New Sage-ing International sponsored series based on a profound teaching by Dogen Zenji, a highly respected Zen Buddhist Teacher.

 Intimacy with All Things

An Online 7-Part Monthly Webinar Series

7 Wednesdays

June 14th - Intimacy with the Body After an initial overview of the relationship between intimacy and spiritual awakening, we will focus our attention on the importance of living an embodied life. Body awareness plays a central role in many of the perennial wisdom traditions and becomes increasingly important as we grow older.

In spite of our deep cultural conditioning, we can learn to honor our aging bodies, including our limitations. Without denying our difficulties, we can befriend the stage of life we are in and come to know our true nature which includes the body yet goes beyond it to a place of quiet joy and timeless peace.

 July 19th - Intimacy with Emotions In this webinar, we will explore what the Buddha called “the ten thousand joys and the ten thousand sorrows.” The quality of life we each experience is significantly influenced by the emotions that flavor our days.

Becoming intimate with our emotions, we come to see the way they can be gateways to compassion that connect us to other humans and non-human beings. We will learn to “turn straw into gold” and to model wise ways of befriending our emotions that invite others to do the same in our presence.

August 16th - Intimacy with Thoughts Ancient teachings tell us that “with our thoughts, we make the world.” This is not to deny or avoid the objective aspects of life. Rather, it is an invitation for us to recognize that our interpretations of events shape our inner lives in very important ways.

By looking deeply at our cognitive processes, we can develop discriminating wisdom, the ability to see which thoughts lead to well being, which thoughts lead to unnecessary suffering, and which thoughts are simply irrelevant and unworthy of our attention. The bumper sticker that many of us have seen says it well: You don’t have to believe your thoughts.

September 20th - Intimacy with the Shadow Carl Jung described the shadow as the unconscious part of our personality that is out of alignment with who we wish ourselves to be. The dark shadow represents aspects of the self that are undesirable and often repressed. The golden shadow represents aspects of the self that are very highly desirable, what one scholar described as our submerged greatness.

Becoming intimate with the shadow requires a willingness to do “shadow work,” the inner practice of bringing alienated aspects of who we are into awareness and reclaiming the innate wholeness of our true nature. When we talk about the Inner Elder in Sage-ing work, we are talking about integrating and assimilating the shadow so that we are increasingly less vulnerable to its unconscious self-deceptions.

October 18th - Intimacy with Illness As we grow older, we increasingly encounter illness, our own and that of others. Becoming intimate with illness means embracing it as an existential given in all of our lives and seeing it as part of a curriculum for spiritual awakening.

Without denying the challenging discomforts and losses associated with illness, we can embrace our human vulnerability and tap into a universal reservoir of trust, strength, and equanimity. In this webinar, we will look deeply at how to show up for ourselves, our loved ones, and others we feel moved to support during times of illness.

November 15th - Intimacy with Death The practice of death awareness plays a powerful role in many of the perennial wisdom traditions. More so than many other cultures, modern western society teaches us to deny and avoid the reality of physical death. Our willingness to turn toward the processes of death and dying enables us to turn toward the great mysteries of life and living that are signposts on the spiritual path.

This webinar will be an invitation to see beyond our cultural conditioning regarding the end of our lives. We will venture into new territory and come to see life and death as one ongoing process that arises and passes in every moment.

December 13th - Intimacy with the Ultimate Mystery  In the final meeting of this webinar series, we will return to Dogen Zenji’s classic teaching: "Enlightenment is intimacy with all things." We will look beyond words like enlightenment, awakening, and God-realization to find the living spirit of love and wisdom that true sages embody in the world.

It is this aspiration that motivates so many of us to study, practice, and serve in the ways that we do. Without being perfectionistic, we will celebrate the “perfect imperfection” of our humanness and intimately embrace the part of everyone that is a center of transcendent awareness.

For more information about registering for individual webinars please look for this opportunity on the right side of the flyer.

Please click below to register for the series.

Registration will stay open through December.  If you register late you will receive a link(s) to the webinar recording(s) you missed.

REGISTER HERE