A two week Enlightenment Intensive is not a light undertaking. It is important to approach it realistically. The aim of these notes is to assist you to decide whether to take a two week intensive, and if you do, how best to prepare for it. If after reading these notes you have any further questions please contact me (Jake Chapman) directly.
1. What is a two week Intensive?
A two week Enlightenment Intensive is different from a three day Intensive in more ways than the number of days. It is a different level of undertaking, involves a different process and can produce fundamentally different results. There are also differences in the schedule and rules; for example some writing in journals is allowed and the daily schedule finishes earlier (around 10.00pm). The high level of stress and intensity of a three day is reduced quite a lot by the two week schedule.
On a three day Intensive participants are invited to give their all for three days – it is a sort of “spiritual sprint” with the goal of achieving a breakthrough. During the three days the main process operating is that participants will dis-identify from their minds. This dis-identification allows breakthroughs to occur.
A two week Intensive starts off exactly the same as a three day; this means that the discomfort associated with uncoupling from life that lasts for the first one and a half days takes place at the beginning of the two weeks. Once that uncoupling is accomplished the participants enter a different space and this continues throughout the rest of the intensive. This is an advantage of taking a long intensive because there is a larger pay-off for the initial discomfort.
After the initial stage of uncoupling the participants go through a deeper process of dis-identification. On a three day intensive the dis-identification occurs for the last one and a half days of the group; on a two week it continues for much longer. After about day six the process shifts gear again, material which was conveniently put to one side for a couple of days now re-emerges. This can be distressing – but it also provides an opportunity for a deeper level of handling the material – it is possible for participants to actually clear material from their minds in a long Intensive. Some of the main benefits for taking a long intensive arise from this process of deeper self inspection and clearing. However the real pay-off is in the possibility of having a much deeper enlightenment experience.
On a three day intensive it is comparatively rare for anyone to have a deep enlightenment experience; on my Intensives it will occur once every three or four Intensives. The frequency of deep experiences on two week Intensives is such that about 25% of the participants have them. Overall the number of participants having enlightenment experiences is much the same; the average on three day Intensives is between 25 and 30%, on two week Intensives it is between 30 and 40%. The significant difference is in the frequency of deep experiences.
What is the difference between a deep and shallow experience? Well most experiences on three day Intensives will not cause the person to change their whole life. The experience is valuable because it resolves for ever the issue of whether there is an absolute truth and who one is. There will also usually be a number of useful insights after such an experience. It is also not uncommon for participants on three day Intensives to hardly notice that they had an experience; some may miss it the first time altogether, others will need help from the master or monitor in connecting to the core of the actual experience. And these experiences often happen by the participant being “tricked” – they may not have been contemplating deeply but had, by some means, just been more open than before. Deep experiences have quite different characteristics. The person who has a deep experience knows it at the time, there is no mistaking it. They may be shy about presenting it, but they know what it is that they have experienced, and it is usually “mind-blowing” (literally!). To the degree that the person accepts the experience it can provide a whole new basis for their life. Me and my life changed dramatically and totally as a result of a deep experience on a six-week intensive. I changed how I was in the world, what I did and how I related. And the changes have all lead to increased happiness, love, satisfaction and sense of fulfilment in my life.
This sort of deep experience requires a deeper level of commitment to going for the truth, it requires great persistence and willingness to be wrong. Those participants able to make this deeper level of commitment stand a good chance of having a very deep direct experience. Those who do not have direct experiences make enormous progress in sorting out their lives and relationships. As with most things in life, the more one puts into this process the more one gets out.
Taking a two week is rather like retreating into a monastery for a period of time. The daily routine becomes a way of life, it becomes easier and easier to maintain ones contemplation, and the love and contact in the group deepens steadily throughout the two weeks – until by the end you will count the other participants amongst the people you know and love the best in the world.
2. Requirements
It is essential that you have taken, and completed, a three day Enlightenment Intensive before you take a two week. It is such a different type of group to any other growth process that it would be extremely foolish to sign up for two weeks without knowing what you are letting yourself in for. You should also have had no difficulties in readjusting to life after a three day intensive – because if you had difficulties after a three day you may have serious problems after a two week.
By difficulties I don’t mean the normal issues of coming out of the structure, learning to tolerate being interrupted and losing the sense of openness. Nor do I mean the emotional swings, from high to depression, that normally occur once or twice shortly after an Intensive. The sorts of difficulties I mean are real problems in relating to people, or difficulties in sleeping, or unwillingness to enter into the stream of life, or paranoia. These are difficulties which relate to exposure to stress – and many people simply cannot handle the amount of stress that is generated on an Intensive. This is nothing to be ashamed of – it is just the way that some people are. The very worst thing such people can do is to ignore the symptoms and expose themselves to more and more stress – that is the way to have a psychotic break! So look at it for yourself. Did you have problems handling the stress after a three day? If you did then don’t take a two week – it simply won’t help you.
