Conclusions after a 2-month solo-retreat

[CoolDreamThanks]

28 minutes ago, Ulax said:

So like if a thought comes up you might observe it for a few seconds. Then switch to say watching the window in the room, and then switch to something else. And so on and so on?

Hm not really, I would stay aware of awareness itself without directing it to objects. It’s a switch to an abstract, invisible domain.
 

Even when I have to direct it to an object to interact with it, the silence is there as a background and after the need for interacting is finished then the silence comes back to the foreground.

[jimwell]

3 hours ago, CoolDreamThanks said:

I feel like if we go through life consciously, then what was an idol before can now be an avenue for deep healing.

And experience divine love and beauty. 

Hedonism becomes spiritual hedonism. Tadaa! 

[CoolDreamThanks]

Additional thoughts (which after further inspection are wrong, see below posts as to why):
 

• Romantic relationships are the main idol in this dream. The addiction to them is so deep, it's a core desire, like sex and food. We want relationships for intimacy, pleasure, companionship, meaning, peace. These things are our birthright, but we go about it in an incorrect way. True intimacy, true pleasure, true meaning and true peace is only found in God. The desire for romantic relationship, for sex, for money, and all other idols has to be re-directed back to God. Desire cannot be spread out across multiple things if we want true happiness. God has to be our only goal. It literally feels like desiring for a partner or sex, this desire for God. But God is like the purest partner in existence - She doesn't tolerate a breadcrumb of cheating. If you turn your eyes away from her unto someone else - She interprets that as cheating and leaves you. God, if you want to experience all of Him, requires all of You to be fully dedicated to Him only. 

 

• Letting go of idols happens only through wisdom. We must see the pain our idols bring us in the end. It's literally this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gaxt347IrFw&ab_channel=iano 
• Most people go around not knowing what they are doing, they think they are seeking happiness, whilst in truth they are seeking for something that will hurt them the MOST. It takes a very wise being to see this and to stop doing it. It's the end of all dreaming. 

 

This universe has invisible scales of pleasure and pain. The more intense the pleasure the more intense the pain will be. Romantic relationships offer us the deepest connection, the sweetest sexual experience, the most beautiful nights spent in the arms of our lover. All of this goes onto the pleasure end of the scales. Now, as we all know relationships end and usually in a very painful way. 

It is usually something like cheating. How deep is the heartbreak when the love of your life, what you considered your soulmate, cheats on you? As deep as the cumulative amount of pleasure was. It's psyche-shattering. It can make you kill yourself. And it's not hypothetical. It happened to me and it happened to you. Not cheating, but the end of a relationship with the love of your life. It's the way this universe is set up. The scales of pleasure and pain are everywhere. You enjoy tasty food? Cancer will eat you alive, literally. It's not a hypothetical, it will happen. 

• You love porn? It will re-wire your brain so that you will not be able to have sex with humans, besides other psychologically damaging things it does.
• You want a big house and a nice car? Prepare to lose your psychological and physical health to attain that desire. Also be ready to lose it all. 
• There is no winning this game, Morty. Look at Leo - how much he suffers because of his physical health. Look at the world, take it in, see what it is, and let it go in exchange for Infinite Heaven for all eternity. The catch? The journey back home fucking sucks too. Meditating for months on end is so painful. Healing the metaphysical separation from God trauma requires for it to re-surface and that is painful as fuck. But there is no other way - only directly through it. I stopped after 2 months because of the fear and the pain.
• I'm stuck in a catch 22 - if I stop meditating and dedicating myself to God, there looms a meaninglessness behind every thing I do - I know what I am doing - being mesmerized by the illusion of death. If I do meditate - I get miserable as the unconscious trauma surfaces and I have to work through it. There's a shitload of it. The good thing is that once in a while there's an experience of bliss and the work itself is the only meaningful thing one can do, so it feels like genuine improvement, not just mental masturbation with concepts. 

Edited September 27 by CoolDreamThanks

[Hojo]

Does it feel like this?

 

Edited September 27 by Hojo

[Inliytened1]

On 9/25/2024 at 6:51 PM, CoolDreamThanks said:

Did it some time ago, can conceptualise some of it now.
 

• Awakening is not complicated. It simply requires a complete letting go of this dream and all the idols we have made within it. Awakening requires total commitment.
   
• The practice of awakening is what every sage talks about - silence and stillness. We stop perpetuating the illusion and it dissolves. At the end of the retreat I experienced this dream dissolving and re-appearing. I know I can make it dissolve forever if I commit. 
   
