Experiencing Life Creatively: Journey of Inner Healing
October 2013 Retreat
Group photo: Leela, Lynda, Chinky, Carol-Ann, Yumkela, Joy, Marie, Magda, Mary-Ann, Nobu, Rachelle, Cathy
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Do you know how beautiful you are? I think not, my dear.
For as you talk of God, I see great parades with marching bands streaming from your mind and heart, carrying wonderful and secret messages to every corner of the world. I see saints bowing in the mountains hundreds of miles away to the wonder of sounds that break into light from your common words. Do you know how beautiful you are? I think not, my dear. [Hafiz] |
Thank you to all the wonderful and AMAZING beings (all women!) who joined us on this retreat. It was a great JOY to have you with us and we hope that you benefitted enormously from the weekend, learnt and healed and grew more into your MAGIFICENT selves! It was an amazing and very powerful weekend … Many participants experienced major shifts, understandings, healings, and closures in certain areas of their lives. One retreatant had a beautiful spiritual experience on Robberg Beach. Another experienced closure of a major cycle in her life on Robberg beach at the end of the retreat, and she was able to let go with honor, love and gratitude, opening her up to begin her new life feeling blessed. Another felt a “resurrection” of an area of her life which had been dormant (in a tomb) for several years. One joined the retreat shy and withdrawn and was radiant and outgoing by the end of the retreat. One realized she had not been living her truth and needed to access her latent creativity. One came to a place of greater acceptance, peace and understanding of an important relationship in her life. One was refreshed and encouraged and felt that God revealed His blessing to her during the weekend. Another came to a place of loving-acceptance of herself as she experienced a deepening and settling into Spirit. After the retreat, one made contact and healed the rift with her brother with whom she had not spoken for 10 years. TRULY AMAZING!
"I have no words to describe your impact on my life. Be Blessed now and forever. Love You."
"I went to the retreat expecting a miracle and I got more than that ..."
The struggles and challenges of our lives are the very aspects that often bring us closer to our Divine Connection and Self. We find the place that is free of judgement, pain, guilt, fear and anger and learn to simply BE in all the facets of our lives with peace and acceptance and the knowing that God loves us no matter what - God loves you, always has, always will. God wants to unveil the beauty within us. He never allows a fire unless he can bring beauty from the ashes. God wants to give you beauty for ashes in every area of your life. See yourself through God’s eyes. All that God is - is in you! God’s Spirit lives and breathes in you and we are justified and sanctified by His grace. So focus on your God-self and not your small-self. Claim your true identity: You are a beloved child of the Most High.
May the Great Birther who created you in wholeness, comfort you when you call!
May Love be your protection and rise up in your heart as a tower of strength!
May all you have given in gratitude and with open hands be returned to you a hundredfold!
May your heart’s desires and all of Love’s plans for you be fulfilled in due season!
Let us shout for joy as Love triumphs over fear.
Let our thankful hearts sing in loud acclamation to the Beloved,
who answers our heart-felt prayers for well-being.
Love comes to all who opens their hearts and dwells therein,
offering gifts of peace and happiness.
Some may boast of wealth and personal power, but they will stumble and fall.
Let us boast of the One who comes in the name of Love and we shall rise up strong and secure.
O Beloved, you who created us, you bless us with your Love.
For you are the Divine Guest dwelling within our hearts.
[Psalm 20 from Psalms for Praying]
Thank you to all participants for your depth of Soul and for sharing your journey and transitions. Each participant gave the others the gift of loving acknowledgement and acceptance, and we were so proud of the way that they respectfully and lovingly supported and cared for one another. We felt blessed to be part of the retreat, and part of their experiences. For many, including ourselves, the retreat exceeded all expectations and was SIMPLY AMAZING! We give thanks for helping to shift the energy on this planet to a higher vibration! We opened to more Love and Light - and bringing and becoming and manifesting that - and this is creating the New Earth that we all long for! The New Earth that is arising, where a heightened consciousness is emerging, and where beauty, harmony, sharing, right action and joy will embrace the planet. All who awaken to the energy of Love-Consciousness will become gateways to bring more Love and Light into the world. And as more and more awaken our home planet will begin to know its own sacredness. Listen deeply in the silence, and there you will be blessed with peace and love at the sacred altar within your own soul. MAY IT BE SO.
Into my life I welcome and graciously accept
All that which is for my highest good and highest life journey
I assimilate all experiences of body, mind and soul
I graciously accept them and I welcome ease and flow
I release and let go all that which no longer serves me on my life journey
May you be happy
May you be peaceful
May you be free from suffering
May you be blessed on your life journey
Love and Light and hugging you in our hearts,
from Leela and Joy xxx
"I have no words to describe your impact on my life. Be Blessed now and forever. Love You."
