Editor’s note: This article is adapted from PJ’s website. Do check out his past articles on tackling the workplace over here, here, and here.
On 19th October 2022, I flew back to Singapore after spending three months at my teacher Ajahn Brahm‘s retreat centre Jhana Grove and monastery in Serpentine, Western Australia.
Since then, I’ve been asked quite frequently about what I learned and “gained”, which I’ll attempt to summarize here. Below are the 11 things I’ve learnt.
(Graphic image warning: Please note that learning point 8 has a few graphic pictures of a decaying dead kangaroo. You may quickly jump to point 9 if you are easily affected.)
1. A much clearer & experiential understanding of how suffering works.
Expectations, wanting, hopes, plans, etc. are a huge barrier, because of the Second Noble Truth: wanting causes suffering. During this retreat, I think I’ve let go more of the expectations & wanting to re-experience the life-changing yo-yo-jhana in 2010, which I’ve written about here and here . And if I wanted anything, whether it was the beautiful breath, or silence in the mind, or nimittas, or jhanas, that wanting always led to suffering.
So towards the end, I was deliberately cultivating the mantra of “Good enough”. Heavy rain while walking to the monastery? Good enough. Restless mind while sitting in the morning cold? That’s more than good enough!
And that really helped and worked: there was a lot less suffering when I was developing this mindset of being “contented and easily satisfied”, instead of striving with strong wants.
It’s not all perfect: there were definitely days when it felt like walking into a perfect storm. The lowest point I experienced was towards the end, on a Monday. For the whole of Monday, I struggled with a very, very restless mind: I could barely sit. It was, as Ajahn Chah (Ajahn Brahm’s teacher) described, “you can’t move forward, you can’t go backwards, you can’t stay where you are”.
I’m experienced enough to know that restlessness is the mind being discontented with the present moment experience. So I tried to make peace with the present moment experience and tried to be unconditionally kind and gentle to my own mind. That caused my mind to kinda go into a kind of split, where a less-critical, more-loving PJ was having a dialogue with a very fault-finding, very discontented PJ:
Loving PJ: There there! It’s ok to be discontented. You’re not enlightened yet!
Fault-Finding PJ: Of course it’s easy to say that!
Loving PJ: Remember Ajahn Brahm’s instructions? Just make peace with the suffering, be kind, be gentle…
Fault-Finding PJ: Of course it’s easy for Ajahn to say that! He’s the MOZART of meditation, whereas you are still playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars! You can’t even watch your stupid beautiful breath, for goodness sake!
It just spiralled downwards from there, into outright fear and despair. I was reminded of the episode in the Buddha’s passing, when his attendant Ananda cried out of despair. I understood what he felt because I felt this deep fear of what will happen when Ajahn Brahm dies? Who else can I have as a teacher I am dependent on?
And there was despair because I was nowhere close to the jhanas, which are needed to really remove the defilements. And I had so many defilements … it felt like I was tasked with using a single box of matchsticks to melt an entire iceberg or glacier.
The fear and despair was very, very real, and very, very bad: I sobbed and cried my eyes out in the shower. I don’t think I have cried like this ever since my colleague Parathy died… after I finished crying, I asked my mind what it wanted to do, and went to sit and meditate, before going to sleep. The next morning, I went to ask Ajahn for advice on how to deal with such days.
Ajahn was so kind and compassionate… he kept saying “trust. you are so close“, and also talked about how, often, progress on the Path isn’t about more effort, but about finding the right place to perpendicularly cross the river. “And when you’re over, you’ll then realize how stupid you’ve been all this while, because you’ll look back and say ‘wait, that was it? That’s all it took?’ ” And that was all it took for me to gain back the trust, confidence, and patience to carry on.
2. A more experiential understanding of non-self”
The other learning is a more experiential understanding of non-self. Basically, I don’t really control my body or my mind: it is heavily influenced by the environment around me. The body is out of control, and the mind is out of control because they are all complex processes which have no single source of self, and where effects become causes for further effects. It’s all about putting the right causes in place, I.e. Right Motivation (Samma sankappa). A few episodes really highlighted this to me.
No matter how much I tried, I could not change the fact that my body is made in Singapore, and that I struggle with the cold. Cold makes my mind restless, as I am really not made for this climate. It’s quite funny because whenever it’s cold, there is automatically a soundtrack playing in my mind (for the first two months, it was the soundtrack of Crash Landing On You, because my wife and I re-watched it before I left…). But what was even more interesting was the short spell of warm weather in late September and early October: the soundtrack playing stopped in my mind, with no choice nor force at all! So it was really caused by the cold.
