Higher Consciousness – Personal Transformation – Meditation Mindfulness
Today, many pathways prepare us for a higher level. Yet we may not realize that beyond concepts and techniques there is a finer Attention, a sacred energy coming into us. Recognizing its touch takes us from self-awareness across the threshold into awakening.
Here, just to be ourselves, free, in this Attention.
ENLIGHTENING
Notes on The Next Attention
An alpine village in the summer sunlight. Ninety strangers arrive from around the world, seekers on retreat, and hear, “The only discovery is this energy.”
HEARTENING
NEW! I AM Stories: Up at the Retreat
Here are accounts, with a touch of humor, of contemporary heroes, sometimes “unskillful,” who taste real transformation when an unknown dimension suddenly opens. As Rumi says, “Then comes a moment of feeling the wings you’ve grown, lifting.”
UPLIFTING
Writing My Yoga: Poems for Presence
Listening for a poem changes me internally. It is a yoga. This memoir of work with a spiritual teacher also includes steps for writing your own yoga poems.
NEW! – I AM Stories: Up at the Retreat – EXCERPTS
“There are two men in me. There is the one who when he is centered, when he is in relation with higher energies, is intense, alive, generous. And then, at another moment, back in my usual state, the one who thinks he is in charge, controlling everything—fears this, wishes that, all my problems. Can let him go for a moment.” –LeClair
In the transcendent light of the Elysian Fields coffee shop, in the lofty atmosphere of the Matterhorn mini-mart, a group of Americans talk of conscious living and convenient shopping. On a summer’s day, we’re traveling through the Swiss Alps on our way to a weeklong retreat at a place nicknamed, by the neighbors, Le Zoo. The compound includes a large chalet, a small chalet, and a meditation/dining hall. Spectacular alpine vistas surround the property, along with sloping meadows, dirt roads carved out of the mountainside, and the prying eyes of the locals who think the chalet is being used as a sanatorium. Actually, something else is going on there. Something amazing.
From Reviews of I AM Stories: Up at the Retreat
“Expect moving, expect funny, expect joyous, and above all, expect enlightening…. This is truly a work of high attention and great love.”
–Whitley Strieber, best-selling author of COMMUNION and JESUS: A NEW VISION, unknowncountry.com
“The book is a perfect book…. A series of memoirs about inner work…. Each character…is led…to moments when everything drops away, when the inward nonsense clears up as if a thunderstorm were over…. The gentle guiding hand of LeClair, the clear one, is ever-present…. Every foible is our own foible…but they don’t become burdens to carry or knives to wound ourselves with. They are flaws in our love that can still be loved… the opportunity to come back to something real…. The book quickly won me over, because Shaw has a delightful and subtle touch… a liberating lack of deadening weight and a loving sense of humor…. I AM STORIES is about people; all of us… about community; and thank God for that.”
–Lee van Laer, Senior Editor of Parabola, doremishock.com