About Darlene

My name is Darlene Rollins.  I have spent a life time in authentic spiritual searching, not for an outer form but an inner experience that in-forms my understanding of life and its purpose on earth.  

I was asking the big questions for as long as I can remember and I have found many good and useful answers.  I also came to realize that we cannot answer for each other. We each have to learn to dance in the mystery trusting that what is going on is much larger than we can imagine, but we can live in a much bigger world than we usually do.

 There is an inner being within each of us that is waiting to manifest more fully in our lives and this aspect of ourselves is a much more reliable navigator of our lives than is the ego self and its more limited understanding.  The spiritual work  is ultimately the work of freeing this true self within each of us.

I studied Psychology and Dance Therapy in Undergraduate School at Colorado Women’s College;  A liberal arts college.  Music and Theater were always a part of my studies and support the dimension of ceremony, community and trans-personal work I do. I studied philosophy and religion and I studied altered states of consciousness, sensation and perception in class and “in the field.”  I was still struggling with my demons of bulimia and depression, but like most suffering processes, this was the wound that opened me to the depths of humanness where, in healing,  I could be of service to others.

At the same time I was dealing with my own demons and from 15 till my early 30’s I struggled with lots of frustration and depression about who I wanted to be vs who I seemed to be.  I was also one of the first cases of bulimia that has since become an epidemic along with anorexia.  This drove me very deep at a young age.  

My graduate school was an experiential 5 year program in the Pathwork of Self-Transformation, that was followed by an additional 5 year post graduate training in Core Energetics and Helpership training and internship.  This program gave me the answers I was seeking and the very practical processes by which to align with the experience of life and learn directly from my own journey.

Finding the Pathwork was like not an immediate cure, but I knew from the start that this was the answer I had been searching for and it gave me the tools to unravel myself and discover what had me all twisted up inside.  As a helper I can now also provide others with the ways to do their own excavation to understand their own soul’s journey and learn to cooperate with its direction.

I completed my training in 1992 and founded the Earthwalk Retreat in 1994.  I have been offering programs, individual sessions, groups, retreats  and other workshops here and at Sevenoaks where I tought the graduation year of the 5 year Transformation Program.  I also serve on the Mid Atlantic Pathwork Council and am on the Board of the Mid Atlantic Pathwork.

I also have explored shamanic and nature paths extensively and found the sacred plant teachers to be amazing adjuncts to our inner explorations.  Their teachings too permeate my inner and outer spaces and I keep up with the latest research on the therapeutic value the importance of community and lineage and the experienced connection to the larger life of the planet.  This informs all my offerings.  

I love movement and music not from a professional standpoint but from a human standpoint.  We all need to be more active and less passive consumers, more creators of our entertainment and entrainment with each other.  I love ceremony and co-created magic in the moment of fully being there.   I want to participate in life.  

I am still learning how to show up fully and be follow the inner guidance that is often so subtle and overrun by my own agenda.  I am still learning from every person who comes and I find great joy in learning and also in sharing what I have learned.  I have a unique style that actually draws the person to discover their own inner wisdom and source.  It is not an over the top method of superimposing a program or concept or approach.  It is going in listening and and learning from within to draw out the wisdom we recognize as truly our own.  

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Below is a bibliography of those books with useful approaches that I have incorporated into the unique integration that is offered here at the Earthwalk Retreat.   These are the most influential and the more I read the more I realize it is all different ways of pointing to the same thing and there are many amazing books that are included here.  So many ways are out there now, it is all available and nothing is hidden.  Within each of us is our own inner path and it is we who must make the journey.   For all seekers, the answers are there.  The key is you must seek.   Blessings, to all.

Here is a link to the Pathwork lectures free on line.  These continue to be what informs me about the meaning and significance of life from the spiritual perspective.

Pathwork Lectures  Eva Pierakkos
5 Rythms Gabriel Roth
Gift of the Body; Jonathon Goldman
Radical Acceptance; Tara Brack
Original Blessings, Coming of the Cosmic Christ; Mathew Fox
Putting on the Mind of Christ  Jim Marion
Spectrum of Consciousness and other works by  Ken Wilbur;
Ever Flowing Onward; Michael de Maria

Power of Now Ekhart Tolle and other offerings
True Meditation Adyashanti and other offerings
The Naked Now Father Rohr and other offerings

The Universe Story, The Universe is a Green Dragon  Brian Swimme and other offerings
Roaring of the Sacred River Steven Foster and Meredith Little
Mark Plotkin;  Soulcraft, Nature and the Human Soul, Soul Initiation

Stephen Harrod Buhner,  Secred Teaching of Plants: The Intelligence of the Heart in the Direct Perception of Nature.
Stephen Harood Buhner, Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm

Of course there are many more and we live in an age where so much is available.  The trick is to take the conceptual understanding that is pointing at the moon and not confuse it with the moon itself.  It is the direct experience of the moon that we need now.  Blessings, Darlene