2027 Silent Retreat

Five Day Silent Retreat

JUNE 13th-18th

St. Rafaela Retreat Center

Haverford, Pa

SAVE THE DATES!

Taking 5 days to calm, reflect, and just be alone yet not alone is such a gift to oneself…

IABOUT THE LOCATION

The retreat center is comfortable and beautiful with a deeply saturated sense of lovingkindness. The grounds are like a well-tended park. The food is pescatarian (no shellfish), lovingly prepared, abundant, and tasty. The Center offers limited gluten and dairy free alternatives and can accomodate most allergies for those who let us know in advance. They cannot handle complex special dietary needs however there is a refrigerator available to retreatants who wish to bring their own food. The center has a variety of food items available at all times for snacks and simple alternatives if meals do not meet your needs.

THIS YEAR

The majority of the rooms are private with shared bath arrangements as in previous years. There are only a few rooms with private baths and they will go to those with the greatest need.

Background Information About Silent Retreats

A silent retreat is one of the essential and most important practices for any spiritual aspirant. Each spiritual discipline and many teachers have unique practices, schedules, relationships between the teachers and students along with other nuances of the training. The retreats we offer have their own flavor.

Mindfulness meditation is frequently learned to find a way to come to some calm and balance in one's everyday life.  It is also a phenomenal path to a complete human transformation from a thought obscured person to one who is clear minded.  The journey for most is arduous, humbling and incredibly valuable.  Upon awakening one must encounter everything in a way that is awesome in its magnitude and far beyond the current human preoccupation of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.

This retreat offers a path and brings guidance and collaboration to those who have chosen this journey.   It assumes that a strong foundation of ethics and values has already been learned and integrated.   The skills needed for this stage are:   1. concentration capacity and discipline   2. powerful mindfulness training practices     3. A thinking mind that can be released into stillness and can grow in that ability in more and more complex engagements.  This final skill and stage is not as well mapped as the earlier skills.  So collaboration with others can be very helpful to understand some of the commonalities but also the uniqueness that happens in this stage.

On our retreats we emphasize silence.    Not every part of the day is silent,  we actually chant and sing/pray together every morning.  In some instruction periods, questions or comments are invited from the participants.  Retreatants have opportunities to engage teachers, either one-on-one or in small groups.  In our silence we are committed to not engage one another on a social level. We do not have mundane conversations. We do not greet one another verbally. Why is this so important? The answer is that something happens deep within each of us when we maintain an outer silence as described. An inner silence for practitioners on our retreats arises after a few days. It is a spaciousness that makes itself known on a very deep level. We experience an ease that is uniquely satisfying and deeply content on some kind of soul level that is inexplicable. We begin to feel profoundly connected with others around us, even though we are not speaking. And we begin to experience a fascinating integration with our surroundings, nature, life.

It is true that initially, for the first few days, the experience may feel a bit strange. We are social beings. But we are also very adaptable and soon we begin to realize the extraordinary wonder of the possibility of a moment-to-moment connection with what is happening right now--the magic and mystery of the unfolding NOW. When this happens, the silence becomes a precious gift. Indeed, on our retreats, after the third or fourth day, retreatants love the silence so much they want it to last as long as possible.

The fees for retreats are for room and board only. There is no tuition for teachers, however, free will donations for teachers are asked for and welcomed at the end of each retreat. Normally tuition fees run from $300 to $1000 for a 5 day retreat. We work on a donation system so that those who can pay more do so and those who cannot pay less. It has worked out fairly for over 25 years.