abundance

Dates available for personally companioned directed retreats with Chris Chaplin msc (by arrangement):
February 12th - 18th, at Ellenborough, NSW
July 9th - 31st, at "The Cliffs", Shoreham, Victoria
August 1st - 30th, at "The Cliffs", Shoreham, Victoria
September 1st - 22nd, at "The Cliffs", Shoreham, Victoria
October 14th - 31st, at "The Cliffs", Shoreham, Victoria
November 1st - 24th, at "The Cliffs", Shoreham, Victoria
December 1st - 21st, at "The Cliffs", Shoreham, Victoria
Click here to email for booking enquiry

Guided Retreats offered at Retreat Venues:
April 20th - 26th, 6 day Guided Retreat “Leaving self Behind”,
St. Mary’s Towers Retreat Centre, Douglas Park NSW
More Information: http://towersretreat.abundance.org.au/smtrc_prog_apr12.html

April 12th - 18th, 6 day Guided Retreat “Journey Into the Heart”,
Hartzer Park Retreat Centre, Bowral NSW.
More Information: http://www.hartzerpark.org.au/retreats.html

Other Offerings:
A Gathering of Men - Men's Weekends
at the Inner Journey Centre, 86 Tom's Creek Road, Ellenborough, NSW
facilitated by Chris Chaplin and Dave West
This is a gathering of men:
• who want to take time to be present to themselves.
• who want to explore their inner world
• who want to connect with the more of who they are.
• who have 'sorry business', hurts, to tend to.
• who want to be in life with all of who they are, mind and body, feelings and spirit.
February Thursday 23 - Sunday 26, 2012
Information Brochure:
Future Men's Weekends at Ellenborough:
May Thursday 25 - Sunday 27, 2012
August Thursday 24 - Sunday 26, 2012
November Thursday 23 - Sunday 25, 2012

March Thursday 1 - Friday 30, 2012
30 day Personal Healing & Spiritual Renewal Program
at Ellenborough, NSW
Facilitated by Chris Chaplin, Carol Dyer, and Wendy Bignell
    This program is live-in.
    It is an intensive time of healing and growth, in a loving and supportive process
    that encourages participants to move through the issues that have blocked
    living their lives freely and with joy.
        One can do the month-long program, or one of the component phases.
         Phase One: 12 days of Transpersonal and Emotional Release Counselling
         Phase Two: 8 day Life's Healing Journey Retreat
         Phase Three: 8 day Contemplative Directed Retreat
Spaces available very limited. Enquiries no later than January 31.
Information Brochure:
Booking Form will be forwarded after enquiry.

Thursdays Aug 9, 16, 23, 30, and Sept 6.
“Mindfulness and Meditation” Seminars
Heart of Life Spirituality Centre. Box Hill, Melbourne, Victoria
More Information: http://heartoflife.abundance.org.au/seminars.html#27

June 25 - 29 from 9.30 am till 4.30 pm
(except Monday begins at 10.30 am and Friday concludes at 12.30 pm)
Professional & Personal Development for Spiritual Directors
Heart of Life Spirituality Centre. Box Hill, Melbourne, Victoria
A five-day intensive for practising spiritual directors,
this year focusing on Story telling and visual images in spiritual direction.
Facilitated by Peter Malone msc and Chris Chaplin msc
More Information and contacts go to: http://heartoflife.abundance.org.au/formation.html#3

Guided Retreat for MSC and others working in Milne Bay, PNG
Dates yet to be confirmed.

What makes religious teaching seem relevant for us, is when it speaks a language which resonates with our experience.  If there's a good-fitting congruence between what we know from living something and what is expressed to us by others, then something in us goes "ping!!" and we want to say "yes!". Our ways of expressing what we believe to be true, are only ways, they are not the source and end of the longing that echoes through our heart.  They are sign posts pointing to the source, the end. Our hearts long for that love by which we were first loved (1 John 4:19). In fact, when we have been loved - really loved - in a manner that honours the very dignity of our existence, we want to reciprocate with love.  Our hearts burn for that love.  We look for that Love, often feeling lost because we substitute other lesser loves for that wholesome Love in which we find ourselves whole. 

Mid-May saw me at Hartzer Park Retreat and Conference Centre, Bowral giving a 6-day guided retreat entitled, "An Unfathomable Love".  Beginning with the tradition of Devotion to the Sacred Heart the retreat presentations explored the giving over one's self in deep devotion, to that Love who first loved us with a Love that we cannot fathom.   This Unfathomable Love moves us beyond ourselves, drawing us ever so delicately into a romance with the Sacred, beckoning from within us a devotion towards our Divine Beloved as the only authentic response we can make.  A profound shift occurs within us, reorienting our living in the direction of the One with whom we have fallen in Love, and we are different than we were, our thinking, perceptions, judgements, decisions, actions and the very energy of life shift and are at the service of Other.  Because of a wonderful re-sacralizing of our consciousness, we enter into all relationships in a new way.  We begin to see the Thou in all creation (visible and invisible), and if the Thou is the aperture through which we see everything, if our relating is built on and directed towards this Unfathomable Love then we are hope-filled of a new earth; a new creation.

"Spirituality of the Heart" was the theme of the 6 day guided retreat I gave in early September at St. Mary's Towers Retreat Centre, Douglas Park.  The retreat explored Heart Spirituality from the perspective of four movements; Encounter, Intimacy, Transformation (Conversion), and Emergence (Mission).  The retreat sessions attempted to speak about the longing of the human heart for the Heart of the Sacred, in a language that resonates for today.  A congruent Spirituality of the Heart, speakes to what is happening in every dimesion of human experience; from the anguish of personal hurt, to the cosmological implications of our awakening to new dimensions of consciouness.  There is nothing that is outside the realms of the Heart of the Sacred - the Sacred Heart.

2011 Seminars Heart of Life Spirituality Centre

Posted August 10, 2011