"I went to the retreat expecting a miracle and I got more than that ..."
The struggles and challenges of our lives are the very aspects that often bring us closer to our Divine Connection and Self. We find the place that is free of judgement, pain, guilt, fear and anger and learn to simply BE in all the facets of our lives with peace and acceptance and the knowing that God loves us no matter what - God loves you, always has, always will. God wants to unveil the beauty within us. He never allows a fire unless he can bring beauty from the ashes. God wants to give you beauty for ashes in every area of your life. See yourself through God’s eyes. All that God is - is in you! God’s Spirit lives and breathes in you and we are justified and sanctified by His grace. So focus on your God-self and not your small-self. Claim your true identity: You are a beloved child of the Most High.
May the Great Birther who created you in wholeness, comfort you when you call!
May Love be your protection and rise up in your heart as a tower of strength!
May all you have given in gratitude and with open hands be returned to you a hundredfold!
May your heart’s desires and all of Love’s plans for you be fulfilled in due season!
Let us shout for joy as Love triumphs over fear.
Let our thankful hearts sing in loud acclamation to the Beloved,
who answers our heart-felt prayers for well-being.
Love comes to all who opens their hearts and dwells therein,
offering gifts of peace and happiness.
Some may boast of wealth and personal power, but they will stumble and fall.
Let us boast of the One who comes in the name of Love and we shall rise up strong and secure.
O Beloved, you who created us, you bless us with your Love.
For you are the Divine Guest dwelling within our hearts.
[Psalm 20 from Psalms for Praying]
Thank you to all participants for your depth of Soul and for sharing your journey and transitions. Each participant gave the others the gift of loving acknowledgement and acceptance, and we were so proud of the way that they respectfully and lovingly supported and cared for one another. We felt blessed to be part of the retreat, and part of their experiences. For many, including ourselves, the retreat exceeded all expectations and was SIMPLY AMAZING! We give thanks for helping to shift the energy on this planet to a higher vibration! We opened to more Love and Light - and bringing and becoming and manifesting that - and this is creating the New Earth that we all long for! The New Earth that is arising, where a heightened consciousness is emerging, and where beauty, harmony, sharing, right action and joy will embrace the planet. All who awaken to the energy of Love-Consciousness will become gateways to bring more Love and Light into the world. And as more and more awaken our home planet will begin to know its own sacredness. Listen deeply in the silence, and there you will be blessed with peace and love at the sacred altar within your own soul. MAY IT BE SO.
Into my life I welcome and graciously accept
All that which is for my highest good and highest life journey
I assimilate all experiences of body, mind and soul
I graciously accept them and I welcome ease and flow
I release and let go all that which no longer serves me on my life journey
May you be happy
May you be peaceful
May you be free from suffering
May you be blessed on your life journey
Love and Light and hugging you in our hearts,
from Leela and Joy xxx
In honor of Carol-Ann who died shortly after the retreat
Carol-Ann was one of the delightful participants on our EXPERIENCING LIFE CREATIVELY Retreat / Workshop in October 2013. She was a beautiful, vibrant and authentic soul, who captured our hearts and radiated love through her gentle eyes and happy smile. We could not know the level of pain and suffering she had endured, and she said it was a miracle that she was able to attend the retreat and manage her pain. She earnestly aligned herself with the work and went through the process of being in witness of her Life Journey. Her dedication to this inner work was timely, as shortly after the Retreat she went into hospital for an operation, and now a few months later, dear Carol-Ann is in the Divine Realm.
There comes a time in our lives when we need to just sit a while with our deep inner awareness and make inner peace with our Life Journey, and with all those with whom we have traveled. EXPERIENCING LIFE CREATIVELY is one such Journey we all need to take before the moment we leave from this Realm. It is a sacred Journey that helps us to awaken to our Spiritual Being. When we have come to sit a while with our Divine Aspect, then we know that we are Loved and in the Arms of God.
On behalf of all the participants on our last retreat that we are grateful for the Light and Love that Carol-Ann brought to the retreat. We are very glad that she was able to be in that space with herself and others who held her with love and admiration for all that she had been through and still emerged smiling. She obviously touched the hearts of many, for the priest told me the church was packed to capacity at her funeral. She will be missed but her sweet smile will remain shining into our hearts.
