I AM STORIES: Up at the Retreat

On a summer's day, a group of Americans arrive at a chalet in Switzerland for a week on retreat with a rare guide. Each of them hears the call of the higher. Yet who among them, despite baggage and type, crosses the threshold to awaken? At any moment is there enough attention to join with the vital force of life? It's a bumpy week. The tug of beliefs and self-image. Yet an indescribable energy, usually hidden, brings an entirely new state of being. As their guide puts it, "With attending to presence, allowing higher forces to enter, staying collected, returning, we can live in a new way." Here are accounts, with a touch of humor, of contemporary heroes, sometimes "unskillful," who taste real transformation when an unknown dimension suddenly opens. In these stories of the I AM, even as we are we rise. As Rumi says, "Something opens our wings.