Physically with my body, there were a few incidents (suspect Covid; my twitching eye; body pains from sitting meditation) which drove home the point of non-self. From the Buddha’s second-ever discourse (Anattalakkhanasutta SN 22.59):
“(this body is not) fit to be regarded thus: ‘This is mine, this I am, this is my self’”, because “…if…(this body) were (my) self, this (body) would not lead to affliction, and it would be possible to have it of (this body): ‘let my (body) be thus; let my (body) not be thus’. But because (this body) is nonself, (this body) leads to affliction, and it is not possible to have it of (this body): ‘let my (body) be thus; let my (body) not be thus’. “
Basically, if your body was you or your self, then you would be able to compel it and control it to be well, not be sick, and to take on any shape or form you wish. Which you can’t.
3. Reduce the drivers of negative emotions
Much of Ajahn Brahm’s teachings are really about undermining and reducing the drivers for negative emotions, especially the overthinking mind that tenses up, comments, interferes, fault-finds, strives and tries, is ruthless, and seeks to control everything (especially due to fear).
If we do the exact opposite to the above verbs, those are the causes for future deep meditation and eventual liberation. So we should:
Relax to the Max
Disengage from commentary
Don’t interfere or do anything, because it is all none-of-your-business
Let the mind decide what it wants to do, rather than tell and control it
Cultivate contentment: “good enough”
Not try
And be kind, unconditionally.
4. Cultivating the opposite of fault-finding
Ajahn Brahm once wrote that “cultivating the opposite of fault-finding is 90% of the Buddhist practice”, and this was something I realised from the three months.
It is so easy to lapse into fault-finding and criticism of everything: I could be sitting for 45 mins, watching the breath for 44 mins, and daydreaming in the last minute, and that is often enough for me to say “that was not peaceful”! This is crazy, if you think about it, because I wasn’t really looking realistically at the whole session, but only picking out the bad parts to smear the whole thing.
I think this fault-finding is due to social conditioning: it seems “smarter” to seem pessimistic, cynical, and negative (as shared in Psychology of Money: see point 7 in the original article here). This mindset is especially prevalent in Singapore, I think.
5. Systems, Not Goals
Scott Adams’ “system vs goals” came up in my mind during the retreat, and I started wondering what was my “system”, vs the “goal” of enlightenment. My system is to keep precepts, learn Dhamma, create the supporting environment for practice around me, and meditate daily. I’ll let the results take care of themselves. Some specifics that I picked up during the Rains:
If the meditation was me largely “letting go, being kind and gentle”, then the meditation was a success, regardless of the results!
I started debriefing myself after each meditation, as part of my “system”. I ask myself these questions:
What suffering was absent? How much peace, calm & stillness was generated from the sit?
Was there letting go, kindness and gentleness in the meditation, between me and the meditation object?
Which defilements were gone? Usually for me, there’s no ill will, sloth and torpor, and doubt. The usual suspects are Kama canda, and restlessness and remorse.
7. Meditation is like taking a shit
Meditation is a lot like taking a shit: there are a lot of parallels between the two.
Both are non-self: in both processes, there is no single part you can point to, and say that’s me, mine, a self. There are also none of the accumulations of a self in any part of the processes e.g. ego, pride, expectations, will, etc.
Both are natural causal processes, where willpower & expectations are NOT necessary causal factors & are often counterproductive:
If you’re blocked in meditation, often you need more mindfulness and kindness, to unblock yourself. If you’re blocked in shitting, often you need more fibre and water to unblock yourself.
Using willpower in both cases causes haemorrhoids in your mind and in your a**
Expectations in both cases are major blockers.
Both processes are about clearing their “containers” of defilements and debris: one is clearing the mind, the other is clearing the digestive system.
Last but not least, the best sits and the best shits are effortless and joyful, and very healthy.
7. Keeping Precepts is Critical
Keeping precepts is critical for progress on the Path. This is often overlooked, especially in western meditation instructions. But this importance becomes very clear when meditation deepens, and when your mind starts to reflect the spottiness of your ethical behaviour by body, speech and mind. Let me share a story about someone, whom I’ll call PJ2. Imagine that PJ2 is single, and that he once had a very, very deep meditation experience a few years ago.
