Creative Tensions: Sacred Community Retreat 2025 (Q&A #2)

This second Q&A from the 2025 Sacred Community Retreat features a discussion on acting with kindness and the creative tension between acceptance and ambition and how it intersects with our careers, artistic pursuits, and spiritual lives. It ends with a few Ram Dass stories for good measure. 

It also contains an in-depth discussion about cultural appropriation. This topic is a big one, and though the facilitators don't claim to offer any universal answers, as a group they explore the question from multiple viewpoints and cultural perspectives.

We are sharing it here because at SCP we don't shy away from systemic issues. In our retreat invocation we state, "We have come together to invoke the Sacred through our shared humanity. During this retreat, we each agree to attend to five things: ourselves, each other, the group, the world, and the shared Presence unifying it all. We do this as an act of devotion, knowing that God is manifest in all five." And, "We tend to the world by acknowledging we are not separate from collective sorrow, collective aid, or systemic influences associated with race, class, gender, sexuality, or ability."

Learn more about this year’s Sacred Community Retreat in British Columbia.

The Sacred Community Podcast is an inter-spiritual hub of the universal teachings, “Love, Service, Remembrance, and Truth.” Home to Sacred Community Project interviews, live workshop recordings, dharma talks, and meditations, each episode is carefully curated to ensure its alignment with SCP values.

Related Credits and Links

Podcast Host and Producer: Sitaram Dass

A/V: zander cole

SCP Logo: Beverly Hsu

Podcast Intro Music: Carl Golembeski

---