Chicago Area Enlightenment Intensives and Dyad Days

Directly Experience the Truth of Who You Are

Enlightenment Intensives (EIs) are retreats that give you the opportunity to work and see through the obscurations of your mind in order to connect to your true self.

The next EI retreat will be held from May 1 to 5, 2025, in Frankfurt, Il, only an hour outside of Chicago.

What is an Enlightenment Intensive?

Enlightenment Intensives are modeled after Zen Buddhist “sesshin” meditation retreats and are combined with the modern practice of sitting with another person in a format called a dyad. This revolutionary combination was first put together by Charles and Ava Berner in 1968. Over the course of 3+ days, you will participate in many 40 minute meditation sessions where partners work together in dyads, taking five minute turns alternating between being the meditating partner and the active listening partner.

Though the outcome of attending an Enlightenment Intensive can be deeply spiritual, EIs are secular and teach no beliefs.  As a result, it is open and available to all practices and faiths, including no faith.  All it takes is a desire to penetrate deeper into the truth of this moment and experience of the truth of yourself.

What is a dyad? How do you do one?

Dyad meditations are partnered meditations with face-to-face contact and communication of what comes up while contemplating age-old spiritual questions like “Who am I?” and “What am I” or “What is life?” and “What is another?”.

Sitting across from each other, almost knee to knee, you work in pairs (dyads). Over the course of 40 minutes, each partner takes 5-minute turns, alternating between being the meditating, communicating partner and being the silent, active listening partner. As the contemplating partner, you open to

being present to yourself in the moment while meditating on your question; whatever arises, you communicate that to your partner. As the listening partner, you simply witness. Judgmental or hurtful communications or any kind of commentary on the other’s experience are not made.

This is neither a mental nor social operation; it is a practice of being open to, conscious of, and vulnerable to your on-going, present-moment experience of self while in the presence of another.

Meet Tim

I attended my first Enlightenment Intensive in 2007 and, since then, have been on more than 20 retreats. I’ve taught both Tai Chi and seated meditation, and worked as a professional body worker for 20 years before finding a calling in Architecture. A seeker for most of my life, I’ve done soul retrievals, rebirthings, and sweat lodges, as well as other practices. I was always looking for what would connect me deeply to truth, and find EI’s to be the most effective means to directly experience the truth of who I am. Through the dyad meditation technique and Enlightenment Intensive retreats, it turns out the opportunity to directly experience Truth isn’t just for monks who sit in caves for dozens of years!

It would be really hard for me give an intensive by myself. While she’s fully qualified to lead her own intensives, our monitor (aka: EI support person) is Grace Honore. We’ve been dear friends for as long as I’ve been attending intensives. I’m so happy we’re working together.

Meet Grace

I love the Truth and I love Enlightenment Intensives. I also love supporting others in their own inquiry into the Truth, and host bi-weekly zoom dyad nights. I took my first Intensive in October 2005, and have taken over 70 Intensives since then, both in-person and online using Zoom. Intensives have radically changed my life. I never knew such joy and love and Truth before I started taking them. Intensives and dyads have become my spiritual path. In addition, I study the work of A. H. Almaas and facilitate a group that studies his work. The teachings of Almaas work beautifully with Intensives. Both practices involve deep inquiry into the Truth of existence. It is an endless unfolding.