Your Peaceful Retreat

The importance of the depressing turmoil I shared with you earlier is to impress upon you that, regardless how bad and negative your own thoughts, problems, stresses, pressures, concerns may be (inside your "BETA room" described in an upcoming post), the fact that you now have a secret “valve” through which to let your inner oppressive “steam” escape prevents emotional “explosions” or “implosions”.

You now have a “Special Place”, a shelter strictly yours, to which you can “escape” for a refreshing, renewing while and work on resolving some problem, search for some answer, an inspiring or motivating “thought for the day…week...month”. This is your Peaceful Retreat !
Note Well: This process is NOT "being or going into denial!"

And, in case you may still feel uncertain as to exactly how to create the best possible one, perhaps my own may inspire you as to the diversity and freedom to let your Imagination “run with it”, even if it takes you, for instance, to one or more natural caves eroded over the centuries by the sea and “set up shop” inside, using the sand as your floor. Or you may want to decorate your cave…throw in a few lush carpets…furniture…connect electricity and lighting…Anything Your Imagination will come up with that makes you happy, comfortable and “ feels right”.

The night of the bombing of the next-door convent…as I squeezed my eyes in raw fear, I envisioned a room… clean, shiny parquet flooring, colors were oranges and bright browns…not a stick of furniture..roll-down thick beige window covers. One of the windows was partly open, letting in the soothing, peaceful, cheerful sounds of happily chirping birds in the nearby and of the gentle rustling of nearby lush green trees’ foliage. I did not have to struggle to "make it up"...it just "came to me", which is why I said, in an earlier post, that it was a "Gift from G-d"...

The room was bathed by the sun through the paper curtains, creating a warm atmosphere of earth tone reflexions on the beige plain walls of the room. The temperature was balmy. It all felt perfectly safe. I would lie down on the floor, which I found to be surprisingly comfortable. I was very relaxed and went off into a deep, deep, sound sleep…

…and never heard another sound until I awakened (in “real life”) and was told that the bombings, the flack from the anti-aircraft guns, the howling sounds of the danger warning sirens…all these, and more, has been going on all night long!

Throughout the war, I was able to instantly drift off and sleep through similar, threatening loud noises and the ground shaken by bombings or shellings.


My two other favorite Peaceful Retreats are: Yosemite National Park with its fabulous pine tree smells, blue and other birds, bears, deer, squirrels, majestic mountains , breathtatking waterfalls…nature in all its glory…
Ansel Adams photographed this “Paradise on Earth”, as I call it, for most of his professional life. I heartily recommend his books and films on the subject to those of you who may not yet have been privileged to experience this great Photographer’s Art.

My third is a white, soft, sandy beach not littered by obnoxious tourists’ disrespectful of the environment. Deep blue-and-green, almost transparent ocean waters with multiple foamy, graceful whitecaps and waves swimming to shore…making repeated, lulling, gently roaring, slushing sounds and imparting a lovely oceanic fragrance softly transported to my nostrils by a gentle breeze. Next to me are several tall palm trees whose fronds are gently rustling in the overhead, soft tropical air, the relaxing combination of which forms a totally aesthetic and reposing Peaceful Retreat..

While you are in your Peaceful Retreat, remember that you can work on problem solving, decision making, magnetizing yourself and your mind to attract Positive people, events, conditions, circumstances, set goals, and the like.

You always feel rested, refreshed and re-energized whenever you come out of your Peaceful Retreat, and are optimistic that worthwhile achievements are on their way to completion.

Finally, a delightful story and another possible viable Peaceful Retreat well worth reading was posted last March 15th...Enjoy!