IMCW Annual Report 2020: Collective Awakening For IMCW, like many other organizations, the past year has been one of celebrations and challenges. While our first and second quarters saw the excitement of hiring of an interim executive director, bringing on several new board members, and the conclusion to our year+, community-wide visioning process, the third and fourth quarters were quickly overshadowed by COVID-19, and the national upheaval that followed the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others. Like other caring communities, IMCW moved quickly to create the needed supports for our sangha... November 13, 2020By Editor announcement
Harriet Tubman: A Lesson in Moving Through the Unbearable She is running in the darkness, a young Black woman, breathing hard, stumbling, but moving, moving in exhaustion and fear, but moving. It is dark, but she has a sense of where she is going. This is where I meet Harriet Tubman. This is how I came into practice. So often, the attention placed on Black bodies is focused on what we do with them or what is done to them. Too often, our hearts, our vision, and our spiritual practices are ignored as the action of our bodies are either praised or vilified. Harriet Tubman has become the epitome of Black woman as action hero.... November 5, 2020By Ayesha Ali Diversity, teachings
The Humanity of Shared Retreat Experience For the past 15 years I've been part of our annual Fall Retreat. This one was way different. It was online. For seven days. I was skeptical..... I was wrong. November 3, 2020By Jonathan Foust ResidentialRetreats
The Enneagram - a Tool for Mindfulness and Insight Most of us come to a meditation practice out of a longing to free ourselves from the repeated experience of being caught in familiar, often painful, emotional experiences within ourselves or in our relationships. We may meditate for hours, days, even years, become more and more aware of these difficult patterns and increasingly long to be free of them. But, at some point, it may seem like we’ve hit a wall, where sitting in individual meditation practice just doesn’t seem enough to penetrate through these more difficult blind spots. We may reach a stage where it’s hard to really see and recognize what’s happening by just continuing to sit with it. The Enneagram is a tool that can help when we encounter these more difficult blind spots.... October 29, 2020By Rob Creekmore, Sarah Keely event
Welcome in the New Year with IMCW's New Online Weeklong Retreat (Space Available) with Tara Brach, Jonathan Foust, La Sarmiento, Anam Thubten Rinpoche, and Kate Johnson -- This year has been tough on all of us. The pandemic has affected everything in our lives – our work, our routines, our health, and our families. Wouldn’t it be good to have a space where we can go to breathe again – to feel quiet and spacious and free? That will allow us to feel all that is in the moment – both the grief and the small joys? That is what IMCW has created for our 2020 New Year’s Retreat. The end of the year is a perfect time to reflect and to breathe and to prepare for the coming year. Tara Brach tells us: The purpose of a retreat is to follow a formal rhythm of practice that allows you to center yourself, tend your body, quiet your mind, see the present circumstances with clarity and freedom, and open your heart.... October 23, 2020By Editor announcement, event, ResidentialRetreats