Return to Belonging
The Heart of Who We Are
A Retreat with Caverly Morgan
October 20 - 24, 2025
Esalen Institute (CA)
We all long to be happy. We all long to feel at ease, to be at peace, and to know that we’re okay and we belong. When it feels like the world is on fire, when divisiveness is commonplace, it can seem harder than ever to access such belonging — both personally and collectively.
Most of us are deeply habituated to believe that we are separate — from one another, from the world, and even from ourselves. We are habituated to fall for the story that we must fix ourselves in order to earn and experience deep connection.
We forget that belonging is already seated in the heart of who we are — and that it’s always available if only we look within. When we do, we can transform far more than just our own lives.
Ask yourself these questions:
Have you ever touched this peace, this contentment, this deep return to belonging but then feared losing this experience?
Have you ever struggled because you recognized the world around you did not reflect this experience of your true nature?
When faced with the enormity of the collective problems before us, have you wondered how one individual’s spiritual practice can make a tangible difference in our world?
These questions will guide our time together as we explore how meditation, mindfulness, and contemplative technologies can — and must — be applied collectively. Our daily meditation practice will serve as a framework onto which we will begin to weave teachings with personal reflections. You will have the opportunity to connect to yourself, others, and the world beyond in solo and group exercises and discussions that inspire us to put our values into action.
Join us in this return to belonging — this remembering of the deepest truth of who we are — with the intention of using this understanding to transform our own lives and the world we share.
“Her spacious teaching style didn’t crowd the agenda with too much information but rather the content seemed to flow beautifully and build on each other. The balance of teaching and meditation time allowed me to rest and drop into the learning more fully. The relational dharma work felt especially powerful and grounded the concepts in real time.”
—Esalen 2024 retreatant