Several months ago, in the wake of previous experiences, I put together a team of five people, including myself, and created a week-long retreat that will be held on the island of Sardinia toward the end of May 2026. Dennis Edwards, the secretary of the Matthew Fox Legacy Project, and Mario Bonfanti, who has worked for us on-site in Sardinia, have been instrumental in making this happen.
Matthew himself has supervised the initiative and will participate by means of three live sessions during which participants will be able to dialogue with him on the most important discoveries that they will have made in the course of the retreat.
We titled the initiative “Awakening the Divine Human: An Immersion in the Living Wisdom of Creation Spirituality.” You can look at the program HERE. The pivotal word for me in this title is “immersion” as I want to use an inductive method rather than a deductive one. That is, experience first, reasoning about it later.
This does not mean that we will not be reflecting and thinking. In fact, the transformation of the mind and its habits is the essence of spirituality. I cannot think of any spiritual master in any tradition whose aim is anything else than helping practitioners transform their mind, and thus the world around them (the via transformativa, which in Jungian terms is “thinking”).
I have found too often than people participating in retreats love hearing their voice expressing their thoughts, which are of course the thoughts they brought with them to the retreat location. In the course of this week, instead, people will be asked first to sense (via positiva), to feel (via negativa), and to create (via creativa) and only then giving full sway to the power of thought/action (via transformativa).
In reality, there will be a verbal “gathering of experiences” in small groups in the late afternoon of each day, followed by a sustained moment of exchange with Matthew Fox online. But these moments will be preceded by “immersion moments” in the sea, in caves, in hot pools, in nature. In Jungian terms, we want the soul to be leading the experience, rather than the intellect.
As I was asked a few times about the Christian contents of the retreat, I want to be clear that there is none, in the sense that we will not work on Christian symbols or texts. As a theologian, however, I am convinced that working within the depths of human spirituality, getting in contact with the roots of our species’ quest for the divine, is a prerequisite for any healthy engagement with the Jewish and Christian traditions.
We have chosen the island of Sardinia indeed because it offers something unique: the possibility of connecting to the ancestral traditions of humankind in a pristine natural environment. The amount of Neolithic sites that are still preserved or have been excavated is stunning, and we will experience some of them not as tourists but as pilgrims.
There has been a challenge to the program coming from some people who think that it is unethical to promote a tour that not everybody can afford and is causing pollution by way of air travelling. Wouldn’t it be more consistent to practice in one’s own place, and maybe create sustainable local guilds of practitioners?
I have been dealing internally with similar issues in the past and I am not sure I have found a solution. I can, however, express publicly the intention that is behind this retreat. It is giving me the occasion to introduce others to a deep source of meaning—i.e. Sardinia itself—that is very important for my own soul.
I hope that participants — some of whom are making financial arrangements to be able to fly to Italy — will look at it not as yet another trip but as a rare occasion and a sacred time. A time of deep listening. Beyond words. With the purpose of elaborating for a very long time, each in their own place and life context, the insights that will be gathered.
Banner image: “Sant’Antioco Island, Cape Sperone.” Image by Maurizio Panicara. Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
How do you deal with your ethical conflicts around the sustainability of your ecological footprint? Or with the disparity between your level of income and that of others?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
Ed., Charles Burack: Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations
Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson and Jen Listug: Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
5 thoughts on “Awakening as Immersion and Changing of the Mind”
Six words have triggered this comment: “Experience first, reasoning about it later.” Six words have triggered this comment: “Experience first, reasoning about it later.” The drama of most religions is to practice precisely the opposite: “Reasoning first, experience later,” thus maximizing the risk that experience is postponed indefinitely, relocated to hypothetical heavens, delegated to a few (founder figure, masters, saints, etc.), or a mere projection of too much reasoning. If the divine is not an immersive experience, the divine is nothing at all.
Even if I cannot participate in the upcoming immersion initiative in Sardinia, I applaud it despite its environmental and economical caveats: when billions are spent daily destroying lives and assaulting Mother-Earth, the cost and the environmental impact of a trip meant to inject more consciousness in the world and to train potential spiritual teachers who will share their experience later are a worthwhile investment whose success depends, as stated, on participants being genuine pilgrims rather than tourists. Since a pilgrim is someone who travels to a holy place, I only have to find holiness in my living space to be a pilgrim (a recipe for an inexpensive and environmentally friendly holiday).
“Since a pilgrim is someone who travels to a holy place, I only have to find holiness in my living space to be a pilgrim (a recipe for an inexpensive and environmentally friendly holiday).”
Dear Daniel and other Pilgrims,
I quoted what you wrote as it speaks to my take on being a pilgrim these days. We are truly being challenged to question the value and the effects from promoting a retreat that is too costly for many to even consider participation and also one that contributes to the pollution of our habitat.(through the necessity of air travel),
Perhaps those of us who want to belong to this specific retreat-but are choosing to
stay home based, could be offered the possibility of participation through receiving the basic inputs via email along with suggestions on how to structure and create similar experiences at home.
I would certainly be interested if such an alternative would be offered.
Sincerely
Judith
Dear Judith, I do understand and sympathize with your point, but, personally, I would be quite satisfied with whatever trickles down into the future DMs from that immersion experience in Sardinia. (And this does not mean that I adhere to the trickle down economy hoax of the billionaire clique now destroying the Earth!)
Veronica from London UK.
I am so glad you are better and diving into activity Gianluigi.
This retreat sounds just marvellous , resonating so much with me.
Very sadly I cant attend because of serious health issues, which have pulled me into a beautiful, challenging transition time.
I plan to offer myself a pilgrimage / retreat simultaneously , linking and resonating with the profound ideas for change, Thank you so much
On my spiritual journey, my hope is to continue to be transformed, Being & Becoming, of my Soul awareness/consciousness of ongoing Loving Diverse Co-Creative Oneness with All spiritual beings and physical/nonphysical sacred dimensions, including Beautiful Sacred Mother Nature/Her living creatures/Her graceful and essential life abundance, with-in the Sacred Process of the Eternal Present Moment….