The Announcement

The first week of March, 2011

Readers please feel free to connect with me by leaving comments.

This web site begins with an explanation of the Announcement, where it came from and how it is beginning to unfold.

The Ease and Joy of my Integral Transformative Practice

The Announcement came to me during a visualization. On the occasion of an important birthday, I went to the sacred place in my inner self, corresponding to a certain tree outside St. Helena, California. Climbing the stairs I saw open before me there, I met Ganesh, who had introduced himself to my imagination during my Hoffman process some years earlier. I asked for guidance.

I took up a pen and wrote what my guide spoke:

The Announcement

As a

* living seed of the coming civilization*

*Those Who Care*

Must now

*step beyond constraints and techniques.*

We embody

*the wise and compassionate teachings*

We've received, despite the

*seemingly endless harms*

Contravening the vision of ultimate bliss.

As a

*bridge between past and future*

From

*all that derives out of ancient spiritual endeavors*

To

*all the future brings (in whatever container),*

We seek to embody and disseminate

*Extraordinary Knowledge of Interior Awareness;*

And to intensify and transmit it to

*a wider sphere and a broader community.*

Unfolding the Announcement

And I sought to widen my sphere, within days attending the extraordinary workshop on Integral Transformative Practice(R) at Esalen. There I introduced myself as having reached phase four, teacher. But what to teach?

The ITP Kata(TM), a movement, affirmation, and stillness meditation was the greatest part of the workshop. Documented in The Tao of Practice (DVD) and The Life We Are Given (book), the Kata is to ITP what Shikantaza ("just sitting") is to Zen, what Satsang is to Yoga: a tangible form of the transcendent Way.

Integral Transformative Practice, of course, is much more than the Kata, as Zen is more than sitting, and Worship more than Prayer. And so two affirmations came to me in my work during the workshop:

• I connect my center, my heart, and my mind, and I live out of Power, Compassion, and Wisdom.
• All I need for my practice of Kata comes to me with Ease and Joy.

Since then I've attended more ITP events and joined a local group who do the Kata on Saturdays. Doing the Kata in any group that opens before me meant that near the end of 2010, I’d led 166 sessions. So far, it seems, I've led the Kata four or five times a week, and followed others leading it often as well. To find a place and time you can join a session, contact me.

Making the Announcement through leading the Kata is a livelihood in the sense of a pattern of practice one could lead "as a way of life." And the way is ease and joy, letting doors that open be paths to future abundance.

(c) copyright 2011, Leland S. Ferguson, all rights reserved. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners.

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