The Retreat with Bob Fergeson & Tess Hughes

This Retreat Was in 2017.
See Our Current Retreat Schedule

Listen to an Interview with Bob Fergeson
Listen to an Interview with Tess Hughes

Separate Journeys, a Common Path:
The Road to Ultimate Fulfillment

Bob Fergeson and Tess Hughes will share their stories and teachings through a series of workshops, inquiry, and discussion, designed to free your own inner guide.

What will I find on this page?

~ Information about Bob Fergeson & His Books
~ Information about Tess Hughes & Her Book
~ Special discounts for Awakening Together & TAT Foundation members
~ Links to Important Retreat Information
~ Link to Register

Bob Fergeson’s Bio:

My inner journey first began in childhood; an intense remembering of another place, a better, less complicated way of being. I could lie on my back in the soft grass under the trees, marveling at the beauty and peace, entranced at the simplicity and stillness.  Later in life this beauty would lead to an obsession with art and photography, to sharing the wonder I found in innocence.

As an adult I soon wandered off down the road of the senses, and became lost in addiction and fear, afraid to grow up and enter the strange world of adults. This very suffering of separateness, of alcohol and drugs, immaturity and loss of innocence, paradoxically led me to my first experience of Light and Love. Eventually, I lost all hope of thinking myself into a better life, and resigned myself to death. I became too sick to struggle, to keep alive the story of ‘me’. This very surrender led to my inner death,  forcing a crack in the ego’s armor. The in-flooding of Light through the gap healed me, bringing hope and a second chance at life and freedom.

Through synchronicity and luck, I soon found my way to a true teacher and his group, Richard Rose of West Virginia. Through his mastery of human psychology and the hammer of zen, he widened the crack enough to plunge me further within. I found there are no others; only One looks out through our eyes. His discipline and inner force helped me to strengthen my mind and develop the intuition. His group, the TAT Foundation, showed me the value of working with others.

Returning to Colorado, I began using art and dream work to further understand my mind, heart, and the unconscious, the inner world from which we spring. Through these images of drawing and dream, I came to see why I did what I did, and how we all have the possibility to free ourselves from our overly complex dual nature. After a third and final realization, I became free of the personality, and began the task of helping others to find their path, their way Home.

Information about Bob’s Books:

A collection of my photographs along with Shawn Nevins poetry illustrates the Standing Now, our eternal sense of stillness and the silence within: Images of Essence.

A collection of essays, advice, and poetry, The Listening Attention offers an everyman’s guide to self-realization.

Zen lessons and a methodology for spiritual development, Dark Zen – A Guru on the Bayou, has something to offer the complete beginner and seasoned seeker – simple explanations of profound truths.

Tess Hughes’ Bio:

I was born and raised on a small farm at the foot of a Christian pilgrimage mountain in the west of Ireland. I still live in the west of Ireland.

The atmosphere I was born into was one of a simple lifestyle with a taken-for-granted sense of the transcendent. We thanked God for this, that and the other as a matter of course. We never said “see you next week” without adding, ”with the help of God”.

At eighteen, I found myself at University studying The Sciences. Here I met all the rational arguments against the existence of or evidence for God and I fell for it. I took on atheism. A rational mind set replaced my trusting believing mindset.

When I was twenty-five I gave birth to my first child and was so profoundly moved by the experience, as it matched more closely my childhood attitude, that I became agnostic. This agnostic stance remained my default mindset, unable to come to any conclusion about God or the relationship between life and death, or any other profound question until I came across a piece of video in which Richard Rose, founder of the TAT Foundation said, “there is no God,……..outside of you”

With this statement I realised that I had never really looked inside myself, did not know how to look inside or what this might entail but it did offer a possible solution to my long-term questioning and questing. To follow up on this statement seemed like the only possible solution left to me, as I had exhausted all other possibilities that I had come across. I had spent decades looking in all the wrong places, books, religious systems, learning various meditation practises and all the stuff that is touted as spiritual nowadays.

I had run out of confidence and energy with my questing when I (accidentally!) came across the TAT website, which to my way of thinking, offered a different take on what spirituality really means and it offered a kind of “programme”, or set of ideas, aimed at facilitating spiritual fruition in oneself. With hindsight I can say that this teaching and programme is the universal message, the Perennial Wisdom of the world, but back then, in 2003, it had a novel appearance for me.

I took this “programme” or teaching on with total dedication and determination. It was my last chance at coming to some kind of settlement in myself about the questions that had dogged me all my adult life.

Seven years after coming across this website I had an experience which led to the end of all questions and questing. That was August 2010, when I was sixty-one years old.

Along the way I had been shown that this seed of questioning had been planted in me when I was nine years old. It took over fifty years for it to reach maturation.

Nowadays I like to share with others the kinds of ideas and practices I was doing that I feel contributed to this final fruition, to Self-realisation, to the end of discontent.

Information about Tess’ Book:

This beautifully organized book is about the writer’s spiritual voyage, all the way to its ultimate unfolding– an end to her suffering. Throughout her story, this writer is profoundly generous, holding nothing back. She welcomes readers into a journey so sensitive, so private, that at times it feels like we shouldn’t be there; her feelings, fears, revelations, struggles, joys, confusion, delight, reflections, courage, tenacity—are all laid out in these pages so that someone else might benefit. The serious seeker will find this book, and the depth of this writer’s generosity, refreshing and uplifting. Tess not only openly reveals her own path, but continually supports and encourages ours. It is a rare read.

Special Discount for Awakening Together
& TAT Foundation Members: