I Find Peace Like This
WPI under the Peace Revolution project has promoted many fellowships for youth people. For the second time, WPI is inviting our partners to this fellowship specially made for them. The retreat will take place in Mexico from November 30rd until December 4th in Casa Azul in Tepoztlan, a charming village near Mexico City.
This article, written by Matt Witt, aims to provide some insight into the aims of the Artistic Meditation Retreat, an annual event that brings together artists from all over the world for two weeks of meditation and art creation.
In January 2014 I embarked on a new chapter in my life. I now understand that we are constantly beginning and ending chapters in our lives, day-to-day, but this seemed like one very epic beginning, like the pages of my book tore out, transformed into a flock of origami cranes, and carried me in my sleep to start a whole new volume, a second life.
“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.
Having a balance life is what I am always searching for…After getting my master degree following 4 years of study in China, I was full of energy, big dreams, ambitious plans and high expectations about the life I had ahead of me. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out as I had expected (not that happy); after 2 month search, I couldn’t find the job I was looking for and became depressed and unhappy. All of my expectation and big plans were ruined as my search became fruitless.
I know, I know, I went AWOL for a while. Not to worry, I’m back!
Before I proceed, let me take this moment to apologise for not accounting much for time and dates in my Amani Series. I went through a couple of days without comprehending or having a feel of time. I later managed to acquire a watch and small alarm clock and things got better, time-wise.
We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality. We confuse the world as talked about, described, and measured with the world which actually is. We are sick with a fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas.
Alan Watts
It was back in the beginning of 2015 when I decided to quit my office job, which has become a routine and stopped boosting my self-development and giving me satisfaction. I realized that more than that I also needed to ‘restart the system’, in the way we restart our computers, with the only exception that the system was my mind. We all are in a constant search for new inspiration, new ideas, new paths. So was I.
