“Self Realization has nothing to do with realization of a self. It has to do with the realization of the illusion of ignorance.” Shri Ramana Maharshi
The Core Empowerment Training is a 5-Day Retreat inspired by the Jnana Yoga tradition and developed by Dr. Paula Horan (see biography). The purpose of Jnana Yoga, is to help you Realize The Freedom That You Are, by assisting you in experiencing your own true nature. This is accomplished when we can overcome the illusion of ignorance (a mistaken belief in a separate self) by transcending the masks of ego that are sense-dependent and bound by karma. From a western vantage point, CET is devoted to cutting through the ideas and beliefs we have and all of the emotions they in turn evoke, that limit our possibilities and choices.
These preconceived notions are what deprive us of a true present and of any sense of balance or contentment with life. The benefits received by participants over the last twenty years of Retreats have proven that CET can indeed point people toward Fully Experiencing Who They Are, which is usually quite different from who they thought they were. The Retreat has been held in different countries since 1989 and has also gone through a number of refinements. Yet the basic structure has always remained the same.
CET—The Fast Track To Emotional Intelligence
Overview of the CET Experience
Days One & Two: The first two days involve partner exercises which transform the emotional charge of unconscious withheld memory, that have acted for lifetimes as an impediment or filter to fully aware presence. Brought into conscious awareness, the thoughts and resulting emotions that once acted as a Hidden Ruler of the Mind, lose their power.
Days Three-Five: During days three to five, the main practice of the Retreat is introduced and then integrated at all levels for the participants—body/mind/spirit. The practices introduced allow participants the opportunity to peel away the filters of memory that rob them of a Mindful True Presence and experience life as if for the first time.
As each element of the persona is exposed through Clear Seeing (one of the practices), often a satori or powerful glance at one’s own true nature occurs. As such, for years, CET has provided the inspiration for a number of its participants to make significant and lasting changes in their lives. Likewise, it has helped others who were previously dissatisfied with their lives, see their current situation in a new light.
It can truly be said that after CET, everything changes
and yet at the same time, nothing changes.
What really shifts is Your perspective…a new Way of Seeing and Being.
In short, CET is a one-of-a-kind process that combines the eastern perspective of non-duality with a western spirit of ‘Can Do’. In the same way, it combines the best of eastern wisdom with the insights of western psychology. Ultimately, CET uses the mind to go beyond the mind (to the Heart-Mind)—to the Realm of Pure Potential.
A Natural Leadership Training
Core Empowerment refers to the skills and energy within you that you disregard because you are too busy enmeshed in ideas and concepts that totally conceal your own inherent and Unique Source of Genuine Power. This 5-day intensive takes you back on a journey of self-discovery, through the maze of self-images, emotions and memories to the Creative Innocence of the Wise. What is revealed is the man or woman who is able to live life from Heart, whose senses become even more finely tuned to deal effortlessly with worldly matters.
For most of the participants, this insight into their true nature comes as a great relief. They feel genuinely empowered.
Moreover, they find that their attitude toward daily life changes dramatically and with that change, their life also shifts from ordinary to extraordinary.
Many varied and useful processes and practices are introduced that help you get back into the driver’s seat—to take charge when needed. At the same time, these newly acquired skills and latent talents help you relax into your natural ability to let go, so that you can Allow Life To
Be Your Guide. Consequently, your new found initiative does not turn into yet another frantic and frustrating pursuit of seemingly unattainable goals. The natural leadership qualities that arise, allow you to fully embrace the moment and make the appropriate decisions that are called for.
The Training further assists you in dissolving the kinds of blocks that could hinder the unfolding of your own inherent creativity. CET benefits all areas of your life—your manifestation of abundance, your career, your relationships, your health, your body image and self-perception, but most importantly CET will benefit your purpose for Being. From your own direct CET experience you begin to Perceive Everything through the Eyes of the Heart, and allow its uncanny Emotional Intelligence to guide you where you are destined or are choosing to go.
