Cocooned by record breaking snowfall, a man in training to be a psychospiritual counselor allows himself to rediscover, accept, and integrate long forgotten aspects of self only to later find out ugly truths as he extricates himself from the remnants of overlapping Canadian-American cults gone supernova.
~Early January of 2007~
***This article remains a work in progress. Enjoy the journey!***
The author at Brew Creek Centre, a remote sanctuary roughly halfway between Squamish & Whistler, British Columbia, on the morning after the snowstorm. A friend of mine in the training took this foto of me with my camera. Early January 2007.
*Fotos taken in cloudy, darkening conditions with an older LG (Life’s Good!) smartfone with a slide-out pushbutton keyboard bought thru Verizon.*
Snow fell so deep and so fast as to bury the entire part of Canada where I planned to immerse myself in a psychotherapy training.
The main lodge after the storm.
Even so…
One of the class rooms & meditation retreat centers built bank to bank over Brew Creek.
In places sheets of icicles presented unexpected hazards. Ironically the hotter the folks inside turned up the heat, the larger and more dangerous were those icy dragonteeth daggers.
Self-portrait of a stark ghost.
Road bridge over Brew Creek granting access to & from the centre sanctuary.
The author again. January 2007.
The Sanctuary & Main Lodge at Brew Creek Centre, BC.
The retreat centre feels enormous even as the place feels engulfed by wilderness. Apparently it’s equally gorgeous in the summertime & a popular location for weddings & other celebrations.
Big snow at little Brew Creek. Bullshit is real, too, as real as wizards behind clothes, as real as emperors without clothes, as real as ideologically rigid people hide behind certificates, degrees, and charismatic teachers/politicians/clergy/therapists/speakers and leaders.
Icy daggers drip down from beautiful gloom.
Chained ice.
Short days.
Darkness comes down from the mountains.
Out in the shadows beyond the dark where werewolves play with prey. Beware, however, of wolves who turn back into humans. Beware the weremen and the werewomen operating in plain sight.
The world shapeshifts were time, emotions, thoughts, gravity, & space bend before unconscious ids, trauma monsters, & the creative imagination alike.
Perceptions of the Sacred.
Me again, 47 years along & a third of year away from turning 48. I’m astonished & delighted by all this snow. The experiential immersion training here was an extension of a year-long Psychospiritual Counseling Practicum. This program blasted open my mind as well as my heart, but when “the Bomb Peak” of my ten years or so enmeshed in New Age LGAT or Large-Group Awareness Training cults masquerading as personal & professional growth, training, & development institutions spiked, massive disillusionment set in. This resulted in years of severe losses, difficult lessons, and a deeper awareness and raw skepticism of religious, spiritual, economic, political, and business movements and their claims.
Reference Notes to complete this article:
Brew Creek Lodge roughly halfway between Squamish & Whistler, BC. First is world-famous rock climbing such as the towering Stawamus Chief Monolith. The latter is a classic mini-city sprawled along the bottom of peaks celebrated for world caliber skiing. Feroucious whitewater abounds such as the nearby Cheakamus River. Mountaineering such as the glaciated stratovolcano Mt. Garibaldi and backpacking lures people deeper into the wilderness.
Fiord of Howe Sound.
Squamish-Lillooet Drive/Seas-to-Sky Hwy (99)
Mt. Brew, Brew Lake,
Daisy Lake – big lake E of 99
S of Brandywine Falls Provincial Park (many PParks are huge in the Canadian provinces & are equivalent in scale & grandeur to many national parks.)
W of massive Garibaldi Provincial Park
***Cults & quasi-cults – PPT/MMI/IFFL$, WS/DD$, X/RAM$, + Integral/AC/KW – ego & poetic language grounded in the hot air of the new age without peer review & science to back up claims. Such woo. Such power & money derived from the woo. “Crazy Wisdom” referred to by RAM & common in these cults has multiple roots, inc Ancient Greece w/ Plato ~370 BC & theia mania, Greek for “divine madness” + Tibetan Buddhism w/ Chögyam Trungpa’s “Crazy Wisdom” founder of Naropa >Wilber, Died et al… Expand into another article. All teachers are to be left behind if one is to journey onwards. (There were other cultish organizations, too, not listed here, that may be mentioned in a different article for another inquiry including individuals influenced by their cultish past who operated businesses with a New Agey LGAT-style approach.)
William Dudley Bass
Tuesday 24 March 2020
Seattle, Washington
USA
Cascadia
Sol
Copyright © 2007, 2020 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.