Rigel

Hi forum people. Took me way more time to bounce back from & make sense of what happened to me than I was expecting. I am still piecing this together actually. Anyhow, I’ll break down my report in 3 parts: Retreat, Post-retreat ego backlash & snapping out of ego backlash. Retreat: It was pretty difficult. Extra difficult. In fact I wasn’t able to do the full 7 days. I did 4 days. First two days I was only playing pretend. I thought I was doing serious work but I wasn’t. I was being intellectual. Trying to formulate what it is I was seeking into linguistic constructs. That was valuable in a way but I still felt lacking & fundamentally unsatisfied with what my mind was coming up with. I went over my values & solidified them. That was good. Day one felt like good old rest & recovery more than deep inner work. I had small clues where I would get inspired by one of my intellectualisations & where I would crack a tear but my mind was so dense that I wasn’t able to go into it fully & get a good taste of it. Ex. I started balling when I asked myself “what do I want?” & came up with “I want to see beauty everywhere, all the time.” Which made me realize how far from that vision I am. How much I am not embodying it at all in my day to day. That was sad but fleeting. Day 3 I started to experience pretty intense withdrawal symptoms & suffering. I started to get kundalini activations at night & I had a very hard time to handle them. As soon as I laid down it would explode & get stuck in the gut, heart, throat & forehead. I tried to let go & allow it to happen but I wasn’t able to. The only way I could manage it is either shake like I am having a seizure or squeeze every muscle I know while flooding my system with rage. Didn’t sleep more than 40min at a time that night. I was thinking of my insights from the first two days & realized it’s all stuff I was already thinking. Thoughts I’ve been thinking for a long time. Thoughts that formed in light of change of consciousness using psychedelics. Thoughts that point to an actual change in state. Thoughts that are not that state. I felt like a rat spinning in a hamster wheel. See what I really want is transformation at the level of state but it feels like there’s a gigantic mountain of suffering in front of it. Becoming that means that the way I am right now will cease to be & I am terrified to let it go. Day 4 I suffered more & had a low dose mushrooms trip. At this point I pretty much stopped trying to inquire & contemplate. I was suffering. My mind was just spewing nonsense so I just decided to do absolutely nothing about it. I would cry & then close my apathetic shell again. Took the mushrooms pretty early I had periods of inspiration where all my visions of this fully alive being I would be if I dropped all of my pretending were right here & were me. But then I would close up, look back up on it from memory & feel like I was still faking & pretending because I am not like this. I am a dysfunctional, addicted, unwise, flawed human. My mind just would not be satisfied. It all felt pointless. I wasn’t resolving anything. Too much suffering. I gave up. I needed something to stand in the way. A distraction. A numbing agent. A vice. That’s the retreat part. It sounds pretty awful when I read it back but there is a silver lining. I’ll write it later in the rest of my report. I have a school assignment due in 2 hrs I gotta go.

This is it. I am unplugging my router in a few hours, going to sleep & starting my retreat tomorrow morning. see y’all on the other side👋 I’ll write a report in the following week. Would have never grown the balls to do this or even thought of it as a possibility without Leo & this community. Thanks !

Those sandals are terrible for your biomechanics. You can’t clench your big toe & walk properly. It trickles up the chain into the knees, hips & shoulders. Terrible for your health.

Great food for thought! Thanks A lot of what I had in mind aligns with what is in your doc. 5 days before my retreat. I have trepidations & excitement. I am running over my intent again & again. I am also in the process of preparing food for 7days. No cooking at all during the retreat.

Such a rewarding process! Are you using agar or liquid culture to isolate genetics or just going straight to grain with the spores?

Cheers! And use a scale. It’s impossible to eyeball mushrooms accurately. Some are more or less dense. Anyone who pretends to know the weight of what’s in your bag from the picture is full of doodoo & shouldn’t be trusted.

I always end up removing the blindfold when it becomes wet from my tears. It’s annoying to have that soaked fabric over my face at some point.

Yes I am a Jazz Major nerd 🤓

I won’t be. I’ll be playing 2hrs a day to maintain the stuff I gotta play for my finals. I am doing this during spring break. Gotta keep in mind that uni starts again after my retreat. It’s still 12hrs of pure silent inner work. I’ve thought this through mate.

