VOID - Falling through the Mystery
In-person Retreat
June 30th - July 7th
Nikkilä Temple, Finland
‘VOID’ is a journey into the dark.
It will feel as if you’re walking in full darkness, not having any reference for any movements. You can’t but give yourself to the mystery that is only revealed through an authentic act of surrender.
The dark is the emptiness that lives at the core of everything.
It is the ecstatic energy of life we call ‘the mystery’ that lives at the core of all things from black holes at the center of galaxies to the atoms in your body.
This dark isn’t the polarity to light but the place from which both light and form arises.
The dark has been called many things, ‘God’, ‘Source’ ‘Spirit’, ‘The Tao’, ‘Void’. It is the non-dual nature of the universe and is what lives behind all identity.
It is our essence.
‘VOID’ opens the pathways for this dark to enter your body, heart and consciousness.
You will be invited to empty your mind of agendas, dissolve expectations and surrender to the arising of the mystery moment to moment.
VOID aims to give a reference point of emptiness not only from the mind as many meditation practices propose, but an emptiness that reveals from the core of one’s body, heart and consciousness.
> BODY
When we take our awareness all the way down inside our body, beneath our cells, into the core of our atoms and still deeper, we find a singularity, a whirring energy vortex. When the emptiness that lives at the core of atoms vibrates out of the physical body it becomes sacred land for pilgrims. Touch from that place reconnects to a lost sense of home.
> HEART
When the dark core of our hearts opens we are gifted a sublime experience of ‘falling through’ the core of another heart, galaxies merging into the singularity of ONEness together. This is the deep rest in love that we long for but rarely find as it requires the dissolving of a separate ‘I’ and ‘you’, there is no outer projection of a partner, lover or friend. There is nothing to hold and no-one to be, nothing else exists except love.
> CONSCIOUSNESS
The dark accelerates evolution and its capacity to radically elevate consciousness is one of the most potent offerings for humanity. This energy can pierce through collective thought forms and mental structures that limit our capacity to know our own boundlessness, the true nature of reality. It can ungrip us from a concrete three dimensional world of predictability and logic where the boundaries of ‘knowing’ encase the multidimensional realms of possibility.
“I had to get out of my own way over and over to drop deeper and deeper into layers of intimacy I didn’t even know existed (...) it was terrifying and blissful all together”
– Judy Blair, Lake Hawea, NZ
Falling through the core of all existence requires an act of radicality, of will.
It will cost your life as you know it, it will require that you face the threshold of insanity while sitting on the edge of totality that includes everything and its opposite.
On the event horizon of the dark, you will be met with terror, this isn’t a fear that has any causality, it is the terror that proceed the dissolution of the Self. As humans we taste it every time we have a sense of irreversible loss.
You can be forced to this initiation the day your physical body will cease to live. Or you can decide to lose control in every moment, letting life arise, while keeping presence in the chaotic dance that moves you.
“This is the only workshop that has been able to give me a glimpse of no mind and refine my quality of presence. Complete letting go and acceptance of all that is.”
– Stephanie, Melbourne, AU
Living and moving from the emptiness that lives at the core of all things, not only prepares us to die, but also allows us to fully live! This is a total different state of existence, from the survival and individuated state, in which the majority of humanity is stuck in.
We fear the dark, because it feels like death. But until we have integrated the flip side of it: an equal longing to not exist as separate forms, we won’t be able to find infinite freedom. The only freedom that allows us to fully be.
Becoming aware of this dichotomy isn’t a sign of personal failure, despite the interpretation that has misled many to give up on life. But it is the recognition of a universal inherent truth, which is the venom and the antidote at once.
“I felt naked with nowhere to hide… while I’ve felt on the edge so many times during the workshop, I simultaneously realised that I’ve always wanted to be there… my experience has been full of liberating contradictions!”
– Justin, Melbourne, AU
We will use practices that involve meditation, embodiment, movement, silence, touch… to support the emergence of the dark, individually and within the group field.
When our sense of individuation surrenders to source and gives space for the dark to be at the center of our existence, we experience a sense of profound rest, a return home, a blissful taste of totality and simplicity.
