“To be is to share. Sharing means being, on all levels, from the atom to our experience of happiness.”
From June 19-22, seven participants met at the Kulturhaus Wilde Rose for the fifth AHI retreat. Based on the essay “Being and sharing: A Practice of Creative Existence” by Andreas Weber, we pursued the idea that we as individuals can only fully realize our aliveness when we experience our existence as a shared one. Following on from the last retreat on the topic of “connectedness”, we are taking the concept of the human being as a being in connection further and following Weber’s idea that we can only truly be in sharing. We put these thoughts into practice in text-, walking- and sitting-meditations, as well as in the free time we spent together. With lots of movement, dance, morning yoga sessions, as well as a gratitude meditation and a connectedness meditation, we approached the practice of meditation from different perspectives in order to give all participants an individual starting point. A highlight of the meeting was the hike in the Melle woods and to Diedrichsburg. The connection with nature gave us a clear sense that we are not a detached part of the world but are closely connected to it and that we can only exist because the forest, the meadows, the animals and we ourselves are willing to share.
Andreas Weber comments on this once again:
“Individuality is the expression of the life force that fills every being, and this life force, in order to come fully to itself, wants to come into contact with others, needs to be protected, sheltered, nourished by them, demands touch, tenderness, being held. Only in this way, in touch, are we able to become ourselves. We all long to be able to be. And only by sharing can we be.”
We would like to thank everyone who was there, the team from the Kulturhaus Wilde Rose for their hospitality, the amazing food and this wonderful place, as well as everyone who made these four days possible for us.