At the start of the Rains Retreat, I was discussing nimittas and jhanas with PJ2. However, as the retreat progressed, PJ2’s past caught up with him: he had not kept his precepts fully, and that caused him to feel this overwhelming sense of guilt that triggered panic attacks.
This lasted until PJ2 left, and it was very eye-opening for everyone to see how important keeping precepts are, for deeper meditation and for one’s practice.
8. Death is everywhere
Death and dying is everywhere, in the most unexpected places. In September, as a few of us returned from visiting Kusala Hermitage, it turned out that two kangaroos had been hit by vehicles just outside Jhana Grove. One of them was more decayed, while the other one was quite intact. It was very eye-opening to see the decaying and decomposition process over the weeks, which I captured by taking multiple videos and photos.
What videos and photos do not capture is the smell: that nauseating odour of death and decay, which reminds me of the very first time I smelled that odour, as a teenager helping my father clear the drowned rat stuck under our driveway.
But what the photos and videos do convey are the charnel ground descriptions in the suttas, especially the Satipatthana sutta (** CONTACT ALERT: Pics of dead things**)
The dead adult kangaroo just outside Jhana Grove
…And it had been dead for one, two, or three days, bloated, livid, and festering. They’d compare it with their own body: ‘This body is also of that same nature, that same kind, and cannot go beyond that.’ 15.1
The dead adult kangaroo had moved due to heavy rain and had decayed
Then:
…a corpse discarded in a charnel ground being devoured by crows, hawks, vultures, herons, dogs, tigers, leopards, jackals, and many kinds of little creatures. 16.2They’d compare it with their own body: 16.3‘This body is also of that same nature, that same kind, and cannot go beyond that.’ 17.1
Same dead kangaroo, much more decayed. Note how the skull has gone missing, and the skeleton has changed color.
Then:
Bones rid of sinews scattered in every direction. Here a hand-bone, there a foot-bone, here a shin-bone, there a thigh-bone, here a hip-bone, there a rib-bone, here a back-bone, there an arm-bone, here a neck-bone, there a jaw-bone, here a tooth, there the skull …
A finger fragment of the dead kangaroo by the roadside marking
Then:
Bones rotted and crumbled to powder. 30.2They’d compare it with their own body: 30.3‘This body is also of that same nature, that same kind, and cannot go beyond that.’
It is extremely sobering, especially since an adult male kangaroo is about the same size as me, to reflect that my body is truly “of that same nature, that same kind, and cannot go beyond that.”
The Sangha at Bodhinyana Monastery paying respects to the Triple Gem
9. The monastic practice is the Buddha’s Training Programme
The monastic practice set by the Buddha is THE way to get to Nibbana. Before this Rains, I had doubts about this: what’s stopping me as a lay person from being able to practice towards liberation? But after three months, there is no longer any doubt in my mind that the Training Programme decided by the Buddha is the best bet to Enlightenment.
However, my conditions in life are such that, it has to be lay life for me, at least for a while: as a married man, I have to take care of my wife, but also have to take care of my parents and parents-in-law as they age.
10. Some observations of my fellow retreatants:
My “alms bowl” for three months, filled with food generously given by lay supporters of the monastery. Those lay supporters drove 1 hr each way to feed the monks and lay retreatants every day, for 3 months!
The generosity of people is astounding. For three months, I was fed by other people. Also, this group of Rains Retreatants really were very generous with helping each other out. For example, Becky would serve Ajahn tea, but also do a lot of acts of loving kindness to others. And in turn, I saw others helping her: a number of retreatants were talking to her to give her an introduction to the suttas, just before her silent retreat. Everyone was helping each other out like one big family (e.g. Gayathri making soup for Piotr, our Polish retreatant, when he fell sick a second time), which the Jhana Grove staff observed was quite unusual to our group.
There seems to be a bit of PTSD from past experiences with SN Goenka vipassana meditation: a couple of retreatants mentioned to me something along the lines of “I can’t watch the breath, because I end up trying to control it from my vipassana experience” and “I can’t watch the breath with pleasure, because my vipassana conditioning kicks in”. Which is a real pity, because the breath can be a lovely meditation object.
Dhamma vitakka (thoughts of the Dhamma) as a subtle hindrance was something that came up in a sutta class taught by Ajahn Brahm, but it seems to have been rejected by a number of retreatants. This hindrance was something I saw in my own mind: at some point, I realised that reading the suttas was actually complicating my own meditation practice, because I ended up generating a lot of questions (“Am I doing X right, like in the sutta?”) which disturbed the peace of mind. So towards the end, I deliberately cut down on my reading of the suttas, and reduced my thinking on aspects of the Dhamma.
