Awakening to JOY
ONENESS IS ALREADY WITHIN YOU, JUST WAITING TO BE AWAKENED
YOUR STILL POINT
The Song of Joy
In our retreat, we meet each day like in a ceremony held in the sacred, shining light of joy. Each day includes 6 hours in blissful rest, unique movements, and meditations in the embrace of real silence, where it unfolds itself more and more. In our week retreats: Each week usually includes 3 days of a silent retreat.
The unknown is at the heart of every person. It exists beyond body-mind, all thought and feeling. It is your still point. Real silence is the only gate to real joy. Like sudden light out of darkness, the low energy field melts into nothing and is experienced as joy.
Find you. Find Joy
Thousands of people have found joy with our retreats
Rune Heivang has hosted more than 200 retreats in the mountains, the sea and ocean, the forest and river, and countless mini retreats in many cities. He has met over 30,000 people along the way. Many have stayed for years. Each retreat brings its own exceptional experience, and a new moment to see and be the brilliance of the divine principle of joy expressing itself as human.
These retreats are an exercise in the bottomless depths of logic, where knowledge alone is no match for experience.
At a certain point, ideas fade into thoughts, or they become alive. The purpose of these retreats is to turn pure logic into ideas, and ideas into reality.
We explore the full depth of the teaching, experiencing a shift from thought to formless beauty, where logic blooms but can go no further.
Make a connection with these words, and find out if this retreat is for you.
Joy is harmony lived. It is the true state of being. And only you can experience it. You are the joy that you seek.
It is where all questions and answers meet. It whispers to the heart and disappears in the gaze. When you look for it, you will never find it. The secret is not to look, but to be and you will see Joy is already given.
If Joy were a place, it would feel like home
Come, let us listen to Silence in togetherness. Just be. Just listen. Just See for yourself. See that your true nature is born satisfied. That joy is the only expression you know to be real. You are the Divine nectar of a cosmic tree. Its roots are watered and nourished by streams of light. That light is you. That light is joy.
What is JOY?
We’ve all felt it at some point in our lives. For a brief moment, all was perfect and clear. And then it was gone, carried off by a troubled thought. Forgotten in a night’s sleep. Buried in the responsibilities of life.
When you learn you were only born to be joyful, every moment of joy is a moment of absolute truth.
JOY IS:
The purest state.
The highest emotional value.
The only destiny of mankind.
To understand and become joy is the greatest achievement in life.
True JOY is a touch of the permanent
Joy is an unconditional state of love. It does not happen with change.
It is natural to become trapped in thought. We are thinking beings, after all. But if we never leave our thoughts, we never see the truth.
The impostor thought uses bare logic to reinforce its likes and dislikes, which are tangled in a web of emotion to support its view, made ‘real’ by the words and actions that follow. In that way, the thought becomes the decision, which can lead to disaster, when the only real role of the thought is to understand and communicate.
The acceptance of thought is the acceptance of a limited frequency, where we can only experience the primitive components of a greater field. Thought is the boundary of separation within that field. Beyond thought, we cannot recognise the whole energy field by thinking. To experience it, we must leave our thoughts behind and accept the energy that we already are.
We are an oneness that buys into the illusion of its own collective fear. We feel out of sync and orientation because we do not know how to experience the greater energy field together, as one.
We become afraid of change even if change means returning to our true nature. When we believe there is no organising force other than chaos and chance, we must look again, beyond the thoughts that trap us.
You are not your thoughts!
You discover them! This is the NUMBER ONE message from the greatest Sages through time. The amazing thing is that it will be the last message most of us will need to investigate. It is the discovery of lifetimes for those ready to see, and it is right there in front of us every moment of our lives.
When we look closer, the person we think we are is an object no different from the world we experience. Because we experience the world, we believe we are experiencing ourselves.
In between thoughts is the Silence where the real you exists. It is the empty space between forces. This is the still point beyond your mind and body. The gate to joy.
Joy is a supreme state to return to. Joy waits for you to come back, into harmony with the field of life. Because you are it.
So the ultimate paradox is finding your way back to the state of oneness that you never left, where there is a continual sense of connection. Joy shows us that we are always in alignment with our true universal destiny, an experience that we are always a part of and only have to remember.
In joy, the finest impulses of intelligence before life are awakened in your body. The body is a vessel through which experiences unfold.
You are the joyful experiencer of this divine body instrument as it passes through infinite fields of actual divinity.
