True spiritual progress requires that we sometimes step out of our outer, busy life and enter into the field of Truth that silence and stillness creates. It is like a small death. The outcome is a renewed life, a new birth.   New Dharma offers the Silent Retreat as an opportunity for each of you to step out of your life for a period of time to discover the Truth of who you are.

The Silent Retreat is a quest for the Truth of our essential self. We are in essence, the Sat, the eternal, unchanging foundation of existence. It is the essential “truth”, the foundation of our being. The Sat is both individual and universal. It is impersonal but it is the source of our personality and of all our experience, including spiritual experience. The nature of the Sat is silence and stillness. The experience of the Sat takes the form of ‘sat-chit-ananda’…truth, consciousness and bliss.

There are two things that happen at the Silent retreat. One, you step out of your life and habits and two, you spend an extended period of time in silence and stillness with a group of people doing the same thing, facilitated by a teacher who knows the Sat. In a very real sense there is nothing to “get” out of such a retreat, rather you will “lose” those qualities that resist, block and obscure your ability to know yourself as the Sat. It is a process of subtraction, of losing that which prevents our natural condition of Truth from being known and experienced in our day-to-day life.

SIX-DAY SILENT RETREATS

Six-day Silent Retreats occur twice a year at Camp Galilee, located on the edge of Lake Tahoe, California. They are designed to create a feeling of silent yoga or unity.  Every aspect the program is organized not only to manifest the Sat but also to give you time to explore how you can integrate what you discover into your life. This is the intention and the purpose of this retreat.

For dates and locations of upcoming retreats click here (coming soon)

SILENT WEEKEND RETREATS

Silent Weekend Retreats are held frequently throughout the year in various locations.  These retreats are a shorter version of the Six-Day Retreat for those who are unable to commit to a longer retreat.  These start on Friday evening and end Sunday afternoons.  The schedule is organized around a series of silent sittings followed by evening satsangs.  Outside of the satsang, these retreats are held in silence.

We did our first Silent Weekend at the Washoe Valley Center in Nevada in May followed by another in June in Boulder, Colorado.  This same force was released and although it did not have the same impact as the six-day retreat, it was surprisingly powerful. We now have one scheduled for mid July in San Francisco and another in Seattle at the end of July. We plan to continue to hold one each month at different locations. There is no fee charged but donations are appreciated.

For dates and locations of upcoming retreats click here (coming soon)