Madison Fall Mini Retreats

This fall a few of us from the Madison Gnostic Center have gone on two weekend mini retreats. On each retreat, we went camping at a different state park in Wisconsin. Both parks were very beautiful and had many nature trails with rivers, bluffs, woods, and water falls. On both retreats the focus was mostly put on practicing awareness, so we went on many walks with the aim of being aware in the present moment. We also did some mystical practices such as mantras.

On the first retreat, while hunting for firewood in the woods, I kept coming across marbles laying on the forest floor until eventually I had found four of them. When I found these I had the idea that we should try an experiment of each holding a marble throughout our days at the retreat as a reminder of what we were attempting to do there, which was to remain in a continual state of awareness as much as possible. This was also the weekend of the world-wide group astral practice, so on Saturday night, we participated in the effort to try to have an out of body experience and travel to Ganymede, a mysterious moon of Jupiter.

One other notable thing we tried on one walk on the first retreat was to practice awareness while walking along some train tracks (please note: these were train tracks that are NOT in use and which many people walk along in the park - I would advise against doing this on train tracks anywhere else!). The interesting result of this was that all of us noted how we were able to balance on the rail much better when the mind was still and focused on the moment, allowing the motor center to act without interference from thoughts. It was interesting to have an obvious physical result to loosing concentration; you could see how just a thought or worry would cause you to lose your balance on the rail, and you would have to step back up onto it and try some more. All of us felt much quieter and clear internally after this walk, as the section of track was around 1 mile long!

a hike in the bluffs...

Jenny, A.J., and Carolyn finding stillness at the lake.

a new freind we made on the retreat

looking out from the top of a bluff

group photo... a rock was our photographer

On the second retreat, a couple of weeks later, we camped at a secluded backpacker site, which you had to hike to. This meant that each trip to the car or to get water was an awareness walk! This time, we aimed at each setting a specific goal for ourself, and focusing the retreat around that. The purpose of this was to get better results from our short time there. All of us saw that this helped a lot in getting more out of the retreat.

We also went to a presentation on stars and outer space held in the park at night. It was inspiring to learn about how many stars there were just in our own galaxy, and to see how many galaxies were out there in space. After the talk, we were able to look at another galaxy and some stars within our own galaxy through a telescope.

a trail beside a brook through the woods

Me, Carolyn and A.J. inside of a "spring house" - an old timey refrigerator cooled by flowing spring water

A.J. at the water fall. We did a visualization practice with this water fall.

Here's Jenny and I at the same waterfall. That's my dad's musket hat, so no jokes!

"The stars at night shine big and bright, deep in the heart of... Wisconsin!"