FINANCIAL TERMS AND CONDITIONS

TOTAL COST - £830
 

This cost covers the following:

• All food and accommodation in our retreat house (called Bishop's House) from dinner on the day of arrival till breakfast on the day of departure.

• All rooms are shared with one other person. *

• Facilitation of all teaching, anam chairdeas sessions

• Guided pilgrimages around Iona

 

* Because there are only a few single rooms in our retreat house, Céile Dé will initially allocate them (at no extra cost) to retreatants with medical conditions or some other circumstance that makes sharing difficult or impossible. If you believe you have a condition that would be supported by sleeping in a single room, please indicate this when, after accepting these terms and conditions, you are taken to a booking form. 

 

PAYMENT TERMS -

 

You can choose to pay either in full or in two staged payments. This is how your chosen payment method will be taken and also how it would be refunded in the event that you cancel your booking:

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IF YOU CHOOSE TO MAKE A FULL PAYMENT OF £830.

• A SINGLE PAYMENT OF £830 secures your booking

• £100 of this IS A NON-REFUNDABLE administration fee.

• Should you cancel your place you would receive a refund only if we are able to fill your place.

 

IF YOU CHOOSE TO MAKE TWO EQUAL PAYMENTS OF £415 

• AN INITIAL PAYMENT OF £415 secures your booking

• £100 of this IS A NON-REFUNDABLE administration fee

• A 2nd PAYMENT of £415 must be made before November 25th, 2023.

• Should you cancel your place any time before making your second payment (due before November 25th) you would receive a refund of £315 only if we are able to fill your place

• ​Should you cancel your place any time after you have made your second payment (due before November 25th) you would receive a refund of £730 only if we are able to fill your place

 

Please do not request alternative payment terms/times, as we are unable to accommodate anything other than the above.

Céile Dé reserve the right to cancel your booking and give your place to someone else if you do not respond in a timely way to our attempts to contact you or if your payments are late.

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​We are unable to make any refund of any amount if you fail, for any reason, to arrive at the retreat house, or if, for any reason you have to leave before the end of the retreat.

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We are also unable to make a refund if we have reasonable cause, as described below, to ask you to leave the retreat house before the end of the retreat. Neither, under such circumstances will Céile Dé be held liable for extra costs incurred by you, in seeking alternative accommodation, etc.

 

INSURANCE... AND DISCLAMER

 

We strongly advise that you take out full comprehensive travel insurance ("Cancel for any Reason") before travelling to the Isle of Iona. ​We cannot be held responsible for the loss of money or belongings whilst on retreat nor for any personal injury or illness suffered by a retreatant.

 

A WORD ABOUT FOOD (AKA “When in Rome…”)

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The retreat house will provide three meals per day, including a packed lunch. Bishop’s House describe their fare as 'good, wholesome home cooking'.  ​Please be aware that Bishop's House is on a remote Hebridean island just off another remote Hebridean island. Iona is almost 100 miles and two ferry rides away from anything close to the food stores you may be used to in your neighborhood and further still from anywhere that sells more alternative ingredients. The kitchen in Bishop's House is also very small and simply does not have the space to prepare several different meals in order to satisfy multiple dietary requests. So that ”all beings may benefit" we have requested a menu that supports moral choice and/or real medical conditions, rather than temporary diets or personal food preferences. ALL meals will be vegetarian with two additional options of Gluten Free and Vegan; in order to support the kitchen, we ask that you select from these options only if they represent your permanent diet. You will be asked to indicate your needs during the registration process. Bishops House will not be able to accommodate additional requests once you have arrived, by which time food for our week will already have been ordered and delivered from the Mainland. If you can't survive without your “Tibetan Mountain flower Broth” bring it with you :-) There is a small refrigerator in the lounge for guests' use, where a few personal items may be stored... and there is one very small food store on Iona, where everyday items can be purchased.

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THE SACRED CONTRACT
GUARDING AND PRESERVING THE CONTAINER OF OUR RETREAT

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As the retreat facilitator, part of Sr. Fionn's work is to protect retreatants from distractions and, because it is human nature to set a spiritual course only to be tempted away from it at times, to help them reset their original course when they lose their way. There is nothing worse, for retreatants and for Sr. Fionn too, to hear the words being uttered at the end of a retreat: "I wish I had been able to keep to my intention - now I'm leaving Iona and its too late". Please serve the intention that you envisioned when you decided to come to this retreat by keeping to the sacred contract described below at all times during our retreat.

