2 Week Solo Retreat - report

[okulele]

This is my solo retreat report. I hope it will inspire you to do something like this yourself.

Over a month ago I started my 4 week solo retreat. I was quite ready for this. I rented a tiny cabin with no electricity, no water. Spartan conditions, but it was extremely cheap and all I could afford.

It was not easy.  I quickly found myself in an ocean of suffering and bliss. These two would swap back and forth, varying in intensity and duration. It didn't take me long to realize that the greater the challenge I faced, the more profound the insight at the end and the stronger the bliss following it. This kept me going through the hellish phases.

Just a day or two in, I realized that no meditation technique would do. I was not in charge. All I could do was be quiet and watch as life expressed itself through me by spontaneously contemplating the right questions, than inspecting the body, then forgetting all and surrendering completely, then other activities still.

I think it was day 3 when the kundalini stuff started to happen. Good thing I heard about all this many times. If I didn't, I'd probably go crazy. In my meditations unspeakable stuff was happening in my body, visions more real than reality would come to mind and I had problems discerning what was true and what was false. Many times my body got so blocked up I thought I would die, only to be forced into an even deeper surrender. Nights were no relief either. Lucid dreams full of trials and challenges awaited me. Alien abductions and meeting gurus, sages and stuff like that. In short, it was a hell of a ride.

Fortunately, after about 3 days this subsided. Deep contemplations started to take place uncovering old traumas, unmet desires and such. It was beautiful.

On day 14 I had the biggest insight of the retreat. I was contemplating Consciousness itself, when I realized that it is no different from Love. Than I remembered the Hindu concept of Sat-Chit-Ananda (Being-Consciusness-Love), looked closer, and sure enough, this Consciousness-Love was not different from Being either - meaning me. I bathed in this unbounded state for a couple of hours looking over a beautiful pond nearby. I came to the conclusion that I was done here, after 2 week out of 4.

 

It has been 16 days since I came home now. A lot has changed, and nothing at all.

I am clearer than ever about what I want, need and value. My life has a much deeper sense of purpose and authenticity.

My contemplation skill just sky rocketed. I realized what contemplation is, and it is such a joy to do it even hours a day, as I now know that I can go all the way to the truth of anything I want to know. And since I believe, I make it happen.

I have had issues with eating for a long time, even though my diet was good. A lot of shame and guilt always plagued this arena of my life. After a particularly bad meal on the retreat and a deep introspection afterwards, I asked desperately - "How the fuck do I solve this?". And the answer came - "Just ask.". I realized the ability to ask about any food and I will get an answer from inside - it tells me if I should or shouldn't eat. Quickly I realized this works for any question with yes and no. I can ask about anything and know if it is 'yes' or 'no', but it's not always easy to ask and follow the answer. This often takes balls and and losing a fat piece of ego is common here.

 

Soooo... go do it. Spend time alone. Forget it all. Immerse yourself in yourself. You won't believe how much bullshit you are buying into.

Thank you Leo, you were one of the ones who inspired me to do this!

[ThinAir]

Beautiful, thanks for sharing!

[tsuki]

@okulele Very inspiring, thank you!

[LucyKid]

Amazing , what a beautiful story. Inspires me to do this too.
May I ask if you had taken any psychedelics? Have you used your phone to insure your relatives you are okay?
How did you get food prepared? 

[okulele]

13 minutes ago, LucyKid said:

May I ask if you had taken any psychedelics?

I had a trip on the first day, which was nothing big. I thought I would do more, but pretty early on I realized that it was to be a sober retreat

13 minutes ago, LucyKid said:

Have you used your phone to insure your relatives you are okay?

Yeah, once a week I checked my phone and sent a message to my family.

14 minutes ago, LucyKid said:

How did you get food prepared? 

A lot of oats, buckwheat, lentils and beans cooked on a portable gas cooker. Besides that raspberries and apples from nature around and salad from a restaurant not too far (this was not a good set up, meeting people was really tough )

[Chi_]

Quite inspiring. Thanks for the share ☺️❤️

[cle103]

@okulele Great stuff! Thx alot for sharing. 

