, deep compassion, and humility, he reminds us that part of our pilgrimage in life is forgiving ourselves as part of the adventure of going forward. He insists that it is better to live our own life and make many mistakes than to live someone else's life.
There is so much more to share which I will in my classes of course and I will add pieces to our Facebook page and/or website soon. Thanks for taking the time to read along. For those of you who did not make it this year, I hope that you will join us next year and enjoy some excerpts from the experience. For those of you who did attend, we invite you to add your favorite quotes to our Facebook or send them in and we will post them on our web. The amazing new poems that David read, which will no doubt be singled out as some of his best, will be out in his new book called Pilgrim in April or May and we will be well stocked. We will also restock Size2Shoes CD's. Sorry we sold out so quickly but I am here in NYC with them and will bring back another selection of their music. Below is a little more background on their journey.
With an abundance of love and appreciation to all of you and to the incredible possibilities and experiences that life offers to us all. May we all continue to encourage and support each other as we ripen and in recognizing and taking our next courageous step at harvest time.
Size2shoes - A little more Background on their Journey:
One of the emails we received from a beautiful woman writing her comments on her experience describing their “pure crystalized voices” and thanked David and LJYC for encouraging and supporting the Size2shoes, as a new talent and giving them the opportunity to grow and the exposure.
Owen and Moley, Size Two Shoes, are family friends with David Whyte, straight from Ireland, only living four weeks in the US.
They came from a highly respected and talented musical family with their mother Ireland’s greatest vocalist and their father having one of Ireland’s foremost music academies.
An opportunity opened up for them when they met Steven Spielberg on one of David Whyte’s walking tours. They recorded music for his movie War Horse, and although ultimately it was not in the final cut, they have since connected with him on other projects, were invited to play for one of this year’s Oscar parties, and have a variety of opportunities lined up including connecting with David on some of his tours and speaking engagements.
Some lyrics from some of their pop songs include:
It seems like some force has taking control of my senses…We’ve got everything we need to breath. Everything is heightened from taste to touch...this feeling is familiar…I’ve seen it in my dreams, now I’ve opened the door”
CDs will be available soon at LJYC. Thank you for supporting these young, incredibly down-to-earth, caring young artists.
Love and Light,
Jeanie Carlstead