 

OUR SCHEDULE - AND PUNCTUALITY

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Our retreat will include the following scheduled sessions, all of which will take place in our main meeting room:

• ​Rùn every morning before breakfast

• A two-hour session, almost every morning, of Immradi (traditional teaching style) session, often opening into anam chairdeas

• ​Optional, open-ended Rùn at 6 pm, which retreatants can miss if they need longer times out walking...

• Rùn at 9 pm, before bed

 

It is expected that retreatants attend all of the above sessions, with the exception of the 6 pm optional Rùn.

​Please aim to be seated in our meeting room at least 5 minutes before any session is due to begin. If you are delayed for any reason, please do not enter the room after the session has begun (once the central candle has been lit).

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OUTER SILENCE...

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We are defining 'outer silence' as: the absence of speech (including whispering) and the absence of unnecessarily loud noises caused by the body (such as slamming doors and stomping up stairs).

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On the day of our arrival, we will have time to say hello to each other and chat excitedly! We will enter silence with our first Rùn together at 9 pm that evening. We will hold silence until the day before our retreat ends, in order to make a gentle shift out of silence..

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​This silence will be held at all times and in all places (not merely in our retreat house, but everywhere on the island) during our retreat. If you are repeatedly unable to hold silence we may have to ask you to leave our retreat and move out of the retreat house - and we would be unable at that late stage to offer you any refund, neither will we be able to help you to find and pay for replacement accommodation. It is worth adding that, in the sixteen Iona retreats we have offered since 2005, this has never happened.

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​There are a few, mostly obvious, exceptions to the holding of silence:

• When we are chanting

• When we are in a circle, sharing in anam chairdeas

• When we are making necessary plans for something, such as a group walk to a certain part of the island.

• Some other kinds of 'necessary' talk, such as an interaction with a non-retreatant, where it would feel odd or unnatural if we did not engage with them momentarily, such as having to buy something in the local shop; or, inside the retreat house, such things as, "excuse me, where is the coffee?" or "can you remind me what time we are planning to meet for Rùn this evening?" or "the house is on fire!"

 

​(If you need to ask a question or require help of a practical nature, please approach the appropriate member of staff or Sr. Fionn, rather than a fellow retreatant - because we are the ones who are there to serve your comfort whilst on retreat, whereas other retreatants are there to stay in their retreat space.)

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When people are together for long periods of highly-charged sacred silence... and if one or more go off somewhere to break that silence, returning to the retreat house sometime later, the noise in which they have been engaged will cling to them, as perceptible as the smell of cigarette smoke. This is very real - and although the intrusion of 'noisy-energy', albeit on a subtle plane, may only be sensed by those who are well-experienced in the art of working creatively with spiritual silence, it will nonetheless negatively impact the whole in some way or other

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...AND INNER SILENCE

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We are defining 'Inner Silence' as the absence of mental distraction (such as 'retail therapy', flicking through magazines, tweeting, texting, emailing and surfing the web) and emotional incitement (such as inviting fellow retreatants out of their own depths by asking them to actively engage with any transient emotion or 'stuff' you may be experiencing).

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If you are in constant communication with the outside world, you are not, by definition, on retreat. Mobile phones or any other devices used for instantly connecting with the world you are choosing to leave behind will be turned off before 9 pm on the first day and will remain off until we leave silence again. If your phone serves as an alarm clock, please switch it to airplane mode for the course of the retreat (please ask for help before you leave home if you are unsure how to do this).

Luckily for our highest intentions, mobile phone reception is very bad on Iona and, especially if you are from the USA, there is a chance that your phone won't work anywhere over here, so the Gods are working with us to help you to avoid temptation :-)

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So that nobody becomes worried if they don't hear from you or are unable to contact you, be sure to tell your friends and family before you leave home that you will not be contactable by phone or text during your retreat - and put up an auto-reply on your email.

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If you feel this inner and outer silence is too much to manage in your life right now, then you need to reconsider going on a full-blown spiritual retreat.

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THE 'PLAYING SAFE' BIT

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We will provide you with an emergency contact number and email address to pass on to your significant others, so that you can be contacted in case of an emergency. We will also be asking you to provide us with the details of the person you would wish us to contact on your behalf, should that become necessary for any reason, such as illness or injury.

