Peace Talk Episode 302: Noticing and Questioning the belief "I need this" for freedom

This is the very last residential retreat of 2026 — and it begins tomorrow.

If part of you has been circling it, this is the moment. 

After tomorrow, there won't be another chance to gather like this — overnight, in one house, at the wild edge of the continent.

Fear to Freedom Retreat · Olympic Peninsula · begins tomorrow, Saturday 7pm.

One bed remains, in a shared room. $1,760 covers everything, meals and all.

Take the last bed → workwithgrace.com

(The next retreat after this is women-only, October 29–November 1 in Seattle — a four-day Day of the Dead/Samhain gathering on loss, grief, and anger, where you'll stay nearby or commute daily. So this one tomorrow is the last residential one of the year.)

Here's what came up this morning.

It was First Friday — our open inquiry session, you can watch it below — and we looked at a concept that lives at the center of the human condition: 

I need life to go a certain way. And I need it not to go a painful way.

One inquirer had found two job listings. Both look great. She sees herself as an ideal candidate for each. Interviews are coming. Will she get one? What will it be like? Wouldn't that be amazing, says the mind.

And everyone found their own version:

• A 43rd anniversary that needs to be romantic.
  A kid being delivered to college — packing, finances, logistics, all of it in order first.
  An event to attend, with no clear way to get there.
  A spouse who leaves things out instead of putting them away.
  Agreement, please, on the internet.

It's incredible how fast the mind offers up the ideal version and the terrible version. 

Avoid the terrible. Pray for the fabulous.

Why question this at all?

Because it's stressful to grip what we hope will happen, and stressful to meet what we don't want. 

And underneath it all sits what I want — is that really where I want to live? 

Referenced entirely from Me, Myself, and I and this personal life navigating through the world?

Who am I without the story of needing it to go "my" favorable way?

Willing. Open. Curious. 

Genuinely interested in finding out however it goes.

We've all watched something "terrible" turn out to open a door, right? 

A new direction, a change we'd never have chosen that turned out to be deeply good. 

So how can we ever be sure the threatening thing is bad?

We don't even know that about death itself!

Who are we without our stories?

That's the whole invitation of this retreat. Come find out — in a small circle, with a lake and an ocean and a week of unhurried time to actually look.

It starts tomorrow. There's one bed left.

Join us by taking the very last bed at the retreat →workwithgrace.com

And even if you never attend retreat....isn't it profound to consider your mind is not the conductor of the universe, that it may not have all the answers, that it doesn't NEED to know? 

Wow. How fun. How amazing. 

🎁 FREE STARTER KIT: First Response Guide to Thought Storms
Tools for working with thoughts from the place of awareness
Download: https://workwithgrace.lpages.co/starter-kit-first-response-guide-to-thought-storms/

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