In this opening session, Miranda will share why it’s an intrinsic part of the human journey to lose contact with the radiant presence at the core of your being, develop a personality, and end up living on the surface of yourself.

However, life also calls us to re-discover the luminous love, joy, and peace that is our deepest nature, relax out of our ego, and walk through this world as the graceful human beings we were made to be.

For this to happen, you must address the obstacles preventing you from turning more substantially within, surrender your resistance, and open to a Grace deeper than your mind.

In this session, you’ll discover:

• Why the human default is to merely live on the surface of ourselves, disconnected from the natural joy and fulfillment of our own heart
• How the main obstacle to fulfillment is the drive to find it in particular conditions externally, even in trying to “do” spiritual awakening
• Ways to spot the False Idols that imprison you into patterns of seeking but never truly finding
• How to see and resist the forces that drive you to seek externally — and instead, turn more substantially into your own heart
• How to practice Ego Relaxation by learning to stay present and undefended with what IS
• A potent meditation and inquiry practice to illuminate your external seeking and the driving forces within it
• How to relax more substantially into the Grace that is always available at your core

We all say we want more love, joy, fulfillment — yet, if we examine our behavior honestly, it seems there is another part of us, a hidden Self, that’s swimming against the currents of Grace, resisting the flow of fulfillment.

This week, Miranda will guide you to compassionately explore your ego’s defenses to receiving, which relates to your pre-verbal history with your mothering figure — your earliest source of love and nourishment. You’ll discern how a genuine need for fulfillment attained from the outside is a necessity during one stage of our development, and how it becomes an obstacle during another.

With Miranda’s guidance, you’ll address your relationship to deep vulnerability, which practicing Ego Relaxation inevitably elicits. Learning how to befriend the power of vulnerability in a manageable way empowers you to move beyond spiritual sabotage.

In this session, you’ll discover:

• Ways you’re likely sabotaging love — and holding back on letting “the good” fully into your experience
• What happened during your first stage of ego development, when you relied on your mothering figure to fulfill your every need — and how this impacts your life and practice today
• How Divine Love melts your ego defenses — making you feel vulnerable, but also more transparent to Grace
• How to lean into the support beyond the web of your mind — so you can stay present in the face of vulnerability, without collapsing
• How sensing into your immediate direct experience helps you relax out of defensive mental activity
• An inquiry practice to compassionately dissolve your obstacles and allow nourishing goodness to permeate your heart, mind, and life

At this point in your journey, you will have seen through the false idols that keep you seeking for fulfillment in the external world. You’ll be learning to relax some of your ego defenses, enabling you to address your resistance to receiving nourishing Grace.

This week, you’ll address the third greatest obstacle to true fulfillment: your unconscious loyalty to the conditions around love, joy, and fulfillment introjected from your childhood authority figures — parents, teachers, culture, religion, and more.

In this session, Miranda will guide you in a potent and juicy teaching on becoming divinely disobedient to the “rules” of your super-ego: the outer layer of your ego structure that manifests as the nagging inner commentary made up of conditions, judgment, and all things “should”!

You’ll explore how the introjected “rules” of your conditioning blocks true fulfillment, and why you’re often powerfully attached to these outdated rules.

You’ll explore how you might unconsciously relate to joy and pleasure as a “reward” and pain as “punishment.”

Prepare to step away from the navigation system of your past, stay present with the fears that will naturally arise, and emerge authentically into the now — with a peaceful, quiet mind.

In this session, you’ll discover:

• How Grace is completely unconditional — not coming through any filter of personality… it’s just always there, waiting patiently for you to receive it
• How the Ego always has conditions around love and fulfilment, relating to pleasure as a “reward” and pain as “punishment”
• Common ways that people obey the super-ego’s rules, which creates and sustains limiting beliefs about what you deserve in life
• How you can be free of the running commentary in your head about how well (or not well) you’re doing
• A juicy practice to become divinely disobedient to anything that keeps you believing you must become worthy of receiving the blessings of Grace
• How to move beyond the paradigm of being spiritual “good/bad boys and girls” to just being unconditionally who you ARE

This week is an opportunity to integrate the realizations from the previous three teaching sessions that illuminated the three primary obstacles to True Fulfillment.

Miranda will share deeper nuances on these teachings, while responding to themes emerging within the group to help you gain the very most from the teachings and practices.

Then, she’ll give a full hour of satsang — working experientially with participants’ most important questions, while demonstrating how the practice of Ego Relaxation opens the gate to ever-deepening love and wisdom.