Unconsciousness—the Cause for Unhappiness
The Wisdom & Science of CET
The words “emotional intelligence” have become something of a catch phrase. More than being a trendy expression, they sum up the center focus of current leading edge exploration into the nature and workings of mind and cognition. They indeed point to the root of some Key Fundamental Questions:
• Why is it that so much of what our minds do, remains below the threshold of conscious awareness?
• What does this large degree of non-conscious-cognition-thought-processing and ensuing action mean for our experience of the world?
• Why is our unconscious mind so extensive and inescapable?
• Why do we have recurring experiences of being the consequence of the unconscious mind while access to our natural states of simple happiness seem to continuously elude us?
Emotional Intelligence—East Meets West
New Brain Research Validate Ancient Traditions
The Dalai Lama has co-authored several books on the subject of emotional intelligence and the psychology of cognition, together with leading western psychologists, such as best-selling author Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than I, and the late Francisco Varela, the author of the concept of Neurophenomenology and a founding member of the Integral Institute, and a professor of cognitive science at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. Besides presenting a thorough investigation into the cognitive processes, this ongoing dialogue sheds light on ways that we can successfully deal with destructive emotions and other forms of unconscious behavior patterns. This approach has been a major focus for practitioners of the Buddhist Traditions ever since the Buddha launched his direct investigation into the workings and nature of the mind, more than 2,500 years ago.
Science Now Agrees: Our Perception Is Ruled by Memory
Awakening Your Free Will for a Fulfilled Life
Currently in several labs in the US, research is uncovering the secrets of cognition. Through the most advanced western technologies (for example, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation or TMS), scientists now realize that we do not see the world as it actually is, but only in terms of what we already know of the world. In other words, in states of non-conscious cognition (which is where most people are most of the time), memory shapes or dictates all of what we can perceive. We are thus deprived of free will and free agency.
The moment we find access to being conscious and aware in the present moment, free will and free agency are restored. Brain scans using the same TMS technology also show how the practice of different forms of meditation, learned through long retreats, in fact influence perception in such a way—that humans can rise above an otherwise unconscious existence. For all human beings, this step into conscious awareness is of primary importance for it enables you to live a happy, balanced and fulfilled life.
Long Meditation Retreats in a Cave
Historically Only Lengthy Periods of Retreat Could Free the Mind
The question now is, how can this be accomplished? The traditional Buddhist approaches to the restoration of free will and conscious awareness require long and arduous disciplines of meditation over the span of many years. As the results of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation suggest, with experienced meditators, these primordial techniques do indeed work. The data collected at the E.M. Keck Laboratory, for Functional Brain Imaging and Behavior on the Madison Campus of the University of Wisconsin, USA, demonstrate as much.
The drawback is, in the past, these techniques were invented, taught and elucidated mainly by monks and other lay people who were in a position to live a life of seclusion and contemplation. In other words, with these traditional techniques, Years of time-consuming dedicated effort were required. Many do not have this luxury today.
Short Cuts to Bring Awareness into the Present
Direct Conscious Awareness from a 21st Century Experience
The question now is, can you accomplish the same or similar results without becoming a Monk in a cave for years? Can the average person achieve comparable levels of mastership and conscious awareness, as have Buddhist masters after twenty or more years of meditation practice? Is this possible while living in the world, going about your business, and taking care of the many obligations that are taken for granted by any ordinary socially active person?
The answer is, “Yes, to some degree, with the right motivation and commitment, it is possible.”
There are approaches to conscious awareness and emotional intelligence that are geared toward direct recognition of what is so in the moment which bypass the mental processing via memory. One pertinent example is the Core Empowerment Training (CET), developed by Dr. Paula Horan that is grounded in the time-tested meditative traditions fused with the present-day wisdom and knowledge of the science of cognition and emotions—Emotional Intelligence. Dr. Horan’s approach has been authenticated over and over with the hundreds that have experience CET around the world.
