“IGNITE YOUR SPIRIT” ~ Our new tagline.
But what does this mean, we hear you ask?
Do you want me to set myself of fire, I hear you ask?
Well, not literally, but metaphorically, YES!
Come sit down with us beside our beautiful cosy Happy Buddha fireplace and we will tell you about it. Get your cup of your favourite hot beverage in your hands and stare deeply into the flames until you reach that meditative place of receptivity and openness. And listen with open awareness to what we have to say.
Igniting Your Spirit really comes down to exploring why we are all here. It’s about exploring, particularly why YOU are here.
Why are you alive, on this magical planet, living, breathing, singing, dancing, yoga-ing, eating, lov-ing, sleeping and then getting up and doing it all again?
Hmmmmm, good question, we hear you say!
Here at Happy Buddha Retreats, we believe that is here for a reason.
We believe that that reason is essentially: to be pure and unadulterated YOU.
It’s to be yourself, to express your truth, to enjoy your life and to live your passions. Sounds pretty simple doesn’t it, except it’s really not, because what we are talking about here is the journey of life, rather than everyday momentum.
The journey of life for each one of us is a process of becoming more and more of ourselves.
This is a magical process of unfoldment, which never ends, it doesn’t matter how old we are.
The journey of life is a journey of self-discovery.
And here at Happy Buddha, we want to support you in the self discovery process through providing a beautiful space for time out from your every day life, so that you can reflect and process and understand where you are at on your particular self discovery journey.
There are so many things that can get in the way of us really blossoming into our true and radiant selves.
Those things include the conditioning we received in childhood from our immediate families and from our schools and wider culture.
And they also include the negative thoughts and belief systems that might have taken root in us somewhere along the road of life thanks to some difficult experiences that have not been fully processed and let go of.
It includes the beliefs we might have inherited from our families, from our schools, from our culture, from our work about what is possible for us in life, about what we are good at or not good at, and about how to live and earn a living.
Depending on the mindsets and the life experiences of those who raised us we might have an expansive, everything-is-possible-and-the-world-is-an-incredible-and-amazing-place-and-I-can-do-and-be-anything-i-want kind of outlook, or we might have a more contracted, restricted view that I-can-only-do-certain-things-and-I-have-to-live-in-a-certain-place-and-do-a-certain-job-and-that-the-world-is-in-essence-a-bit-scary-and-not-very-welcoming kind of outlook and, more likely, we will have something in between these two.
Our view is of course also constantly in a state of flux.
So the journey of IGNITE YOUR SPIRIT, is about unravelling any beliefs that don’t serve you any more, so that you can connect to more of your essence and be more your true self.
If you have an underlying feeling that the life you are living is not really true to you, and that you there is a greater level of enjoyment and pleasure available to you, you can do one of two things.
- You can ignore that feeling, and just continue on as is, and perhaps use things like alcohol to numb out a bit so that you don’t feel the uncomfortable feeling so much, or
- You can open to the possibility that there is much more available to you, and start to slowly look at areas of your life (including the ways that you behave, the thoughts that you think) that no longer feel aligned with who you are.
We recommend, of course, that you choose the second option.
The practices on offer at Happy Buddha – our yoga classes, our drumming sessions, our meditation talks – are all designed to support your reflective process.
These practices help align you back to the truth of who you are, and they help you to clarify what you really value and what you really want in your life, so that you can let go of everything that no longer serves you.
And from that point, you can really Light Your Inner Fire, Ignite Your Spirit and continue to expand into everything that your soul desires to experience in this lifetime.
And we say: One big Namaste to THAT!
IMG CREDIT: @jennifer_regnier on Unsplash.com
Michelle is a writer, musician, meditation and yoga teacher based in Bali. She teaches meditation and yoga retreats through her own business, The Global Yogi. and also offers coaching sessions in Self Love.