11. The Practice isn’t just about meditation
While on a day outing with Ajahn Santutthi, abbot of Kusala Hermitage, I asked Ajahn about advice on the practice, especially since I felt stuck and stagnating in my meditation depth. He gave very good advice: “the practice doesn’t end after three months”, “the practice isn’t just about meditation”, and “just develop contentment and peace.” Which is perhaps the main takeaway I got from my three months.
Monks from Kusala Hermitage walking in a botanical garden bed of tulips
TLDR: Meditation always seems so hard to get acquainted with, there is always this inner voice that says, I can’t do it or I don’t do it good enough. However, once you recognize what is making it so difficult, your “enemies” can become your friend too.
How’s your meditation retreat? If the answer is “so so” or “not so good,” congratulations you fit into 99% of what most meditation practitioners experienced. Oftentimes, just having this idea about how our meditation practice should be going is already setting us up for “failure”.
There is an innate judgement or comparison about how our mind ought to be during meditation instead of simply observing it as it is.
We have this expectation on the kind of progress we ought to have, comparing our meditation today with the one we had before, a “better” peaceful meditation.
My teacher, Venerable Phra Ajahn Den, taught me one has to learn and see the moment as it is. The main goal is to be fully aware of what’s happening now in this very present moment. Seeing things simply the way they are has nothing to do with good or bad. Meditate as if there is no outcome or result waiting somewhere in space and time. It’s about learning how we can become more unbiased and resilient to the present moment.
So, what’s getting in the way of being in this present moment?
The Pali Canon speaks of five hindrances, which I rename as 5 frenemies [you have to make friends with your enemies to win the battle right? :)].
They are called (pañca nīvaraṇāni in Pali) or obstructions during meditation, namely: sense desire (kāmacchanda), Aversion (byāpāda), sloth and torpor (thīna-midda), restlessness and remorse (uddhacca-kukkucca), and doubt (vivikicchā). We have all had moments — perhaps one more than the other — when these emotions arise in our meditation practice.
Sense Desire
Sense desire includes wishing our legs to be less numb; wishing for our weather to be warmer, cooler, or quieter; wishing we are less sleepy. Sounds familiar?
I was given a choice in the temple on how I like to practice my meditation, so naturally, I chose to practice my walking meditation outdoors. It’s not because it is better than indoors. Outdoor meditation provides more challenges: feeling the sweat dripping on your body on a hot day, houseflies buzzing around, and the potential of getting bitten by mosquitoes.
For those who have not done walking meditation before, my practice does not allow me to make any movement other than walking back and forth across a fixed distance. In doing so, I am training the mind to focus solely on the body’s movements and not engage in feelings arising from external disturbances. While walking, I’m taught to be aware and recognize arising sensations.
With that restraint, the sense of desire grows stronger. I wish there will be more breeze. I wish the houseflies could leave me alone and many more.
Embarrassing to share, but before I came to the retreat, I was watching a Netflix series 1899. The show was so intriguing that I would think about watching the next episodes during the retreat and wondering what would happen!
Nonetheless, it shouldn’t be a smooth sailing journey. Without all these sense desires that arise, how do I recognise or understand them better?
The desires seem to get a hold of me, so alluring and yet so unsatisfying at the same time. It is like being trapped in a prison cell you put yourself in, where you have no control.
How do I observe that these desires are so impermanent and are always trapping me in a prison cell?
Aversion
Aversions include being annoyed by someone who is not considerate by making loud noises during the retreat. Or even deeper than that: resentment and anger from emerging memories surface into our practice. We can spend countless hours imagining how we are going to defend ourselves the next time we see that so-and-so. Like a performer rehearsing, we rationalise how we will react and this thought process reinforces our narrative of being the aggrieved party.
We can dig the bottomless hole.
As I have chosen to keep noble silence in the retreat, my friend, who attended the retreat and knew I was keeping my mouth closed, tried her very best to talk to me after being told that I was not speaking. When her solicitation for a verbal response failed, she messaged me on the phone.
She was not even asking any questions about the meditation practice. Rather, she was seeking advice for a poster design that someone was doing for her event (I’m a professional designer).
Half of the time, I was lamenting about this person during the retreat. I realised how silly I was. She didn’t even know I was annoyed by her. So, immediately realising the aversion was not helpful for my practice, I confronted the annoyance.
