The Temple Trainings are part of an evolutionary impulse catalysing the birth of new civilization.
ANCIENT LEGENDS speak about Samothraki being an island beyond time and space. Anyone who has traveled here can confirm you leave the noise of the world behind and step into a different realm. As temples of transformation reemerge around the planet, the Mysteries of Samothraki are calling, feeling our prayers and responding with readiness to welcome awakening souls here.
COME poets, artists, musicians, creators of all kinds. COME rebels, misfits and catalysts of change, activists of sacred awakening. COME fallen angels and rising devils, midwives, shamans and dervishes, womb awakeners, priests, followers of the longing heart. COME mystics, witches, dreamers of the new culture. COME those committed to awakening, to leadership. COME unfold your love, gifts and power within the body of soul community. YOU are the leadership of the New Dawn
This is an invitation to travel into the unknown, leaving anything behind that is not love. Joyfully following the guidance of life as it unfolds through us and breaks us apart at the seams, we travel the unmapped territories of our soul into the vast presence of the One Heart.
THE TEMPLE TRAINING – Beauty of the Heart
In-person 6 weeks training
September 23rd – November 1st 2024
Samothraki Island Greece
Applications are now open for the SAMOTHRAKI TEMPLE TRAINING, affiliated with Highden Temple New Zealand. Click here for the Application form
THE PURPOSE OF THE TEMPLE TRAINING is Soul Initiation for those participating, and activating living temples to embody templates of new culture. You become part of a live-in field vibrating the culture of a contemporary Mystery School (leadership, magic and soul initiation) in relationship with the ancient Mysteries of Samothraki. We will share transmissions, practices and embodied experiences while exploring ecstatic soul community life. This isn’t a bottled formula; it’s a living medicine where you are part of creation. As a group we will move through initiatory portals of spirit, soul and body together, tracking the path, making meaning and opening the way for generations to come.
This INITIATION is for moving identification from personality to soul and landing fully into the life you were born for. You will know by the sense of a calling if you are to be here. This initiation container tends to attract those who are sensing the deeper energies emerging in themselves and the planet and have resisted getting distracted by polarization.
THIS LIVING TEMPLE EXPERIENCE is grounded in the body through collective ritual and deep immersions into nature and the mysteries of this mythical island. Our extended venue embraces the waterfalls, un-spoilt beaches, oak forests, thermal waters, the rawness of the mountain, the majesty of the Sanctuary of the Great Gods, and the beauty of secret sacred places of Samothraki. We can practice as in the days of Pythagoras under olive trees, roam the mountain, streams and ponds and muse with magical tree beings. We will have a home base at Mariva hotel situated between two rivers in Therma near hot springs, and other temple spaces in ancient nature sites, and at Chrysostomos, home of the golden word on the shoreline near the Temple of the Great Gods.
We will be spending times close to the land with the opportunity to journey/sleep in special places in nature.
SOUL INITIATION is the process of shifting your center of gravity to the eternal being that was born to live your life. It involves releasing your personality’s survival mechanisms and falling deeper into the core of this being, the living expression of love and freedom that you are. The soul now shines through the garment of personality, integrating it instead of being hidden by its structure. We call this soul shine.
This six week temple training is an environment to support your soul shine to emerge in a sustained and lasting way. It will cost your life as you know it, all the love you can bring and a commitment to the evolution of the planet. And ultimately the willingness to be nothing so you can embrace everything. All traditions inevitably point towards the dark core, the emptiness, the void from which everything emerges, and which is inside all matter. Here we practice holding the power of this dark fire of transformation at the centre of everything we do, integrating love through the three rings of spirit, soul and embodiment.
We embark on this journey of Soul Initiation at a remarkable time for humanity. Much of the known order is changing. We approach the Emerging Now with Joy and expect the unexpected.
Attending the Temple Training requires three things of you.
1. FOLLOW YOUR HEART - and an inner calling to be available in service to the world through the deepest part of you. This is about initiation into the core of life, not just tribal belonging.
2. OPEN YOUR HEART - and make a real commitment of time, energy and money to the process. This includes preparation work for the journey and clearing commitments for the six weeks. The weekends are your own time, everything else is unpredictable.
3. OFFER YOUR HEART - and be willing to live the fullest expression of your soul sovereignty while at the same time consenting in full surrender to the mystery that dances us all.
GROUP SOUL
This is a practice of deep listening, to ourselves, to the group and to life, while holding the dark fire of transformation at the center of the field. It’s a pathless path navigated by adventurous souls who together form one body. Each of us deeply committed to our own alignment and to the awakening of the group.
This is a living experience of group soul - weaving the source code of spiritual, creative and ecstatic community. The erotic life of the living temple, the shamanic vibration of the body, and alignment with spirit are central to the forging of group soul.
The CONTENT will focus on five major areas, while the real teaching is Life itself:
Awareness - meditation, cosmology, astrology, seven rays, soul fusion, the Void
Creativity - unique self & life purpose, synergy, money and the economics of love
Eros - life force activation, polarity & magnetism, tantric sexuality, magic & ritual
Community - love & relationship, group soul & group initiation, living as organism
Earth - shamanism, earth energies, working with devas, planetary kundalini, initiations & ceremonies, archetypal theatre.
We will align in meditation with concurrent trainings in Highden NZ and Nikkila in Finland.
WEEKENDS are a special time during the Temple Training, a chance to open into nature, play, share-space or have downtime, integration, solitude, or adventure.
You can leave home base and have time away, or stay onsite. Your tuition covers 6 weeks accommodation and catering Monday to Friday. Weekends you free flow and fend for yourself. Kitchen is available.
