Rich Borofsky, EdD and Antra Borofsky, EdM
Rich Borofsky, EdD and Antra Borofsky, EdM, co-directors, Center for the Study of Relationship, contributing authors, On Intimate Ground: a Gestalt Approach to Working with Couples and Joyful Wedding: A Spiritual Path to the Altar, Antra, a Gestalt therapist and Marriage and Family therapist and Rich, a Clinical Psychologist, have been a couple for 39 years
Precon: Intimacy as a Spiritual Path
All day workshop January 22 - 9am to 5pm
The word “intimacy” means the sharing of what is innermost in us. What is innermost is our aware, eternal, pure, spacious presence that is none other than Love itself. To realize and manifest and share this loving presence is the heart of spiritual life.
In this workshop, we explore how intimacy and intimate relationships can be a path for allowing, welcoming, cultivating, and celebrating our loving presence, that is the heart of who we are most truly. Because intimate partnerships are such a mix of inspiration and difficulty, possibility and limitation, safety and vulnerability, they provide an optimum environment for our loving presence to become more rooted, robust, resilient, flexible, precise, wise, selfless, conscious, inclusive, compassionate, and kind or in a word, more spiritual.
We will focus on cultivating three aspects of intimacy that are the foundation of spiritual life: being present; dissolving the defended, fearful, false self; and extending compassion to our collective vulnerabilities.
You’ll learn a number of the practices that we use in our own relationship. These are meditative practices, done in dyads, that cultivate a profound sense of connectedness to one’s essence, one’s partner, and to Love itself.
This workshop is open to individuals and couples.
Goal: To explore how intimacy and intimate relationships can be a path for loving presence.
Learning Objectives:
- To experience the loving presence that is our essential spiritual being.
- To learn how to cultivate this presence in the context of an intimate partnership, and
- To learn a set of practices for sharing this presence with another.
Workshop: Being Together: The Art of Loving
Saturday, January 23 - 3:30 pm to 5:30 pm
Love is the art of being together—sensing, cherishing, sharing and celebrating the deep, delicious presence that we are. This presence is none other than love itself. To experience this is to know ourselves as love’s own and to be welcomed home.
In this workshop, you will learn a number of practices that help cultivate the capacity for being present together. These are practices that enliven our attention and help us use it to create and sustain an experience of deep intimacy. We will focus especially on the art of consciously giving and receiving attention. We will use music and movement as well as talk and discussion to help us enrich our experience and understanding of presence as the heart of loving.
Goal: To ripen and refine our ability to be present with one another.
Learning Objectives:
- To understand that love is present attention; making love is a deep sharing of presence,
- To learn the practice of sharing present attention, and
- To identify and practice eight aspects of giving and receiving attention.
