I am doing a 7day solo retreat in 2 weeks. Any tips?

[Rigel]

2 hours ago, Sugarcoat said:

Wow that you’re doing that. That must require crazy discipline. I’ve tried 3 hour meditations and I find that hard enough. Maybe if you face frustration and agitation from the boredom that will inevitably come, just know that it’s temporary and it’s like a wave that will pass, so if you pass that wave each time it’s like you go deeper and deeper. Your brain/mind getting more accustomed to the lack of stimuli, forcing it to rewire. I bet you’ll release a lot of emotion, anything that has been hidden has the opportunity to come up and be cleared out of your system. I bet it’s gonna do amazing things. You go man

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.

[Rigel]

7 hours ago, Salvijus said:

If you do mushrooms on day 4, you won't be able to continue with your retreat soberly. Either you will start increasing doses or you will lose the energy and inspiration to continue the retreat altogether. Let me know if I was right when you're done. 👍

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.

Edited February 18 by Rigel

[Sugarcoat]

14 hours ago, Rigel said:

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.

If you manage to get through this it would be really cool

[Schizophonia]

@Rigel Don't listen to music ; It's one of the worst things you can do.

[Rigel]

31 minutes ago, Schizophonia said:

@Rigel Don't listen to music ; It's one of the worst things you can do.

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.

[Schizophonia]

1 hour ago, Rigel said:

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.

Are you studying music? 🤔

[Rigel]

36 minutes ago, Schizophonia said:

Are you studying music? 🤔

Yes I am a Jazz Major nerd 🤓 

[Realms of Wonder]

Not saying you need to follow this word for word, but I created a process for myself when I do Solo Retreats. (It is a Google doc)

Have fun! 

"How To Take A Solo Retreat" 

[Rigel]

14 hours ago, Realms of Wonder said:

Not saying you need to follow this word for word, but I created a process for myself when I do Solo Retreats. (It is a Google doc)

Have fun! 

"How To Take A Solo Retreat" 

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.

[Rigel]

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 !

[UnbornTao]

@Rigel Nice! Go have some insights.

[ExploringReality]

@UnbornTao

I love you!! Cheering you on. You got this. You are shining that light and we are all here at the campfire of consciousness sharing its own unique journey.

[EternalForest]

I can't wait to hear the results! You're an inspiration

[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.

[Salvijus]

On 2025-02-17 at 8:29 PM, Salvijus said:

If you do mushrooms on day 4, you won't be able to continue with your retreat soberly. Either you will start increasing doses or you will lose the energy and inspiration to continue the retreat altogether. Let me know if I was right when you're done. 👍

But congrats anyways 🙏

Edited Tuesday at 08:36 AM by Salvijus

[Rigel]

17 hours ago, Salvijus said:

But congrats anyways 🙏

Thanks I was about to tag you but got distracted. You were right.

Would you trip at all during this kind of experiment? Or keep it to the last day?

I’ll try again & also trip again during the next retreat just to be stubborn😅

I feel way stronger now I can do it.

[Salvijus]

3 hours ago, Rigel said:

Thanks I was about to tag you but got distracted. You were right.

Would you trip at all during this kind of experiment? Or keep it to the last day?

I’ll try again & also trip again during the next retreat just to be stubborn😅

I feel way stronger now I can do it.

If you survive 7days soberly, the desire to do psychedelics will evaporate from your mind and you will wonder where the hell did it go. But the urge will feel the strongest towards the end. The desire to do them is an unconscious ego escape mechanism at play. 

Edited Wednesday at 05:33 AM by Salvijus

[Yimpa]

On 3/24/2025 at 1:13 PM, Rigel said:

 

• • Too much suffering. I gave up. I needed something to stand in the way. A distraction. A numbing agent. A vice.

Hey, if you need some motivation during your retreats, hit me up ASAP!