“Empty Your Mind to Fill it With Creativity” was a project that promoted self-development through meditation, mindfulness and creative writing. It brought together 25 young people from Italy, Latvia, Slovenia, Portugal and Spain for a week-long youth exchange in the beautiful Castrelo de Miño village and Ribadavia, Galicia (Spain) from August 1 to 9, 2016.
The project was organized by Peace Architect Agnija Kazuša and her colleague Elisa Emiliani. For both, this was their greatest project during a year-long European Voluntary Service in the youth information centre OMIX Ribadavia in Ribadavia village in Galicia, Spain. The project encouraged young people to effectively use their mind, showing the links between meditation, mindfulness and creativity. Through the daily Morning Meditation and Morning Pages activities, participants were encouraged to observe their mind, write down their feelings, emotions, thoughts, as well as learn to cultivate the habit.
During the six days of the Inner Peace Time Journey, the participants learnt the basic Dhammakaya meditation as they were introduced to the (1)centre; (2) sabai feeling; (3) visualization; (4) mantra; (5) loving kindness; (6) neutrality. They wrote down their meditation experiences in the daily feedback sheets observing their own self-development.
Apart from meditation, participants engaged in other activities that helped to understand the link between meditation and creativity. They acted out different characters during the Mindfulness Game where they observed the minds of the characters noticing ego, jealousy, greed and other mind contamination. There were other activities, like the Live Action Role Play (LARP), Hapkido breathing workshop, Mandala activity and others.
On the last evening, participants gathered on the dock in the Miño lake for the PIPO night where they shared their inner feelings and emotions and wondered what may happen in the future. They pondered about the meaning of the life, feeling grateful for the moment and for their existence before continuing their life journey with more mindfulness and more creativity.
