Now,
Based on where we are in the arc of retreat life here together,
I'd like to speak on the propensity that the emotional system has to begin to disengage with presence when the long claws of our future selves start pulling us away.
And so on this day we're over halfway through our immersion together and we've reached a level of,
Or perhaps a series of levels of climactic insights and often there's a come down from the new heights that we've reached when we're in training time.
So I just want to call attention to the fact that it's quite normative at this time in the training to start to feel more heavy in the parts that are more comfortable in dullness.
So if your inspiration to stay awake and appreciative,
Two of the qualities of presence that I highlighted on our arrival evening have thinned,
Then calling attention to the pattern of checking out is being presented to you now as an opportunity to work with the parts that have a shorter endurance in staying aware.
So it's very easy to feel inspired in a new place with new people who are also committed and devoted to the path and the kind of on-ramp of new stimulus,
New tastes,
New sounds,
New types of teachings.
Keep the regularized pattern of distractibility and excitement and stimulation and productivity alive in us so it's very easy to want to drop in and feel like we're here to get our money's worth in the first few days of retreat.
And it takes about three days for a pattern when you're fully immersed in an environment to bake in to the nervous system.
So by now there's a level of familiarity.
With familiarity,
A lot of us have conflated familiarity with mundane so that daily tasks no longer feel sacred to us.
But that of course goes back to the parts of us that are comfortable in boredom because they know how to hold the expectation that something better will occur later on.
As if we might just wait for a future time when ideals are more in alignment and we can wake up them instead.
So what I'm suggesting to you is that the moments when the inspiration thins,
When dullness starts to creep into the energy body,
That's the time when practice life becomes the most potent.
It's very easy to practice when we're inspired.
We'll want to train the circuitry that knows how to stay with when the inspiration's not there so we don't spend the rest of our life chasing excitement,
Waiting for something to inspire us.
There's an agency and an empowerment there in cultivating the inner,
The inspiration that doesn't require conditions around us to line up in the way that we expect them to.
So I implore you to keep the container alive.
It will be gone before you know it.
The last thing I'll say on that subject is that very often the benefits of the qualities that we cultivate on retreat aren't fully felt,
Don't have the time to be demonstrated until we leave.
So there's a natural feeling as if maybe I'm not actually doing as much work here as I thought.
Maybe the transformation I've been craving or calling in hasn't quite occurred.
You'll only feel the rhythm that you've built here when there's a stark contrast in the outer world and you recognize the pace and the urgency and the fear states at which many people operate.
And you'll recognize it because it will feel like a vast distinction from the inner pace that you've settled into.
And then you'll know what type of shift has actually occurred and you'll have a chance to stay with it for a long while and then you'll forget and you'll start to speed up and get cluttered and chaotic because it's the natural tendency to absorb the attributes of those around us.
At that point when you start to dull and speed in,
It will be time to take retreat again.
So we come back into training time when we need to slow down and to be re-inspired.
And you'll go out into the world for as long as you feel capacitated and integrated and then you'll hear the call to take another training,
To tap in with a healer and you'll know that it's time.
So I'm speaking to the future parts of you that will feel guilty about losing the sense of integration that you've worked so hard to build here.
And just know that as you naturally dissolve or disintegrate,
There will be deeper patterns of pathways back home and you'll know how to get there more easefully.
So again,
Often those qualities aren't fully felt.
The capacity for tolerance and the clear seeing and the brightness of your appreciation,
The level of awareness,
Often those won't be fully felt until you leave.
And I love this story of a student who was on a Zen retreat in Japan.
He went on a silent retreat there and it was a week of really severe seated meditation.
It's an hour practice.
You get up for a couple minutes to take a break,
Stretch your legs.
You sit down again another hour,
Break hour,
Break hour.
And it's like that for a week.
It's just pretty miserable and drab.
And on top of it,
There's a fast involved.
So the food,
You just get a little bit of rice and this and that.
So not much stimulation to the senses.
And on the retreat,
You also have to wear a thin cotton white get up.
But of course it was raining and damp the whole time.
So there's a chill and he was cold the entire time.
And of course he got sick,
Which often on retreat you get sick because it's one of the only times that you can let your guard down.
So it happens very often to get sick on retreat.
And so this whole week,
He's just miserable.
And the narrative of wanting to be anywhere else and wishing he wasn't there and hating himself for making the decision to be there.
Why did I think this would be a good idea?
And he didn't leave,
Even though many parts of him were yearning for escape.
And on the final day,
As he left the retreat center and felt like he just hadn't received anything but just misery and felt begrudgingly that he was leaving and had wasted a week of his life,
He was waiting for a train and standing on a platform.
And there was a man selling strawberries.
It was the rainy season.
And so these berries were on the crate,
Just fresh and just kind of speckled with dew,
These fat,
Plump strawberries.
And he bought a bag of these strawberries from this merchant.
And just as he reached for the first bite,
A ray of sun struck through the clouds and hit the strawberry,
Just as he took the first bite.
And then Satori.
And just a depth of realization and insight and awareness that he hadn't even realized he was building the whole time.
So know that when you leave here,
Many strawberries await you.
And stay curious to the process for these last few days.
Let's take a Sphinx pose to really arrive.
