Looking back on July

July was a vibrant month with summer in full swing - three events, many visitors and a lot of help in the kitchen from people with a heart for tasty and beautiful food.

 

 

The garden, too, thrived with abundance. To our surprise even the young plum trees offered their fruits with branches hanging down heavily. It was a joyful and tasty inventory of the garden, which later provided a rich breakfast of fresh fruit for the guests.

 

Qi-Gong Retreat

One of the events was the Qi-Gong Retreat of Wabke. Wabke has been with Yoginâm a long time and used to give Qi-Gong retreats in Amonines. She has now deepened her experience and has a large group of enthusiasts around her that enjoyed a very beneficial and loving Qi-Gong Retreat, as one of the participants wrote. Due to the overwhelming response and numerous requests, Wabke has decided to come back with another group in October.

 

Strange connections

July was also the month in which we decided to dig a little deeper in search of the answer to where the blockage was in the drain pipe, causing water from the washing machine to run into the garden instead of being drained off. In place of finding the blockage, we found a strange constellation of connected drain pipes. While the issue remains unresolved, we’ve taken the first step by addressing the source: leaves and cherries from an overhanging branch of a cherry tree fall into the gutter, making their way into the washing machine's drain.

 

The Essence of Meditation

After a meditation retreat, many people often ask, “How can I continue my practice at home?” In support of integrating meditation into daily life—whether one has attended a retreat or not—we offer several options:

• A subscription to Nâm Inside, with weekly mystical texts, talks, and the unique HarpMood meditation. Subscribe here
• A twice weekly live broadcast of the Asha Meditation, to help keep your practice going. You can register for free here.
• A Year Card for regular visits to the retreat center, in support of your meditation practice. Learn more here.

 

Feedback of the last course of The Essence of Meditation:

 

In this retreat I learned to focus, do things slowly, one thing at the time. Time is not running, we are.

Elie

 

Thank you so much for teaching me about silence. Or perhaps silence taught me... It touched me deeply, right to my core. It was a pleasant, unique, spontaneous, confrontational and enlightening stay. I feel that I have ‘grown’ as a person - or rather, as an entity - and I now view the myriad aspects of life in a significantly different manner. For this, I will be eternally grateful.

Maarten

 

 

The Butterfly

Sitting in the garden, this butterfly landed on the back of a chair in front of me. It appeared to show its beautiful wings to me and I made a picture and the butterfly flew away. I had no way of knowing if it wanted to show its wings to me, but it was a nice thought and I hoped it would return. The butterfly took a very short flight and a sharp turn and landed in the same place and started turning around and half faced me, it took another step and fully faced me with its wings closed. Then it carefully opened its wings and I wondered if I could make another picture. I took my phone and it stayed still in exactly the same position. I made a pictures and looked at it. I would not get a better picture, but I was tempted and took my phone up again to make another picture, but the butterfly flew away and landed again in the same position. I cannot know if the butterfly had really shown me its wings at first, but when it returned and slowly turned around it was a different experience, it felt as if there was a form of communication, as if we had an understanding.

This feeling of sharing happens in soul.

 

Soul and Causal Investigation

Soul is the field of emotions and feelings, of communicating without words, of dreaming and memory. Soul is the dimension in which all living things share outside the restrictions of time and place. Soul is unconscious and only the aspects that surface and are translated in the dimension of Mind become conscious. In the case of an event that is shocking and cannot be integrated, related to or explained, the event leaves an imprint in Soul that can become a traumatic memory against which future experience is measured.

The trauma may be healed by means of a technique which is called causal investigation.

Yoginâm explains it as follows:

In Causal investigation and Causal exploration, you enter a very particular state of Witnessing in which the passive and unconscious aspects of Soul are combined with the active and conscious aspects of Mind. It is a kind of lucid dreaming in which you remain active enough to set the course and passive enough to allow Soul to speak in images.

Yoginâm SIWEB, Dimensions of Experience, p. 179

 

Causal Investigation, Shamanic Retreat: Unlocking Soul’s potential

In October there will be such an opportunity to dream purposefully. Guided by Anna Montis, using the techniques of Causal Investigation, all aspects of Soul will be explored. It is a chance to widen one’s view beyond everyday perception, to get in touch with inner forces and energies, allowing them to transform and to communicate on a profound level with one’s feelings. Causal Investigation is a natural magical self-psychology for insight and healing that works on a deep and tangible level far beyond conventional psychology.

This retreat will take place October 23-27 and there is only one place left. For more information and to book, click here.

 

Beyond Soul identification

Soul as the dimension of feeling and memory, is the connection between one experience and the next, which acquire meaning in the dimension of Mind. As human beings we usually identify with what we feel and how we experience the world and therefore identify with Soul. As Yoginâm says:

Soul is what we think we are. It is not what we are. What we think that we are is the identification that we give ourselves.

Yoginâm SIWEB, Dimensions of Experience, p. 139

 

Soul guides our behaviour as an individual, but also as a collectivity and because Soul is unconscious it is not always clear what drives us to do certain things or act in certain ways. From painful past experiences protective mechanisms might have developed that are not necessarily helpful and may even hurt others and, in turn, ourselves. They might also cause feelings of loneliness as we perceive ourselves more and more as separate from the world around us.

 

Loneliness

The upcoming 5-day Intensive - Meaningful Living provides a way of looking beyond soul identification, taking a first step, as Yoginâm says, to realise that you can not be conscious of the most important aspects of what you are.

Yoginâm SIWEB, Dimensions of Experience, p. 199

In the context of this event and in response to the often heard questions about how to deal with loneliness Irma wrote the blog How to deal with Loneliness.

 

How to deal with loneliness?

Recently, the theme of loneliness appeared repeatedly in my life. It came as a question—first from one person, then echoed by four others in close succession: “How do I deal with loneliness?”

 

But then, I asked myself:

Why is this question crossing my path now?

What can I offer when I haven’t lived that same pain?

Looking more closely, there have been moments in my life when I experienced exclusion—both as a child and again as an adult. The latter brought with it an incredibly intense pain, maybe the deepest I’ve ever felt.

And yet, curiously, I wouldn’t describe it as loneliness. Because it was in that pain that something beautiful happened:

I reached out, inwardly. And the help came.

 

To read the entire blog, please click on this link.

 

The 5-day Intensive - Meaningful Living will be held from August 27 till August 31 and can be Booked here.

The small septic tank has been found (and marked), but where is the large septic tank?