Thittato

3 days with 45 min mediation in a row after my last journal-entry, and then a few days without meditation. And then 45 min meditation today again (and a good cold shower, been keeping up the cold showers). I was really triggered by this experience of coming home from the ashram in Brazil, but now I think I'm finally starting to land. I guess the month in Brazil has been such a deep and rich experience that it feels like I have been away for much longer than a month, and it hasn't been so easy to get integrated back into my patterns and behaviour here back home. It feels like I have been away from everything for much longer than a month. But anyways, it seems like I'm landing more and more. I'm starting to appreciate my job and my co-workers more again, like tuning into the connection again, and I'm very much appreciating my music-friends and the bhajan-group that I'm a part of. Now I also decided on doing a 2 month really intensive guitar-course with a teacher who has a studio just right next door to me. I'll be able to do up do 9 classes per week with him. Probably more often 6 classes per week. I think this will be really good. It is a very big part of my purpose right now to improve on guitar, as it was for the whole of 2022. At some point I hope to be able to play guitar as one of the musicians in ayahuasca ceremonies. I'm also thinking right now that I want to travel back to the ashram in Brazil same time next year, but then stay there for 3 months this time. So keeping up with my meditation and guitar-playing until that time, and also with learning portuguese, and devoting myself to my job and the bhajan-group here in my home-town until that time would be really awesome. Sounds like a really awesome life to me. It also makes the gap of life in my home-town and life in the ashram in Brazil much less. It is very interesting because I've been looking for some sort of parallell life in a different country far away that I want to have as an adventure, inspiration and escape from my daily-life here in my home-town, and now I've found it. I have a spiritual home and a familiy in Brazil. So it is about bridging the gap between home-town life and ashram-life, and enjoying both. I guess it takes some practice and adjustment to find a good balance between these two, but now the most difficult work has been done with travelling there for the first time and getting established in the community. And interestingly enough my job as a social worker in a psychiatric hospital has many similarities to the life in an ashram, and I'm both teaching yoga and playing guitar and singing mantras with the patients sometimes, so this is also a place where I can bridge the gap. Pretty awesome, everything, sometimes, when the mind clears up and purpose and passion is felt clearly.

6th ice-bath this winter 45 min meditation this morning, too. And then I went for an ice-bath together with a bhajan group who was going to have a bhajan right after the ice-bath. I was also celebrating New Years Eve together with this bhajan group. We were having a cacao-ceremony, and then we had a long drum-circle integrated with lots of mantra-singing and a lot of improvised fun around the camp-fire. My friends that I'm jamming with, and this bhajan-group, makes it easier to integrate back into society after Brazil. Yesterday, all the way until the cacao started to kick in together with the drum-circle, I was in a big process regarding how much I'm missing the ashram in Brazil, but as I realized what a fun and open and expansive group I was with yesterday, filled with beautiful friendships, I was starting to really apprieciate what I have here in my home-town. Something big must have been triggered for me in this ashram. I was only there for a month, but I was really having the time of my life. The couple who runs this ashram are very much into playing out the role of spiritual mother and father, too - in a conscious psychotherapeutic informed way. So in many ways it was very much like coming home to my spiritual home. It has also been a long journey leading up to actually travelling there. Lots of mental preparation over several months for this "adventure of my life," and finally I was there, and it was even better than I was projecting that it would become. And now it feels like in many ways I only want to live this kind of life with those types of people around me. I think we humans are meant to live like that - in communities of like-minded people. I love psychedelics, yoga, meditation, nature, psychotherapeutic processes, travel, adventure, language, playing guitar and drums, singing, living in a community of like-minded people, and I also really like the physical work of taking care of a place like that, so it was really like all my interests converged into one community and all it had to offer. But now that I'm choosing to let go of both alcohol and cannabis, it seems like I will attract more and more people and situations into my life that are more aligned with my purpose. About time! And of course this transition is going to be a little rough, because there are frustrations and stuff that I've been numbing with alcohol and cannabis that I will now have to face head-on. But things will re-align, and I'm even finding that cacao-ceremonies are a really thing, so when I'm starting to crave some stimulant, cacao is a more healthy alternative. And a friend even has some ayahuasca lying around that I will get. Enought for at least one strong ceremony. So at some point soon I will do a solo-ceremony. And then my teachers will come to Europe again in March. So gradually new habits and a new orientation will get established and soon enough I will feel established in a more aligned life-style.

5th ice-bath this winter 45 min meditation yesterday, and 45 min meditation today. I skipped the ice-bath I had planned for yesterday, but today I did one. After the ice-bath I did another session of 45 min of meditation. So much process and stuff after Brazil, so maybe I have to increase my dose of meditation. It was like it was burning all over my being with restlessness before that second session, so I sat down in order to go deeper into the burning sensations and let it burn. There is a transformation I've experienced before where before meditation I'm victim of the burning sensations, but after meditation the burning has been transformed more into flames of devotion. Not sure if that is exactly what happened today, but I feel more cooled down now.