I won’t take your word for it to avoid weakening my intent but I’ll be open about it & admit you were right if that’s the case.

That’s exactly what I am going for. I feel like I am about to go to war. I am prepping for & anticipating war. Catharsis is the right word I think. definition: “the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions.” Purging is a good one too. Thanks for hyping me. I’ve told too many people to back off now lol. Time to put my money where my mouth is.

I decided to trip on day 4 from 10am onwards. I’ll do a moderate dose of mushrooms. I am expecting it to feel way different & deeper after 3 full days of emotional work/meditation.

Yeah I think seeing the sun everyday would do me some good. I was planning on going for a light run as part of my 1hour exercise routine.

Yes I did.

Those are all great ideas thank you 🙏

@The Crocodile Thanks for the inspiration but I don’t want to fill up my apartment with candle fumes.

I eat home made kimchi every day & I have noticed a significant improvement in my digestion. Nice, non-sticky logs that come out in one piece without struggles. No gas, no bowel discomfort. I used to get gases when eating chick peas. Now I don’t. And I just love the flavour of kimchi. I make it super spicy. Goes especially well with carbs like sweet potatoes, rice, whole grain bread & legumes. Meat as well. Tangy, hot & spicy health boost!

Thank you for your input Davino. Reading your comment makes me want to boil down & distill my intent to its most simple formulation & make it a sort of mantra. Something I can repeat over & over when I find myself loosing focus. Maybe write it down on a piece of paper & stick it to the wall where I’ll be doing the work.

I didn’t think of it but it makes a lot of sense. I fully expect my mind to try every trick in the book to derail my efforts during the week. If I can remove all guess work before going into it & know exactly what I should be doing at any moment, it should make it easier to stick to it & not take my mind’s bullshit at face value. Thank you for your perspective. I’ll contemplate whether I should trip or not during the retreat this week & put it (or not) in the schedule in black & white.

Your advice is basically what the book says lol Practice. No book is ever going to fill in all the gaps but it’s a good read.

Yes sensei. Real movement ability doesn’t come risk free😅 Although I like the idea of using Bulgarian bags or ropes to do those movements even more. Ropes is best imo. @Something Funny check out RMT club if you want to take @Michael569’s advice to heart & you are dead set on using a mace type tool.

That is an excuse & a story. You don’t need to feel better to start moving. Get on the ground & roll around if anything else feels overwhelming. Once you start moving you increase your ability to move more. You don’t by waiting to feel better. By crawling you set yourself up for walking. By walking you set yourself up for running. By sitting & waiting to feel better you set yourself up for sitting more & feeling worst.

I don’t have experience the mace but I do a practice with heavy ropes that involves a lot of similar movements & I can say it has been SHOCKING. If you want to move well you need some kind of practice that works on rotation & coiling of the spine, supination & pronation of your joints. The problem with traditional lifts you are doing is they teach you how NOT to move by bracing your spine in a neutral position. Don’t get me wrong, pull ups, pushups & such are great for building strength but they are inadequate to train you how to actually move like a human can & should in everyday life. I was socked to discover that most people don’t even know how to walk properly because they either don’t move at all & sit all day or (even more socking) only lift & squeeze their muscles & call that training. Most people can’t walk in balance because their spine won’t move. I think the mace can correct that from what I have seen. @Michael569 Sorry but you are very wrong on this one. I would choose to do mace work or other practices that involve coiling of the spine before all the other practices listed. Balance & movement ability >>> hypertrophy hypertrophy is great if it’s built on a fluid & balanced foundation.

I don’t remember the brand I am using. It’s been a few years already. But you’d probably have to cater to the company your audiologist is working with. I had my ear doctor make the molds & they sent it to a company that took those & made the ear plugs. I wish I remembered, sorry.

Have some some custom molded made. They are a bit pricey but they are a million times better than anything off the shelf. One of the best investments I ever made as a musician. You also get to change the noise reduction level whenever you want by changing the filter in them. Very easy to do. -15db, -20db, -30db. Whatever you want & all with a neutral/flat eq curve.