“A condition of complete simplicity costing not less than everything” - TS Eliot
Although we will explore various practices, they aren’t the focus. They are here to support the awareness of the formless freedom of being danced by the mystery. This state of inner spaciousness and emptiness will allow synchronicities, effortless exposure, core intimacy, deep insights, acceptance, objectless bliss and the potential for many more describable and indescribable experiences.
‘VOID’ is for:
Anyone who longs to dissolve a separate self.
Anyone who is willing to let something greater direct their lives.
Anyone who is willing to sharpen their capacity to pause in any given situation and listen to what life wants.
Anyone who wishes to embody ecstatic spaciousness and deep stillness.
Anyone who is tired of resisting life as it comes and ready to let the mystery lead the way.
Anyone who is longing for true freedom.
Anyone who is longing to find togetherness in their deepest aloneness.
This retreat is open to all genders and non binary folk, as well as all relationship styles and preferences. You can attend alone or with partners.
This retreat will include:
Radical discontinuity - don’t be attached to structure
Individual and group practices
Live demos to direct transmissions
Introduction and practice of Tandava (see bellow)
Introduction and practice of Yoga of Touch (see bellow)
Periods of silence
Spaciousness
Main Practices:
TANDAVA
Non-linear movement practice
Often depicted in the traditional iconography of northern India, Kashmir and Tibet, Tandava is an extremely slow, mystical dance and non-linear movement practice.
Through its refrain from intentions, one can create an expansion of the body into space, an experience of absence of limits that leads to a non-dual awareness and absorption of the Self-undistinguished from the Cosmos, the Void, the Dark.
The seemingly empty space around us becomes our dance partner as we slowly allow the waves of life to move our body and merge with the universe around us as a mystical union of totality.
This hybrid practice connects body, heart and spirit as one and is designed to remember our infinite free and unconditioned nature.
“When I first received Laura’s transmission of Tandava I felt like I finally had a part of me receive what it was looking for, a deeper layer of intimacy, without even knowing it or how to attain or find it.”
– Kaya, Wanaka, New Zealand
YOGA OF TOUCH
Kashmiri massage
When one becomes Tandava, its touch carries spirit and devotion and seals it into matter. Touch becomes a spiritual practice and a form of refined art.
Yoga of Touch is a form of non-dual meditative touch that unites masculine, feminine, inner child, spirit and matter.
Through loving attention, presence and unintentional touch a space of trust is created in which deep allowing and letting go is possible.
This ritual of presence beyond time, space and duality, allows an inner meditative journey and can lift giver and receiver, that ultimately become one, into unknown levels of consciousness.
This spaciousness and intentionlessness nourishes our core and deep need for unconditional acceptance and love, in which our body carries its eternal remembrance.
This devotion turns touch into art.
“This retreat has touched me in much deeper places than I expected it to. This journey was a powerful immersion into what it means to let life move you and letting go of control. What I thought would be just a meditative state and bodywork practice to add to my inventory turned out to be a teaching that translates immediately to my everyday life and has vibrated since in the way I’m approaching living in synchronization of what is happening around me.
I’d personally recommend this workshop to anyone who wants to journey into the mysteries of life in themselves, and is ready to get touched intimately in their soul, in a way that I have never experienced before and was actually looking for, without knowing it.”
– Kaya Levin, Wanaka, NZ
Meet your guide
LAURA DEVA
Laura has been a mystic over life times. Her devotion to formlessness has made her from a very young age grieve a quality of purity in singularity, encapsulating in her heart a secret and long misunderstood longing for death as liberation from forms.
As a surreptitious devotee of Thanatos, she was faced with multiple experiences of radical disruptions followed by times of profound dissolution, which made her acquire a unique breadth of wisdom.
Developing an intimate relationship with core aloneness, Laura learned to take refuge in an inner world of emptiness as an escape from the erratic human experience.
What made her inadequate to a world that is in constant denial of a fundamental dark truth, made her simultaneously uniquely suited to see beyond forms with clarity and compassion enabling breaches for core emergence in others.
