Journal Amonines June: Summer Reflections: Poetry, Presence, and Practice
A quiet flow
June passed quietly, with no events yet a steady stream of visitors. Some of them came and joined in the chores, giving service during the mornings, others came for a Private Meditation Retreat, enjoying four meditations per day, inviting spaciousness, reflection, and renewal.
The turning of the seasons
With some very hot and dry days the roadside grass is turning dry and yellow. Tightly packed bales of hay, placed in the fields like huge black marbles, mark the passing of spring into summer.
In the garden, we still enjoy the colourful flowers and we sit in front of the house in awe of the majestic linden tree offering its blossom. One of our visitors responded to the tree’s offer and picked the blossom to make linden blossom tea and shared her experience in the little poem below:
Beneath the ancient linden tree
I find support and shelter deep within
My thoughts grow quiet
as I drift on the sweet perfume of bloom
Carried gently away
to a world beyond time
Where this moment, the Now,
is all that truly matters
Bees drink eagerly, dancing
joyfully in mid-flight
A gentle breeze sets
the leaves singing
Each their own melody,
yet together — a perfect harmony
Tugba Topal - June 2025
Looking back on a wonderful Feast of Greater Light:
Heart
The inspiration of this month arose organically, from a conversation in the kitchen on a reflection on Yoginâm’s song of advice for Beautiful human beings.
This song ties in beautifully with Angela Kohnlein's event next month in Amonines. The connecting word between the two is Heart.
As we understand Heart, it is in Heart that we do not identify ourselves with what we are as experience, but with what we are beyond experience, realising that with our lives we share in a whole. To the question how we should imagine what this sharing is like, Yoginâm gives the following example:
Behind your eyes you stretch out infinitely. In front of your eyes there is
the universe with the limitations that are inherent to matter.
Ultimately it is the infinity behind your eyes that determines the
quality of what emerges in front of your eyes.
Yoginâm, About sharing, 2023
Connect in Heart & Spirit with Movement and Resonance - August 15-17 in Amonines
In August we facilitate a new event organised by Angela Kohnlein. Angela is a familiar face in Asharum Amonines.
During this particular workshop Angela invites you to join her in making room for yourself, others and your environment and think about who you want to connect with.
The curriculum will develop organically with a fixed timetable for the sessions along the following themes:
- Heart bridges experience and Awareness
- Movement and sound are guiding instruments
- When encountering suffering, it will be questioned who it is, that is suffering
- When encountering love, non-judgment and non-possession will be explored
- There will be time to stand still and connect to the subtle forces of transformation
- Archetypes may appear in shared experiences and a neutral vertical connection will be maintained.
- There will be quiet exercise sessions in nature along and close to the l'Aisne River.
Beautiful human beings
Yoginâm refers to what we consist in as our essence, as ‘Awareness’. This Awareness is unconscious and can only be detected by how it colours life.
Identifying less with experience of I/World and coming more into Heart creates an opening for Awareness to shine through:
Awareness happens when the condition is right. The most effective way to create this condition is concentrating or just not forgetting that you have in you a range, that is other than the ordinary daily you.
In the Beautiful Human Being, Experience has become Awareness. This means ‘I/World’ is not considering itself as a separate unit, but as a vehicle through which life lives. ‘I/World’ is just ‘I/World’ but life is carried by its meaning and not by overcoming limitations dictated by separation, which is a force that rules the lives of Ignorance.
Yoginâm, Introducing the Guardian (2023)
Oh, beautiful human beings,
This is the song of my advice:
Discover oneness in multiplicity
And love it unreservedly
Discover multiplicity in Oneness
And serve it unconditionally
Discover freedom in beauty
And follow it unabashed
Discover tolerance in openness
And walk in its footsteps
These are the principles of Love
These are the precepts of wisdom
These are the preconditions of bliss
This is the Way of
Beautiful human beings
Love each other
Because you are One
Serve each other
Because you are One
Destroy the boundaries
Because you are One
Abandon all judgment
Because you are One
This is the way of
Beautiful human beings
Yoginâm, The eye of Beauty, 2013
