Retreat Conclusion
I have returned from my retreat. I learned a great deal, mostly on a subconcious level, and came to several conclusions which I will try to elaborate upon.
Isolation and Focus
The most obvious details I noticed pertained to isolation. In my time alone, I had free time beyond my dreams even though I still spent nine hours a day at work, and with that free time came a level of freedom that I do not often experience. I got the opportunity to write code, play, read, and meditate that my normal life normally crowds out. I used them thoroughly. Sometimes I did so unwisely, and sometimes I used them quite well.
I also noticed that I really do value small group interactions, possibly above all others. I frequently do not want one-on-one time, especially if all of my interactions for a couple of weeks involved only one person. Even more frequently, large group time completely overwhelms me.
I think of it as focus. I can maintain extreme focus only for so long. Eventually I need to get more diffuse. But I discovered some weeks ago that if I go out to a big event, so many things vie for my focus that I have no hope of making sense of anything. Further, parties run at their own speed. If I want to really participate, I must hook into that speed The one party that I attended had some dynamic that I was unable to participate in because I was so accustomed to both being alone and to choosing my own speed.
I need to continue to spend a lot of time alone. I came to understand this last summer, but putting it into practice was difficult. Changing habits always is. After a month, I spend time alone easily.
Diet
As I have said before, I spent twenty-one days on a cleanse. Generally, this required a very restricted diet and a set of supplements that theoretically helped clean out excess fatty tissue and any toxins that dissolved in them. As we all know, anything fat-soluble may end up living in the body for years.
I saw two immediately visible effects and my nutritionist saw one. I saw my weight drop rapidly back down to my ideal. I also saw the piercings that I got back in October very suddenly heal. Those piercings had been struggling to heal for months, making some progress forward and then slipping back, and then they suddenly came to almost fully healed in the last twenty-one days. I will remember that and may even go on this cleanse again in autumn when I go back to get some more holes poked in me.
My nutritionist noticed that I slimmed down a bit in several places. I do not see it when I look at the pictures that I have been taking, but I do know that I have to wear the utility belt tighter than I ever have before.
Invisibly, I learned about cravings. Three days in, with the cravings starting to take up my mind, I discovered that my biggest and most urgent craving was for fat. The source did not matter. I would have been as happy whether it came from candy, chocolate, pizza, or the cream in my coffee. Much later, I learned ways to work around this craving by eating some foods that provided some of the taste involved with fatty foods, but without actually providing any significant amount of fat. I discovered sweet potatoes, which were allowed in the cleanse, and I fried them in a small amount of olive oil, which was also allowed on the cleanse. Everything suddenly became much easier until I was able to add in lentils, and then the rest of the cleanse went very well.
Except for the day that I attended a party. I ended up leaving after just a couple of hours because I got severely overwhelmed, both by all of the foods that I could not eat, and by the number and loudness of the people. A mere ten people overwhelmed me. See my comments about isolation. The food tempted me so much that I left, had a single fortune cookie (which first tasted very pleasing, and then rather bitter), and then I felt unhappy for the rest of the evening. I railed against this specialized diet that I forced myself to go through and the tenacity with which I would finish it out. And then I felt better in the morning, went to work, and continued on through the rest of the cleanse with a few more bumps.
Cravings exert a great hold over me. I think that food has a more direct influence on my experience than anything else. I sometimes find that only magnificent sex can satisfy me as well as a decent bar of chocolate or a good cup of coffee. Considering the coffee that I buy and brew, I spend more of my time drinking coffee than having sex.
Spiritual Matters
A long, long time ago, somebody was trying to tell me that being able to go into an out-of-body experience really deserves little more than “so what”. I did not get it at the time, even though e explained it all very well. I thought I got it, but I really did not.
I figured it out, I think for real this time, over the last month. Go out of body, raise consciousness to see the big picture, lower conciousness to more directly touch the world, then Come Back And Do Something With That. Just experiencing does little good until I turn that experience into knowledge anduse that knowledge Right Here and Right Now.
