Newsletter Spring / printemps 2025
Welcome!
Please find below the schedule for summer 2025. We have this fab new booking form system on the website. There will be some innovations this year with the "Rivers of Change" canoe retreat & the " Understanding and embodying Impermanence" wilderness retreat at the wild hot springs. New collaborations with Vicky Uccele a yin-yang yoga teacher & Kaushal Rana Singh, a refugee & LGBTQIA activist for the LGBTQIA canoe retreat. Finally, Ekuthuleni will welcome Jaya Ashmore for a Deep Rest retreat in September for the 5th year running. Noon is also teaching a Deep Rest retreat in Madeira in March.
Upcoming Retreats at Ekuthuleni
Ekuthuleni Retreats in 2025:
Rivers of Change
10th to 15th of June
LGBTQIA+ Canoeing & Meditation Retreat,
on the Orb River near Béziers/Montpélier
led by Noon & Kaushal Singh
Embodying Impermanence
& Interdependence
20th to 27th June
A Wilderness Meditation retreat in the Pyrennees
led by Noon.
Still Flowing Water
24th to 29th July
Silent Meditation and Yin yoga
led by Noon and Victoria Ucele
Mud and Meditation Retreat
8th to 14th August 2025
Silent & Activity retreat
With Noon
Deep Rest Retreat
19th to 25th September 2025
With Jaya Ashmore
Bookings open April 1st
Other Retreats being lead by Noon in 2025
The Ecology of Meditation
With Noon & Tisara
29th August to 5 September 2025 at Freely Given Retreats,
Brimpts Farm Devon, UK. https://www.freelygivenretreats.org/
This silent meditation retreat will focus on the teachings of dependent origination to explore the process by which we create our worlds, get entangled in that creation and the way out of that entanglement.
Reflection
The Breeze at Dawn
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.
Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi.
I love how this poem speaks to my heart in subtle ways at different times.....
Now, as before, I hear the encouragement to awaken from slumber, as in from states of unseeing, so different from a refreshing sleep...
I feel the interdependency of which we are all part, "the door is round & open" in it's awesome wonder & also a certain urgency to be aware, not just to our inner worlds but also to our surroundings, our environement & to what's happening for others, those near & dear to us but also those far away we don't know personally but we know of some of their dukkha ...
We know & sometimes don't want to know about.
"people are going back & forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch"...
This also evokes for me people crossing the seas in small boats to escape wars, or to get a tiny piece of the privilege cake...maybe not meant that way by Rumi.....but this is what comes up for me.
As we sit mindful of the breath, or mindful of the soles of our feet on the ground, growing awareness of sensations, emotions, thought habits & conditionings, sometimes into expansive states beyond a
contracted sense of self, broadening our sensitivities to include all of life...
I can feel this "knowing but not wanting to know" sometimes...in myself & I sense it in others.
There can be an edginess. Or an anxiety I don't quite know where it comes from...it feels like not really mine, & yet it's living in me.
Can you feel this?
we meditate to awaken.
But from what?
Or into what?
Gautama, the Bouddha whose wonderful teachings have endured through time & continue to shine & be shared into our lives, left the palace of privilege,to explore suffering beyond his cocoon, beyond an insulated existence.
In these times of rapid digital communications, overloading our nervous systems with too much Dukkha news doesn't feel wholesome. Staying balanced & buoyant, supple & lighthearted amidst news of floods, raging fires, famines & rich madmen taking over the world is no small act of love, of life. As is also an act of love: not shutting out too much in our warm meditation blanket, in our well fed meditation centres. Denial may actually create more stress, as it is with our more personal dukkhas: the more we run & hide the sharper it is. Unseeing can leak through the cracks. Overwhelm can make us crack. High-wire walkers use a long pole to keep their balance as they tread softly, adjusting constantly along the cable of dis-equilibrium.
The door is round & open. We are not alone: we feel others. Nature feels us.
To know the incessant shifts & scrambles of our minds & hearts, to cultivate presence in communication
with others, to have enough food, shelter, clothe & medicines. Some safety. And feel good with the above.
I was born & grew up in part in Zambia, surrounded by kids with swollen bellies from malnutrition: my childhood a sort of palace, even though we were not wealthy. But there I could not escape the feelings: our privileges were possible from other's dukkhas. Here in Europe, the palace walls are thicker. A bit. For a bit longer...maybe.
There are many crossovers from activism to meditation & back...many cross fertilisations.Many ways to live our practice, many forms of beauty.
To practice meditation in all it's shapes & live beyond fears in these choppy waters...an awakening dream?
with love, Noon
Wishing our friends in Dharma a Fresh Year of Awakening blessings,
from the Ekuthuleni team: Li, Tisara, Birgit & Noon.