4th ice-bath this winter 45 min meditation yesterday, and 45 min meditation today. The meditation today was extra nice. Seems like I have a lot of experiences to process after I came home from Brazil, so my meditation doesn't go so deep yet, but it stays on processing that content, but today my meditation was deepening into concentration again. Later in the evening I went for an ice-bath again, and that was super-nice. I will do one tomorrow, and one on New Years Eve as well, so that I get in 6 baths in total before this year is over. That should give me some momentum for January and February, and also help me get a kick-start on my new sober life.

3rd ice-bath this winter 45 min meditation yesterday morning, and 45 min meditation this morning. No ice-bathing yesterday, but one today after morning meditation. So nice and empowering! Wow. I'm so glad winter is here again and I can do this. It feels like the freshest thing ever.

2nd ice-bath this winter Started the day with 45 min of meditation before going to my job. Felt really connected to my co-workers again both today and yesterday (I was going to work after I wrote yesterdays journal-entry). Feels like I'm about to land again in my normal daily life after this intense and awesome Brazil-adventure. After job I did my 2nd ice-bath this winter. So sweet. I've been ending my hot showers with a cold shower ever since last winter, and for several years now actually, but it was so nice to bring something fresh like ice-bathing into my cold exposure practice again. It brings in a lot of new inspiration. And at the same time it is really nice to be familiar with the whole thing. Seems like I came home from Brazil very much in process. The last ayahuasca ceremony I did really exploded in my face. It was like the 12 ceremonies before this one was only warming me up to this last one. And I've been working a lot while having to deal with this process, so I'm pretty tired now, but fortunately I have some days off now. So it is feels nice to be integrated back into my job-situation before I take this rest.

1st ice-bath this winter, and reflections on coming home from one month in Brazil So today was my first ice-bath for this season. I started the day with 45 min of meditation, and then I went down to the beach where a lot of other people were doing their christmas-bath. And this is also my first journaly-entry in almost two months. After I came home from the ayahuasca retreat that was 22nd and 23rd of October, I started planning on visiting this ayahuasca ashram in Brazil, which is their home-country. The teachers from this ashram are doing regular tours in Europe where I live, and I've been drinking ayahuasca with them for almost 12 years now, but never visited them in their home-country, so it was starting to feel about time. It took an immense planning and all my thought-capacity, so I dropped out of journaling here, but from 12th of November to 12th of December I was in Brazil. It was a really fantastic stay. I participated in 6 "regular" ayahuasca ceremonies, and 7 days of taking part in the ritual and work of making ayahuasca where we drank ayahuasca for 7 days straight. The doses during this work was not as strong as during regular ceremonies, but they were pretty strong still, and it was a really powerful and beautiful ritual. However, I've been feeling that it has actually been pretty difficult to return back home to my normal life here in Europe after this. In particular I feel very lonely. Brazil had everything for me. The country was so cool, and the ashram and the people in the ashram were so amazing. It was like all my interests merged into one place and one country where I totally felt like I had it all. In particular I was spending a lot of time working on my music. I bought a drum and a guitar over there, and I spent a lot of time practicing and jamming with other people. I even tried to play in some more official settings, and it all was a really nice learning-experience in what I need to do in order to develop my playing to get it to where I want to have it. But the damn thing is: I have an alcohol- and cannabis-addication, and it was a big theme for me during this whole stay that I wanted to give up these substances, and it was very easy to be without them when I was in Brazil, but back home I can easily see why these addictions have been sneaking up on me over the last years. Even though my practice, both in meditation and spiritual practices, and in therapy, have been pretty dedicated, these addictions have been lurking there all the time, sometimes active, other times dormant, but always there still lurking. So now that I'm back home I have to face the realities of why this problem continues to linger on. I'm thinking that maybe I need some professional help with this, but I will keep that as an open question. It feels like there is a lot of potential in my meditation these days, and when I'm starting to add ice-bathing to the mix again, maybe the cultural shock of being back home again will soon become easier. It felt really great to be back in the ice-water again today, so as for now I'll put my faith in meditation and ice-bathing, but I'll continue to evaluate how things are going.

Sunday: Second day of the ayahuasca retreat. Monday: Traveling home. One cold shower before I left, and one when I came home. Today: 45 min silent meditation, 25 min of singing gayatri mantra, 10 sun salutations, and a cold shower. This weekend was totally awesome. I'm out of words, but it was just totally perfect. Good to be back home and to start the day with some solid practice to just help me balance all the impressions from this week.

