2012 Workshops
July 20-27 Greece workshop
Click here to go to the Kalikalos website and read the full description. You can register from there and choose your room options.
February 18-26 Hawaii workshop – SOLD OUT
This workshop is full. You may email support@radicalhonesty.com to be put on the waitlist.
The Curse in Honesty
Eighteen people get together on Saturday morning and make some agreements about what they will do together for the next eight days. One of the most important agreements is that they will the truth to each other completely for the next eight days. If that was all that occurred, and there were no other agenda whatsoever, the course would be powerful because the power of that alone is incredible.
The agenda for each day goes something like this: we all start with yoga from 7:30 to 8:30, meditate together until 8:50, then run a couple miles or do alternate aerobic activity for 20 minutes or so. We do this because yoga and meditation and exercise put you in touch with experiential reality. Breakfast is available from 9:00 to 10:00 and there is time for a shower. Then the entire group meets from 10:00 to 2:00 with occasional 15-minute breaks. The cotent of the meetings varies, but generally includes Gestalt hot seat work, lectures, directed conversations, paired exercises, small group exercises, and other training geared toward the distinction between noticing and thinking for all participants.
Lunch is at 2:00 followed by a break until 5:00, during which time participants meditate fro the second time each day, as they have agreed to do. They can also take a nap, interact with others, read assigned material, write in a journal, and so on. We do our second meditation individually during that break. From 5:00 to 8:00 we meet again, other watching feature length movies like Secrets and Lies, Little Big Man, My Dinner with Andre, Baghdad Cafe, The Karate Kid, The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain, Ikiru, or other films selected on the basis of representing what I call abnormal mental health. Generally they are stories of people who were able to remain sane while the society around them was crazy.
At 8:00 we break for supper. From 9:00 to 11:00 we hear two life stories. Each person spends an hour telling the whole story of their life which is recorded. A timekeeper prompts the storyteller every fifteen minutes and a little time is left at the end for people to ask questions to get the honest details. Before this workshop is over, every participant hears everyone else’s life story, tells their own, and receives their DVD to use later to start conversations with parents, ex-spouses, brothers, sisters, lovers, and friend with whom they have unfinished business in life.
Also, about the fifth day of the workshop, everyone gets naked. One person at a time stands up in front of a mirror and talks about what they like and don’t like about their body. This is also recorded. Then they tell their sexual history- when they first found out that they were a sexual being; when they first masturbated; whether they like doing it with men or women or vegetables, animals, or minerals; how many people of each gender they have had sex with; their best and worst sexual experiences; and so on. Each participant stands naked in front of us, recounting these details while being recorded, until we who are watching and listening (and also naked) feel they are no longer embarrassed. They often are embarrassed, but with good coaching and persistence and complete sharing of the truth they get over it. Everyone always thinks this will be a sexy experience. SO far, it has never been very sexy at all. Mostly it is about embarrassment and shame and suffering more than pleasure, and about how the avoidance of all those aspects often controls our lives.
The next day, we review the videos together, projected onto a wall so you are bigger in image than in reality. Each person sits by the wall of the projected image when their image appears, observes their segment of the video, and receives feedback. The process of watching themselves on (big) television, naked, while talking about their sex lives is a more confrontational process for some people than the original experience of standing naked before the group. Again, the willingness to face the experience and live through it provides a decrease in the intensity of the sensations related to shame and a change in perspective on their own life in the direction of compassion for themselves as well as others.
As you can imagine, by the fifth or sixth day, people get to know each other pretty well. What happens, and it happens over and over again with very diverse groups of people, is the same every time. Everyone falls in love with everyone else. The very people who were categorized as jerks the first day are the same people who, just a few days later, have you, their greatest enemy and most severe judge, put an arm around them and say something like: “Bless your heart! You’ve come through some really hard times. You have a lot of courage. Good for you! You’re just like me. I had no idea we were so much alike. Aren’t we funny? Aren’t we pathetic? Isn’t life strange? I just love you to pieces!” When people get to know each other, in detail, they fall in love with each other. Now, isn’t that a hell of a thing? Imagine all that time wasted “putting on airs,” in hopes that someone would love us for our act, when all we really needed to do was drop the act and tell the truth!
Because everyone very much likes being in love, even though afraid of it because of the unfamiliarity and vulnerability, the question arises, “What can we do to sustain this feeling of connectedness?” Here lies a place of great danger. Here is where the mind makes its first attempt to take control and make assessments and judgments and determine how to hold on to something. Here is the critical point. If we are going to remain enlightened and alive, we have to do it without holding on too tight. If we try to hard to preserve something like this, we kill it. That is what a mind is for. Making dead memories more important than the living present is one of the functions of the mind. Making obligations out of past joys is the kind of thing any mins knows how to do and will do at the drop of a hat. That is what makes the mind such a killjoy.
The curriculum for the continuation of the work beyond this point requires a built-in method for correcting itself or it will surely go awry. That curriculum involves the continuous completion of unfinished business from the past and keeping up with honesty day to day. It also involves consciously designing and creating with friends.
Dates: February 18-26, 2012
Price: $2400.00 – Includes room and board
Location: Island of Hawaii at Aaahhh… Paradise
How to sign up: This workshop is booked full. You may email support@radicalhonesty.com to be put on the waitlist.
About the Curriculum for Life and World Transformation
The Radical Honesty workshops were created by Dr. Brad Blanton, Ph.D.. The course curriculum for life and world transformation follows a natural pattern of progression and training. The workshops teach you to rely on noticing, rather than thinking, as the basis for getting grounded in your experience and creating real intimacy. The Curse in Honesty training provides for you the experience and the tools to go out into the world and sustain ongoing transformation. It also includes training in how to utilize your mind in a new capacity, by designing your life consciously from your vision. The Trainer’s Training gives you concrete experience in actively coaching others, and developing more distinctions as a noticer, while consciously creating your life.