Omega Dreaming: Awakening to Awe

May 26, 2023

I just had a dream that I want to share with you: It is summertime. Birds, who have gathered from everywhere around the world, arrive and sing me awake –Wake up! Wake up! Come out into the awe with us! As I step outside into the moist coolness of a perfect summer’s day dawning, I am wrapped in a shawl of blossoming, quietly pulsing light. I am already in awe. My awe-walk continues, the growing light draws me forward like an excited child tugging on my hand to show me something it discovered. There is familiarity in the newness of this journey. Oh, the bell of recognition rings: I am at Omega! The sun rises as I flow down the path to Stillwater, a sanctuary cradled by lush quiet green – Long Pond Lake shining through the trees. As I enter the simple beauty of this space I am met with a deep sense of arrival - welcomed with open arms and bright smiles from the space itself - to the home of my beingness.

In the awe, there is unconditional acceptance and the warmth of genuine welcome as if I have always been here, or never left. There are no words to adequately describe what happens next: I am awash with the vibrations of shared voices, contained by something far bigger than myself, caught in a swell of sound filling my senses – will I laugh or cry from the pure pleasure of it? There is truly nothing like it.

Emptiness saturates our culture. Addictions, consumption, and materialism are pervasive symptoms of our cultural disconnection. They are our attempts to escape, or cope, with the unbearable feelings of barrenness, separation, and isolation far too many of us struggle with. When there’s sustained absence of community to create a container, to hold a sense of interconnected We, individuals adapt, attempting to create this container in themselves. Rarely, however, do these Me spaces allow any of us to walk deep enough into the cave of our experience, to a place where we can fully acknowledge and let go of all that we carry - including the grief of not being held regularly by a community of other beings. It is by being vulnerable together, openly sensing and being sensed by other beings, that we return to a felt-sense of wholeness, a sense of oneness, entering an interconnected space that interpersonal neurobiology researcher Dr. Daniel Siegel calls, MWe.

As I have lived it these past 50 years, the human developmental journey is largely devoted to integration of the relational self with the inner self. I consciously choose to deepen this journey with experiences that counter the imprisonment of modern culture’s messages of separation. It is not possible to do this without being in active relationship with self, with other humans, and with the world around us. My week-long immersions into the sanctuary of Continuum at Omega over the past 20 summers have all been a celebration of interdependence that provides counterbalance to the fierce independence we are enculturated with in current times. It is in the gathering of fellow embodied explorers - to move, sound, breathe, and truly be my authentic self in a sanctuary space full of other humans doing the same – that I can sense in my bones what freedom means. In this space, everything is amplified into awe. It is this awe that nurtures me, preparing me for the colder months that lie ahead.

I want to share this dream with you. Come experience the power of awe, the power of being in a place of possibility, a place of open awareness, interconnection, and love with me. It is time to dive into the sea of potential together! Let’s discover what unfolds and emerges when each of us dissolves our resistance to change or adaptive growth. Let’s meet naked in our self-honesty, in a place of limitless possibility. It is our human work to make ourselves more receptive - emptying and letting go so we can open to what is emerging in ourselves and in each other.

The 2023 Continuum retreat at Omega in Rhinebeck, NY will be July 2-7. The theme is Interdependence in Motion.

Photo credit: Phyllis McCabe