Interview with ‘Spirit of Iona’ participant Anat

Anat, participant on Spirit of Iona

Britta: How did you hear about the ‘Spirit of Iona’?

Anat: I have known about Iona for many years. In my heart I knew that Iona has a special energy and I felt I needed to come at the right time in my life. I couldn’t come before now. It is not like you are just going to another retreat. You need to synchronise between your energy, the energy of the island and the spiritual and personal development you are going to do there. For me now was the right time to come.

Britta: Was there any particular reason why you chose to come to Iona now?

Anat: I am in a spiritual process to support my healing. For me coming to Iona was a highlight of my spiritual work. It was my purpose to go to Iona to consciously work on my health. So this is what I did.

Britta: Could you give an overview of your week?

Anat: The long and beautiful journey to Iona is part of the pilgrimage. In our group we were five people and they were all amazing. Andrew was holding the week in a perfect way and the bonus was that he cooks amazingly. Every dish he made was delicious. 

Everyone had their special needs and the week was fitting for each one of us. It was very balanced between spending time together and being alone. As a group we went to see the Abbey and the sacred hill Dun-I, walked to St. Columba’s Bay, meditated and shared our experiences … We also had free time which we could spend with others or by ourselves. So you had time for your own process and then you were able to share about it in the evenings with the others if you liked. It was very balanced and amazing.

Anat with other participants of Spirit of Iona

Britta: How did you personally experience the week on Iona?

“It is like being out of time and place. Like being in a place that is not part of this world ...”

Anat: I can’t really tell yet what happened for me, I just know that it was really, really big and deep and I will have to see what will come from it. One lady from our group said it in the most beautiful and most accurate way. She said it is like being out of time and place. Like being in a place that is not part of this world in any way. As if it was on a different planet. At least that is how it felt for us. It was amazing. 

Britta; Is there any experience that stood out for you?

Anat: I don't think that there was one thing. I think that the intensity of the experience built over the week. For me the most important thing is that you have the opportunity to really get in touch with yourself in a way which is right for you at the moment. I think the beauty was that everything happened in the right time and in the right place. Everything supported itself. 

“Lots of the magic happened during the times we talked to each other.”

The beauty of this retreat is that on the one hand it was structured and held but on the other hand it was open enough for everyone to find themselves. You could do what was really necessary for you in the moment, like having a walk on the coastline, go swimming, meditate indoors or outdoors, do a self awareness process. Lots of the magic happened during the times we talked to each other.

So for me there is not one highlight that stands out, everything was equally balanced. When I look at the whole retreat in an ecological way as if the whole retreat was an organism or a network, then the net is working perfectly. Everything within the net is flowing openly so that each minute becomes a highlight in itself. 

View from Traigh Bhan sunroom

That’s how I look at it: The whole retreat is the highlight itself. Every part of it makes up the whole picture: the environment, the land, the house, the people, the structure, the timetable … Everything forms one big net that allows everyone who enters it to flow in a way that is good for them personally and supports them to do what is good for them. It supports their own self awareness process and spiritual work. 

Britta: If you only had two minutes to tell someone about the retreat, what would you say?

I think this is the point of the metaphor of the net I just used. The whole retreat is structured in a way that supports your own process and provides you with what you need at the time. That’s what makes it such a good retreat. The Findhorn Foundation knows how to create good retreats and courses and Iona gives an extra energy to them.

“Iona is such a magical place and it was so easy for me to connect to the energy I felt there. I felt the love of the land - an energy so pure, so loving.”

Iona is a place with really big magic. I don’t have any other words to describe this island. I travelled a lot and For many years and I feel that  Iona is a different world. It is magic over there. You enter and it is like in the Mists of Avalon. Do you know the book? Where they are going on the boat through the mists of the lake and in the middle it shifts to another world and the weather is different. That is how we felt when we left Iona. The whole week it was sunny on Iona. We were very lucky. During the day, we didn’t have rain at all. It was sunny, it was warm. Amazing. And then as we were in the middle of our trip on the ferry to leave Iona it started to rain and it was raining non stop until Inverness. That is what it felt like, I broke through the mists and arrived back in this reality.

Iona is such a magical place and it was so easy for me to connect to the energy I felt there. I felt the love of the land - an energy so pure, so loving.