I’m curious: What did your day typically look like? What practices did you do and for how long? 

Also, what tips would you give someone planning his first solo retreat? 

- Much Love 

 

[okulele]

8 hours ago, cle103 said:

What did your day typically look like?

5 am waking up

-5.30 stretching and washing myself

-7 meditaiton

-8 breakfast

-12 meditation

-13 lunch

-16 meditation

-17 workout and washing myself

-21/22 meditation

sleep

8 hours ago, cle103 said:

What practices did you do and for how long? 

 The formal techniques I did was 15 minutes of loving-kindness in the morning and 30-60 of contemplating 'Hsin Hsin Ming', a beautiful Zen text, in the evening. Otherwise it was very organic and anything that wanted to happen, happened (do-nothing, self-inquiry, contemplation,...).

8 hours ago, cle103 said:

Also, what tips would you give someone planning his first solo retreat? 

Set it up well. Make sure you will not be disturbed. Ideally you want to talk to no one during the entire thing (it really messes things up), so find a store for food were you don't need to communicate with people. Think about what you will eat, make sure it's simple, you don't want too much time and focus on cooking.

Maybe consider doing some exercise daily - it helps with all the sitting. 

Most importantly, just be quiet and give it all up

[Pouya]

@okulele You just inspired the shit out of me! Thank you.

 

[cle103]

@okulele Thank you ??

[Nahm]

@okulele Nice ??

[Space]

@okulele Very impressive! These solo retreats are so much harder than they sound. I recently did a 3 day psychedelic retreat on my own in a small cottage. Even that was a challenge. My addictions are strong. It's also so expensive to rent a place on your own here in the UK, even a crappy hotel room. Particularly when you add on food and supplies etc. Did you use Airbnb? How did you find the cabin?

[okulele]

4 hours ago, Space said:

Did you use Airbnb? How did you find the cabin?

Yes Airbnb. I think there was about 70% price reduction - I was lucky. The rent for 1 month was almost nothing

[okulele]

On 9/5/2019 at 2:45 PM, Space said:

I recently did a 3 day psychedelic retreat on my own in a small cottage.

What did you use? How did it go?

[Space]

55 minutes ago, okulele said:

What did you use? How did it go?

Thanks for asking  I did mushrooms on one day, and then did a 5-MeO trip the next day. It was definitely very fruitfull but I didn't get that breakthrough experience that I was looking for. I have a feeling the mushrooms I used had dropped their potency quite a lot as I took around 2-3 grams and didn't have a particularly deep experience. Although I did spend around 3 hours contemplating all sorts of aspects of my life and had some really interesting insights. I also feel like mushrooms have a positive 're-wiring' effect on the brain, even on relatively small doses. You can almost physically feel the brain making new connections. The 5-MeO was similarly not as powerfull as previous trips, even though it was the biggest dose so far (28mg). Saying that, the ego dissolved and I had some quite profound insights. Overall it was a good experience, I learned a lot. I will definitely be doing it again, if I can find somewhere cheaper. I also intend on trying to find some better quality 5-MeO as i'm still dealing with a lot of nausea from this batch, and i'm pretty sure thats not normal. 

[okulele]

@Space How did you use the 5-MeO? Did you smoke it? If you don't want to plug it, a possibility of getting a rather smooth breakthrough is smoking maybe half a dose during a peak of e.g. mushroom trip. I know it's a bit risky, but it worked very well for me.

[Space]

1 hour ago, okulele said:

@Space How did you use the 5-MeO? Did you smoke it? If you don't want to plug it, a possibility of getting a rather smooth breakthrough is smoking maybe half a dose during a peak of e.g. mushroom trip. I know it's a bit risky, but it worked very well for me.

I plugged it but I don't mind that roa. I would smoke it but I have HCl so i'm not sure it can be smoked. I'll definitely keep it in mind though, thanks

[Buba]

It is great. You gave a very valuable report. How long have you been meditating?