When she was first introduced to the practices of Tandava and of Yoga of touch, she recognised instantly the refined quality revealed through them as being her core, making her land and rest at ‘home’. She was extremely moved to find practices that could translate her most precious and guarded place of aloneness that would help bridge, expose, invite and guide others into wordless singularity.
Laura has been supporting groups through transformation for a decade. She is dedicated to collective change and genuinly cares about the emergence of a new civilization based on freedom from conditioning and awakening of human’s hearts.
Laura is a living dark seed that serves the emergence of the Temples that hold emptiness at the centre.
She co-facilitated the last two Temple Trainings in Highden, New Zealand, and will co-facilitate the next one in Nikkilä, Finland.
Laura is also a facilitator of ISTA (International School of Temple Arts).
“Laura’s ability to speak the dark truth and then laugh like a child in the same sentence is a gift. The freedom she has in her body is inspiring”
- Karl, Melbourne, AU
“Laura is a powerful transmitter of the quality of approaching life as it emerges. Her embodied wisdom of what she teaches is what allowed this experience to run so profoundly while she held space listening to the group and in a feminine/masculine integrated way leading us with care and professionalism.”
- Kaya Levin, Wanaka, NZ
“I’m so grateful to have learnt from a true master of the art of devotion to the mystery”
– Rebecca, Melbourne, AU
Bellow is a conversation between Laura & the organising team, Lucy and Lucie.
It gives some words transmission of the nature of this work and why it is needed.
(22 min of watching.)
About our venue:
Nikkilä Temple, Finland
Nikkilä is a living temple, a vortex, a school, a home and a community - a greenhouse for souls.
It encompasses 46 acres of magical and powerful land, 1.2 kilometres of lakeshore in Finland.
It is dedicated to humanity’s Soul Initiation, the path of Freedom and Love - recognising Spirit at the core of all.
Devoted to anchoring a new era, it is where humans live as embodied souls and know they are on this planet with a purpose.
An era where humans deeply listen to and co-create with the earth and the cosmos.
An era where humans remember themselves as the union of matter, soul and spirit.
It is committed to the emergence of a world that stands for and as Love, whatever name you choose for it - be it freedom, truth, the divinity in matter, or otherwise.
A world that is fully ALIVE, here and now!
To learn more about Nikkilä Temple: www.nikkilatemple.org
Investment & registration
SUPER EARLY BIRD : 888€ (5 tickets max and until next full moon March 18th)
EARLY BIRDS: 1088€ (5 tickets max and until following full moon April 16th)
REGULAR PRICE: 1288€ (From April 17th until registrations closes: April 22nd or sold out: 25 participants)
The price includes food and accommodation and the complete training fees for 8 days.
The first meal is dinner on 30th of June
The last meal is lunch 7th of July
How to register?
Fill out the REGISTRATION FORM
Note that the registration form is compulsory to validate your registration.Make your payment through bank transfer (bank details bellow)
Once we receive your payment you will be added to a private Facebook group.
Bank details:
Account holder: Lucy Rebecca Forrest
SWIFT/BIC: TRWIBEB1XXX
IBAN: BE56 9670 0993 5388
Wise's address: Avenue Louise 54, Room S52 Brussels 1050 Belgium
Send a payment confirmation (screenshot/pdf of transaction) at voidretreat.contact@gmail.com
Important Information:
If you are making a bank transfer from a country outside of Europe, extra fees might be taken through several intermediary banks which might result in us not receiving the full amount.
Please make sure with your bank this isn't the case as you will be responsible for reception of a full amount on our end.
If you are unsure here a some options:
Open a Wise account and pay trough Wise
Get in touch with Lucy if you desire to pay in AUD, NZD, USD. You will be provided with a fixed fee in those currencies and a local bank account.
Cancellation policy:
The fees for this journey are non refundable except under Covid related circumstances.
Special COVID-related considerations:
1) In case of cancellation of the retreat due to COVID restrictions, full amount will be refunded (minus an admin. fee of 10€).
2) In case of cancellation of your participation due to flight/ health issues which are COVID related, we will refund you the deposit (minus the admin fee of 20€).
3) In case of cancellation on your side for any other reasons refer to the regular policy above.
For any queries
voidretreat.contact@gmail.com