I stopped lamenting and was aware that my friend is also a human being just like me – someone who needs love and compassion. I sent her my loving kindness and hoped that she could be awakened by her insight in this retreat.
Isn’t letting go of hatred a way to extend compassion and loving-kindness to ourselves in such moments too?
Sloth and Torpor
Sloth and torpor refer to a lack of alertness. It can be mental states of dullness, boredom, sleepiness, or indulging in pleasure, not realizing you are taking the comfort for granted by not stepping out of your comfort zone.
These states are often due to physical causes such as sleep deprivation, exhaustion, or monotonous auto-pilot mode filled with mundane actions.
I woke up at 4am every morning to start my meditation. It does feel sleepy yet I can appreciate the routine – so I can do in the retreat what I normally wouldn’t do in my daily life.
I pushed my body and mind into unusual conditions to see how my mind reacts and responded with the “abnormality”. I will never know how far I can reach without stepping out of my comfort zone.
Restlessness & Remorse
Restlessness is that feeling of wanting to get the practice over with and asking in my mind, ‘Is it time to end my meditation?’
As a designer, I’m so used to thinking about the next step and moving on to the next project. I seldom stop and appreciate the moment of what I had designed or done at that moment.
In this retreat, I let go of the control over my “meticulous” plan.
I went with the flow with Phra Ajahn’s reassurance when he spoke to my friends, who are beginners doing a meditation retreat.
He said, “Every time, I see the faces of my disciples with serious and stressed faces. It shouldn’t be like this. You should be more relaxed and enjoy the process. That you finally had this opportunity to see who you truly are without any distractions.”
Whenever I felt restless, I stopped beating myself up for my incompetence to stay awake, I observe it as it is when it happens. I tried not to control how I should feel but rather to look in and befriend restlessness as a feeling. Once I’m aware of it, I don’t feel restless anymore.
Remorse is a sore spot in memory, where you wish that you could redo something — your mind keeps returning to it, endlessly replaying “woulda,” “shoulda,” and “coulda”.
Where do I even begin?
I can count my blessings. I can also count how much guilt I have borne.
The guilt of not seeing my father when he passed is always there. However, whenever that guilt arises, I will dedicate whatever merits I have gained to him so I can lessen my guilt.
Confront your mistakes. Learn how to untie the knots: by seeing you can’t change anything and have closure like knowing what you can do now to make it better. Follow your breath and let it all out.
Doubt
Doubt could be doubt about the Dharma, the path, your teacher, or your practice.
“Is this the right practice for me?” “Should I take my meal now?” “Should I take more food since I’m not taking food after noon? “Should I be trying something else?” “Does my practice get me anywhere?”
You may be doing mindfulness of the breath and wondering whether you should be counting your breaths, doing mental noting, chanting, or engaging in the choiceless debate instead.
Now, calling these mental factors “hindrances” is a fundamental misconstruction. They can also be our friends if we get a chance to know them better. It’s better to think of mental states as useful tools for a particular purpose.
Instead of wishing the hindrances away, perhaps we can explore them with interest and simply observe them as they are. Can we notice how each sensation or thought behaves without our participation? When we are aware and apply effort to observe, the hindrances become our very practice itself rather than obstacles in the way of practice.
They could be our friends, enemies or frenemies however you want to see them (sometimes their roles can switch too). Whatever it is, hindrances are necessary for our mental cultivation.
If we were so perfect in our mindset if the meditation retreat was so smooth sailing, why do we even need to do a meditation retreat in the first place?
Summary
After all, our minds, like everything else, are interdependent and affected by causes and conditions. Our goals when we practice meditation are to develop three skillful abilities:
1) staying with the object of meditation (Concentration);
2) recognizing when we’ve drifted off (Awareness);
3) returning to the object without fuss or judgment (Equanimity).
When we have a “good meditation,” i.e, when our concentration is strong and we’re able to stay with our object of meditation, we are developing the first skill. Even when we keep drifting off and returning to our concentration 100 times during meditation, we’re still developing the second and third skills.
These may be the most important skills we need to have in improving our daily lives: recognizing when we’re no longer present and returning to mindfulness. It is what we do after the meditation retreat that is more important than the actual retreat itself. Not everything you encounter has to be good or bad, It’s relativity, what’s good for you can be bad, and what’s bad for you can be good too. We should treat everything we face as frenemies. Isn’t that what non-duality is all about? ; )
“You are your teacher. Looking for teachers can’t solve your doubts. Investigate yourself to find the truth – inside, not outside. Knowing yourself is most important.”
