Esalen Institute is open! However, Highway 1 to the south is closed — please review the current travel advisory.
Learn More.

Learn more.

Due to road closures along Highway 1 to our north and south, Esalen is closed through April 11.
Esalen Institute is open! However, Highway 1 to the south is closed — please review the current travel advisory.
past workshop

The Heart of Who We Are: Personal Freedom and Collective Change

April 3–7, 2023

Caverly Morgan

We all long to be happy. Happy as in deep contentment. We all long to feel at ease, to be at peace, to know that we’re okay and that life is okay. Most of us are deeply habituated to looking for this happiness outside ourselves, to grasp and scramble for an experience that, at best, ends up being fleeting, and then something we long for again. We forget that this feeling we desire is already seated in the heart of who we are — and that it’s always available if only we look within. When we do, we can transform far more than just our own lives.

Ask yourself these questions:

  • Have you ever touched this peace, this contentment, this deep knowing of who you truly are?
  • Have you ever struggled because you recognized the world around you did not reflect this experience of humanity’s true nature?
  • When faced with the enormity of the collective problems before us, how can one individual’s spiritual practice make a tangible difference in our world?

These questions will guide our time together on retreat as we explore how meditation, mindfulness, and contemplative technologies designed for the realization of personal freedom can — and must — be applied collectively. Our daily meditation practice will serve as a framework onto which we will begin to weave teachings with personal reflections. You will have the opportunity to connect to yourself and others and the world beyond in solo and group exercises, and discussion that inspire us to put our values into action.

We hope you will join us in remembering the deepest truth of who we are, with the intention of using this understanding to transform our own lives and the world we share.

Opportunities for scholarships/BIPOC scholarships are available by application for this retreat.

https://www.caverlymorgan.org/theheartofwhoweare

Caverly Morgan

Caverly Morgan blends the original spirit of Zen with a modern nondual approach. She is also the founder of Peace in Schools, and is the author of The Heart of Who We Are: Realizing Freedom Together.

Full Bio