By surrendering ourselves to the joyful journey, it becomes evident that the real experiencer is NOT the person aware of the world, but the Awareness that is aware of the person who is aware of the world.
And there is no reason, because the only reason for anything is always here, never there. Joy is a changeless state. It is pure. It is aliveness, it is a freshness that wants to express itself as life through you. It requires no explanation.
The Song of Joy
Meet life for the first time, all the time.
Joy is the centre of all centres. Here, you are safe forever, and always were. Doubt is erased. Awareness becomes self-aware. And you See.
The more we embrace life as it is, chaos and change, the more we feel joy.
We must untangle our fears and tension, which are born of the need to control.
The more we let go, the more the flow of intelligent universal power floods our divine body instrument.
And this is how we realise our final destiny as human beings. Unity consciousness turns our divine instruments into a song. It is the song of Joy. It is opening the gate beyond.
The Song of Joy shows us if we are not continually transcending, we are dying. Life can do nothing but continuously change to a higher field of existence all the time. We have known nothing but change since our physical birth, and now that our physical growth is complete, we are ready for a new type of change.
Just as you keep your memories from childhood, so too are your states of consciousness brought with you as you transcend higher, from where they are Seen.
In its journey, consciousness never grows up. It continues to explore, play and experiment. It changes forever in a spinning state of continuity. Something that never stops changing is itself changeless.
And you See that what you seek can never come, because it was never gone. You were gone. And in joy you return.
Every part of us is tuned into a magnetic force, a greater cosmic rhythm, from the spin of an atom to the spin of galaxies, all life is linked. We have no other choice than to meet life for the first time all the time. We are life.
Beyond our fear reflex are the rhythms of nature's laws, and in them, we find the great law of abundance, an intelligent, infinite flow where life flowers, withers, and blooms anew, forever.
And as a part of that rhythm, there is a subtle intent to seek a harmony, the new, the flower, that you do not know, cannot know. And as you fall into the unknown, you fall in peace, you fall in joy, you fall in love. Again and again. Until you are not falling at all. And all things are as they were. A natural, spontaneous perfection of innocent life.
Find Joy
Still Point Meditation
A practice older than books
Through time, Sages have repeated this practice with no knowledge of one another. It has many names. It is profoundly simple. Countless forms of wisdom have led us to the same conclusion.
Awareness can become aware of itself.
Let us practice the most rapid, effective and direct method that brings the impostor self to its final end. We realise that when we are free from any traces of thought, we are happy.
Here, our hearts can hear the whispers from the absolute. We listen closely to the chapters specifically recommended from the Sages for attainment of Self Realisation.
“Ramana Maharshi says:
“If you observe Awareness steadily, this Awareness, Itself as Guru will reveal The Truth”
The Teacher is You
In Real Silence, you will See the teacher is you. You will find no master or student. No virtues. No knowledge to gain. No stages of growth or enlightenment. No liberation in life or death. No desire. Only a stateless state free of thought and feeling.
Just being what you are, and See no discrimination between the real and unreal.
Real silence is indeed real joy, so let us meet Here!
The Joy of the Absolute
The world is the Radiant Self in Disguise
Our minds beg for enlightenment, but to seek it is like chasing our thoughts to the edges of space. For your true self to ever be found in the joy of the absolute, you must release the grip on pursuit!
Within the Absolute, there can be no enlightenment, because there is only a stateless state of nothingness, also called beyond consciousness — or The Great Awakening. Within nothingness, the infinite value of wholeness and divine flavours of love and joy is revealed.
Enlightenment is often seen as ascension, a form of separation from ignorance. But the Absolute can be imagined as all things dissolving, being stripped of form, and having no division. Here, they return to formless form, where all is the shining self. All is the joy of the Absolute.
Instead of gaining anything, all you know is lost, and everything that we understand becomes falsehood: an existence trapped in thought. Here, we find pure, endless joy.
When you cease to be a separated individual walking through space and time, convinced of your body and mind, you realise the world has been the Radiant Shining Self in Disguise the whole time. And you See it, for the first time, before, now, and always.
Reality, in all its purity, is revealed to your living body and mind. Once it becomes clear, it stays with you forever. It can never be lost, because you’ve seen it for the first time, all the time, with the body and mind you are now, which grew from a seed watered by the light of the universe.
You See reality from the Absolute, as if you have moved to where you belong, not with your body, but as a part of the Radiant Self, which you never ceased to be.
Beyond intellect, senses, and emotions, it reveals itself as the boundless pure essence of all that exists now and forever.
