On Our Upcoming Ceremonies and Retreats or Apparent Lack Thereof

“All the people singin’ all down the line Mmmm…., Watch the men all workin’, workin’, yeah (All down the line)….”

If you’ve visited The Higher Haven, you’re familiar with that final turn south down dusty 63rd. street off of 106th Ave., as a bright green, half-mile farm field of soybeans — or this year’s cucumbers — spreads out wide to the Western horizon on your right. Every year, bees fan out across and pollinate that field, increasing the crop yield and improving the quality of the produce. Both honey bees and native bees buzz from flower to flower, pollinating not only the agricultural crops but many wild plants as well, contributing to the overall biodiversity of our neighborhood ecosystem.

This may be why we chose the blessed bee as the symbol for our signature retreat, our quarterly Noble Silence Meditation Retreat (NSMR), a weekend of energized, spiritual work that brings about fruitful growth. Just completed in mid-July, we’ll be offering the next NSMR again this Fall, from Friday, October 17th to Sunday, October 19th. Right now, as mentioned in our previous post, we’re riding out the retrograde by bowing to some of the greater forces at work in our world. Having recently consulted with our friend James Kelleher regarding our upcoming Fall schedule, here’s what James had to say about this very day — 08/08/2025:

“The upcoming Mars–Saturn opposition, active from July 28 to September 13, 2025, peaks on August 8, and in Vedic astrology, this alignment is like summer rush hour on the cosmic highway. It often produces delays, obstacles, and pressure, amplifying frustration for individuals and entire nations. For most of us, this transit simply means snags in communication, bottlenecks at work, or setbacks in everyday plans. It's the astrological equivalent of sitting in traffic when you’re late for a meeting. It’s annoying, but usually manageable. However, for countries and large organizations, this aspect can be far more visible, especially during periods of global instability. History shows that previous oppositions have coincided with moments of mounting strain: the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the Korean War offensives in 1951, and even major turning points in World War II.

In today’s world, with a fragile ceasefire in the Middle East, the grinding war in Ukraine, and other geopolitical hotspots simmering, this opposition suggests the possibility of increased tension, military buildup, or even surges in violence. While it doesn’t guarantee conflict, it often marks periods when tempers flare and patience runs thin. The best remedy? Think of rush hour traffic—you can’t change it, but you can change your approach. Slow down, stay patient, and reframe the experience. Listen to your favorite music, a podcast, or an audiobook. Tension and delays  are part of life. Frustration & anger, however, are optional.”

The take-away? Rest, relax, organize, (for us) plan our Fall and 2026 schedule, and of course our favorite — go on retreat. We had hoped to have this post up by Wednesday, as it was the cut-off for August’s Shinzen Young Home Practice Program (HPP), a chance to meditate and practice more advanced techniques with people from around the world. We posted a chunk of Shin Speak an article or two back, and are looking forward to this weekend’s Shinzen led sessions on Focusing Out, Going Deeper into Equanimity, Working with the Auto Family, and Feeling Great! You can explore next month’s HPP or even consider a Virtual Home Retreat with Shinzen, both very economical ways to boost your personal practice.

Here, we’ll soon be posting our full Calendar of classes and retreats, information on solo visits, and be back in Ceremony next week with our August Way of The Contrary Weekend, circling up monthly through December. Although our tag line touts “Movement for the Body” and leads with Yoga, followed by Meditation, Ceremony, and Community, that was simply a pleasing rhythm of words to my old advertising copywriter ear. The truth is that we are a one-of-a-kind retreat center, more accurately offering Ceremony — powerful enough to heal a lifetime of unhealthy patterns and even mental illness, Meditation —in the Vipassana Tradition with techniques and teachings from a Master Teacher, Yoga — practiced in its original intent, to keep the body supple for long periods of sitting still, and a thriving Community — of which we’d love for you to be a part. All that said, we’re excited about a new standout yoga teacher, a yoga teacher’s yoga teacher, Ms. Kellie Lindsay, who will help lead upcoming Fall classes and 2026 retreats. We’ll close on the healing and uplift she recently received in Ceremony:

“As I was nearing the end of the first year of my PhD program—which followed a devastating break-up, completing my master's degree on fumes, working full-time, and moving myself and my teenage son to Ann Arbor—I was actively searching for a reset button. I've practiced and taught yoga for many years, so my initial instinct was to search for yoga retreats since those were familiar to me. However, I stumbled upon the Way of the Contrary at the Higher Haven and felt a strange calling to attend it instead. I will forever thank my intuition because this retreat experience was unlike anything I had ever encountered, and it was exactly what my body, mind, and soul needed. To be honest, I wish it had lasted much longer.