The more you practice Ego Relaxation as you turn more substantially within, the more your sense of being a historically based “somebody” who has to earn, deserve, or become worthy disappears.

Not only does this lift you out of unnecessary suffering, it also lifts you into an infinite expanse.

As the curtains of your consciousness open, and you befriend the feeling of vulnerability, you discover what seems like a parallel universe within you, where true fulfillment and freedom abound unconditionally.

Many mystical scriptures of the world’s wisdom traditions speak of Grace in terms of “wine,” “living water,” “nectar,” and “amrita.” These terms speak to a blissful subtle substance that is not physical, but has a powerfully rejuvenating effect upon our soul — like gentle rain on a dry plant.

While no one can ever fully understand the mystery of Grace, you can nevertheless lean into a felt sense of being powerfully blessed, which leads to a more fulfilling experience of life.

Whether you come to the path through an established spiritual tradition or have no affiliation to a particular lineage, this session invites you into the possibility that divine love and celestial blessings are available to support your desire to expand spiritually, address your life situation intelligently, and help you practically manifest your fullest potential in life.

With Miranda’s guidance, you’ll access a state of deeper receptivity to Grace through non-linear means, including a specific meditation and mantra practice.

In this session, you’ll discover:

• The reasons you often feel a sense of lack — even when you know intellectually that, compared to so many on the planet, you’re blessed
• What you can learn from how the Divine is expressed in Vedic cosmology — each deity is really an essential aspect of our radiant core.
• How the substance of your soul returns to its natural clarity, fluidity, and freedom as your practice of Ego Relaxation develops… melting out of ego density and into greater transparency
• How to open to the Shakti (Divine Force) of Lakshmi, whose Grace is abundant love, nourishment, harmony, beauty, and blessings on both the spiritual and the material dimensions of life —and how to work with this force within your own theological framework
• How to open to infinite auspiciousness to bring you into the flow of synchronicity and what you truly need to thrive in life
• How to contact your heart’s deepest prayer, and how to discriminate this from ego grasping for “more,” enabling you to receive the Divine Force upon your deepest prayer with a powerful meditation and mantra initiation
• A recorded version of the Maha Lakshmi initiation to keep as part of your deepening homework

The more you relax the search for “more” in the world “out there,” and cherish conscious contact with your immediate direct experience, sincerely opening to the Divine Force upon your prayers, it is inevitable that you’ll start to experience a natural sense of joy, even though life continues to bring its inevitable ups and downs. This is because joy is the natural fragrance of your deepest heart.

The sense of dissatisfaction, which is the basic state of ego, gives way to a simple satisfaction. Ordinary life becomes richer and more meaningful, but at the same you become less attached to particular conditions as you learn to liberate joy from its triggers.

You become more naturally optimistic, resilient, and intelligently responsive to life’s invitations. Furthermore, your presence exudes a relaxed, beautiful fragrance that is also satisfying to be around.

In this class, Miranda will share how to practice ego relaxation with all that life brings — including moments of ego contraction, and also in moments of great beauty.

She’ll share how important it is to recognize and also unabashedly pleasure in the blessings of your life, harnessing ordinary moments of simple pleasure as a form of worship and gratitude. You’ll deepen into your bliss, relishing every sensation as you learn to receive more fully the blessings of life.

In this session, you’ll:

• Experience “Ananda” — the fulfilling love, joy, and bliss of your deepest heart
• Harness the everyday triggers for joy, as a way to enter more fully into the source of them
• Practice Ego Relaxation in moments of expansion: as you walk in nature, cook a meal, hang out with loved ones, enjoy music or art, and more
• Receive and recognize the blessings of your life
• Learn to walk this world in gratitude and generosity

In your journey so far, you’ve been learning to surrender in and through your blocks to true fulfillment, and instead harness all that life brings as an invitation from the Divine Force to grow, heal, and expand us.

You’re likely recognizing that life, even with its challenges and complexity, is a precious gift, and are learning to relish it more fully amidst the imperfection of your own life.

All authentic traditions understand the importance of serving our fellow human beings in some way. This helps us evolve out of self-centeredness, and also supports us to embody our love, and find not only fulfillment but a deep sense of meaning and purpose in our existence. Embodying our love in some way, even if it is simple, is key to a life of fulfillment

This class is dedicated to supporting you to explore what within you most wants to be shared in the service of others at this point in your life. You’ll explore why you can’t truly integrate the gifts that you have until you share them…

… and how to discover the true, natural, effortless, and generous giving of your gifts — minus the filter of a separate “me.”