The world as you know it is the mirage.
In other words, it does not exist. It is the living dream of a collective impostor thought. This is the power of the Absolute. We See the Supreme Divine appear to us as an illusion in the form of the world!
“Ramana Maharshi says, "Only the Shining Self, No World"
Your Still Point
Awareness watching Awareness
In Silence, you are still as a stone.
You are light as air.
Close your eyes.
Now open them again.
See the world. But do not watch it.
Close your eyes.
Watch the watcher.
Let thoughts come and go.
Let feelings slip away.
Watch the watcher.
Soon, just like catching yourself falling asleep…
You catch yourself falling awake.
Let yourself fall awake.
As you fall, all sense of being and self withers.
And you land in the whole of creation, where it smiles for no reason.
Where it whispers without sound…
“Stay here forever.”
Find Joy
A life-changing discovery
Learn about yourself by unlearning yourself. Let go of the stories of who you are. Without them, what is there left to believe?
A miracle.
The miracle of Seeing that the giver of life creates reality without you.
A reality without beginning or end.
In it, you can only have joy. A joy that is born of love.
Love is born of truth.
Truth is a whole. There is no half love. There is no lie.
Birth and death come and go.
But true death is when death dies.
And when death dies, you are what is left.
True birth was never born.
The Seer is the Seen.
The Seen is the Seer.
Life sees itself for the first time, all the time.
You cannot find the Seer!
This is the joy inside all of us.
It must only be Seen.
The joy of meeting life as joy.
Understand You.
Find You.
Find Joy.
Look at this white background. It is like the sky, allowing letters, which are like clouds, to exist.
The letters cannot exist without the white background. But the white background can exist without the letters… The white background is a metaphor for consciousness.
So something is always here. You are always here, never there.
The Map to Enlightenment
The drawings cannot exist without the paper. Without the white background, no drawings can exist. The paper is a metaphor for consciousness. Nothing can exist without something being aware of it. The drawing is a metaphor for everything. Awareness is beyond the mind: intellect, thoughts, inner voice, and the body + everything. Consciousness is very good; it lets everything exist. There is no distance between the paper and the drawing. All is well; all is divine forever when you wake up to it.
Oneness is already within you, just waiting to be awakened.
About Joining Our Retreats
Our retreats are intended to open the gates of awakening in the shared vibration of stillness. By taking part, you will also meet a small group of people who have attended many retreats and are in good company over the years. The union of familiar retreat goers and open-minded newcomers creates a powerful space of pure stillness, which invites the essence of awakening to take place.
Here, you will find that Real Silence is the only gate to real joy, and that awakening to higher states of Consciousness ultimately leads to the end of all seeking.
We kindly ask that you read the information here and in our other E-books to find out if this retreat is right for you. We welcome anyone and everyone who wishes to benefit from the unique knowledge, experience, and awakening offered.
When you arrive with this genuine purpose, you are guaranteed to leave with a newfound understanding of who you really are. As in the teachings we offer, it is the attitude of the person that allows the retreat to serve them fully, and create a comfortable place to expand into light each moment and each day during their stay.
Please reach out with any questions and to learn more about Our Retreats and how we can serve you.
Awakening to Joy Retreats
Oneness is already within you, just waiting to be awakened.
Your true self has always been divine. Only perception has limited your experience of it. As you have started to explore and realize, through regular spiritual practice, you have seen that you can expand toward greater joy and fulfillment more quickly.
What we see and experience reflects the degree of refinement of our nervous system. As our perception becomes more refined, the more our world reflects that shining perception. It becomes how we see the world. By simply being who we are, we discover the most profound level: only one Being, one Heart, one Body, and one Life shared by all.
Divine creative energy is constantly flowing through us, ready to be embraced.
With these simple spiritual practices and the knowledge offered, you can awaken to pure consciousness and infuse it into your mind and body, into your creation. As your perception deepens, life reveals its true divine nature—full of peace, joy, and bliss.
If it is always here, it is always there.
When we meet in the light, we refine our awareness to experience that reality. The universe pulses with divine intelligence, filling existence with waves of bliss and fullness so we can stay “there” that is always here. Everything is vibrant, alive, and connected as one flow of life—and you are that life!
Welcome to a meeting in the light!
Wake up to Joy!
Be prepared for the most incredible experience in your life!
ALREADY THERE
THE ONLY PLACE TO BE
ONLY PLACE TO LIVE