THE MYSTERIES OF SAMOTHRAKI
Samothraki has been a place of initiation since ancient times. Older than the Greek and Roman Empire, the Cabeirian Mysteries have attracted people from the Mediterranean and beyond to shed the skin of their personality in the presence of the wild gods of this island. Many of the ancient heroes and demi-gods were taking part in the rite; Jason and the Argonauts, as well as Orpheus. Alexander the Great was conceived here during the initiation. Our work will include tuning into the current fragrance of these mysteries and expressing the images received through ritual and sacred theatre.
TEAM
The teachers are the island of Samothraki and the dark fire of transformation we keep burning at the centre of the field.
The training is facilitated by Rex Rafiq, Arpana Ashish, with Dom Bury, Aleasha Sundari and a core team. Bruce Lyon and Janine Ma-Ree will contribute from the parallel training happening at Highden in New Zealand.
What is Soul Initiation: https://www.brucelyon.com/post/what-is-soul-initiation
Landing The Temples: https://www.brucelyon.com/.../landing-the-temples-and...
APPLICATION and REGISTRATION
Participation in the Samothraki Temple Training is by APPLICATION. It is suitable for those who feel significantly on a path of soul work and liberation through both consciousness and embodiment. Graduation from programs such as ISTA (International School of Temple Arts, Spiritual, Sexual Shamanic Initiation), is a good preparation for this work. However we will accept applicants on the basis of an intuitive sense of synergy and alignment with the purpose of soul initiation. It is not a therapy program.
STEP ONE. Fill out the application form, best to do this once you feel called as it starts a process of getting to know each other to see if there is a fit:
Click here for the Application Form
STEP TWO. If accepted commit with payment. You can pay in installments if it helps you.
Enquiries to: samothraki.temple@gmail.com
FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTION
EUR 5.500 : Regular price
EUR 6.000: Abundance price. Funds received above EUR5000 will recirculate to support people on lower incomes to attend. Please INVOLVE YOUR HEART in the decision of what you pay.
EUR 5.000: Some places available. Apply for this if genuinely needing financial support
Includes tuition, accommodation for the full 6 weeks and catering 5 days a week.
SUBSIDY FUND CALL. We want to make this initiatory journey as accessible as possible to those who are really called to it, and we recognise the imbalance of global economics. If you feel drawn to support and can donate funds to support participants from low economies contact us directly: samothraki.temple@gmail.com
If you are called to attend and funds are an issue we encourage you to go to your community and family and resources of abundance you have access to as your first step.
REPEATERS of previous trainings wanting to be in the inner field are welcome to apply.
GRADUATES FROM PREVIOUS TTT -
There will be a field of graduates from previous residential Temple Trainings from around the globe. This is a separate and surrounding ring to this training, to deepen your practice of living in community as group soul informed from the dark core, becoming part of the source code of creative, loving, shamanic and ecstatic community life. Together we are creating a living temple experience in deep relationship with nature and the mysteries of the island.
There will be a curriculum, shared practice and creativity, service and support to the field and holding temples.
Here in the outer field a refined form of leadership allows the upwelling themes in this field to serve the group soul as guidance. Muses play through the group soul, lightening sparks of revelation. The ancient mysteries come alive through sound and form. The living word expresses uniquely through each being in relationship with the portal of the island and weaves a symphony of sounding principles of the new culture.
This soul expression becomes part of the contribution to the inner field. Rituals and ceremonies are heightened by the inflow of imagery and embodied transmission distilled by beings holding their channel open to source.
Interested? Contact samothraki.temple@gmail.com
DATES
September 11th - October 20th 2023
We encourage you to come some days before the training starts to settle in and open your heart to this extraordinary island. Weather is typically sweet here into November. There will likely be an ongoing co-living creative immersion beginning in November following the temple training.
FACILITATION TEAM
REX RAFIQ
A native New Zealander with a global heart Rex Rafiq has been leading transformational programmes since he was 30. His experience has been honed from working extensively with groups in all kinds of settings from the wilderness to corporations, prisons to ashrams, and anywhere in the community people are showing up for wisdom and awakening.
As the founder of Essentially Men, www.essentiallymen.net he pioneered ground breaking men's work in Aotearoa New Zealand, and co-founded the Heart Politics Gatherings. He is trained in group work, psychodrama, expressive therapies, co-counselling, and has a masters in Social Ecology and is the author of Fatherless Sons (Harper Collins) and On Their Own (Finch). Rex is currently lead faculty with ISTA, the International School of Temple Arts, facilitating Spiritual Shamanic Sexual trainings globally, and a shareholder of Highden Temple.
Over his life he has explored diverse mystery traditions, shamanistic practices and spiritual enquiry. He has a reputation for leading potent rites of passage and known for his wise and playful style and ability to hold people with love while they shed their skin.
Rex has stopped trying to improve himself...instead he has turned to loving the life force that is living him.
ARPANA ASHISH
Ashisha has been learning and thriving through images and imagination all her life, which took her to careers in theater, journalism and filmmaking, a wild ride through uncountable versions of personal life and creative reality on this planet.
More than 20 years of storytelling has taught her that the true stories that can advocate change for our lives need to be found inside ourselves and in our direct connection to our creative source. She has traveled the globe to find the universal language, turned towards the imagination of the heart, the language of the inner space.
To support souls to awaken to their eternal core fire has become her primary calling in life. Her gaze is pointed towards the expression of the subtle essence we hold within, to unlock that unique gift and support it to manifest in life with love, power and grace, aligned with the greater whole of this planet.
Ashisha is cultivating and teaching ancient tools for awakening the imagination of the soul into sound, form and life force by using mythology and archetypal images, alchemical methods, meditation and embodiment for creative transformation. Her sessions, trainings and ceremonies support people worldwide in dreaming their future into existence. She attended the first ray of the Highden Temple training and has been on the teaching team of several trainings since.
