On January 11th, 2016, I started a daily practice of writing a joke meditation of the day called Cracked Pot Meditations. I was still recovering from the treatment of cancer, and I was having very challenging cognitive issues, so I chose just to put something simple and easy to write every day. Posting it to the blog allowed me to have some accountability. Some of those meditations were poorly written and unedited. I have gone back and begun editing these and adding an illustration, starting with the April 27th meditation. I hope you enjoy.
Meditation for June 29th
Spiritual Retreats (an Unpaid Advertisement)
Sometimes we need to step out of our daily routine and retreat into nature with like-minded people to recenter. Spiritual retreats are an excellent way to achieve that: a little rest, a little spiritual upkeep, and a little quiet time. Everybody from Christians, Buddhists, ISIS, to Google, Yahoo, Uber, and Bing has retreats once in a while to get their primary purpose refocused.
All of these groups use outside facilitators to schedule, plan, and execute these retreats. For the last 22 years (now 31), I, David Everett Fisher, have been a retreat facilitator. Using my experience as a life coach, counselor, drug and alcohol counselor, minister, artist, and spiritual guide, I, David Everett Fisher, have successfully run retreats that have had lasting effects on religious, cult, and corporate groups, and have been asked to continue facilitating them for many years in a row.
Things that I offer:
Location
I will find a location that will best suit the retreat’s needs. Usually, I find a place that is isolated from urban centers to keep the attendees focused. Typically, a location that is out of cell phone range and offers no Wi-Fi. I will start the retreat by saying that we have a landline, and the only cell reception is available on top of the ridge past Rattlesnake Gully and Obsidian Knife Crest, with an elevation gain of 2,000 feet. People should feel cut off from the outside world in a scary way.
Some groups need a more intense practice in team work, project organization and a little diversity sensitivity training, so I choose a run down house in a very unstable urban location to rebuild, paint and film a montage to a rockin’ 80s song that may or may not have a sax solo while the gangs look on with intensity and fear. In many past experiences, my groups have pushed out the gangs and turned a mainly downtrodden, diverse ghetto into a thriving neighborhood.
The movie Band of the Hand is loosely based on a troubled teen program I ran in Southern Florida.
Location is crucial for being a character in the retreat. Being able to look at moss-covered trees usually calms a corporate lackey for a weekend.
Food
Yes, food is the way we keep our bodies nourished as we strive to nourish our souls. I like to strip the food to being as Free as possible: gluten free, meat free, slave free, GMO free… Copying an Eastern culture’s diet is also ideal for giving the impression that one is sitting cross-legged next to monks who have taken a vow of silence for a century and can do push-ups on one finger.
I like to reward the end of the retreat with a noon-time American cuisine to let the body know that it is about to leave this place and return to civilization, and hopefully become a better person with all the brand new ideas. If they are full, then they will forget the bland, cardboard-tasting food we passed off as health food.
Silence
I like to state whole hours where silence is key. People spend all day in their offices or churches talking to each other. Talking is the tool of our brain, and our brain is just not capable of spirituality. I don’t want the gossip and the rating system to encroach on the retreat’s purpose, so I carry around a cattle prod and shock people who talk during the silence times.
We use the silence to contemplate life, meaning, and solutions. I want the attendees to have the time to not hear the constant barrage of small talk and office gossip. I want them to get to know the screaming, terrified part of their brain that can’t find any point to life and wonder why they exist.
Time
Other than telling people when it is time to show up somewhere, I want no time to be shown. No watches, clocks, or computers. Nothing that tells the time. Time is awful, and the very thing we need to retreat. I want time to be the made-up construct we use to control the masses.
There are two times: daytime and nighttime.
Ideas
I also appreciate the opportunity to hear people’s ideas at the opening time. What is the problem, and what’s the idea? I like writing on walls because it seems more rebellious that way. It makes the ideas more daring when I brazenly deface property. People will yell out ideas, and I write them down in permanent marker on a wall that may not be easily cleaned, or is a historical landmark.
A few years ago, we were trying to find a solution to a problem at the company that manufactures Segways. I wrote up all the ideas that we could come up with – even the crazy ones. Well, one idea kept coming back to me and was discussed at great length.
Just so you know, I was in Portland, Oregon, on September 26th, 2010, and was nowhere near England.
Yoga
Oh, god, yes, we have to have yoga. Getting a bunch of out-of-shape corporate jockeys to stretch to the point of exploding sweat on mats to sitar music is the highlight of my life. I get the most beautiful men and women I can to not only go at an almost impossible pace, but also to show that while they may be successful business people, they are ugly and fat.
The best thing is, yoga one weekend a year and not on a regular basis is completely worthless, but I gots to have physical shit, right?
Workshops
I have about three workshops a weekend. Two on Saturday and one at a god awful early hour Sunday morning before coffee and breakfast. I do serve tea. I try to come up with names that really tell what kind of workshop they are getting themselves into. Some examples:
- Intentions and minuscule target appreciation actions
- Harbingers of diverse roll call scenarios and tactics
- Leveling of course work outside of labor perimeters with managerial involvement
- Bodily fluids, gas, and flesh at the office
- Suggested expectations versus realized set goals by leadership massaging talent
- Being openly accountable and systematically valued
- Donuts versus Kale chips
- Emancipation of ideal candidates for bonus hours and accredited web cloud imports
Ropes Course
This is the highlight of the retreat. This is where we bring together a group of coworkers who may not trust each other at all, due to the corporate backstabbing and passive-aggressive communications via email and memos, and we put them on a course that may seriously harm someone. We have only had like six or seven deaths.
We first fall from a large tree trunk and hope to god your shitty coworkers that make fun of your outfit choices behind your back catch you.
Then we sprint at a large wooden wall and try to find a physical way to get over the wall using teamwork.
You get to a balancing beam, and you and your companion must get across at a set time. Under and around the beam? Deep ass stinking fucking mud.
Then you must get through a maze. Don’t worry, I have a ‘minotaur’ mauling people who get lost or separate from their team. I have a strict Letter Releasing from Liability that all must sign before joining.
You then cross a pond with an actual man-eating crocodile! Don’t worry, we have a trainer nearby to keep the crocs from getting too fat.
Next is doing five shots of Jaegermeister and then doing a calculus test.
Next, I have attendees try to gang up on racist, right-wing, and rich libertarian grandpa and win an argument without being written out of the will.
We always conclude the course with a zip line ride down five and a half miles of deep, evergreen forest. I like to get the adrenaline rush to outrush crack cocaine.
Exiting
I enjoy the milling around and waiting for the buses to arrive and take everyone back to their own lives. This is where long-lasting friendships are formed, with friends making promises to continue their relationship on campus. This is where people who are married to other people had drunken sex in the boathouse during silent meditation try to figure out if they should even talk ever again. Bosses will glare at the employee who may have been a little too honest with hostility. This is the closure a retreat needs.
Clients:
Yahoo
Uber
Bing
Microsoft
PLO
NAMBLA
ISIS
FARC
ANO
ETA
HAMAS
PKK
DHKP
Shining Path
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade
CIRA
Jundallah
Hizbollah
Goldman Sachs
Bank of America
Dow Chemical
DynCorp
Monsanto
Nestle
JPMorgan Chase
AIG
General Motors
Citigroup
Morgan Stanley
SunTrust
Friendster
Ask Jeeves
Dogpile
MySpace
LiveJournal
AA
Don’t hesitate to get in touch with me if you would like any additional information or to arrange a retreat.