Carol-Ann wrote beautifully and shared her thoughts with us both during and after the retreat. Now reading her words again, it is easy to feel the Loving, Guiding Hand of God. She gave permission to share her experience and letters if it could open the hearts, minds and souls of others, which is what she dearly wished to do. In tribute to this brave and gracious lady, we now share these (edited) letters of hers:
There comes a time in our lives when we need to just sit a while with our deep inner awareness and make inner peace with our Life Journey, and with all those with whom we have traveled. EXPERIENCING LIFE CREATIVELY is one such Journey we all need to take before the moment we leave from this Realm. It is a sacred Journey that helps us to awaken to our Spiritual Being. When we have come to sit a while with our Divine Aspect, then we know that we are Loved and in the Arms of God.
On behalf of all the participants on our last retreat that we are grateful for the Light and Love that Carol-Ann brought to the retreat. We are very glad that she was able to be in that space with herself and others who held her with love and admiration for all that she had been through and still emerged smiling. She obviously touched the hearts of many, for the priest told me the church was packed to capacity at her funeral. She will be missed but her sweet smile will remain shining into our hearts.
Carol-Ann wrote beautifully and shared her thoughts with us both during and after the retreat. Now reading her words again, it is easy to feel the Loving, Guiding Hand of God. She gave permission to share her experience and letters if it could open the hearts, minds and souls of others, which is what she dearly wished to do. In tribute to this brave and gracious lady, we now share these (edited) letters of hers:
Dear Joy and Leela
I thank both of you for the two days of the retreat - it was pure gift. Lots of people have asked me what the retreat was like, and the only word that comes to mind is “the such-ness”, which of course no one understands, so I just reply “I got a lot from it”. When I wrote to Leela, I mentioned that it is not so much a lot of words needed to explain it, it is rather a state of “being” and in spite of being in pain and discomfort, I still have the peace that I received. Fear is a thing of the past, and what a pleasure to get rid of THAT companion!!!
Thank you for sharing with us how, using our breath in and out, to honor and accept our day and all events as being for our higher purpose. I believe that all my pain and discomfort is serving a higher purpose - although at the moment I don’t know or understand. One thing it has taught me though, is that when I pray, I not only pray for myself, but for all people who are in pain. I have begun to feel a sort of connectedness, and I pray with gratitude.
Maybe the purpose is teaching me gratitude - even in pain - because it has created within me an acute awareness of people who suffer every day with no end in sight, just as part of their daily life conditions (like my dear deceased husband Doug). He bore it so courageously, and I now see that it never touched his Spirit. Wow is all I can say, in the magnificence of it.
I have put into a frame the photograph of me as a child (that we used on the retreat). I was bowled over by what other people saw in that little face. I have typed it out, and put it behind the photograph to re-read from time to time to remind me never to let those qualities be buried in conformity by life’s events, but to draw upon them as my strengths! How many people get the gift and joy of that knowledge! After Doug’s death it seemed that I had lost my purpose in life. Now I know that I will carry those strengths into every situation that comes my way. How exciting that with the tools of mediation and reflection to be able to live a full life from now onwards day by day, and maybe even in loneliness, pain and discomfort and trying to find and learn a lesson there too.
I received another gift on the retreat: Chinky asked me to sit on the beach quietly at the end of the retreat, which I did. I just sat on the beach letting the sand sift through my hands, and when I looked up and became aware of my surroundings, I realized that I was sitting on the exact same beach that Doug and I had walked on, two weeks before he went into hospital never to fully recover. It then hit me that I had come full circle!!! and I let go with honor, love and gratitude. Haven’t I been blessed!!!
Thank you both with lots of love, light, & blessing
Carol-Ann
MY DAMASCUS EXPERIENCE
by Carol-Ann McMenamin
I woke up at 1.30am on the morning after the retreat, and knew it was a calling to mediation, prayer and reflection. I never went back to sleep again and with pen in hand wrote what I called my “Damascus Story’:
My Damascus experience began on 6th May 2004 when I was struck by a life experience of my husband losing all life and movement in his body in the blink of an eye. I was struck blind in as much as I would never again see or experience life as I had known it. I was catapulted into another life dimension within a heartbeat.
I lived this life of blindness until on the 26th October 2013 (date of our last retreat), the scales began to fall away and once again I could see ... I woke up to very different world from where I had come ... and yet in a strange way had always known.
I have found the mystery that I have been searching for all my life, even as a child. The Mystery is within me (always has been). It is not me, and yet I am it, and because of that it connects me to everything that lives and breaths ... It is the very Source of life itself ... known as God ... I have been called to live close to that Source, and take that gift of awareness to everyone I encounter. I do not know the way yet, but it will be shown me.
I do not shun that period of Blindness, as it showed and made me aware of strengths I have which I never knew I possessed until they were put to the test. I honor that period of blindness as a gift, and I welcome my new sight with joy. In the Source that created me, and lives in me, and becomes me ... for the world.
