A Weekend Retreat

Weekend Retreat with Dr. Ravi Ravindra “Self-knowledge and the Awakening of Intelligence” March 21 – 23, 2014 The retreat opened with a talk by Dr. Ravindra at the Swanwick Centre (KECC) on Friday evening at 7 pm.   It was very well attended by thirty people.   Dr. Ravindra discussed some of the subtleties of the words used in the title of the retreat.   For example, the word “self” has many different levels of meaning in different spiritual traditions and even within the same tradition.   Knowledge may refer to various kinds of knowing and understanding.   Similarly, “awakening” and “intelligence”.    The material provided for some interesting exploration and the audience had numerous questions to put to Dr. Ravindra at the completion of the talk. Some participants stayed on site for the weekend while others commuted each day.  Altogether 15 people attended the weekend.   Dr. Ravindra started off the morning on both Saturday and Sunday with a twenty minute guided meditation on relaxation and receptivity, that demonstarted the power of awareness to create change.  The rest of the time was spent in a number of activities such as a meditative nature walk on the property, some small group explorations on the topic of self-knowledge,  and a number of talks and group discussions about Krishnamurti’s teachings.  At one point the group moved up to the Guest Cottage for some simple movement exercises along with some musical accompaniment by one of the participants. Dr. Ravindra has a wealth of experience with Krishnamurti, including numerous personal meetings, and was able to share many stories and introduce points of discussion with the purpose of shedding some light on the man and, more particularly, on our own process of self exploration in relation to K’s expression of truth.  This was supplemented on Saturday night with a video of K speaking on “What Is Meditation?”, a powerful presentation which produced a desire to remain with it in silence until retiring to bed. The retreat ended with a group discussion considering to what extent we are controlling the events of our lives and whether there is any permanent self.   It became clear that some of these deeper questions are not easy to answer and there may be a number of angles or perspectives that could be taken which may not be mutually exclusive.   The real situation may not be linear or logical in the conventional way at all. The feedback showed that participants felt very pleased with the weekend and the value they had derived from the experience.