Gokulanandan Gopal das: It was another opportunity for devotees in Singapore to leave aside the rigours of the material existence and get immersed in a weekend of spiritual bliss, when they gathered for the third Bi-Annual spiritual retreat in the peaceful and scenic surroundings of the Changi Chalets from 17-19 August 2007.<\/p>\n
With the mercy of Guru and Gauranga, the retreat had an overwhelming response with around 80 devotees, including families, enthusiastically participating in various programmes during the two and a half days packed schedule, aimed primarily at building Vaishnava relationships in the form of exciting quizzes, games, seminar and debates.<\/p>\n
The Spiritual Retreat also provided an opportunity to the devotees to be a part of a full temple programme, which included mangal arati, tulasi arati and congregational chanting as well as Gaura arathi followed by sweet kirtans in the evening. More importantly, the devotees took great pleasure in closely associating with each other during their stay in the two chalets, one each for prabhujis and matajis, comprising of fourteen spacious rooms. The devotees thoroughly relished the sumptuous prasadam, which was lovingly prepared by HG Sadashiva Prabhu and HG Manikundala Mataji. <\/p>\n
The first programme of glorification of Srila Prabhupada gave indepth understanding of Srila Prabhupada\u2019s contribution to each and every devotee\u2019s life.<\/p>\n
The games provided an opportunity for the devotees to come out with innovative Krsna conscious ideas and also tapped their deep realizations.<\/p>\n
The Grhastha seminar was well presented with various short skits, primarily focusing on the appropriate manner for Grahastha couples to deal with certain day to day emotional and psychological situations, in order to lead a successful Grahastha life. The Krishna conscious quiz was greatly successful in keeping the minds of the devotees engaged in the thoughts of Krishna and his pastimes, thus greatly enriching their spiritual knowledge.<\/p>\n
In the game, flavours of the holy name, devotees came together in chanting the Hare Krishna mahamantra in different tunes. Around 45 different tunes were chanted by devotees.<\/p>\n
There was also an interesting session at the Changi beach with various thought provoking games that gave new blissful directions to realize the importance of various intricate aspects of spiritual life.<\/p>\n
Towards the end of the seminar, the devotees also shared realizations of their most blissful experiences in their life, which was both sweet and inspiring.<\/p>\n
Overall, all the participants unanimously agreed that the retreat was a grand success in providing them with an impetus and motivation to progress in their spiritual life and are anxiously looking forward to the next one.<\/p>\n