The book I read, On Becoming an Alchemist, by Catherine MacCoun, described alchemy from a Christian alchemy. As I came to understand, “Christian”, “Buddhist”, “Islamic” (or Sufi), and others simply show different perspectives on the same set of truths, helping the alchemist understand the process through a familiar religious framework. Use what works, choose the perspective that resonates. Read the documents of the alchemists of all traditions and understand my own biases in terms of what perspective I use. The book resonated with me and made so much sense to me that even now, after processing on it for several weeks, I find that I must resist parroting what the book said. I am internalizing all of it, reformulating it into an understanding which will be uniquely my own. Ironically, I still do not know what religious filters I put on this, so I have work to do there.
I can still describe the broad picture as I understand it today.
First, the Alchemist, by which I now mean me, seeks self-transformation. I seek this transformation so that I can draw the energies of my body and the energies of my mind together at my heart. Once I have done this, I have created a Philosopher’s Stone, my heart, and can direct those energies outward from me, influencing the world around me in loving and helpful ways when the alignment is complete and when I see the world as it exists, not as delusion would have me believe. This process brings my spirit and my soul back together, though they technically never parted except in perspective.
At the time of my creation, my soul jumped into the horizontal world, splitting into my physical body and my subtle body. My spirit held back. At this time in my life, I have no real conciousness of my spirit. I have very little awareness of my subtle body or those of the people around me, though I have spent much of the last three years working on cultivating that awareness.
I exist here and now in the “horizontal” realm where I have full freedom of movement within the realm. If I can become lighter or more abstract in my conciousness, I can rise upward into the realms of thoughts and ideals to get a glimpse of the bigger picture or to commune with those spirits and angels who live at those levels or who have descended to those levels. If I can become heavier in my thoughts, I can descend into the emotional realms, into more intense physicality, and communicate with the elementals and so-called demons who live there. All of this communication benefits everyone. I learn from them. They learn from me. What they learn depends on what I can teach and what they need. Further, these heavier beings can help me heal from wounds that my physical body remembers even though I do not. Ultimately, they can help me transmute the physical emotions which drain me into similar emotions that help to energize me.
The experience bears importance only insofar as I put it to use. Pure experience does not help. Translating that into understanding helps, especially if I can communicate that understanding to others. Putting that understanding into active use helps much more, helping me to be most effective in the world towards… what?
I read that I can undertake much of the path through my own efforts and the aid of the spirits, elements, and other human teachers may speed me along significantly. In fact, I believe that these spirits and teachers really wish to render such aid, and that I will wish to render the same aid when I understand enough to usefully provide it. The book gives guidelines and ideas mostly for how to develop my own methods of transformation, but the final stage is out of my hands. Somewhere, sometime, if I remain intently on this path, the final stage will occur when I suddenly, with full knowledge of what I can do, give up all power I may have created to obey the dictates of the universe. Ms. MacCoun says “God” here and describes that transformation as the shift from arbitrary magick (the power of the individual to choose and create amazing change) to sacred magick (the power of the God to operate through the individual when the individual steps aside). What I call it will depend on what I believe when I reach that point.
For now, I meditate regularly just to focus my mind. Watching how my mind works reveals so much, and yet I have difficulty describing that knowledge. I have no vocabulary to describe what I see, but I can create analogies for what I feel.
Importantly, I must check and recheck everything. I can test every experience and insight here in the horizontal realm. I must discard insights which do not stand up under testing. Perhaps I mistranslated the experience. Either way, I must not get so caught up with looking upward that I forget to verify my experiences. Incarnation here gives me the opportunity to run such tests.
What Changed?
My perspective changed. My habits changed. I wanted this, and in one month I learned what I want to change now and got a good start on beginning it.
- I am meditating regularly, but not quite regularly as I wish.
- I have retained most of my diet from the cleanse. I have incorporated several foods that were forbidden, but I am adventuring through re-creating some of my favorite foods in healthier ways.
- I have slowed down my life dramatically.
- I have re-learned the joy of solitude.
- I have a roadmap… for now
I do not really know how I will integrate back into the normal world. I suspect that, as I described above, I will need to remain very careful about how I distribute my time amongst people, and I will need to guard my alone time carefully.