July 2018

In the first week of July, I attended a retreat (alongside other SPUDS) with the spiritual friend that I have been working with since February 2017.  Interacting in person allowed me to pick up aspects of body-language & general integration that I would not have otherwise. The concepts taught helped guide me towards a more service-oriented view of the path, as well as a matured understanding of the intersection of personal practice & society.  The techniques taught helped me understand the nuances of motivation, emotional stability, concentration, investigation & choiceless awareness. I specifically realized that I could use my facility with freestyle noting to “hack” breath concentration.

Some of the deepest psychotherapeutic healing I’ve ever had occurred & have continued over 2 months later (time of this writing).  I found myself crying multiple times as early life memories arose & evaporated, leaving a greater sense of independence & confidence in my ability to navigate the world.  It felt like maybe 5 layers of baggage were lifted. With new self-love came the desire for more honest self-expression (include being ‘ok’ with feeling anger) & release of power-dynamics.  

One major perceptual shift happened, which actually seems more like a completion of the half-baked one that started in May.  The sense of total knowing of the whole sphere of consciousness at any given time synced up with itself. I was surprised that it reminded me more of dullness, but later realized this was due to the dropping away of extra monitoring that was sneakily hiding in the background.  This knowing only lasted for about 30 minutes & then I found my attention-muscle split off into the field again.

After I left the retreat, I kept using my intuition & the retreat instructions to feel my way back into that total-knowing space.  Getting back into it felt like a combination of allowing myself to conventionally space out, feel 5th jhana subaspects & repeat the teacher’s pointers mentally.  After moving in & out of it throughout the day, for a couple weeks, I was able to make it the new baseline.

Once home, a meeting with my newer mentor prompted me to start pondering the importance of creativity & the “right brain” - both for my inner life & my communication with others.  The self-acceptance kick continued as I let myself feel new waves of kindness that I probably would have tried to previously block out. There was also a sense of newfound perforation in the experiences of lust & hunger, reducing the ‘grab’ those invoked.