MUHU RETREAT AFTERGLOW
I create this page so you can use it as a resource, as an inspiration, as a time-machine to take you back and to help you remember! For now, I include here the poems that I read and once we've gathered all your pictures, I'll add some here as well.
Firstly, I collected a selection of practice recordings that hopefully are helpful way to remember some of the exercises, tools or themes from the retreat:
Password: muhu25
Some of the ways to continue practicing with me online are outlined here
QUOTES AND POEMS FROM THE RETREAT
AT THE PACE OF CREATION by Mark Nepo (from "The Book of Awakening")
Slowing how we think and feel and take in the world is directly related to being centered. The wisdom traditions all have some form of meditation or prayer that is aimed at slowing us into this center, where the very pace of creation breathes. In their own way, all spiritual practices help us reclaim this centeredness, because being centered in this way plunges us, again and again, into that unseeable stream in which life is continually vital and refreshed.
At the pace of creation, all things breathe the same way. So, when we slow and open and center ourselves, we breathe in unison with all of life, and breathing this way we draw strength from all of life. When we slow down and breathe, we reach like trees into everything open, and whole skies of cloud drift in unison with the dreams of an entire people. If we can slow to the pace of creation, truth will sweep like a flock of birds from the mountains we climb. At the pace of creation, the beginning enters us and we are new.
When courageous enough to relax our soul open, the pace at which our mind thinks slows to the pace at which our heart feels, and, amazingly, together, they unfold the rhythm with which our eyes can see the miracle waiting in all that is ordinary.
Krishnamurti (philosopher, educator, writer. Indian spiritual teacher) writes about going on a retreat:
“I think it is essential sometimes to go on retreat, to stop everything that you have been doing, to stop your beliefs and experiences completely, and look at them anew, not keep on repeating like a machine ... You would let fresh air into your mind..."
He emphasises the importance of retreats not as means of escaping problems, but as a way to gain clarity and freedom from the habitual patterns of thought and behaviour... to allow for a fresh perspective and a deeper understanding of oneself and the world.
“I think it is essential sometimes to go on retreat, to stop everything that you have been doing, to stop your beliefs and experiences completely, and look at them anew, not keep on repeating like a machine ... You would let fresh air into your mind..."
He emphasises the importance of retreats not as means of escaping problems, but as a way to gain clarity and freedom from the habitual patterns of thought and behaviour... to allow for a fresh perspective and a deeper understanding of oneself and the world.
Here a poem I often read in connection to setting intentions:
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PRAYING by Mary Oliver
It doesn't have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones, just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don't try to make them elaborate, this isn't a contest but a doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak. |
And then ... t here I go contradicting all I said above. A new favorite concept of mine to live into - "no cherished outcomes"...
I first heard the phrase "NO CHERISHED OUTCOMES" from the author Elizabeth Gilbert. This phrase is part of the "Celtic prayer of approach."
This idea encourages creatives to approach their work with an open, receptive mindset, free from rigid expectations or specific end results. By releasing the pressure to achieve a "cherished outcome," we invite spontaneity, curiosity, and playfulness into the creative process.
The phrase suggests a willingness to embrace uncertainty and avoid becoming overly attached to any particular vision or goal, which can otherwise stifle creativity and lead to disappointment. Instead, she advocates for focusing on the act of creation itself, allowing the outcome to emerge naturally. This perspective aligns with a broader philosophy of surrender and humility, inviting us to let go of control and trust the process, wherever it might lead.
What inspires me, is how she describes using this mantra when approaching new situations, meeting new people, in a new learning environment, in order to check her own biases and hidden/unspoken expectations.
I first heard the phrase "NO CHERISHED OUTCOMES" from the author Elizabeth Gilbert. This phrase is part of the "Celtic prayer of approach."
This idea encourages creatives to approach their work with an open, receptive mindset, free from rigid expectations or specific end results. By releasing the pressure to achieve a "cherished outcome," we invite spontaneity, curiosity, and playfulness into the creative process.
The phrase suggests a willingness to embrace uncertainty and avoid becoming overly attached to any particular vision or goal, which can otherwise stifle creativity and lead to disappointment. Instead, she advocates for focusing on the act of creation itself, allowing the outcome to emerge naturally. This perspective aligns with a broader philosophy of surrender and humility, inviting us to let go of control and trust the process, wherever it might lead.
What inspires me, is how she describes using this mantra when approaching new situations, meeting new people, in a new learning environment, in order to check her own biases and hidden/unspoken expectations.
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Celtic prayer of approach I honor your Gods I drink at your well I bring an undefended heart to our meeting place I have no cherished outcomes I will not negotiate by withholding and I am not subject to disappointment. |
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ATTENTION was a big centered theme throughout the retreat.
I quoted Mary Oliver: "Attention is the beginning of devotion"
On my retreats and longer series, I sometimes like to offer a reframing - to change the word discipline with devotion and see how can that change our relationship and commitment to our practice. The devotion here points you towards what you hold dear and what you value, what you want to cultivate and call into your life.
And I read a John Tarrent quote from his book The Light Inside the Dark: Zen Soul & the Spiritual Life.
"Much of the journey is about the ways we work with our attention, because attention gives us more life. It expands the register, brings us to notice more of the vividness and consolation of our dark lives, so that we can exist in our true range, and not go around missing things ....
Attention is the most basic form of love: through it we bless and are blessed. When we attend to the interior life, we also connect with what surrounds us....
