Madison-Montreal-Toronto Winter Retreat

Teachers and trainees from the Gnostic Centre in Toronto and the Gnostic Center in Madison met once again this year over New Year's for an intensive 5-day mini-retreat. This time, we were also joined by some of the teachers and trainees from the Centre in Montreal for the first few days and last night respectively. We went to the Laurentians - a mountain range located about an hour North of Montreal, in the province of Quebec in Canada.

This was a great opportunity to dedicate ourselves solely to the practice of gnosis, be it while doing actual exercises such as those you'll see mentioned in the pictures below (note: hopefully later on Andy can also add some of the pictures he took in a comment below), or simply having meals, chatting around the fire, or any other activities. We had a goal set to utilize the group strength and practices to find out where we each are individidually with our own spiritual work, what is stopping us from moving forward, and investigating how we can overcome those obstacles.

The retreat was awesome...

 

 

Here I am at the entrance to the chalet, which we managed to get a booking with extremely last minute! It worked well, but unfortunately it could only accomodate about 12 people, so we couldn't extend our invitation to other centres or online this time around...

 

 

The main room in the chalet, where we often met, held talks, and did some practices. Appearing in photo L-R: Jenny R, Stas, Dara, Andy, Ruben, Jenny P, Bianca, Adam, Steeve, Olga. Not appearing in this pic are Emmanuelle, George, Vadim, and myself.

 

 

Heading out for an awareness walk in the snow... The temperature never really dropped below -5 degrees Celcius during the day, so it wasn't too bad for those of us that are used to it :-)

 

 

Back at the chalet, here is the makeshift practice room that we set up for the weekend. Surprisingly, it actually started to feel pretty good in there after only a day or two into the retreat, making the practices done in there quite strengthening.

 

 

Ruben takes a rest in the snow during one of the walks...

 

 

Here's a bunch of us taking in one of the scenic views.

 

 

 

 

Ruben leads the way carefully on a cleared, yet still icy, path up a hill.

 

 

You be the judge - who's the taller gnostic giant, Adam or Andy? Once again this year, somehow this one didn't get resolved :-)

 

 

Another motivating retreat activity of late has been reading a chapter from an inspirational book such as Revolutionary Psychology by Samael Aun Weor. We took turns reading a couple sentences out loud and passing the book around, while everyone concentrates intently on the words...

 

 

Although we didn't have snowshoes, one day I decided to lead everyone on a trail left by people who did have snowshoes, because I thought it might've packed the snow down enough to walk without falling literally thigh-deep into the snow. You can do it if you distribute your weight very evenly and walk sort of without putting much pressure down on your feet, but inevitably you end up falling into the snow anyhow :-) Here's Adam catching his balance as Andy follows closely behind...

 

 

Stas takes a spill off the beaten path...

 

 

Jenny R and Dara relax in the snow in an amazingly peaceful and quiet spot

 

 

Andy just about to help Jenny P get back up on her feet. You can't really see it in this picture, but they were both laughing pretty loudly...

 

 

Dara leads the way through the deep snow. Note Jenny R is standing up straight at this point, so you can see how deep it goes if you are unfortunate enough to fall through, which happened quite a bit!

 

 

Everyone preparing for an astral practice together in the main room. In this case, it was the mantra La Ra S, which we used to try to have a conscious out-of-body experience. But we also did plenty of vocalisations of mantras, concentration, and meditation practices throughout the long weekend.

 

 

Stas, Olga, Jenny P, Andy, and Bianca in front of a postcard backdrop

 

 

A group shot from the first day...
Standing L-R: Stas, Dara, Adam, Olga, Jenny P, Andy, Bianca, Steeve
Crouching L-R: Me, Jenny R, Ruben

 

 

Andy's Pics
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Jenny and I coming out of the chalet.

 

 

A cat

 

 

Adam is about to get a surprise

 

 

Stas has had enough of the cameramen this retreat!

 

 

Nice shot

 

 

Jenny P becomes a part of the landscape

 

 

Some of the group surveying the path deeper into the woods...