Rashani, 2001

Rashani's retreats are an opportunity to cultivate
unconditional presence and to be "lived by the Tao"
while living simply with the Earth. Rashani shares
what she has gleaned from her teachers as well as from
her own experiences of motherhood, partnership,
solitude, severe illness, personal loss, many years of
gardening and being close to the earth, dreams and the
creative process. She is an alchemist in the truest
sense and is constantly refining her practice. Her
natural curiosity and passion for truth slice through
falsity and illusion, creating a space of open attention
for those ready to meet all parts of themselves.

There is a brokenness
out of which comes the unbroken,
a shatteredness
out of which blooms the unshatterable.
There is a sorrow
beyond all grief which leads to joy
and a fragility
out of whose depths emerges strength.

There is a hollow space
too vast for words
through which we pass with each loss,
out of whose darkness
we are sanctioned into being.

There is a cry deeper than all sound
whose serrated edges cut the heart
as we break open to the place inside
which is unbreakable and whole,
while learning to sing.

-Rashani,1991

Between 1974 (during my first pregnancy) and 1988,
six years after my mother's death, several profound
dreams came to me. In three of the most vivid dreams
I experienced unconditional presence, also referred to
as non-dual awareness. The dream I had in 1988 was
so vibrantly alive that I made a stained glass window
the following day: a white dove descending from the
sky and a black raven ascending from the earth. They
merge in a radiant golden light, then vanish. By
becoming one another they enter the unknowable as
oneness. These koan-like dreams have guided my life
in many ways.




To learn more about Rashani's Inward Bound retreats, click here