• In our unconscious there is a fear of God. This fear surfaces when we reach the deep canyons of our unconscious and gets expressed symbolically in nighttime dreams. Horrific dreams that made me wake up drenched in sweat many times. It’s like ptsd. 
   
• Had maybe 5 experiences of Heaven. When I say Heaven I mean no body, no mind, no world, just infinite love. Visions of Saint Marry too.  
   
• Thinking is pain. When I fall into deep meditation - bodily pain disappears. When thoughts return - so does pain.  
   
• Saw clearly how God arranges the day time dream to allow for me to awaken by providing me with financial resources with minimal effort from my side. Beautiful. Thank you.   
   
• Sattvic diet is a must. So is light exercise. Yoga helps to sit longer. Sitting meditation is most effective, but I did a lot of walking and laying meditation too.  
   
• Psychedelics are permissions slips to meet God. They can go wrong if the desire isn’t pure and we go into it with ego as our teacher.
   
• Final step does feel like dying, but I did not go through the door of death, only stepped in with one leg and stepped back. Was scary.
   
• Books are there just to bring us above concepts and to teach us that this dream is suffering and our purpose is awakening. 
   
• Everything feels very meaningless, like walking around in a dream. Everyone is constantly blabbering about nothing, as though they will die if they shut up for a minute. 
   
• Saw how desires confuse the mind.  
   
• Saw how manifestation is a trap and will work only enough to keep you chasing for more. Like sex and all other idols. That’s how this illusion is set up. Seek and do not find is the name of this game.  
   
• Noticed the more meditative I become the more attracted I am to white, simple clothing. I think clothing is an expression of who we are. You can glance at someone and know their priorities, their internal world. 
   
• This post is meaningless. There is no one to share with. 

This is nice but did you have an actual awakening. I didnt get that from this.   Are you lucid?

[integration journey]

47 minutes ago, CoolDreamThanks said:

Additional thoughts:
 

• Romantic relationships are the main idol in this dream. The addiction to them is so deep, it's a core desire, like sex and food. We want relationships for intimacy, pleasure, companionship, meaning, peace. These things are our birthright, but we go about it in an incorrect way. True intimacy, true pleasure, true meaning and true peace is only found in God. The desire for romantic relationship, for sex, for money, and all other idols has to be re-directed back to God. Desire cannot be spread out across multiple things if we want true happiness. God has to be our only goal. It literally feels like desiring for a partner or sex, this desire for God. But God is like the purest partner in existence - She doesn't tolerate a breadcrumb of cheating. If you turn your eyes away from her unto someone else - She interprets that as cheating and leaves you. God, if you want to experience all of Him, requires all of You to be fully dedicated to Him only. 

 

• Letting go of idols happens only through wisdom. We must see the pain our idols bring us in the end. It's literally this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gaxt347IrFw&ab_channel=iano 
• Most people go around not knowing what they are doing, they think they are seeking happiness, whilst in truth they are seeking for something that will hurt them the MOST. It takes a very wise being to see this and to stop doing it. It's the end of all dreaming. 

 

This universe has invisible scales of pleasure and pain. The more intense the pleasure the more intense the pain will be. Romantic relationships offer us the deepest connection, the sweetest sexual experience, the most beautiful nights spent in the arms of our lover. All of this goes onto the pleasure end of the scales. Now, as we all know relationships end and usually in a very painful way. 

It is usually something like cheating. How deep is the heartbreak when the love of your life, what you considered your soulmate, cheats on you? As deep as the cumulative amount of pleasure was. It's psyche-shattering. It can make you kill yourself. And it's not hypothetical. It happened to me and it happened to you. Not cheating, but the end of a relationship with the love of your life. It's the way this universe is set up. The scales of pleasure and pain are everywhere. You enjoy tasty food? Cancer will eat you alive, literally. It's not a hypothetical, it will happen. 

• You love porn? It will re-wire your brain so that you will not be able to have sex with humans, besides other psychologically damaging things it does.
• You want a big house and a nice car? Prepare to lose your psychological and physical health to attain that desire. Also be ready to lose it all. 
• There is no winning this game, Morty. Look at Leo - how much he suffers because of his physical health. Look at the world, take it in, see what it is, and let it go in exchange for Infinite Heaven for all eternity. The catch? The journey back home fucking sucks too. Meditating for months on end is so painful. Healing the metaphysical separation from God trauma requires for it to re-surface and that is painful as fuck. But there is no other way - only directly through it. I stopped after 2 months because of the fear and the pain.
• I'm stuck in a catch 22 - if I stop meditating and dedicating myself to God, there looms a meaninglessness behind every thing I do - I know what I am doing - being mesmerized by the illusion of death. If I do meditate - I get miserable as the unconscious trauma surfaces and I have to work through it. There's a shitload of it. The good thing is that once in a while there's an experience of bliss and the work itself is the only meaningful thing one can do, so it feels like genuine improvement, not just mental masturbation with concepts. 