I had never participated in a ceremonial purification Lodge, so, I had no expectations or pre-conceived opinions on how things might go, which allowed me to "drop in" and embrace the newness of the practice in tandem with the newness I felt in my life. We were encouraged to bring photos of loved ones and/or "trinkets" for blessings, and that gesture alone helped me feel a deeper connection to my purpose for being there. Including photos of relatives alive and deceased as well as a friend who is struggling, I realized that I had inadvertently chosen people of a certain pattern. This realization happened moments before I entered the Lodge, and throughout the ceremony the feelings of forgiveness, relief, compassion, and closure washed over me. ‘Renewal’ is the best word I can use to describe it. An added bonus that I was completely taken aback by was that the chronic pain in my neck and shoulder was completely gone after the Ceremony. I am writing this nearly two weeks later, and I'm elated to report that the pain has not returned.

 Logistically, Paul and his team were amazing at making us all feel at home on the grounds and in the retreat center. The place was clean, comfortable, and the trails were lovely and very well marked. Getting to spend quiet time alone in nature is always a bonus, and it was especially sweet for spending time introspecting after the Ceremony. All-in-all, if you are even slightly on the fence or feel any apprehension about attending this retreat, please take it from me—GO. You will not regret it.” ~ KL

On Our Summer Noble Silence Meditation Retreat (NSMR) Weekend

“Ticking away moments that make up a dull day, fritter & waste hours in an off-hand way”

I’m happy to report we recently emerged from our Summer Noble Silence Meditation Retreat (NSMR) Weekend. Gathering a small clan of courageous souls to abide in silence and foster inner stillness from Friday eve to Sunday’s mid-day talking circle, for what I jokingly call our 40-hour (Spiritual) Work Weekend, we melt away the barriers that keep us all from feeling fully alive. With teachings and techniques that cultivate high states of concentration, we work to create a clearer, more openhearted presence that reconnects us to life. Quieting the monkey mind, relishing the sites and sounds of nature, nurturing ourselves with good food and our good practice, we then return to the talking world more open and awake, riding the energy of a more caring presence that has us then responding to the world and its mounting, modern-day challenges with our full intelligence and compassion.

It’s that turbulent return I’m citing here, the funky time right after a retreat that my teacher Shinzen Young reminds us in his dharma talks could be an unsettling experience of both aftershock and afterglow, in the light of ongoing spiritual purification. “My standard remark,” comments Shin, “only because I have so many times experienced what I’m about to describe myself upon leaving a retreat, is that I am shocked to discover the that entire population of North America has become… Insane… one has to stop and think: they all went crazy, completely berserk, since I was away on retreat? There can be that sense of vulnerability to the outside world.” Indeed, the left turn lanes of South Haven, Michigan were hot, honking jams of tumultuous, external energy. And, as my watch indicated, both space and time can feel a bit “upside down”, a description of a situation that feels confused, disordered, or chaotic. Coming out during the cosmic churn of Mercury Retrograde probably didn’t help our cause.

Still, after days of learning how not to interfere with the natural flow of our senses, training every muscle of our being to work in a deeper, more cooperative way, even a bumpy, temporary transition couldn’t negate our spiritual progress. Afterward, we rolled seamlessly into some private visits, a late-summer, early Fall option for established clients of The Higher Haven. “Earlier this week I took a day to do a mini solo retreat at The Higher Haven,” writes Manuj. “This was my second visit there, having attended a group retreat in 2022. I want to take a moment and thank Paul & THH for providing such a relaxing and healing environment around meditation and tribal Ceremony. The grounds’ country cell phone connectivity encouraged me to disconnect from the outer world, but check in if needed. Great experience, Good Medicine, or as they say: “Just what the Doctor ordered”.

If you’re seeking good, healing medicine, The Higher Haven’s next NSMR Weekend will be this Fall, from Friday, October 17th to Sunday, October 19th. Our next Way of The Contrary Ceremonial Purification Weekend happens the weekend of August 16th and again on September 6th. And, if you’ve already paid us a visit, watch for more information soon on private retreat possibilities through the end of 2025 and into The Year of The Horse 2026.

