Kia ora, I’m Pip.
I used to have a website called ‘the gentle art of knowing’ and after 15 years it’s time for something simpler. If I were to have a title now, I think it would be ‘it’s so darn ordinary’.
What’s so darn ordinary? Learning to live with an ease. An ease away from being driven and controlled by our conditioned selves - our minds and emotional selves. Teachers through the millennia have shown us how to do this by merging with the intimacy of Unconditioned Openness that resides within the Heart of all of us. Yes, it is named differently according to different traditions, and two great teachers, the Christ and the Buddha both left their ancestral traditions to walk a new path towards this Freedom. A Freedom found this side of our graves…
If you find yourself being called to grow in deeper ways, to grow beyond the ‘box’ that has served you so well, I’d be happy to be beside you for a time, as you find your own ‘true balance’ in this wonderful experience of being human…
Do get in touch.
My Offerings
Spiritual Companioning
Together in person or by Zoom.
Spiritual companioning offers time where I sit beside and with you, as you share and explore the complexities, the insights, the paradoxes, the vulnerabilities of life… Who’d have thought both conundrums and beauty would be with us all the way through, and they will. And they do all dissolve as we learn to open and embrace them by that deeper Heart, deeper Home of Being. These sessions can be in person at my home in Eastbourne or by Zoom and are by way of koha, any expression of gratitude you choose.
A Contemplative Way
The beauty of stumbling home.
Pat Neuwelt and I offer this one or two-year programme on the understanding that new insights, new depths and new ways of being take time for us to integrate and embody. One of these shifts might be moving from having faith in the Truth of others, to trusting an embodied Truth as expressed within us. Learning to live these changes, is greatly helped by the support of other participants, in a growing contemplative community. The programme is completed at home via written material, group/small circle Zooms and concludes with a five day retreat each year.
Retreats
Individual and group
Residential or non-residential retreats can be organised to suit your group, on a topic mutually agreed. Some common themes are ‘Living beyond seeking’, ‘Depths of knowing’, ‘Being with and trusting the Unknown’. I can facilitate retreats anywhere within Aotearoa and they generally run from one to five days. Individual retreats by Zoom or in person can be arranged too, and all retreats are by way of koha. Retreats offer possibilities for refreshment, silence, deep listening and living from new insights.
A little of my story…
At age seven, I became attracted to a sense of ‘repose’ that I saw in my aunt when she prayed. I first sought it out in empty chapels during Catholic school years, then Buddhist teachers and monasteries in my 20’s and 30’s and back around to the contemplative tradition from my 40’s. And what becomes obvious is that the more we live from an inner Openness - the Divine Indwelling - then more scaffolding, concepts, and boxes fall away. Yes, they have their place and are very useful… And ultimately unknowing, and the Unknowable become Home. I am so grateful for the many teachers, spiritual companions, friends and Life itself, that support me to return Home moment to moment.