I like this. Will contemplate! 

[CoolDreamThanks]

7 hours ago, Inliytened1 said:

This is nice but did you have an actual awakening. I didnt get that from this.   Are you lucid?

I don’t know what you mean by awakening.

7 hours ago, Hojo said:

Does it feel like this?

 

Haha, something like that 😁 

7 hours ago, integration journey said:

I like this. Will contemplate! 

👍👍

[Leo Gura]

@CoolDreamThanks 2 months is a really impressive solo retreat!

[Javfly33]

8 hours ago, CoolDreamThanks said:

 

This universe has invisible scales of pleasure and pain. The more intense the pleasure the more intense the pain will be. Romantic relationships offer us the deepest connection, the sweetest sexual experience, the most beautiful nights spent in the arms of our lover. All of this goes onto the pleasure end of the scales. Now, as we all know relationships end and usually in a very painful way. 
 

Nice one.

Because pleasure is a low vibratory state... is one of the arms of the devil... Pleasure tells you, You are empty at the source...You need to me to feel good.
 

Seeking pleasure still happens because of disconnection, thats why the other side of pleasure is pain as you have said. 

[Salvijus]

On 2024-09-26 at 0:51 AM, CoolDreamThanks said:

Saw how manifestation is a trap

Without the power to manifest, you'd never experience emptiness because even that falls under the category of manifestation.

Manifestation is inseparable from what you are. There is nothing you can experience unless you desired for it in some way. And in fact, your experience is the answer to your prayers. 

Manifestation is life. Manifestion is who you are. Manifestation the way of existence. Manifestation is God. Manifestation is everything. The only question is are you a concious one or unconscious.

Edited September 27 by Salvijus

[CoolDreamThanks]

1 hour ago, Javfly33 said:

Nice one.

Because pleasure is a low vibratory state... is one of the arms of the devil... Pleasure tells you, You are empty at the source...You need to me to feel good.
 

Seeking pleasure still happens because of disconnection, thats why the other side of pleasure is pain as you have said. 

100%.  
 

Yet another nuance to this is that trying to fight against them is an even greater resistance.  
 

For the longest time I believed in the idea of sacrifice - I have to stop doing things that bring me pleasure in order to reach enlightenment. With that came alot of internal struggle and misery.  
 

However, what healed this misperception was the words Keith Kavanagh, an ACIM teacher shared:  

 

Importantly, the Course doesn't ask us to renounce anything.  That would be sacrifice, and sacrifice is of the ego thought system and not the Holy Spirit's.
We just want to gradually undo our clinging and resistance - allowing things to pass through our experience without grasping at them or trying to push them away, not deal with them, or repress them.
We work on allowing all things to be exactly as they are, with no desire that they be different, or desire to cling to things in this moment that will keep us from fully engaging with the next moment.

So, in keeping with the spirit of the original post, what we want to undo is our belief that anything in the world is the source of our happiness or our pain.
We don't have to let people or things go, only to learn to need nothing from them, extend Love to them, and undo any neediness that they must be in the next moment. 
 

Here’s how chatGPT summarized ACIM teachings on sacrifice: 

 

In **"A Course in Miracles" (ACIM)**, the concept of *sacrifice* is addressed as a key theme, and its interpretation is quite different from traditional religious teachings. ACIM views sacrifice as an illusion, based on the mistaken belief in separation from God and the ego’s interpretation of giving up something valuable to attain something greater, particularly to please God or achieve salvation. Here are some key points:

1. **Sacrifice is Unnecessary**: ACIM teaches that God does not ask for or require sacrifice. It argues that the idea of sacrifice stems from the ego, which promotes the false idea that we must lose something or suffer to gain God's love or spiritual reward. This belief only reinforces the ego's perspective of lack and limitation.

2. **Love Involves No Sacrifice**: True love, according to ACIM, is free from sacrifice. Love is abundance, completeness, and unity. It is limitless and cannot be diminished. Therefore, if one is giving in love, there is no loss or cost, and no sacrifice is involved. Giving love means extending love without losing it.