On Our Turtle-Like Return And New, Breezy Retreat/Do Nothing Weekend

We’ve been off the blog for a minute. Actually, several minutes, roughly 112,320, a figure we came to by multiplying roughly the number of days it’s been (78), by 24 hours by 60 minutes, which, as stated, is many minutes out of communication. We’re happy to back and now officially back, having returned to Ceremony in April and teaching our annual Mother’s Day weekend Meditation and Mindfulness 101 class. We’ll be doing it again Father’s Day Weekend, as those are not usually good weekends for a full on retreat, but if a Dad and Son or daughter and Dad want to come over for the afternoon and pursue a bit of happiness together, it’s proven to be a good time.

Speaking of good times, I had a chance to take part in Shinzen’s Home Practice Program, as I did back in February, but never had a chance to post some of the wisdom of the Mighty Shin. Below, I’ve transcribed what I found to be a brilliant introduction to one of his Duration Training sessions. Upon review, much of it was Shin-speak, and if you know and love his teachings and techniques, you’ll understand the hope and eternal positivity of his message, in light of AI, in light of acquiring a skill set as homo sapiens sapiens that will broaden and deepen our happiness and even more importantly prep us for rapid evolution. I hope by reading the following you understand there is a movement against the stream that’s been happening for thousands or years and the current shifts occurring here, now are nothing but confirmation and good news. It may appear to be crazy given our world’s current chaos, but it’s more Weitgo, which is the word for crazy the Lakota use to describe the look in a Buffalo’s eye when it’s sacred, circling, and charging. So let’s turn it over to Shinny for some insight into the upward direction we could all choose to take by honing our internal skills, much needed given the modern world’s tectonic quake.

If all this sounds like a bit much and it certainly can be, we’re equally excited about the posting our first Super Breezy Solstice Retreat Weekend , inspired by the need forr just what it implies — an easier retreat weekend. We’ve felt the need for awhile, and it was all recently confirmed by over a dozen turtles soaking up the morning sun on a log in our front pod. For those folks with no proclivity towards the purifying heat of a hardcore Sweatlodge Ceremony or the seemingly daunting challenge of a silent retreat weekend, you now have your very own retreat weekend. And the Summer Solstice on Lake Michigan beaches is quite a magical time. Of course for those ready to take on exactly what Shinzen expounds on below at a new level, there’s always our upcoming Summer Noble Silence Meditation Retreat Weekend. “The longer we train, the deeper we purify", per Shin, and I’m happy to convey his ideas below on Biomodulation, really a form of best modern medicine, drawn from more ancient science. More soon on our late summer Yoga retreat offerings, Dark Sky Events and other 2025 opportunities to come out, reset, restore, renew, and return renewed.

“I’m going to say a few words about this practice we’re doing --  the nature of this 4 hour micro retreat program we’re currently doing. We call it Duration Training - in English. I made up a word in Japanese – Yuza – which means Heroic Sitting. In Chinese, the pronunciation is: “英勇就坐” and translated it means “To Sit Like a Hero”.  It’s a broadening and a deepening of a common practice associated with Southeast Asia…  and probably going back to India that has various names (Shin conveys the terms for the practice in Sanskrit, Poly and Chinese) and so forth. We’ll take it not as an ordeal, not as a test of how tough we are, of undeniable courage — like our ancestors did when they performed Shamanic Ceremonies, that suddenly had members of the tribe in very different modes, doing some very scary things, subjecting themselves to pretty scary sensations. This is a broadening, an elevating – you can think of it along those lines, with different cultures and their notions - but more flexible and beneficial for this period in history.

 Call it what you wish, that’s the background, where it came from and what it’s meant to achieve. It goes under the concept of Biomodulation actually, even though that connection may not seem so obvious. Biomodulation is the control of a biological system, a conjugated mixture of influence and information flowing through nodes and arcs. The biological principles that become evident when we look upon the two sides of life — life as we all know it, living it as this species, in the context at this time, by in this context, meaning the world as it is, at this general period. Which in case you didn’t notice is changing wildly and accelerating and maybe even the accelerator is accelerating. There’s actually a name for that in mechanics it’s called a Jerk. The world seems to be jerking us around locally and globally. It’s a characteristic of large, complex systems, and so system thinking will be helpful here. Biomodulation, in respect to the pursuit of happiness long considered, is anything that helps the process along, gives more benefits than causes harm. And certain practices, sometimes called aesthetical, which just means an exercise of the physical kind. But hen, in the Western contemplative/meditative tradition, that Greek word might mean what we consider meditation, mindfulness, systematic focus training in the service of happiness broadly and deeply considered, would be my definition, of contemplative neuroscience, which brings us back to a scientific way to think about these aesthetical practices. They are Biomodulation but there are other kinds of Biomodulation, and the old fashion way, the traditional way, can be rough sometimes. Life can be tough as it’s lived.

