Beginning next Sunday 26 April, 6pm UK time, I will be offering an online, progressive retreat for 9 weeks focused around the Aramaic Beatitudes in Matthew. We will revisit the Beatitudes and their relevance to current life concerns, starting with personal healing, then expanding our focus and meditation to our communities, nature and the world. This also allows me the opportunity to update some of the teachings on the Aramaic Beatitudes since I recorded the Sounds True “Healing Breath” series nearly twenty years ago.
Practices like the Beatitudes, which encourage both depth and connection, shared in a group over period of weeks, can have effects that go beyond our personal self. In our case, we will meet staring just after the new moon and ending on the summer solstice. Since we will be meeting during Ramadan, I may also share an occasional attunement from the Sufi tradition, as well as refer to the Aramaic Beatitudes in Luke. We will be meeting using the Zoom technology (You do not need to pay for an account; check this out at zoom.us). Each meeting will last about an hour and a half, once a week. Recordings will be made for those who are not able to join live.
Please go to the following home page link to join the special groups.io list for the Aramaic Beatitudes retreat. This is the only way in. I ask that people who join do so for the whole series, rather than just drop in and out. Same as for an in-person retreat, really. Once we begin, the group will be locked, again for security, given various problems that Zoom has experienced recently.
https://abwoon.groups.io/g/BeatitudesSpring2020
Go to the bottom of this page and you will find a link to “Subscribe.” I will be posting all of the Zoom details for this series only through this group. This is partly for security’s sake, and partly to make sure that my Zoom account will handle all those wanting to join. I will also be posting the recordings in this group, in case you miss a meeting, as well as hosting questions and/or sharing.
A donation is requested for this series, and donations can be made via PayPal to: donations@eial.org
(Or if you don’t have a PayPal account, please use the link below this message, where you can make a donation via PayPal of any amount via credit card without an account.)
This retreat will be most helpful for those who have experienced the Aramaic work previously, either through a) an in-person retreat with me, b) going through one of the previous Sounds True recorded series or c) having minimally read The Hidden Gospel. This means that I will not be starting from basic explanations during this retreat, so that we can dive right in together.
For those who are new to the Aramaic Beatitudes in Matthew, you might wish to spend some time with the words before each session, staring with (yes) the first Beatitude for the first session. The easiest way to do this is by downloading the Prayers of the Cosmos teaching audio here.
One can also find the CD online, both here in Europe and in the USA.
If this journey works in your life just now, I hope you can join us. May all we do return to praise Reality!
Yours in peace,
Neil