1948 - 2023
God's Pocket
I Walk in Single Mindedness
Serendipity
I Like Me
EJ Shares
Mattia’s Magical Bench
Practitioner Letter
It Is So Simple
Having fun wherever
I am - whatever I do
WHEN I WAS sweet sixteen, I got my first taste of a monastic life.
Before I finished high school our class was invited to spend a week in a traditional Mona-stery in silence.
For the first time in my life I realized how beneficial it is not to talk and be still. It was a beautiful blissful inside myself experience. Though the silence impressed me deeply, the general environment was rather too somber, stern and sad. This I thought was cloistered life.
Living since a quarter of a century as a monk at the Absolute Monastery I now see and experience cloistered life quite differently.
By choice I create a happy and fulfilled atmosphere wherever I go wherever I am. I do so now here in my treasured home, the Absolute Monastery.
This is what all experience who come to visit us here as monks. Our motto is happiness, health, wealth, purity, givingness, creativity - feeling fulfilled. All this we do by being self disciplined, self dedicated, self determined, and self diligent toward our spiritual life.
Recently one of my Swiss grandsons came to the UNI campus to spend some valuable time with the Monastery monks and me.
Guest-visitors share their creative skills with us. It is their choice to freely give from their hearts.
They practice being themselves and having fun. They have specific times for meditation and introspection.
They awaken to inspirational ideas they have dreamed of but never believed possible. Often unknown talents make them aware that indeed they are fabulous beings capable to do anything they want.
With great interest and curiosity I observed 20-year-old Mattia Arnoldi, my grandson evolving, revealing and fulfilling his creative ideas on campus. For the first time in his life he came up with the magical thought to build an architecturally well-designed wooden bridge over a dry creek bed that he instantly proudly accomplished.
Several times every day I walk from the Embassy to the Monastery and I cross this lovely wooden bridge thinking of my genius grandson. His creativity stands as a monumental gift on the UNI grounds among all the other tasks he masterminded. He caringly shared his uninhibited magic with the UNI-campus during his three months stay.
One day Mattia amazed me with another special inventive grand idea. His beautiful blue eyes were magically sparkling as he shared his ingenious inspiration with me. "May I cut the big dry tree trunk lying at the Citadel corner," he asked me filled with anticipation to start his exciting new project.
I was thrilled about his eagerness and gave him my instant OK! reminding him: Go and have fun!
Happy like a young deer, he leapt off to fulfill his work of dreams - responding to me in his newly learned English-Italian: "Of course, Nona, I always have fun!"
That entire afternoon I heard him sawing and hammering working with uninhibited delight over the fallen tree. I wondered what his amusement would bring forth, being tempted to peak in on him. Later my patience was greatly rewarded with the delightful piece of art Mattia humbly presented to me.
In only a few hours he had created a special meditation bench - uniquely sculpted from a fallen Live Oak Tree hundreds of years old. Now here I am honored to be the first one to sit on it.
Delightfully speechless about his ability, I asked my young artist: Where and how do you plan to set up this monumental masterpiece, it is an enormous load?
"Just watch and wait," he casually responded with a knowing smile. For Mattia nothing is impossible. His dream was in his mind as already accomplished. So he and our handyman loaded the bench on the tractor and up it went to the top of the OM Meditation Mountain at its perfect planned location. There it stands, Mattia’s Magical Bench, overlooking the UNI-campus, our Far Valley Ranch and the Absolute Monastery campus. Its idyllic surroundings invite monks and visitors alike for a lovely daily meditation. Monastery life at the Absolute Monastery is fun. Thank you Mattia for your great sharing!
—Dr Ellen Jermini