Meditation solo retreat musings
This time a week ago I was arriving back to UK soil after three weeks alone in a cabin.
In that time I was stretched wide by the both/and.
I was incredibly lonely and made best friends with the birds, the trees and the soil.
I was plagued by doubts, shame and anxiety whilst feeling deeply trusting, held and loving towards myself.
I was bored to death and have never been so engaged by the unfolding of life around and within me.
Time crawled by and flew by.
I was grubby and feral yet the healthiest I have ever been.
My practices were a lifeline. Mantra, breath, song, dance and asana animated the days and kept me sane, evoking and embodying the energies that would serve me best in any moment.
Internal family systems and other therapeutic modalities allowed me to navigate the haunting places my body-mind travelled when I fell into a 4-day spiral with no-one else to speak to and no phone to distract me.
Metta meditation left me sobbing in gratitude on several occasions, feeling blown open by how much bubbling, joyful love was there - a mudita-karuna-metta that coloured everything golden.
Vedantic meditations revealed no-thing. For fractions of time there was no me, or you, or it. Pure peace. A wonder to imagine existing in this (non) place as the foundation of your day-to-day existence.
Non-dual meditations took me to places of beauty, love and understanding. Not just rationally ‘getting’ that all is pure consciousness, but starting to have moments of glimpsing in my raw experience the potent field of the no-thing, every-thing. The dimensionless, timeless, eternal-infinite that permeates everything, that is everything. The infinitely diverse oneness. The paradox that collapsed when my mind tried to grab the understanding and instead began to cling in fear to 'me' once again.
I am excited to bring what I learned into my offerings. Expect to dive Into some of the meditations, philosophies and more during the Elemental Retreats and through the Tantrik Yamas and Niyamas Workshops:
https://bookwhen.com/yogasara.../e/ev-sjb1-20240525100000
Beautiful to be home.
In metta
Megan