Open Minds
Retreat

About
Open Minds…

Open minds started as an idea to help individuals awaken to their true nature. Your true nature being the place where you go to when you are completely at rest, that still quiet place you might experience when there’s no one else around to impress, tend to, compare yourself to, or demonstrate to. You might have just opened your eyes after a good nights sleep and you find yourself wrapped up in a warm duvet, with nothing going on in your mind, before you remember the days tasks, there is just comfort in the sense of complete safety, you could stay there all day, doing nothing, you find yourself smiling at nothing in particular, just maybe the joy of being. This is a partial glimpse into the experience of ones true nature, not a completely accurate one, but as close as I can get with the limitations of words. In a nutshell, it’s your experience of joy and complete comfort.

The initial idea to share these pointing’s started as a concept in a small makeshift office in the corner of a local library, in Hunslet, Leeds, though a little uncertain, I felt ready to share more broadly. The teachings and techniques that had helped me and various others that had come to me through word of mouth. So, with the help of Dasha, a Leeds city council representative, I started a group, pointing participants in the direction of sustainable peace. I eventually realised that although the peace that I was pointing to was sustainable, the method of individuals turning up once a week was unsustainable, the experience needed to be more immersive meaning we needed a place where we could spend time in daily silence, alongside our talks and practices.

I had for some time previously, pictured a place where one day individuals would be able to come and stay for a period of time with a focus on transformation and healing, as if by magic as I began to consider an alternative to our weekly library group talks. I received an invitation to go to Bulgaria and view some land that was available, I jumped on a plane immediately, I could feel this was divine timing, when I saw the land, it was perfect.

And so, it begins. The next leg of the journey.

My team and I intend to create a space where individuals can either come to convalesce, participate in 7-10 days silent retreats, with Satsang (talks on true nature of the self and reality) yoga and other related activities, or participate in healing ceremonies where we will invite guest speakers and healers.

We invite those that feel compelled to walk this path with us to follow our journey as we share our unfolding story through photos, videos, and logged reflections, from our beginnings in Leeds, to the heart of the Balkans. Whether you seek healing connection, or simply sometime to rest in stillness, know you are welcome.
There are many more ideas that we will be exploring, like music festivals etc, also please share your ideas if you have any.
Please keep an eye out for upcoming events.

About Me…

My name is Roy Morris, I live in Leeds, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom.
My journey toward self-discovery began around 15 years ago, I was 45 years old, a businessman in the leisure industry.
I had come from a challenging background being mixed race, Irish, Jamaican heritage in the 60’s in Leeds was uncommon and unwanted, by a large majority of the native population.
I came from a broken household, one parent mother, I spent periods of my childhood in care homes, experienced impoverishment, abuse of all kinds, violence, young offenders’ institutions, all before the age of 16.
I’d come through a lot, comparatively to the people I was now in 2011 surrounding myself with.
Although I could at least be proud of how far I’d come, a lot if not most of the people that had come through that system were by this point, had either met an untimely death through violence, addiction, abuse of some kind, were serving life sentences, locked away in mental institutions, begging on the streets mostly to feed their addictions, or strung out on anti-psychotic medications.

If I was a product of my environment, with my shaking hands, obsessive training regimes and tendencies towards violence, I often wondered what had happened to the people I was surrounded by, they by comparison had come from, in my perspective, “simple” “normal” backgrounds, yet they were as broken as me and in some cases not holding it together, on the surface as well, I realised everyone was struggling in their own unique way, no matter what background they came from, whether they were self-medicating in various ways or overtly depressed.
Whatever superficial comfort I took from understanding I wasn’t alone in my struggles, didn’t change the fact that I knew I needed help.

Previously I’d learnt not to trust conventional medicines after witnessing my mother along with almost all the adults I knew growing up spend a lifetime on tablets and gradually get sicker instead of healthier.
So, I decided with the resources I had available to me I’d explore the unconventional, alternative methods.
I first felt called to experiment with Entheogen’s in 2011, after doing some research I took a trip to Iquitos ( Peru, South America ) travelled deep into the Amazonian rainforest and spent 10 days in ceremony drinking Ayahuasca ( a mixture of the caapi vine and the chakruna leaves which produces DMT Dimethyltryptamine ) a psychoactive hallucinogenic which shamans have used for estimated thousands of years for healing physical and spiritual ailments.
I wasn’t sure what to expect but after the 10 days although it was great as an experience, I didn’t feel healed, instinctively I still felt Ayahuasca was somehow part of the solution toward healing, so maybe a month after returning to the UK I was heading to another 10 day retreat, this time in the southern mountains of Spain, ( Montefrio ) on this occasion I got what I had unknowingly been searching for, the answer to why I was suffering after the last ceremony the next morning, I drove away from the retreat like a child looking at the world for the first time, everything was shining with a newness that felt perfect and beautiful and I was overflowing with love and peace that couldn’t be touched by anything external, it was beyond the experience of the body and everything was permeated by it, bird song that I’d normally be oblivious to suddenly filled my heart with joy, I didn’t have sat nav in my hired vehicle and I didn’t refer to the road map I’d used to find the place, I felt guided and didn’t doubt it.

I arrived back into Leeds and some of the shine gradually seemed to dull but it was still there, I innocently tried sharing my experience with people around me but was met with sneering and indifference, I started to feel the disconnection creeping back in, the whispers were I’d lost the plot, gone mad, I came back to suffering around a week after returning to Leeds, it felt more painful knowing what I was meant to be feeling, I returned to ceremonies a few more times throughout that year but eventually after repeating the same cycle of bliss and then back to suffering, I reasoned that this wasn’t sustainable, I’d spoken to people that had spent years taking plant medicines and not one had fully established themselves in what I’d felt was my true home.
I eventually decided to travel and sit with teachers around the world, I looked at ancient scriptures, looked at all the denominations of religion and saw a common thread that explained what I’d experienced, what I’d felt was my inner sanctuary some called heaven, some described it as Nirvana or Mukti, it was all described the same way.
I gradually found my way back to my essence through practicing, contemplation, meditation and submission.
I began sharing in earnest around 6 years ago, while I was still establishing myself in the understanding, just locally and gradually it grew a little further afield, I found it difficult to watch others suffering knowing what I knew.
I took a lot from that experience of sharing with others and now feel ready for what feels like the natural next step, just like the drive back from the retreat in Montefrio, I don’t have a map I just have complete trust in the direction I’m being taken.

— Roy Morris

Other Activities Include…​

Gallery