45 min meditation this morning. I’ve been keeping up my practice but I haven’t journaled about it. Now I’m at an ayahuasca retreat for the weekend. Day 1 was yesterday. Such an amazing ceremony, group of people, and music. I only managed to sleep for 3 hours tonight, but it feels like that was enough, especially with the rest I was getting from my morning-meditation. It was really nice to just sit and breathe, relax into all the impressions, and clear my mind for Day 2.

45 min meditation today as well. So nice. I feel very energized, relaxed and in a positive mood.

45 min silent meditation yesterday, and today 45 min of chanting Gayatri mantra together with a friend. We were both strumming with guitars at the same time, and it was a really nice way of meditating together.

45 min meditation yesterday, and 45 min today, Deeply relaxing.

45 min meditation yesterday, and today a good session of mantra-singing. So nice. I keep telling myself lately that my meditation practice is working and it is giving me good results. Such a nice message to give oneself :-)

45 min meditation today. Nice :-)

45 min meditation today, and a cold shower. Sweet :-)

Cold shower today. Really nice. The water is getting colder so there is more bite in it.

45 min meditation today. Didn't meditate friday and saturday. Yesterday I was participating in the mantra-circle again, which always is awesome. I had some crash this weekend from having worked a lot lately, so I've been sleeping a lot.

45 min meditation this morning. So good :-)

45 min meditation today as well. Very nice meditation. Seems like basically with vipassana-meditation one turns into all the tiny little vibrations in ones sensory experience, and that makes ones sensory experience vibrate more and more, and this experience equals that the flow of Qi energy is increased. "Stuck material" turns into a healing flow. It seems like more and more I can nudge this flow in the right direction. By accepting and seeing the vibrations in negative sensations they are decreased and dissolved into flow, by enjoying the positive sensations they are increased and strengthened. And if it doesn't flow as well as I would like to it is about seeing how I'm trying to squeeze my experience into something that it is not, and to let go of this squeezings so that I don't put unnecessary strain on my experience. The more this flow is increased, the softer, more still and spacious I feel inside. Behind my closed eye-lids there is a glowing white light filling the space of my experience. It is about letting all these things merge. To let the physical sensations of flow merge with this white light and with the feeling of spaciousness until it all becomes one thing. To become unified inside. And then seeing ever more suble ways that the mind is putting strain on itself and how one can let go of more and more subtle layers of noise.

30 days without cannabis completed Hurra! Finally made it this time. Don't think I'll be going back to it anytime soon. It was an addiction and life is much better without. Started the day with 45 min of meditation. So good. Strong momentum going on today. Softness, stillness and quiet beauty.

Gosh. I’m just getting more and more into ayahuasca and so-called «medicine music.» And, of course, especially how it relates to meditation. Tonight in my job as a social worker in an emergency psychiatric hospital we have a patient who is really really sick. All the other 11 patients here we know where we have them, and they are predictable in their sleeping routines, but this last one seemed like he was going to destroy the night for us. He was very on the defense and aggressive towards us. So I asked him if I should sit inside his room with him. I listened to all his accusations towards us, which didn’t make sense because he is psychotic, but I still tried to give him some empathic listening and at some point his defenses seemed to soften a little, and then I asked him if I should bring the guitar and play a little for him while he was resting in bed. That was enough to finally get him to lie down and stop fighting against falling asleep. Such an awesome experience to help a troubled soul find some much needed sleep through guitar and singing mantras. And especially when everything else didn’t seem to work. I need to do more «medicine music» in my job <3 :-)

45 min meditation today as well. (Or actually this is second time, but I've turned my sleeping around because of night-shifts, so my day starts now). Somewhat disappointed about this meditation, as it pales so much in comparison to the one before it. There is always the issue of honesty in meditation. The mind so quickly attaches to the memories of a good meditation and tries to copy that exerience, instead of acknowledging exactly what is going on. So I'm doing this work in my after-reflections here. And that makes the meditation feel successfull. Just surrendering into what is.

2nd session of 45 min meditation today. I just came home from working night-shift, and did a second session. This meditation was really really good. And oh my gosh I feel so connected to the ayahuasca work I did this summer. It was such a good idea to stop smoking cannabis. Everything related to self-development has become so much more interesting again. In the ayahuasca tradition that I follow they view ayahusca as bread for meditation, ie nourishment that fuels the meditation. It certainly felt like that in this meditation.

45 min meditation today as well. Not fully in the groove, but still a pretty nice meditation.

45 min meditation today as well. The groove is back. Really nice and energizing meditation. I was going through something emotional for a couple of days. Seems like that is how it always is. Life keeps flowing between expansions and contractions.