Miranda will share a potent teaching story that Ramana Maharshi gave about recognizing and staying close to the recognition of Who it really is that is the do-er of all our actions.

This opens up a new possibility for sharing your gifts, minus the stress and struggle, in creative and juicy new ways.

In this session, you’ll discover:

• How to let your inner inspiration come alive into loving action, minus the “should”
• How to discern the difference between serving from your ego and the effortless embodiment of your being that simply extends its gifts
• The ways that Grace can manifest through you in unique ways you might not have considered
• Why service, sharing “the good” with others, brings us the deepest meaning in life
• How the ego can co-opt the concept of service as just another ego strategy to earn, bargain, or prove ourselves — and how to reset when this happens
• An inquiry practice to uncover the possibilities for your giving to flow freely

As you near the end of this course, you’ll be equipped to understand and explore — with ongoing curiosity and compassion — the many ways in which you block the flow of fulfilling Grace.

You can now meet, and lovingly understand, the stubborn places where you just do not want to let go and open up.

And at this point in your journey, you’re still trying to get the good stuff while holding onto your “me-go.” It’s time to see this for what it is, and let the healing Grace touch it.

Furthermore, to recognize that everywhere you go, Grace, and all of the gifts you could possibly need to flourish and thrive, are ever present.

This class is dedicated to helping you experience the Divine in yourself, in others, and everywhere. This provides the spiritual platform from which to be a graceful human being.

In this session, Miranda will guide you to explore:

• How, in the end, spiritual practice — and indeed, life — invites you to say YES to the invitations that come knocking in your door
• How Ego Relaxation makes you more capable of yielding when the mystery of life asks you to let go
• Why you should keep saying YES to that which fertilizes your soul — cherishing the practices that help you stay intimate with trust, close to your own heart, and tuned in to its wisdom amidst your daily life
• What you can learn from the profound mystery of how everything is always happening at once — for instance, right now someone is dying and someone else is being born
• Why Grace will always deepen, season, and bring out the very best in you — and you are its embodiment, now and forever
• How to recognize the Divine everywhere, walking through life with this realization

In this final session, Miranda will expand further on the last four sessions, which have invited a significant expansion of your consciousness. She will speak to any themes occuring in the group, clarifying confusions and teasing out further nuances that will help you gain the most out of our material, so you can stride forward in your life beyond this course.

She will spend a full hour working experientially with your grappling points and questions, and end the program with a guided meditation in which you’ll ask yourself:

• What was most nourishing for me in this course?
• What was my most important insight?
• What obstacles to true fulfillment do I want to keep an eye out for?
• What can best support me to live into a life of True Fulfillment and freedom from this point forward?

Russ Hudson, revered Enneagram teacher, co-author of The Wisdom of the Enneagram and fellow Shift faculty, joins Miranda for a robust dialogue on what it truly means to walk the mystical path amidst the dizzying level of change and uncertainty of contemporary culture. They explore the gifts and challenges of practicing beyond the structure of an established tradition, and how to avoid the pitfalls that limit the potential of the path to truly transform us into more graceful human beings. You’ll discover how to determine whether or not your practice is truly supporting your awakening process. Miranda and Russ have been friends for over 15 years, and share a love for the mystical traditions while simultaneously being dedicated to living in the world, but not of it.

Russ Hudson is co-founder of The Enneagram Institute and is one of the principal scholars and innovative thinkers in the Enneagram world today. He’s also President of Enneagram Personality Types, Inc. He’s been co-teaching the Enneagram Professional Training Programs since 1991, and is a founding director and former vice-president of the International Enneagram Association. Russ is co-author of The Wisdom Of The Enneagram, Personality Types, Understanding the Enneagram, Discovering Your Personality Type, andThe Power Of The Enneagram. Russ also assisted Don Riso in writing Enneagram Transformations. He holds a degree in East Asian Studies from Columbia University in New York, from which he graduated Phi Beta Kappa.

“Be Still and Know I AM” is the universal invitation at the heart of all the great teachings. Yet it is often misunderstood, not to mention overlooked in our fast paced world. In this opening talk from a 3-day retreat, Miranda invites a deeper contemplation on what it is to be still that includes the journey to, with, and as I AM presence. She eloquently discriminates the difference between the habit of acquiring spiritual information and the knowing that genuinely transforms our being. She transmits the essence of the invitation, and invites us beyond the obstacle of seeking to humbly letting go into a deeper abiding in the heart of pure being.

The Way of Grace is a hand of spiritual friendship to make the journey home clearer kinder and more potent.

A practical map to help you abide in the living presence that you are and always were.

An invitation to become a more graceful human being.