[We just concluded our first experiment in a Virtual Head Hand Heart Immersion this week. This year has brought many retrospective spaces/questions/concerns/challenges for the entire world, and it has been heartening to see that such spaces are also adding into a collective wisdom to flow - to build a new way forward. While we are still collating ways to share the experience of the past week on the MBL blog; this email from one of the participants Praggun brought a big smile on our faces.]
"The retreat was most wonderful and beyond. The two days in person and the 5 days of offline engagement were for me an escape into a world that was everything but judgement, noise, violence, conflict and more. This small, little world that MBL has created is so pure, intentional and beautiful.
It is difficult to verbalize what I take back with me for there are just so many learnings and epiphanies. While there are the Elon Musks of the world building rockets to colonize newer, distant planets in the outer space, I strongly believe now that it is communities like MBL that are firing the real rockets, jettisoning the human pain and suffering and reclaiming humanism for all of life on the only living planet that we know today i.e. Earth.
On the two mornings of the retreat, all the participants and the volunteers sat in a minute or two of silence as an "all religion prayer" played in the background. I realized that it has been more than 10+ years since I indulged in such a prayer (the last was when I was in school). On listening to the prayer during the retreat, something moved within me as tears formed around my eyelids like raindrops dripping from the edge of a roof. The moment was surreal, unexpected and revealing. It felt like rays of warmth filtering through the crevices of my soul illuminating parts of me that I had long forgotten much like how sunlight peeps into our bedrooms, driving away hours of darkness. I intend to make the prayer + silence an everyday part of my life.
Once again, I thank you and every other MBL volunteer for the love, devotion and care with which they organized this retreat . I hope to someday cross this moat of virtual interactions and connect even more deeply in-person with you and everyone else."
"The retreat was most wonderful and beyond. The two days in person and the 5 days of offline engagement were for me an escape into a world that was everything but judgement, noise, violence, conflict and more. This small, little world that MBL has created is so pure, intentional and beautiful.
It is difficult to verbalize what I take back with me for there are just so many learnings and epiphanies. While there are the Elon Musks of the world building rockets to colonize newer, distant planets in the outer space, I strongly believe now that it is communities like MBL that are firing the real rockets, jettisoning the human pain and suffering and reclaiming humanism for all of life on the only living planet that we know today i.e. Earth.
On the two mornings of the retreat, all the participants and the volunteers sat in a minute or two of silence as an "all religion prayer" played in the background. I realized that it has been more than 10+ years since I indulged in such a prayer (the last was when I was in school). On listening to the prayer during the retreat, something moved within me as tears formed around my eyelids like raindrops dripping from the edge of a roof. The moment was surreal, unexpected and revealing. It felt like rays of warmth filtering through the crevices of my soul illuminating parts of me that I had long forgotten much like how sunlight peeps into our bedrooms, driving away hours of darkness. I intend to make the prayer + silence an everyday part of my life.
Once again, I thank you and every other MBL volunteer for the love, devotion and care with which they organized this retreat . I hope to someday cross this moat of virtual interactions and connect even more deeply in-person with you and everyone else."
Reflections
Share your thoughts or questions