Returning from a retreat

At the end of my semester here, I took off to do
a personal retreat. I had located a hermitage that
rents some of its hermit cabins to the general
public, and I rented one for almost two weeks.

I brought no internet and no phone. I brought
food for cooking. I also brought books, CDs, and
DVDs (I have a portable DVD player) of the
spiritual or qigong variety.

It was a great experience.
Hard, but great!

80% of the time I was extremely happy; although the
cultivation brought up all kinds of stuff the other
20% of the time–the juicy misery buried within.

One interesting night was that strong feelings of
grief and sadness came up in me surrounding the loss
of my dog that I had seven years ago! The feelings were
so strong, as if I had lost him just recently–and missed
him terribly.

There were a few other moments punctuated by
extreme loneliness, sadness, and of feeling unloved.
Some of these were quite strong, bringing me to tears.

My dreams were uncharacteristically erotic, which was odd.
During the day, I wasn’t thinking anything sexual
at all–not because I was trying to avoid it,
but just because my thoughts weren’t in that direction,
and I was busy with reading and practicing.
However, *every* night when I would go to sleep, my
dreams would be extremely sexual in nature–and I
would have multiple such dreams each night.

Other than these things, I spent my time enjoying
the silence of the woods, reading, and practicing.

Among the books I read were “Awaken Healing Energy
through the Tao” by Mantak Chia–which is his
microcosmic orbit book. Personally, I kind of found
this book to make the microcosmic orbit too
complicated. The training I already acquired
from QF2 is a lot easier, but it made for an
interesting curiosity reading nonetheless.

I also read “Seven Taoist Masters” trans. by Eva Wong.
This was a highly entertaining read, a folk novel
about various people living in ancient China that
undertook the process of trying to become “immortals”.
It was written in a “fairy tale/parable” type form, and
was hard to put down.

As for CDs, I spent time listening to the audio
CDs from old workshops on Qigong Fundamentals and Primordial
Qigong–since I really hadn’t gone back and listened to them
carefully before then.

On the practice front, I tried to practice most of what
I knew.

I’m going to go back and try to add my practice record to
the log soon–even though I didn’t necessarily record
everything I did.

To give you an idea, here is what I did the day before I
left:

10:50am-11:25am QF3 Audio Disk 1, Tracks 1-2
1:30pm-2:20pm Tao Yin
2:25pm-3:45pm Inner Smile Meditation
5:10pm-5:30pm Ocean Breathing
5:30pm-5:55pm Five Animals
5:55pm-6:10pm Six Healing Sounds
7:15pm-7:35pm Orbit Form
7:35pm-8:00pm Microcosmic Orbit Meditation (Wudang)
8:05pm-8:25pm Primordial Qigong
8:25pm-9:20pm Deep Healing Qigong–Advanced version
9:20pm-9:30pm Deep Earth Pulsing
9:50pm-10:45pm QF3 Audio Disk 1, Tracks 3-4
10:55pm-11:10pm QF3 Audio Disk 2 Track 1

I planned on doing the Blissful Breathing Qigong after
that, but decided on doing some reading instead.

The earlier days were more heavily focused on Tao Yin,
Primordial Qigong, and Five Animals/Six Healing Sounds–
the Tao Yin because I was trying to learn it, Primordial
because I just learned it in October, and wanted to strengthen
it, and Five Animals/Six Healing Sounds to help clear some
emotion stuff.

All in all, a great experience.

Smiles,
Steven