Is Moinhos Velhos a Religious Retreat?
No. The religious philosophy of Moinhos Velhos is that we welcome visitors of all faiths and none. We accept all religions as equal, the one religion to be neither better nor worse than the other.
Moinhos Velhos is a spiritual health retreat as we invite people to work with their spiritual, as well as their emotional, physical and mental detox needs.
We often use daily readings from Opening Doors Within by Eileen Caddy, who is the cofounder of the Findhorn Foundation in Scotland. She received these messages from God during her morning meditation.
Because of the influence of yoga in our lives and work, our meditation temple has many statues from the Hindu religion. To us they depict the various aspects of the divine energies, but we are not Hindus. In the temple there are also images of many other spiritual masters, but we do not worship them.
In our mealtime prayer we acknowledge and thank the creative spirits for their contributions in creating our food.
Having said that Moinhos Velhos is not specifically Christian: we believe that Jesus Christ helped to guide us to establish a fasting retreat in this beautiful place. Jesus was also a great advocate of fasting and detoxification.