Melbourne Centre Retreat

Hello Everyone,

Well it was a sunny weekend two weeks ago that 23 of us went away on retreat for the weekend.
We had 20 Melbourne students and 3 from interstate, the weather was perfect and everyone was feeling strong.
As noted above the focus for the retreat was to establish the foundations for the spiritual work in daily life; to really investigate the essentials and to make a shift in our priorities.

We went for walks, had discussion, did practices, looked more deeply into , awareness, self observation and how to apply the death consistently and what is required to maintain this state. To try to really sense and feel what it is like to be aware and conscious, how to strengthen this with mystical practices and to maintain it through the day as our number one goal.
We spent time reviewing our concentration ability and how to set up a schedule to strengthen what needs strengthening.

I will leave space here for others to comment on what they achieved and experienced from the retreat and look forward to the end of year retreat and another Melbourne retreat early in the New Year.
Photos of the weekend will be posted shortly.

Scott

I was not feeling all that well on the starting day of the retreat. I felt like staying at home and feeling sorry for myself.
Luckily my husband was dropping me off and refused to listen to my winging.
When we were approaching the retreat (we were already inside the property), I suddenly felt better and I felt like I belonged there. All my troubles seems to be lighter and not so bad.
I stayed and I learned a lot about the egos around my sickness.
I actively took part in the retreat and discovered some hidden strength within myself.
Sometimes we need to push past what we think are our limits in order to discover the real strength of our consciousness.
Thanks to all the people who made it happen.

This weekend seemed to be a bit of a turning point for me and my work. A few days before the retreat i had been freshly inspired by some reading i had done. I saw this weekend as a chance to really try to put into action what i had read, and to personally verify what was said.
My focus was really on self-observation, and how to apply it naturally within my life in any activity.

Throughout the weekend there were times of laziness, times of failure and also times of great success and clarity. Now the challenge is to bring these successes and understandings into my everyday life.

As promised here are some photos from the Melbourne Retreat! Thanks to Trent M for his photography skills.

One of many awareness walks. Trying to feel what it is to be conscious and what happens to that feeling when we become identified.

A discussion about how we are going during the walk just before we do a concentration exercise.

Everyone getting ready to start a practice. We did various practices such as mantras, meditations, concentration, and astral practices. These not only helped us to build up strength but really gave us more insights into how we can improve our observation during the day. We also looked into how we let the strength that we build through the practices be sabotaged and taken away.

An awareness walk through the pine trees.

The view from one of the walks.

Everyone focused on the task at hand.

Group shot of everyone.

We all start to wonder if we are in the astral. Weren't we just doing an astral practice? Did that practice finish? Have we fallen alseep and come out here? Let's check!

Action shot :-)

Up, up and away! Steve got a shock when he started to fly :-) I don't know how we managed to get this photo back from the astral? :-)

During the retreat alot of strength was created within the group which helped us all to strive for self observation and seeing the difference of what it feels like to have our centres balanced compared to when we are identified either internally or externally.

The retreat helped me to see how the strength gained during practices can be built upon with continually striving to balance my centres rather than get caught up within the subconscious. The challange now is to bring that back into everyday life.

A fantastic retreat! Thankyou.

I was very excited to spend this time away from the daily grind and be amongst other like minded people to practice, spend time in nature, and gain some much needed inner calm.

Upon arriving to the retreat, it took me a number hours to become actually present at the place where I was. By that afternoon I felt more centered and aware of my surroundings.

The atmosphere at the retreat was generally inspiring, with a relaxed pace of various group practices and activities that kept things fresh.

For me the retreat was a boost of focus and motivation to move forward with a stronger esoteric framework in life. When I got home, it was interesting to see the pull to go and sit in front of the TV as a 'reward'. Ha!

Sounds like a wonderful experience. Great pictures too! Wish we could have been there.

I was suprised to see you all wearing jackets? I guess Australia has it's cooler days as well.

Great photos! and from the astral too! Would like to have been there with you all.