Voice of Clear Light

Volume 14, Number 6 / December 2014

The True Source of Healing

A Free, Yearlong Course in the Tibetan Practice of Soul Retrieval

You are warmly invited to attend a free, yearlong course in Soul Retrieval! Beginning this January, Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche will generously offer a series of monthly live webcast teachings on the topic, open to everyone from newcomers to experienced meditators. He is basing the series on his forthcoming book, The True Source of Healing: How the Ancient Tibetan Practice of Soul Retrieval Can Transform and Enrich Your Life (Hay House, summer 2015).

Rinpoche will start off the New Year—and the 2015 webcast series—on Saturday, Jan. 10, with a daylong Internet retreat, “Reconnecting with Your Joyful Essence: An Introduction to the Tibetan Practice of Soul Retrieval.”

This will be a wonderful opportunity to learn the practices of soul retrieval from your home computer, or—in some places around the world—in person at local group webcast screenings and guided meditation sessions. You can view just one webcast, or for truly life-changing benefits, commit to engage in the entire course. Soon after each live broadcast, Rinpoche plans to make a recording of the webcast and its guided practice available so you can view and review any webcast after its original broadcast date.

Click here to learn more, view the full schedule, register for upcoming webcasts, view recorded webcasts and access any nearby practice groups or group webcast screenings.

About the Webcast Series

Done in a committed way, the practices of soul retrieval can transform your life. They are typically used as a lifetime practice for nourishing one’s inner being and restoring one’s soul. More specifically, they can help you to:

• Avoid losing your vitality when faced with difficult life challenges.
• Revitalize your personal, family, and professional life.
• Recognize powerful internal and external sources of healing.
• Experience healing on all levels—physically, energetically, psychologically.
• Bring healing to others around you.
• Come home to your inherently joyful and creative nature.
• Progress on the path to higher liberation.

In the webcast series, Rinpoche will draw on the ancient teachings of soul retrieval from the Bön Buddhist tradition of Tibet. However, as with his upcoming book, the webcast course will focus only on the most essential aspects of the core teachings, omitting the traditional ceremonies and other rituals.

Course Begins Jan. 10, 2015

During the first webcast in the series, a full-day event on Jan. 10, Rinpoche will lead two teaching sessions and senior teacher Marcy Vaughn will lead two related practice sessions. Most but not all other monthly webcasts to come will take place from 3-4:30 p.m. Eastern Time U.S. (New York time) on the second Saturday of each month.
View full schedule 

The course will continue as Rinpoche gives an in-depth explanation of the five elements and their relationship with one’s soul (see “What Is Soul Retrieval,” below). Later, he will guide us in noticing the ways in which we personally have lost our soul and help us pinpoint which element we are most in need of at this time. He will then explain in detail how to retrieve these elemental essences, both from the natural world outside us and from the ultimate source of healing: our own inner refuge. He will give advice in overcoming the sense of loneliness that is so pervasive in today’s Western society. Finally, he will explain how to use these practices for physical healing, as well as how to nourish one’s soul on an ongoing basis, throughout each day and throughout one’s life.

In each webcast event Rinpoche will guide a meditation, offer teachings, and give instructions for formal and informal practice in the month to come. Downloadable print materials will be made available during many of these live webcasts, for added support in the practice.

Whether you attend these live webcasts online or in person at local screenings, participating with the worldwide sangha can lend a deep level of support. There will be opportunities online via a chat screen to ask Rinpoche questions about the practice. Local group screenings and practices will offer an opportunity to get to know others locally, learn about other local events, and experience further support and camaraderie.

As the New Year begins, we hope you will join participants worldwide in these revitalizing and healing practices!

Related teachings: You are also invited to attend soul retrieval teachings in person with Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche at a free public talk in Charlottesville, Va., on March 31, 2015; as well as Ligmincha's annual Spring Retreat in central Virginia from April 3–5, 2015.

*  *  *

What Is Soul Retrieval?

A young girl sits alone on the fireside bench, entranced by the embers and flickering flames. She absorbs the heat into her face and body, undisturbed by the chatter of nearby adults. As the flames dart creatively, arising from nowhere and dissolving into nowhere, she settles ever more deeply into an ineffable sense of joy in simply being.

Day after summer day, children play at the swimming pool. In the morning they dive, tread water, dart below the surface, splash, float, play water games. Sometimes after lunch they return to swim some more. The longer they commune with water, the more they become one with that sense of flowing comfort and healing that only the water element can bring. The comfort stays into the night, and continues upon awaking.

The elements of nature are portals to something very essential and sacred in us as human beings. They bring us closer to the moment, to our true selves. Many of us have had spontaneous experiences like the ones above—perhaps in childhood or during an extended vacation in a natural setting. But such intimate experiences with the elements can be fleeting, and they typically become little more than a memory. Most of us lose essential qualities as we grow older and are shaken by life’s challenges. We lose the sense of the groundedness and connectedness that comes with communing deeply with the earth element; the flexibility and flow of connecting with the air element; or the sense of openness and freedom from one’s conditions that comes with a deep relationship with the space element.

According to the teachings of the Tibetan Bon tradition, when certain elemental qualities become lost to us, we lose parts of our soul. When we are able to retrieve those elements—when the qualities of the five elemental essences of earth, water, fire, air and space are balanced in us according to our full capacity as individual human beings—our soul is restored to health.

Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche explains that the sacred qualities of the natural elements are always there, deep within us. The external elements of nature simply permit us to recognize these qualities. They help us open our eyes, heart and mind to what is already within. For the same reason, certain meditation practices can also help us tap into this deep source of healing within us. The true source of the elements is our own inner refuge.

Ancient practitioners of the Tibetan traditions recognized the power of nature and its elements, and the power of meditation, to bring profound healing to our soul on all levels—spiritual, mental, energetic and even physical. Indeed, the elemental essences are said to be part of every experience we can have, from normal daily interactions to higher meditative states. They are the building blocks of both dream and reality. The teachings show how we can gain access to their healing properties at any moment of life.

---
This article was written by Polly Turner, webcast producer for Ligmincha International and editor of Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche’s forthcoming book, The True Source of Healing: How the Ancient Tibetan Practice of Soul Retrieval Can Transform and Enrich Your Life (Hay House, summer 2015).