Weekend Retreat

  Awareness In Daily Life January 22 – 24, 2016    This weekend retreat was designed to invite as much as possible a concrete experience of living as non-dual awareness. It was facilitated by Lynne Walker and David Bruneau, both of whom have been working at the Krishnamurti Educational Centre of Canada for some years and exploring the challenges of living with awareness and self-knowledge. A good deal of silent looking and listening was the foundation of the retreat, whether sitting quietly, walking in the beautiful environment, eating meals, and even talking. There were five guided meditations leading us into the contemplation of the qualities (or lack of them) of pure awareness and Beingness and six silent meditation periods as well as longer silent periods over the weekend. There were a good number of handouts for contemplation taken from The Book of Life by Krishnamurti and pertinent to the focus of the weekend. The eight participants watched three videos of Toni Packer speaking about looking, listening and meditative inquiry, a video of J. Krishnamurti speaking in Ojai entitled “Watching the Activity of Thought”, and selections from a Mooji satsang which deal very directly with the issue of “keeping” the sense of our true nature that we have experienced during a focused retreat.  Mooji challenges us to “leave everything” for a moment and realize that which is beyond thought. This complimented a quote from Krishnamurti that “meditation is not only constant self awareness but also the abandonment of self”.     Participants reported a wealth of insights and meaningful experiences over the weekend and an appreciation of the opportunity to spend time in a  meditative space where real looking and being was possible. It is intended that more of this type of direct looking and inquiry be included in the programs at the Centre.