Ten inspiring days with depth and lightness, full of life, with warm encounters and meditative silence – that was the Celebrate Life Festival 2019! On Sunday, August 4, the 15th festival ended with a touching ritual of thanksgiving. A total of 1,200 people were directly on site, 194 were present via livestream.
The highly topical theme this year was “Home – Being at home in a changing world“.
Thomas Hübl and the guest speakers have explored the question of what home means in a dynamic process, and how we humans as cultural beings continually recreate home in our consciousness.
This year’s festival spanned a wide range of exciting elements of the home experience, in three modules:
- Home in me
- Home in the world
- Home in God
Thomas Hübl:
“The Festival 2019, has shown us the deep meaning of the topic of Home, not only as an intellectual understanding, but also as an inner reality of experience. Home, and also the wounded home within us, has a strong impact on the way we shape our lives. And on how we feel embedded in a world to which we can make a meaningful contribution.
Christina Bethell and Thomas Hübl
Since for many people the inner homeland is hurt or traumatized, a healing community is important. A community of people who care about the healthy restoration of the home in all of us. For 10 days the festival was such a community.
Denying home leads to disembodiment and to mental, decoupled concepts about the world, which often find no relevant implementation. A rigid attachment to home as a demarcation (as a symptom of deep fear) leads to xenophobia and exclusion. We have explored what a healthy concept of homeland is that honors the human need for security and protection as well as the urge for freedom and creativity.
East-West Encounter
How can we practice healthy inclusiveness, that is including “the other” and the foreign, and at the same time create safe spaces for families and children?
We made ourselves aware of the division between nature and humans and how we can transcend it. For those who speak of the reconnection to nature, already live in the symptom of separation, because our bodies are part of nature.
The festival also gave us an experience of how much global warming immanently influences us and our society, and how much we are all called to act here. Here we can really be very effective by initiating a change of consciousness in our relationship to nature.
The Big Hall
Home in the spiritual dimension is the realization of transcendence and the impermanence of the sensory experience. All life is always in motion, and in the depths of our consciousness we are permanently rooted in silence and motion as Not Two. The daily experience is thus embedded in a more comprehensive dimension of consciousness, which gives the human being a meaning that goes far beyond being human and is deeply anchored in humanity”.
The Core Orga Team of the festival
I would like to thank all the main speakers who contributed so wonderfully to the festival this year (Christina Bethel, Karen O’Brian, Tristan Harris, Ken Wilber, Brian Swimme), all the workshop leaders, the assistant team and the entire volunteer team, including the core team that planned and organised the festival over a long period of time.
Many thanks to all the guests who came and formed a community that is healing, transformative and innovative”.
The emotional radiance, the healing resonance and the many new impulses that emanate from these ten days will continue to have a lasting effect on the many people who were there, in our field and beyond.
The shared visions of the future of our planet, the collective power and connectedness of so many people on the road together touch deeply and encourage us to move on.
The next Celebrate Life Festival will take place from August 30 to September 4, 2020, again at the Omega Institute near New York City, USA.
And the following year, 2021, the festival will be in Germany again.
Celebrate Life Festival 2019 – Photos
Celebrate Life Festival 2019 Video Clips
Celebrate Life Festival 2019 Website