Category: Winter Meditation

Reflecting on Resilience

January 15 – 17, 2021

A virtual Zoom-based experience

$35 registration fee

Additional donations for the GSV Scholarship Fund and/or The Mountain can also be made in the registration portal.

Register now!

Sacred Brothers,

I invite you to join our January 2021 Winter Meditation where we will explore how we access and sustain our personal resilience.

With our GSV siblings, we will experience two meditation/journey visioning activities, one focused on practicing gratitude and a second one on gleaning the things we have learned as we have all navigated pandemic, social unrest/awakening, and a charged, divisive political landscape over the past months. To enhance our sacred space, we will weave our hearts together on Friday evening before our Opening Ritual. We will also create small breakout sessions for further processing and sharing of what we bring forth through these meditations and other activities.

As you consider this theme of resilience, is there a workshop/experience your heart leads you to offer to our group?

Join us for an opportunity to contemplate the last year and move forward into 2021 sustained and nurtured for your continuing journey. More details on the weekend program will be shared as we get closer to the end of the year.

FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE IN THE FORM OF SCHOLARSHIPS ARE AVAILABLE

THE FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE APPLICATION FORM SUBMISSION DEADLINE IS JANUARY 1ST, 2021

Our hope is that anyone who resonates with our mission and community, and who has a desire to attend, can join us at our gatherings. To that end, we offer financial assistance through the Raven Wolfdancer Financial Assistance Fund.

Please go to the Financial Assistance page on the Gay Spirit Visions website for more information about financial assistance (scholarships) and for a link to the GSV Financial Assistance Application form.

Remember, the financial assistance application form submission deadline is January 1st, 2021.

GSV Financial Assistance page

Your eager and excited Winter Meditation 2021 convener,

David Cable
[email protected]

Register Now!

Seeing the Unseen: Bringing our Gifts into the Light

January 17 – 19, 2020

The Mountain Retreat and Learning Center ~ Highlands, NC

Register Now!

Dear Siblings,

Our Ancestors are with us, supporting, gifting, and enfolding us. These are the loved ones we have known and not known; from our family of origin, our chosen queer family, and from the Queer Breath of the Universe that flows around us. They have given us gifts which we may not even know. Let’s bring them into the light.

Friday night, we will gather, meet, greet, and eat. The opening Heart Circle weaves us together in mutual purpose and transforms us into a sacred compassionate container in which we do our deep work together as a community. Together we will invite and welcome those who love us, the Sacredness, the Spirits, and our Ancestors. We will ask them to come and help us to know ourselves more fully, especially our hidden gifts and strengths.

On Saturday, we will connect with our deepest, truest self, and invite the luminous being of light within each of us to ignite, shine, and make itself known. Through Systemic Family Constellations, Systemic Ritual, and other techniques, we strengthen our ancestral connections more fully so that the unique universe of mystery which lies within us may come forward in beauty and safety. We will welcome all of ourselves into the circle.

Sunday morning, we break our fast together and share our experiences. We will speak our spiritual experiences out of the dream and into reality, thus solidifying their potency. We will thank the Ancestors and the Loving Spirits for holding us so beautifully and we will invite them to depart in beauty. As we take our leave of each other, we will carry into the wide world the bright seeds of our sacred container and all the beauty they contain. May they find fertile ground in which to sprout for all people.

What will we be doing?

The Mountain has been GSV’s spiritual home for three decades. You’ll have opportunities to enjoy breathtaking views, friendly folks, hugs, fireside chats, delicious food, and heart-centered community sharing. The focus of the weekend will be experiential and heart-opening workshops, meditations, and activities.