All wanting - for love, to be seen for who we are, for a new red car - is wanting to find and be taken into this mysterious depth in things. And it is this inner connection that resolves the problem of who we are and makes us at home in the world. For the interior life sweetens the humblest thing. It opens us for magic in ordinary life. "
There is a YIN practice in your recordings collection that goes deeper into these topics: Simple YIN for restful awareness
Poem (the spirit likes to dress up)
Mary Oliver
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The spirit
likes to dress up like this: ten fingers, ten toes, shoulders, and all the rest at night in the black branches, in the morning in the blue branches of the world. It could float, of course, but would rather plumb rough matter. Airy and shapeless thing, it needs the metaphor of the body, lime and appetite, the oceanic fluids; it needs the body’s world, instinct |
and imagination
and the dark hug of time, sweetness and tangibility, to be understood, to be more than pure light that burns where no one is -- so it enters us -- in the morning shines from brute comfort like a stitch of lightning; and at night lights up the deep and wondrous drownings of the body like a star. |
In a session about CENTER / EARTH / centeredness I quoted Prentis Hemphill. In one of the interviews Prentis talks about what can help us withstand the pressure of the times we are living in. Prentis mentions a question "How close to my center do I live?" as in inquiry around our values and whether we live inside them or not. In your recordings collection you have a practice Guarding your center that explores this inquiry.
And eventually the umbrella theme of our retreat was to orient towards beauty, goodness and pleasure.
Our bodies and nervous systems don’t need help remembering what’s hard. Negativity bias - tendency to remember, notice and react more strongly to negative experiences than to positive ones. This bias has evolved as a survival mechanism, helping early humans to stay alert to danger. But opening to what’s good and life-affirming — that is a practice. A tender, daily devotion.
I love the writer Ross Gay's response when he was asked: How cold you be joyful in a moment like this? he answered: ”Knowing what we love and how to take delight is the fuel we need to tend to what is broken, what we are called to make better, what we are called to make more just”.
In nature death and life, beauty and loss/decay/composting are in constant and complex interplay.
My absolute favorite poet (and activist), the late and great Andrea Gibson has written: "If we consciously fuel our joy, if we put our attention on the world’s beauty, we will have far more strength and stamina to show up to the world’s pain.”
This is what the bees can teach us:
INSTRUCTIONS TO THE WORKER BEE
Lucy Adkins Remember your first duty-- seeking out beauty in the world and going within. There is rapture in a field of clover-- purple and blue petals, throat of honeysuckle achingly open; and you must be drunk with love for salvia, monarda, Marvel of Peru, all the glories of this world. It’s not just about pollen or nectar, the honey that eventually comes, but the tingle of leg hair against the petal, against pistil and stamen, the vault of each flower opening. Learn dandelion, learn lantana, red-lipped astilbe, each with its own deliciousness. Take what you need and remember where it is in the field. Then go back and go back and go back again. |
WORKER BEES
James A. Pearson I wonder if you can pause —just for a moment-- the emergency of your life and step out into the quiet of the world. Hear how gently it conveys the delicate thread of birdsong, how quickly it can soothe the rupture of a passing jet. Feel its vast, smiling invitation to rest back into the person you’ve been all your life. Listen now– the poppies bursting out over the sidewalk are electric with bees. Look how they bury their bodies in flower after flower, drunk on their longing for the world. Maybe that’s the real work: to fall, over and over, into the scent of what you love. 
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Food and Water by Brooke McNamara Sit yourself kindly down and begin to breathe with and as the ache of being, instead of above it. Remember your first questions. Enduring and unanswerable, they can make you curiosity again. Gently, allow your heart to hand you every last piece of who you truly are. This is the food you’ve been hungry for. This is the water that will quench. Softly you dissolve into an undomesticated friendship with your world. Enter into it again with that quiet quivering in your now more-human heart, and let an uncaused joy come out of your eyes -- so the others feel it, so it’s all of ours to eat and drink and share. |
For When People Ask
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer I want a word that means okay and not okay, more than that: a word that means devastated and stunned with joy. I want the word that says I feel it all all at once. The heart is not like a songbird singing only one note at a time, more like a Tuvan throat singer able to sing both a drone and simultaneously two or three harmonics high above it-- a sound, the Tuvans say, that gives the impression of wind swirling among rocks. The heart understands swirl, how the churning of opposite feelings weaves through us like an insistent breeze leads us wordlessly deeper into ourselves, blesses us with paradox so we might walk more openly into this world so rife with devastation, this world so ripe with joy. On meditation, sort of by Mary Oliver Meditation, so I’ve heard, is best accomplished if you entertain a certain strict posture. Frankly, I prefer just to lounge under a tree. So why should I think I could ever be successful? Some days I fall asleep, or land in that even better place — half-asleep — where the world, spring, summer, autumn, winter -- flies through my mind in its hardy ascent and its uncompromising descent. So I just lie like that, while distance and time reveal their true attitudes: they never heard of me, and never will, or ever need to. Of course I wake up finally thinking, how wonderful to be who I am, made out of earth and water, my own thoughts, my own fingerprints -- all that glorious, temporary stuff. |
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WHAT WOULD HAPPEN...?
Jeff Foster What would happen if we removed the word ‘anxious’ and just paid attention to these flickering sensations in the belly? What would happen if we took away the concept ‘lonely’ and simply became fascinated with this heavy feeling in the heart area? What would happen if we deleted the labels ‘sick’ or ‘broken’ or ‘bad’ and just got curious about the tightness in the throat the pressure in the head the ache in the shoulders? What would happen if we stopped looking for solutions and checked to see if there was actually a problem here? Let’s come out of the exhausting storyline. It’s not true. It was never true. Commit sacred awareness to a single living moment. Come closer to yourself, Now. Bring warmth to the tender places. Infuse sensation with the light of attention. It’s never as bad as we think. And always, always more alive. |
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