The Benefits of Going on a Spiritual Retreat

Do you long for deeper meaning, greater simplicity and a greater connection to the divine? Currently there is a quiet explosion occurring. The numbers of people searching for and wanting a richer spiritual experience are flocking to retreats in record numbers. More people are going to spiritual retreats than ever before. Retreat facilities and spiritual tours are in full swing and are booked weeks, even months in advance. Spiritual retreats are more popular than ever.

People are looking for places to escape the pressures and anxieties of their busy everyday life. The retreat experience is seen as a temporary withdrawal from daily life, designed to empower the individual to fulfill his or her spiritual value within the circumstances of ordinary life.

As the need for spirituality increases, the need to re-energize and reflect at retreat locations also increases. Medical doctors are even beginning to see the value in retreats and are starting to prescribe their benefits to their patients. Doctors are recommending to their patients that they take a day every month to go to a retreat, a long weekend every three months and a longer sabbatical at least once or twice a year, simply to recharge themselves and survive the intensity of our societies high stress levels. Retreats are a chance to reorient oneself from the hectic life to a place of spiritual, mental and physical refreshment. This sacred time allows us to tap deeper into our inner silence and in this respect a brief retirement from the distraction of daily living. This alone is very beneficial. Retreats can give us the necessary balance with work and can serve as the function of play and rejuvenation in our lives. To approach retreats with the frolic of openness and play can be heavenly.

Typically we are too busy to hear the call, the beckoning of spirit, but when we remove ourselves from our daily lives and we quiet ourselves, we are allowing the sounds to be heard from that deep place. Retreats create this environment so that this conversation can be heard. A spiritual retreat is where seekers are seeking and it is where the divine is seeking the seekers. Choosing the journey towards a spiritually inspired life begins with a willingness to ‘heed the call’. When the student is ready, the journey will appear. We will then be standing at the threshold of spiritual seeking, we then must choose. That choice is to enter into a retreat so as to recollect our scattered lives, reconnect our fragmented parts of self and focus on the one who calls, seeks and invites us to communion.

Retreats renew us and provide us perspective that subtlety changes our relationship with the life we know. The solitude of a retreat will provide an interval of stillness and gentle concentration, a pause in the constant and unremitting demands of our daily lives. By listening, you have an opportunity to find your true self, if you listen, you can hear the quiet voice of the divine. The retreat environment creates a relationship with the divine where one cannot hide from one’s problems and distractions. This environment is contemplative; it opens up the channels of communication with the divine. Retreats become an accelerator of the spiritual journey, a booster if you will where you go a long way in a short amount of time. But this growth needs to be fostered and continued afterwards by some daily process, if not, its primary benefits will wear off and be missed.

Truly an opportunity for experiencing miracles can occur, because in this retreat environment we are provided a focused opportunity to learn and strengthen practices, which may lead us to a shift in perception, thereby changing our relationship with life and the world around us. This, say some, is the miracle of the spiritual journey in life, which a retreat can facilitate. We are in an environment to affirm our commitment to spiritual priorities. We break out of our ordinary patterns. This act of removing ourselves is very nourishing. We become more aware of our body, mind and spirit, and from this awareness we are re-energized on all levels.

It is precisely because the needs are so great and life so short, that we need to take the time for a personal retreat. Withdrawal is necessary to ultimately expand ones self. When nurtured in a safe space on a spiritual level, it rekindles our spiritual fervor, and renews a steadfast spirit within us, and act’s as a restorative template for realigning our vision and refining and reshaping our perceptions. With this template we are open and ready to receive the guidance that we are seeking. Spirit will reveal itself, when we remove ourselves from the adrenaline addicted, fast paced lives, and we are all attached too. We are all subject to our frenetic existences of intensity that zap our spiritual vitality and mask our spiritual laziness.

Let’s not wait until our engines cut out on us or we crash, let’s take the time to recharge, renew and refresh our spirits by removing ourselves from our ordinary existence and heed the call, to awaken ones self at a spiritual retreat.