Keep watching your mind just as it is. Turning poison into wisdom is the path of the Buddhas. Turning enemies into friends would make your meditation journey a little less bumpy.
Wise Steps:
Do you always feel that meditation is ‘tough’? Or that your meditation is going nowhere? Identifying these 5 frenemies might be helpful
Knowing which of these 5 hindrances affect you the most and how to deal with them will be key to growing in your practice.
TLDR: Sometimes, a crisis does not always have to be doom and gloom, if we have some innovation and a willingness to experiment!
Recently, a good friend forwarded me a Zoom meditation retreat led by Venerable Canda and Ajahn Brahm of the Anukampa Bhikkkhuni project. I rolled my eyes in my sockets a little (because my friend knew I was under lockdown in Paris and didn’t have anywhere else to go), but was enthused by the idea of attending a retreat. The last one I attended had been over 3 years ago (even before moving to Paris)!
Immediately after that, however, I was accosted by scepticism that retreats need to be conducted in person. Online retreats would not be any good.
Indeed, the absence of any interaction with a teacher who could read retreatants’ body language and signals to guide retreatants was slightly worrying. Being in the physical presence of a teacher was psychologically important for me.
Nevertheless, the lack of an opportunity to attend a retreat for the past 3 years pushed me to sign up. I am very glad I did, as my preconceived notions were pushed out of the window.
Zooming out of the lockdown and into my heart
From the very first time I tuned in, I could feel waves of authenticity coming from Venerable Canda and Ajahn Brahm, who were conducting the retreat together. Their faces, as they looked at us in our little screens, radiated compassion and warmth that was no different from being there in person.
The only difference? This time we could see them up close!
Because it was happening in real-time, there was no feeling of artificiality or forcedness. Indeed, both venerable admitted halfway through the retreat that they were also slightly apprehensive about whether people would be receptive to an extended online retreat. It had gone even better than they had expected!
Somehow, as Venerable Canda put it, they managed to intuitively gauge the audience and “pitch to the middle” as they would have done in person.
When words speak to the heart and the person at the other end is speaking from theirs whilst tailoring it to you, it doesn’t matter whether it is done in person or online.
Is ‘community’ missing from online zoom retreats?
Another pleasant surprise that I had underestimated was the presence of community at the retreat. Again, I had assumed that any sense of community would have been obliterated by our inability to be together in person. I was happy to be proved spectacularly wrong.
I discovered that encouraging retreatants to turn their video on placed faces to names, and sometimes facial expressions during the talk.
This created a palpable sense of community – we were all experiencing something together at the same time.
What helped even more at the end of the retreat was an opportunity to interact with fellow retreatants who shared on their retreat experience. While it was put in place to help ease retreatants back into everyday life, it also allowed us to connect more deeply with others.
In the two minutes per person that we were given, people turned from faces on a screen to living, breathing beings with their own problems, aspirations and thoughts. Such beautiful sharings forged an inexplicable sense of togetherness.
Do we need retreat centres to disconnect?
Having the retreat at home made me rethink my assumption that retreats always needed to be in retreat centres or temples, lest we “just cannot disconnect”!
While my room as a psychological place of safety had taken a beating after working from home commenced, retooling the room for the meditation retreat made me view my room in a positive way that I had never seen before.
While I had done meditation in my room before, it was always peripheral to the function of my room, in my mind at least. With the meditation retreat being conducted at home, I needed to go beyond my usual meditation spot to find different spaces that could allow me to change around a bit. A small achievement! I managed to clear a small path for walking within my small room!
It does sound cliché, but the retreat was an opportunity to show me that sometimes we are constrained by our views and supposed knowledge. A fresh and happy mind is very conducive to creatively develop things of value.
This online Zoom retreat was an immensely positive experience for me. I am very grateful for the organisers’ kindness and also willingness to experiment. I had so much joy hearing from other participants on how they were able to let go of their various negativities of depression, anger or anxiety. With that letting go, they gently develop contentment with the moment during the retreat.
By the end I had tears bursting out from my eyes! With the right intention and some wisdom and creativity, it was a great demonstration for me. A demonstration that truly meaningful solutions can be developed that are beneficial to others. I hope to take this inspiration and apply it in my own life as well.
Wishing everyone good thoughts and safety through this pandemic.
Wise Steps:
Be open to trying online retreats, it will reshape the way you think!
Find joy in the sharing of others, lessening the importance on the story of ‘Me’
