Practice Retreat in Dzogchen Beara - a personal experience
Dzogchen Beara
Have you ever considered doing a practice retreat of a few weeks or months, or a nyenpa retreat but you’re wondering what the experience might be like?
Adele Hersey from the UK sangha shares with us her deeply personal experience of doing several months of retreat in Dzogchen Beara and how doing retreat both deepens her dharma practice and supports her to deal with life’s challenges.
Read Adele’s story.
Adele’s retreat
If you have ever wondered about doing a long retreat at Dzogchen Beara, I’d like to share my experience as encouragement to explore the possibility for yourself. Jennifer, the retreat manager, is really open to finding ways to make it work for you and you can apply to the Terton Sogyal Foundation for a grant of up to fifty percent of the cost.
The Background
I’ve been to Dzogchen Beara a few times. A few years ago, I did a five-month closed group retreat there, which I followed with a retreat at home for over four months (which conveniently coincided with the pandemic lockdown). This time in 2024, I chose to do a personal retreat in Dzogchen Beara from May to August. Each of these retreats has been quite different, with advantages and challenges, but all have been hugely transformative, touchstones, enabling me more than anything I can name. I find that the space, time and structure of an extended retreat allows my mind to settle and become uninterrupted. Whatever happens is part of the practice, everything working together. I find my mind goes very deep and this also brings the deepest of challenges.
I have grown up with complex trauma from childhood abuse, and my whole spiritual path has necessarily involved finding a way to work with this. These days I feel the trauma is an advantage, as there is nothing else to do other than truly apply the dharma to my own mind. If I don’t, the trauma takes over. So, I'm very motivated! I want to be able to experience fear unaltered, to see its nature, to feel how it is only a wave rising from and returning to the ocean, to allow all experience to come and go, free of hope and fear. But terror is a hard feeling to endure, welcome and befriend.
Settling in
As I settled into my room in Longchen, Dzogchen Beara’s long term retreat building, I placed some flowers on my shrine that the woman from my AirBnB had given me. Little did I know how significant flowers would become in this retreat. Next door, I had a buddy who was doing the same practice as me. We were fortunate to receive teachings on this practice from Khenchen Pema Sherab shortly before we went into closed retreat. I was so joyful to begin. Usually, my retreats begin with joy!!! And although from then on, we did not see each other, it was comforting to know my companion was next door doing the same practice as me.
Support during my retreat and integration
I had been able to talk through my retreat boundaries carefully with Jennifer and was glad we made such thorough preparations. I had a strong feeling that I wanted to be able to go outside for walks during my retreat. I find that during the breaks, the most helpful thing for me is to be outside, with the elements. I can integrate the practice so much more easily outside. Finding a quiet spot to sit, and feeling not separate from this land, sky, sea. I made my own land boundary, as far as the gate to the animal sanctuary and as far as the bend in the road where the flags start. I was able to circumambulate the new temple within this boundary and feel part of its momentous opening.
After four months, I knew every little path and track of this landscape. It was on these walks that I began to gather flowers for my shrine. I knew what to pick and what to leave, not to deplete anything. Often at lunch, I would sit on my terrace outside arranging the flowers I had collected and they became exquisite offerings. As I settled into my formal practice again, the flowers became a blissful symbol to me and I found myself gazing, no inside or outside, nothing separate from anything else, a sense of being completely present, and in touch with everything. Everything being ok. Everything belonging.
The other main boundary I discussed with Jennifer was to be in silence, with only two exceptions. First, my regular check-ins with her and, second, I would continue a weekly phone call with my therapist, with whom I’d been working for five years. She’d begun working with me during my long retreat at home. To be able to continue this work as I practised enabled me to go even deeper. She said herself she’d never worked with someone who was in retreat, and she noticed how free and unencumbered my mind was—how we could cut right through things, be aware of the subtle, the parts that usually hide, and arrive at something much more profound and more quickly than normal. This retreat happened at a very difficult time in my life, and I had some life changing decisions to make that brought up a lot of fear but the combination of the practice, walking, flowers and therapy seemed to make everything possible. I could feel my fear but I was held in a much deeper knowing, a sense of possibility and freedom that comes with courage. When leaving my retreat, I carried this forward and was able to act, able to apply, able to move forward in every way.
Adele
Practice Retreats in Dzogchen Beara
In Dzogchen Beara we offer Rigpa sangha members a variety of different possibilities for doing retreat in order to find the best option for you at your stage of the path.
Jennifer, Retreat Guide at Dzogchen Beara
We offer both group and personal retreats of various durations. For those doing personal retreats, we work together with you to create a plan for your retreat with the best programme, environment and boundaries so that you get the most from your retreat.
If you need financial support, grants are available from the Tertön Sogyal Foundation.
If you aspire to do a retreat in Dzogchen Beara, even if you’re just exploring the idea, don’t hesitate to reach out to discuss it further. Please contact Jennifer at retreats@dzogchenbeara.org.
