“Live Consciously” retreat connects hearts and souls
Jayshree devi dasi: Last weekend (11 and 12 August 2018) around 80 devotees from Brisbane participated in a spiritual retreat facilitated by HG Chaitanya Charan das at Camp Warrawee. Located in beautiful natural bushland, on the North Pine river only 35 minutes from Brisbane Camp Warrawee served as a contemporary banyan tree in which devotees of all age groups, toddlers, teenagers and adults, took shelter to learn the art of applying scriptures in real life. An entire weekend was spent in devotional activities including morning program, chanting, kirtan, skits and discussions on various themes from the Mahabharat including,
Understanding the mind and how it makes us misunderstand.
Dhritarashtra: Wrongdoing is not just the wrong we do, but also the right we don’t do.
Duryodhana: When expectations rule our life, they ruin our life.
Ashwatthama: Hating the wrongs done to us blinds us to the wrongs done by us.
Rohan Vakharia shares his reflections on the retreat
I thank HG Chaitanya Charan Prabhu for sharing his wisdom and time with us this weekend. He gave us a synopsis of Mahabharata, at the same time took a deep dive into some of its key characters. He debunked the myths we got from watching BR Chopra’s Mahabharat serial, such as Draupadi insulting Duryodhana, Arjuna being urged by Lord Krishna to use Shukra Niti when Karna steps off his chariot and so many more.
There were so many questions that Prabhu answered including why Lord Krishna failed in his mission to stop the war. Understanding the psychology of various Mahabharat characters helped us understand how to apply Vedic scriptures to our practical life.
Some of the lessons we took away:
Learn to tolerate, mitigate or emigrate to manage a conflict.
Destiny is like a weather forecast and free will is how we can deal with the forecast.
It’s our wrong choices that doom us, not the destiny.
It is important to have a soft heart but a hard skin.
Destiny puts us in our situation but we determine our decisions.
Attachment consumes us,
we crave for it till we get it
when we get it, we fear losing it
when we lose it, we lament for it.
These lessons will help us in our spiritual journey and our daily life. I sincerely hope Prabhu will be able to come to Brisbane for many more of such retreats and until than we will have his books, USB and online resources.
Call it a celebration, rejuvenation or spiritual association it was a marvelous display of teamwork as everyone seamlessly stepped in and out of the various services assigned to them to support the spirit of spiritual growth. It was a common consensus that we should have such events more often at least twice a year to strengthen the bond between devotees.
All glories to the Vaishnava devotees.
All glories to Guru and Gauranga
The audios and videos of the retreat talks are available here:
https://www.thespiritualscientist.com/category/lecture-series/live-consciously/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JUi2cdOUBKoYtFp_Gr-MtgqSGgt7BJtN/view