3. **Sacrifice and Fear**: The course suggests that sacrifice is closely linked to fear. The ego convinces us that sacrifice is necessary to protect ourselves or achieve spiritual goals. However, this belief is based on fear, not on the truth of our divine nature. True spiritual growth comes from understanding that fear is an illusion, and in reality, we are already one with God.

4. **Release from Guilt**: The belief in sacrifice often stems from guilt, the notion that we must atone for past sins through suffering or loss. ACIM teaches that guilt is a false belief created by the ego. Instead of sacrificing, the Course encourages the practice of forgiveness, which leads to healing and the recognition that guilt is unnecessary.

5. **Sacrifice vs. True Freedom**: ACIM holds that the belief in sacrifice leads to bondage, keeping us tied to the ego’s thought system of loss and pain. Freedom comes from recognizing that God’s Will for us is only happiness and peace. By letting go of the idea of sacrifice, we embrace the truth that we can experience love and joy without the need for loss or suffering.

In summary, ACIM rejects the idea of sacrifice as an ego-based illusion, and teaches that God’s love is unconditional, requiring no sacrifice from us. The path to spiritual awakening involves letting go of the belief in sacrifice, embracing love, and practicing forgiveness.

Edited September 27 by CoolDreamThanks

[CoolDreamThanks]

31 minutes ago, Salvijus said:

Without the power to manifest, you'd never experience emptiness because even that falls under the category of manifestation.

Manifestation is inseparable from what you are. There is nothing you can experience unless you desired for it in some way. And in fact, your experience is the answer to your prayers. 

Manifestation is life. Manifestion is who you are. Manifestation the way of existence. Manifestation is God. Manifestation is everything. The only question is are you a concious one or unconscious.

Manifestation is a stepping stone on the spiritual path. It’s valuable as it can teach the power of the mind.  
 

However, those who tried dedicating themselves 100% to manifestation likely noticed that sometimes it seems to work, but mostly things don’t manifest as you wanted. 

[CoolDreamThanks]

9 hours ago, integration journey said:

I like this. Will contemplate! 

Upon further contemplation I think that I wasn’t correct there.  
 

While there is pleasure and pain, trying to fight against our idols is a fight we are bound to lose and it brings alot of struggle.  
 

If we are already One with God, then we don’t need to do anything to be deserving of his Love.
 

We are innocent and worthy of His love now, there is no need for sacrifice, as I wrote in my response to @Javfly33

[Salvijus]

20 minutes ago, CoolDreamThanks said:

Manifestation is a stepping stone on the spiritual path. It’s valuable as it can teach the power of the mind.  
 

However, those who tried dedicating themselves 100% to manifestation likely noticed that sometimes it seems to work, but mostly things don’t manifest as you wanted. 

Your understanding of manifestation is very surface level. 

Love is what manifests everything. Love is what you are. Manifestation is inseparable from your Self. 

[Salvijus]

If love was the only thing you want, love would be your only reality. Therein lies the end goal of manifestation. It's not a desire you can make, it is a desire you can only become aware of and allow to move through you. By paying attention to the heart's desire, you get closer to the source of all desire - God, and God's will for you. 

Edited September 27 by Salvijus

[CoolDreamThanks]

13 minutes ago, Salvijus said:

Your understanding of manifestation is very surface level. 

Love is what manifests everything. Love is what you are. Manifestation is inseparable from your Self. 

Don’t you mean saying affirmations and visualizing things by manifestation? That’s what most people refer to and that’s what I was reffering to. Thought that’s what you meant and that is limited and surface level and doesn’t really work.

[CoolDreamThanks]

I think life is a reflection of our core beliefs and of our state of mind, as we are the dreamer of the dream.  
 

It’s an outward picture of an inner condition. 

[AION]

Pain and pleasure are both needed. We all strive for pleasure and enlightenment and cloud 9 but hell is there for a purpose. Pain and conscious suffering in hell is a way to burn impurities and to get spiritually lean. 

[integration journey]

@CoolDreamThanks did you do a Vipassana style retreat or self inquiry? I’m curious what technique you used during the retreat. 

[CoolDreamThanks]

46 minutes ago, integration journey said:

@CoolDreamThanks did you do a Vipassana style retreat or self inquiry? I’m curious what technique you used during the retreat. 

Self enquiry. Used to do vipassna but I didn’t like the effort part, so switched to efortless beingness.