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PLEASE HOLD YOUR COURSE, FOR YOUR OWN SAKE AS WELL AS THE OTHERS

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As well as the above, the following diversions must also be viewed as a departure from our shared intention that will negatively impact on everyone in our circle and that may result in the individual concerned being asked to leave our retreat house:

• Going out for a social occasion (such as dinner).

• Going to the pub (it has happened! :-)

• Socialising with non-retreatants

• Attending ceilidhs in the village hall

• Boat trips for tourists

• ​etc...

 

Please appreciate the vast difference between being on holiday and being on retreat. The former you can do anywhere, at any time in your life, the latter we are working hard to offer to you, in a consensual world that constantly undermines its chances of success. There are numerous lovely things to do whilst staying on Iona, but our retreat is a carefully created womb-like space, guarding something precious that wants to emerge from deep inside - please give it a chance - the process takes time and effort and is not supported by the above activities, all of which fall into the category of tourism. We can appreciate that this will be the very first visit to Iona for many of you and you will want to do IT ALL... If that sounds like you, please plan to spend a few extra days on Iona after our retreat ends; book yourself into one of Iona's two hotels or many B&Bs and enjoy moving into gentle vacation mode. In fact, we heartily recommend that you take a little extra time on the island after your retreat, in order to make your re-entry into everyday life more gradual and easy to bear. On that note, some of our retreatants also like to arrive either on Iona, or certainly in Scotland, a couple of days before the start of the retreat, in order to decompress, drop a gear or two and get at least a little of the jet lag out of the way.

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ALL WORKING TOGETHER TO HOLD OUR SPACE

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We hope the need will not arise, but should you feel that your retreat experience is being diminished by the behaviour of others in the retreat house it is important that you take steps to remedy this. We would consider it to be 'necessary speech' on your part, were you to gently and clearly request that a fellow retreatant stop talking to you... or checking emails in your shared bedroom, or whatever they may be doing that impacts on your retreat. If you have spoken to them and the situation persists, we encourage you to speak to Sr. Fionn as soon as possible and she will do her best to resolve things with as much firmness, compassion and diplomacy as possible.

 

PLEASE DON'T GO AWOL!

There are bogs, cliffs and dangerous tides all around Iona. Not to mention fairies who want to take you away with them into the Otherworld. It is a part of the culture of remote and wild places like the Highlands and Islands of Scotland that if someone does not show up at a time or place they were expected - and remains nowhere to be seen an hour or two later, that Emergency Search and Rescue are alerted. Once or twice in the past we have got very close to this... please be kind to our hearts and avoid putting us through this again (in both cases the 'missing people' concerned were all right... but their worried fellow retreatants were fairly knocked out of their space for a good while!)
 

​ONE-TO-ONE TALKS

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We're sorry, but one-to-one sessions with Sr. Fionn do not form a part of this retreat, as there will not be sufficient time for this.

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​FINALLY...

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Everything we have written above is the result of years of experience running Céile Dé silent retreats on a tiny Hebridean island. We know the ingredients that make for a powerful retreat and anticipate the pitfalls and want to do all that we can to avoid them. We hope you will appreciate that whilst some of the above stipulations may seem quite unusual from the point of view of 'Normal Life', we are creating a retreat from 'Normal' and that, by definition, requires a different set of conditions than we are used to, in fact it almost goes without saying that the everyday self should feel just a little out of sync with what is being asked of it; we are after all inviting the Higher Self to emerge and that requires a sense of spaciousness, an honoring of sacred space and a particular kind of applied presence; the Self is served when we are no longer self-serving.

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*We realize there are a lot of words here, we recommend that you read everything over several times and walk a while with what it really means to agree to these terms and conditions.

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--------- THIS AGREEMENT IS GOVERNED BY THE LAW OF SCOTLAND ---------

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1.  ​I will hold to the Sacred Contract as described above

2.  If I am paying in two equal installments, I will keep a note of the second payment's due date

3.  I will pay the first payment immediately upon registering and, if needed, make the second payment in good time. (a reminder will be sent out by Termonn one month before the second payment is due)

4.  I will respond to any important communications from the retreat organizers​ in a timely manner

​5.  I fully understand that this Iona retreat is not an annual teaching retreat ​

 

BY REGISTERING FOR THIS RETREAT, I AM AGREEING TO ALL OF THE ABOVE TERMS AND CONDITIONS.