The Memory Trap Is Released by Clear Perception
Eradicating Destructive Emotions and Patterned Behavior
In the Core Empowerment Training, it is the destructive emotions and unconscious behavior patterns which become the object of your exploration. They are not judged, and neither are they rejected. No effort is made to push them away. Instead, participants are guided to directly feel them, and to cultivate a sense of exploration about every circumstance that arises, whether seemingly ‘comfortable’ or ‘uncomfortable’, ‘happy’ or ‘sad’, ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
This direct feeling and recognition bring about a sudden shift in perception. You cease to identify with the immediate unconscious destructive emotion or behavior pattern. Although you can notice and sense its presence clearly, you also know without a shadow of a doubt that this is not what you are, but only an automatic conditioned response with which you sometimes identify.
Clear Perception is Due to Heart Intelligence
The Fast Track to Living A True Presence
Subsequently, once the link of identification is broken through noticing, and most of all, feeling from the Heart, the same old destructive emotion or behavior patterns can no longer rule you. In other words, often in the 5 days that the Retreat takes, the same depth of balance and lucidity is experienced, which through more traditional approaches may take years to accomplish. This fast track is made possible through a combination of fine-tuned, scientific as well as traditional techniques and years of experience on the part of Dr. Horan.
Depending on the individual, from the perspective of Dr. Horan’s 20 years of CET training experience, participation in three to five, 5-day Retreats over a two to three year period can help to stabilize one’s ability to Transcend the filter of Memory and Live A True Present. Because all emotions are reactions to thoughts, the ability to live in the present, without clinging to passing thoughts, automatically gives you the ability to transcend the lure and ambush of your emotions.
The consummate result is a remarkable and perceptible degree of equanimity in all situations, whether ‘positive’ or ‘negative’.
The Emotional Intelligence of a Life Lived from Heart.
Your expedition in the Core Empowerment Retreat will awaken unimaginable Benedictions from your True Nature. The natural Grace expressed through Paula Horan’s presence and skillful coaching will stir the deepest inner yearnings that lie resting in your intrinsic Being. The experience will certainly put ‘stretch-marks’ on your Mind and Heart!
What some participants say about CET
“I have investigated and tried many different trainings and seminars around the globe for the last five years but have come across nothing that could compare with the astounding success in terms of boosting emotional intelligence and intellectual flexibility that the Core Empowerment Training can facilitate in its participants.”
I. S.
Aberdeen-based management and human resource consultant
“Continuous practices of the processes that I learned during the seminar have taught me how to detach myself from over-involvement in my work and to delegate responsibility. Although, I work less than before, the profit from my two business ventures has risen steadily over the past two years.”
U.C.
Chemical Engineer
“I have gained more in the last five days from C.E.T. than I did in two years of psychodrama.”
E.B.
Psychologist
“My relationship with my family has changed dramatically for the better. I have dropped my eagerness to please everybody and yet there is so much more intimacy to share.”
A.S.
Physiotherapist
“C.E.T has taught me that I am fully responsible for what I attract in my life and that I can indeed step back from the dramas of emotionality and
enjoy a rare sense of freedom.”
M.D.
Writer and Editor
Benefits of Core Empowerment Training
• The power to cope with challenging situations
• Easier self-expression and the capability to say yes only when you really mean it
• The competence to make decisions, clarify goals and the ability to fulfill them
• Freedom from self-imposed limitations and a high degree of emotional intelligence
• Compassion and a deepening sense of trust
• Vitality, Vigor and Joy
• A release of stress and an experience of greater health and well-being
• The capacity to communicate your true feelings and needs
• The ability to be your own master, with an accompanying increase in self and worldly leadership skills.
If you would like to take part in the next CET, here are the details:
24th March – 28th March
Location : Cabo De Rama, South Goa
Price: Rs.18,500/- inclusive of stay food and the workshop.
To register, or for further information on Core Empowerment Training, please feel free to call +91-(0)836-2251273 or write: geonita17(at)yahoo.co.in. Ask for George or Renita.
