2024 Original Love 1 Year Program

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“This year’s program is in service of coming home to who we really are – to the love and well-being, joy and positive energy intrinsic to our original nature. We need it more than ever. And this is how healing can happen, individually, communally, collectively, globally.”
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Schedule

20 Sundays in 2024

10am – 12pm MT

You can join the One Year Program at any time, and access the recordings of events that happened earlier in the year.

We’ll be meeting online approximately 2 Sundays per month. The schedule for the first 9 Sundays is set (see below), and the schedule for the rest of the year will be announced on a rolling basis:

  • January 21
  • February 4 & 25
  • March 10 & 24
  • April 7 & 21
  • May 12 & 19

If you can’t attend live, recordings will be available the day after each event.

Lake, boat, and mountain (Lake District)
Henry Shukman in front of mural

A message from Henry

We’re excited for our 2024 Original Love program. The world is on fire, burning up with the “three fires” of greed, hate and misunderstanding. There seems to be suffering wherever we turn. The spirit of Original Love may seem paradoxical – it’s about letting our experience be as it is, learning to be welcoming toward ourselves and our experience, not striving in any way, but allowing ourselves and things to really to be as they are. As a result, we come home to our hearts, we start to come home to who we truly are, and we start to see new ways of responding.

We’ll be gathering through the year to do just that, together.

Our program is evolving!

From its inception, the Original Love program was never intended to be too systematic or lock itself into fixed structures. We explore four zones of growth that I believe are intrinsic to well-being and to wholesome,
integrated spiritual practice – Mindfulness, Connectedness, Flow and Awakening. These are based on seasoned teachings from millennia-old meditation traditions.

But this program from the start was intended to be evolving, changing, and continually experimenting. So far, it has been doing that, and we’re going to continue in that spirit. This year marks two exciting developments: our brand-new innovative meditation app, The Way; and a deeper dive into live Sunday sessions.

Bell in the zendo of Mountain Cloud Zen Center
Entrance of zendo of Mountain Cloud Zen Center

Practices, talks, poems, koans

This year, instead of distinct courses, we’re going to have 20 individual Original Love Sunday sessions through the year. The topics may be decided
more spontaneously, and we may offer a thematic series of Sundays from time to time as the inspiration arises. We are also planning an exciting roster of guest teachers. The theme that will stay consistent throughout the year is exploring ways of contacting our original nature, and the original love that is part of that very nature.

This is the most critical discovery of a lifetime, and offers the greatest potential for inner and outer healing. In these Sunday sessions, we’ll be meditating together, exploring teachings through a talk, enjoying poems, picking up some koans, and investigating a variety of practices, techniques and views.

Daily meditations

Many of you have reported relishing and valuing the guided meditations that we’ve offered in the Original Love program. This year marks a great step forward in that regard. We’ve created a meditation app, The Way, which offers a meditation every day throughout the year. We hope these meditations will serve as the foundation for your daily practice, guiding you ever deeper along your journey.

We’re very excited to include a 1 year subscription to The Way as part of the 2024 Original Love 1 Year program.

The Way meditation app
Ocean view from Santa Monica mountains

Finding our great home

While our app The Way offers the backbone of daily practice in 2024, the year of Sunday Sessions is an opportunity to gather and be in community – for meditation, for teachings, and for explorations where we continue the work, the journey, the blessed practice of coming home to our real nature – to the original love that’s always here, holding us. 

When we find that, we cannot help but feel a tremendous sense of belovedness, and of lovingness. That’s the key component, the real watchword of this program: coming back again and again, amidst all the suffering and trouble in our human experience, to the lovingness that is intrinsic to our being. This year, that’s what we’re going to be gathering to do, in this beautiful way of experiencing together what it is to find our great home.

Cost

$500 – includes:

  • 20 Sunday sessions
  • A 1 year subscription to The Way meditation app (usually priced at $149.99 for an annual subscription)

See registration page for payment plan options.

All Sunday sessions will be recorded if you can’t attend live, and made available the following day.

Scholarships

We warmly welcome you to contact us if a scholarship would allow you to attend this year’s program. Please contact the Original Love program manager Jeremy for details about how to apply.

Questions?

We welcome you to join the One Year Program at any point this year. You’ll get access to all the Sunday recordings from earlier this year, and invitations to join all upcoming Sunday events.

If you have any questions about this program, please contact Jeremy. We’re happy to answer any questions and look forward to having you join us!

About your teacher

Henry Shukman

Henry is an authorized Zen Master in the Sanbo Zen lineage, and is the Spiritual Director of Mountain Cloud Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In addition to teaching meditation, Henry is an award-winning author and poet. His struggles and traumatic experiences as a youth, combined with a spontaneous awakening experience at 19, paved the way for Henry to develop a well-rounded approach to healing and awakening through meditation.

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Henry Shukman
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Zen Teacher, Author, Poet.
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