I cannot thank you (Leela) and Joy enough for the gift of the retreat - it has turned my life around 360 degrees ... I see everything now as gift, even the pain - not immediately of course! I look back with a sense of connectedness - I am not the only person, and I won’t be the last. The lesson I learned from it, is to be more patient and empathetic for other people in pain. It is difficult to be kind, or understand when someone is in pain, when you are bubbly and full of life, have places to go, and things to do, and they are down and depressed, (I experienced that as well). It takes a deeper understanding that comes from connectedness. Out of everything comes good, if you choose to see it that way.
Love, thanks, light and gratitude
Carol-Ann
I thank both of you for the two days of the retreat - it was pure gift. Lots of people have asked me what the retreat was like, and the only word that comes to mind is “the such-ness”, which of course no one understands, so I just reply “I got a lot from it”. When I wrote to Leela, I mentioned that it is not so much a lot of words needed to explain it, it is rather a state of “being” and in spite of being in pain and discomfort, I still have the peace that I received. Fear is a thing of the past, and what a pleasure to get rid of THAT companion!!!
Thank you for sharing with us how, using our breath in and out, to honor and accept our day and all events as being for our higher purpose. I believe that all my pain and discomfort is serving a higher purpose - although at the moment I don’t know or understand. One thing it has taught me though, is that when I pray, I not only pray for myself, but for all people who are in pain. I have begun to feel a sort of connectedness, and I pray with gratitude.
Maybe the purpose is teaching me gratitude - even in pain - because it has created within me an acute awareness of people who suffer every day with no end in sight, just as part of their daily life conditions (like my dear deceased husband Doug). He bore it so courageously, and I now see that it never touched his Spirit. Wow is all I can say, in the magnificence of it.
I have put into a frame the photograph of me as a child (that we used on the retreat). I was bowled over by what other people saw in that little face. I have typed it out, and put it behind the photograph to re-read from time to time to remind me never to let those qualities be buried in conformity by life’s events, but to draw upon them as my strengths! How many people get the gift and joy of that knowledge! After Doug’s death it seemed that I had lost my purpose in life. Now I know that I will carry those strengths into every situation that comes my way. How exciting that with the tools of mediation and reflection to be able to live a full life from now onwards day by day, and maybe even in loneliness, pain and discomfort and trying to find and learn a lesson there too.
I received another gift on the retreat: Chinky asked me to sit on the beach quietly at the end of the retreat, which I did. I just sat on the beach letting the sand sift through my hands, and when I looked up and became aware of my surroundings, I realized that I was sitting on the exact same beach that Doug and I had walked on, two weeks before he went into hospital never to fully recover. It then hit me that I had come full circle!!! and I let go with honor, love and gratitude. Haven’t I been blessed!!!
Thank you both with lots of love, light, & blessing
Carol-Ann
MY DAMASCUS EXPERIENCE
by Carol-Ann McMenamin
I woke up at 1.30am on the morning after the retreat, and knew it was a calling to mediation, prayer and reflection. I never went back to sleep again and with pen in hand wrote what I called my “Damascus Story’:
My Damascus experience began on 6th May 2004 when I was struck by a life experience of my husband losing all life and movement in his body in the blink of an eye. I was struck blind in as much as I would never again see or experience life as I had known it. I was catapulted into another life dimension within a heartbeat.
I lived this life of blindness until on the 26th October 2013 (date of our last retreat), the scales began to fall away and once again I could see ... I woke up to very different world from where I had come ... and yet in a strange way had always known.
I have found the mystery that I have been searching for all my life, even as a child. The Mystery is within me (always has been). It is not me, and yet I am it, and because of that it connects me to everything that lives and breaths ... It is the very Source of life itself ... known as God ... I have been called to live close to that Source, and take that gift of awareness to everyone I encounter. I do not know the way yet, but it will be shown me.
I do not shun that period of Blindness, as it showed and made me aware of strengths I have which I never knew I possessed until they were put to the test. I honor that period of blindness as a gift, and I welcome my new sight with joy. In the Source that created me, and lives in me, and becomes me ... for the world.
I cannot thank you (Leela) and Joy enough for the gift of the retreat - it has turned my life around 360 degrees ... I see everything now as gift, even the pain - not immediately of course! I look back with a sense of connectedness - I am not the only person, and I won’t be the last. The lesson I learned from it, is to be more patient and empathetic for other people in pain. It is difficult to be kind, or understand when someone is in pain, when you are bubbly and full of life, have places to go, and things to do, and they are down and depressed, (I experienced that as well). It takes a deeper understanding that comes from connectedness. Out of everything comes good, if you choose to see it that way.
Love, thanks, light and gratitude
Carol-Ann