Another requirement is that you should be seeking the Truth just for the sake of knowing the Truth. Quite often people will take a three day Intensive to find out what it’s about. Then they may take another one because they want to have an experience, or to have another experience. Sometimes people think that they will stand a better chance of having an experience if they take a longer Intensive – so they sign up with the aim of satisfying their ego – to have an experience, to appear bigshot, to be able to say “I did a two week Intensive”. Well you should know that these motives wear pretty thin after a few days. One’s ego desire can keep you going through a three day OK – but on a two week that motive gets crushed pretty quickly. And you should know that in general there are not many more experiences on a two week than on a three day. So although a person’s ego may get them into this business it is not an adequate basis for taking a two week intensive. Do it because you really want to know the Truth of yourself, life or another.
You should be prepared for your life to change in fairly fundamental ways. You should not expect to be able to take a two week intensive and then continue your life exactly as before. If that is your expectation then you will either have a hard time (trying to forget what you have learned) or you will be disappointed – because the whole point of digging that far into finding out the truth is to be able to bring your life more in harmony with who you really are, what life is really about and what others actually are. I will return to this later on in these notes.
3. Choosing a Question
If you have read this far and are still contemplating taking a two week then you need to know something about how to prepare for the group – and one of the more important aspects of this is choosing your question. Normally you will work on the same question for the entire two weeks – so it is not a trivial decision. Since you will have already completed a three day you are free to work on any of the four questions – which are
Who am I? (not recommended for a long Intensive)
What am I?
What is life?
What is another?
Charles Berner ended up using the above four questions because they actually covered all the areas of direct experience encountered in the more traditional methods for seeking enlightenment. He also noticed, as Zen Masters had noticed for hundreds of years, that the above order of the questions appears to be the “natural” order of enlightenment. In other words people tended to first experience who they were, then what they were, then what life is and finally what another is. This is not a universal sequence, but it is by far the most common.
On a three day group participants are instructed to work on the question that interests them most. This is a good guideline, but needs to be moderated by some other considerations – especially since what is being sought in a two week is a deeper level of experience. I do not recommend “Who am I?” for long Intensives. A very deep experience of oneself is almost always a “what” experience – so it is best to work directly on “What am I?” if you want self enlightenment.
It is important to work on self enlightenment first simply because if you do not know who you are then it is far more difficult to experience another. In fact I have had participants who have had direct experiences of life or another but who were unable to present the experience, let alone integrate it, because they did not know who had had the experience. So I recommend people to work on self enlightenment until they have had a solid (i.e. not just a flash) experience of who or what they are. There are other advantages to this strategy since when you know who or what you are then
(a) you can do the technique better because you will be able to communicate from yourself more fully and also be more prepared to enter into the contact with your partners
(b) you will be more willing to go through crises – you will know that you are different from your mind and be more prepared to face it down.
(c) the mind clearing effects of the longer intensive will be somewhat enhanced.
Working on “life” on a long Intensive can be difficult – the object of contemplation becomes a real issue and you will have to face up to all your ideas and preconceived notions about life. However it is precisely for this reason that Charles Berner used to strongly recommend this question – he says it is the best question for getting your ideas sorted out. In his opinion once a person knows who they are then it is their lack of knowledge about life that is usually their greatest obstacle to personal growth
“What is another” is actually the most difficult question to work on. It is difficult for practical reasons – you will usually be using your partner as an object of contemplation and yet must not involve them in your communications. It is also difficult because it runs you straight into your most profound obstacles – the deepest parts of your mind. But this is also potentially the most rewarding question – indeed for many people it is finding the Truth to this question that finally resolves their issues about how to orientate their life.
In his most recent comment on Enlightenment Intensives Charles Berner has noted that people seem to make most progress working on “What am I?”. He attributes the reason for this to the faster rate of dis-identification that occurs on this question, and on the fact that the object is relatively easily available. His observations coincide with my own. My own most profound experiences have been on this question. So there are pros and cons associated with all the questions – nevertheless there is a strong case for persisting with the traditional sequence – self, life and then another. There are also benefits and drawbacks associated with working on a question that you have already worked on in an Intensive. The advantage of sticking at the same question is that you will go deeper each time you work on it – the disadvantage is that you might start to get preconceived ideas about what it means to work on that question. On balance I would recommend people to stick to the same question until it is resolved for them – too often changing questions is the mind’s way of demanding entertainment.
Next.
A Master's Path 