Inviting and Opening Sacred Space and Weaving our Community Container (all y’all): In ceremony together we invoke Sacredness and weave our spiritual container with our hearts, words, and actions.
Silent Morning Meditation (T.S. Pennington): Beyond description.
Meeting the True Self (Jeffrey Rich): A Guided Meditation to meet our uniqueness in this incarnation. Before getting to know the Ancestors, we need to know who we are.
Systemic Ceremonial Constellations (Jeffrey Rich and Michael Murphy): Systemic Constellations (also known as Family Constellations) lets us look at the hidden dynamics operating behind the scenes in our family and ancestral systems. Using the “Knowing Field” of energy and information, this amazing methodology will help us unpack the seeds of queerness in our families to better see and receive the hidden gifts that come with them.
Exploring our Auric Fields and their Information (Jason Buchanan): A short meditation to center ourselves followed by beginning techniques to sense our auric fields. We will then have an opportunity to partner up or form small groups to look at each other’s auric fields. We may then probe past color and texture to sense the emotion and gnosis held there.
Dancing Through Your Chakras (Mahan-Kalpa Khalsa): In this exploratory session, we will identify our energy centers — called chakras in Ayurvedic medicine — and stimulate them with body movement, breath, and sound. Knowing our chakras allows us to open our eyes to the depth of our intuition, our desire, and our unrealized abilities. We will partner in a series of simple experiments that will be playful and adventurous.
Five Rhythms Dance (John Brock): A Moving Meditation –- we’ll move to an eclectic mix of music designed to help cast off inhibitions and cultivate transformational joy.
Finding Your Fierceness (Scott Dillard): In this workshop we will use guided meditation, movement, and storytelling to connect with our fiercest self in order to bring that being forward into the new year. We will be accessing story and body memory in order to reach into our past and then project into the future. Participants will work individually and in small groups. As we will be moving about, comfortable clothing is advised.
Conversations and Camaraderie: Casual conversations with friends, old and new.
Free Time to reflect, relax, journal, explore, nap, and soak in the beauty of The Mountain.
Closing Heart Circle and preparation for re-entry into the world with your gifts

Our Convener

Vic Mansfield: I’ve lived in the mountains for over 30 years. Coming out late in life, I came to GSV about seven years ago. It saved my life and loved me into being. I’m a bit of spiritual BuddhaPalian after years (and years) as a parish priest in the Episcopal Church. Now retired, I live in Burnsville, NC. I am passionate about Spirit, our belovedness, our gifts.

Convener’s Little Helper

Jeffrey Rich was born in Asheville and now lives in Burnsville, NC. He has worked as a software developer and trainer during his first career, and as a massage therapist, massage instructor, shamanic healer, and systemic family constellations group facilitator in his second half of life.

Vic Mansfield, Convener
[email protected]

Register Now!

Copyright © 2020 Gay Spirit Visions, All rights reserved.

Seeing the Unseen: Bringing our Gifts into the Light

January 17 – 19, 2020

The Mountain Retreat and Learning Center ~ Highlands, NC

Register Now!

Dear Brothers,

Our Ancestors are with us, supporting, gifting, and enfolding us. These are loved ones we have known and not known; from our family of origin, our chosen queer family, and from the Queer Breath of the Universe that flows around us. They have given us gifts which we may not even know. Let’s bring these gifts into the light.

Friday night, we will gather, meet, greet, and eat. The opening Heart Circle will weave us together in mutual purpose and transform us into a sacred compassionate container in which we do our deep work together as a community. Together we will invite and welcome those who love us, the Sacredness, the Spirits, and our Ancestors. We will ask them to come and help us to know ourselves more fully, especially our hidden gifts and strengths.

On Saturday, we will connect with our deepest, truest self, and invite the luminous being of light within each of us to ignite, shine, and make itself known. Through Systemic Family Constellations, Systemic Ritual, and other techniques, we strengthen our ancestral connections more fully so that the unique universe of mystery which lies within us may come forward in beauty and safety. We will welcome all of ourselves into the circle.

Sunday morning, we break our fast together and share our experiences. We will speak our spiritual experiences out of the dream and into reality thus solidifying their potency. We will thank the Ancestors and the Loving Spirits for holding us so beautifully and we will invite them to depart in beauty. As we take our leave of each other, we will carry into the wide world the bright seeds of our sacred container and all the beauty they contain. May they find fertile ground in which to sprout for all people.

We envision time for reflection and recreation in our schedule, as well as workshops. We invite you to suggest workshops you may wish to offer as well as suggestions for workshops you’d like to see.

Vic Mansfield
Convener, 2020 Winter Meditation
[email protected]

Register Now!