BA Com Retreat (Sept 15-17,2016)

Since I started teaching, this is my first time to be a retreat adviser. I took the opportunity of joining my students in the sessions and reflection. Our venue, St. Paul Spiritual Oasis, provides an ideal environment for introspection, nourishment and rest.

In our noisy and busy world nowadays, silence can be a precious thing. Being an adviser meant being in charge of students' discipline- collecting gadgets and food items before the retreat starts, timekeeping and even conducting random inspection. While some may perceive only the restrictive side of this, I hope that everyone got to appreciate the value it added to the experience. Being separated from gadgets, it actually helped us get more out of the event.

The main themes were gratefulness and forgiveness. Retreat master Yumi let us write SPECIFIC things that we are grateful for, under four sections: Material possessions, skills, people and life events. It is upon reaching the "people" part that participants got emotional. It was here that we got to appreciate our most important treasures. The short clips "My Shoes," "No arms, no legs, no problem," "Team Hoyt" and "Kay Inay" were all inspirational and helped us draw from our own wells of experience. Rather than saying "thanks for everything," being specific as a sign of sincere gratitude was emphasized and practiced. For example, saying "Thanks for being one of my first students. I also learned from you and got inspired to be better in what I do."

Being specific is also the way to go in asking for forgiveness. Saying sorry is a hard thing to do, and if it comes so easy for you, think again. "Forgive and forget" also just doesn't work. We remember things that hurt us, because we only get hurt by the people close to our hearts. It is in remembering that we can truly grow, learn and truly forgive.

The retreat is still ongoing and I am confident that this is just the beginning of a wonderful journey.