 So the two sides of life, life as its lived — we lense it through our conditioning, largely associated with what language we’re speaking, and what cultural sub dialect we’re lensing through, life as we all know it, as a bipedal, symmetric; but not quite because we have five fingers on each side, so symmetric but the five makes the difference (Note: Lakota’s The Five Fingered People). Our eyes aren’t on the sides like a rabbit, they instead face forward and we have color vision, we have stereoscopic vision, we can carry things on our shoulders, and we have back problems. And it’s very hard for the female species of our kind to give birth, because the head is just way too big, and the brains are all scrunched up, to compete for more surface. This tells us a lot about our species, as we are the ones who made all the changes that allowed us to survive on this planet that can be very, very, very hostile to life. And has a long history of killing off almost everything every once in a while. But…we have time. We are really smart and really social. We can communicate like no species ever communicated, on this planet, as to other planets? We’ll see.

 So, ife as its lived, we all know it right now, by our species identification. And then there’s life as the best practices of our scientists are abled to organize it into modern biology. Modern biological principles may be far deeper than the principles of fundamental physics. It’s a whole reversal. There’s the new biology, and a new way of thinking about information and influence in networks. And that’s the new biomodulation. In our case, it’s transcranial ultrasound (reference Shinzen’s work with the University of Arizona). That’s our new biomodulation. But the old version, that’s what we’re doing now, Yuza, duration training, strong determination, empowerment through surrender; harnessing will that is beyond a personal will, a higher power. It’s always there, on the inside, subtle, subtle, it’s all around subtle, subtle. It’s just a matter of what we call being crushed, or running out of resources, does have a miraculous other side to it. We have to go all the way back, and all the way forward, at the same time, to touch the smallest next, that’s the best we’ll be able to do. Get to the smallest next; not to the one after that, we’ll never be that big, but get to the smallest next. The smallest infinity, the next One, the one that makes our infinity look like zero. That one.

 We can get there. It’s reciprocal; we have to get that big and that small at the same time. Or if you can’t do that, at least one of those, but if possible, both. Then your experience becomes simple. Either there’s a simultaneous decentering and crushing that is perceived as cathartic, which in Latin means purgatorial, it cleans. There is a lift, there is an extension, even when you’ve been caught short in the most horrific form. Duration training has adjustable parameters, dials, knobs and valves. You control the challenge. On this exercise equipment, you don’t have to do things that harm body and mind. Take it easy. Shift anytime you need to. Set it with tolerances on the right and left; it doesn’t have to be razor-sharp. You control the type of experience, you control the duration and the intensity. You can take it easy. You can learn gradually how to do this – you can learn this if you realized how much relies on developing this one skill. You control the settings here.

Duration training is a flexible way to restricting motion. The side of Shamanism that says offer your own flesh, your own being. The Wicasa Wakan, the Medicine person in the modern world would be considered a type of Life Coach, sometimes who knows how to get small in a very effective way. We’re using a very convenient, modern culturally neutral form of biomodulation – it’s legal (!) as far as I know in any country - I’m not aware if sitting still with your eyes closed is against the law. This is sort of the larger picture in which Yuza or Heroic Sitting or the Boddhisattva. We’re the flesh and blood heroes of this endeavor, and it reaches into us, into the past, who we are, and how we imagine ourselves to be in the future. As consciousness becomes purified, there’s an inner story also – we came from a unique source, from a natural source, and in that way we are natural equivalent. As that becomes clear, the inner world reorganizes – the outer connections becomes alive but also safe, by the same process. We all have our personal map or happiness broadly and deeply considered. This practice reaches into the past – where we came from, our biological heritage and the larger heritage we have as being a part of the network of cause and effect and whatever the big picture is. But we can do our best to stand in infinity, in humility, that we can contact. All we have to do is balance it on the inside, standing in the humility before the smallest space, the space of no space, which is way too small for us but we can contact the. We have limited contact with what is both big enough

 Some of this might have been hand wavy or a strange way to talk – you can call it poetry, you can call it Zen, there is sharp prose to back it all up. Let’s go back to the practice now…  you can continue with See Hear Feel… now you have both the big picture and the small picture – the big theory, the hyper doctrine and what is what is in-between… let’s continue to explore…”