Monday, March 29, 2021

This is the longest Spiritual Retreat I ever remember being on

This is in some ways many people's experience who haven't already died or been maimed by the Coronavirus worldwide. This is not to lessen the sadness of all their deaths and maiming from coronavirus but rather to make us grateful that we, at least survived so far

I was thinking today about the vision quest I did around 1983 in the summer on the north fork of the Trinity River in California which is up near the Oregon border of California and Oregon. And I was realizing that many of you could likely do a vision quest also if you didn't want to go into the wilderness because you don't feel safe there because you aren't used to being in the wilds all the time like I was then that someone could (if they were in a non-ghosty house) on a good set of ley lines go into their closet during the day so it would be dark like the Tibetans do in a 4 month retreat and do that for 4 days not eating food or drinking water. But, you would have to be careful where you did this to have a positive experience in the end too. The Tibetan Monks often do 4 months in a darkened room where they push food and water to that person who is in retreat. So, the Tibetan 4 month version (that literally all Tibetan Monks have to go through before they can become monks at all is this of praying (without ceasing) for 4 months waking and sleeping while in the dark.

NOte: IF you go into your closet during the day for 4 days and come out and sleep in your own bed when it is dark out that might work better for you. However, you need to make sure this isn't a Ghosty house with some kind of ghost that might make all this difficult for you. When you are in the wilds you don't have to worry about this as much because there is nowhere you can go on earth where animals, birds, insects etc. haven't died in the past. But, this tends to clear naturally more in the forests and deserts and plains and oceans of the world and be more of a natural thing there, whereas houses in this sense hundreds of years old houses are more unnatural in a long term sense and often have ghosts (good, bad or indifferent) in them. So, if you don't feel good about doing this wherever you are you shouldn't do it. So, choose carefully the site where you are going to do a vision quest of no water or food for 4 days or a place where you are going to be inside doing this with no water or food too.

Because what you are going for is asking God what you should do next in your life and the vision quest is through the visions as you slowly starve to death for 4 days time are God answering you what you should be doing next in your lives. About 2 days in when you have eaten or drunk nothing you are going to start having visions especially at night that might be more real to you in your experience than anything you have ever experienced before. end note.

What is the purpose of this?

The purpose is to get in touch with your innermost feelings and awarenesses and your hopes and fears and if you can come out after 4 months of prayer in the dark and still be sane they let you be a Tibetan Monk usually.

However, I did meet one young man who was maybe 18 to 20 who came out of his experience screaming and still wasn't okay when I met him a few months later. So, what I'm saying here is this isn't for everyone because there are many different types of people and many people have PTSD or other problems that won't allow them to do this successfully.

Even when I did 4 days and nights of no water or food on the Trinity River my mind screamed at me for 2 of those days things like: "You are going to die!" "This is insane!" "You won't survive this!" But, I was young enough and healthy enough to know that I was going to do this no matter what.

And it really changed my life in many very good ways. It changed the whole way I see the universe and myself in it. I see how much more people are than they think they are but also more vulnerable in ways humans usually in cities at least aren't aware of.

So, though cities might be places where it is easier to get work they are also places it is easier to slowly or quickly go insane too for human beings. Though out in the country it might seem more boring in some ways it is also living closer to nature and to a human beings natural sanity that one gets from being around nature and animals and trees and birds and fish and all that.

So, many of you like me have just had the longest spiritual retreat we have ever had in our lives this last 14 or 15 months of life.

Those of you who are still relatively sane after this might be looking forward to a very long life indeed helping the rest of mankind survive what comes next.

By God's Grace

I met Lam Rim Geshe in early 1986 in Dharamshala, India who is the longest retreatant in the dark I have ever heard of surviving it who spent 17 years in the dark in retreat. He had the most amazing aura in some ways when I met him and was sort of like meeting someone from a different planet than Earth in some ways. He is the model for Yoda in Star Wars by the way, except he looked like yoda a lot but without the pointy ears but he was around 6 feet tall and a Tibetan Monk too. He had come out of his 17 retreat a few months before I met him to go to the Kalachakra Tantra Initiation in Bodhgaya which I also attended. However, I met him a month or so later in Dharamshala, India up in the mountains at about 6000 feet in Altitude where the Dalai Lama lives. This was a very amazing experience for me because this was only 3 years after my 4 day vision quest of no water and no food with a Blackfoot Sioux Medicine man 4 miles away who sent me off on this vision quest and was downriver to help me go off this vision quest too after it was through.

The hardest part was trying to walk 4 miles downriver on the Trinity River while not having eaten anything or drunk any water for 4 days and keeping my balance walking over river rocks because there was no trail there.

But, Lam Rim Geshe who was Gelukpa like the Dalai Lama was the most amazing long term retreatant I have ever met in my life in 1986.

What did I learn from my vision quest in 1983?

I learned that human beings are not at all what most people think they are. We are capable of things so far beyond what most people think that that is amazing in itself. However, at the same time we are vulnerable in ways most people don't even consider thinking about.

How has this changed me. It has changed me at odd times.

For example, before the vision quest I likely would not have been successful at counseling Juvenile offenders in the early 1990s in San Jose who were boys 12 to 17 years of age with 7 non-gun related felonies at that time.

The Vision quest increased my respect for all life I encountered a lot (more than I can say). I would have disrespected the Juvenile Offenders before this and either would have been fired or killed by them one of the two. But, I was successful until I had to deal with a boy who had taken PCP and threatened his family with a .25 caliber pistol. The reason I think he wasn't put in CYA is because he never fired the gun and so his family didn't want him there because he might have no hope of ever becoming honest again. But, when I took away 6 shanks that day from this boy including a butcher knife I had to quit because he was temporarily psychotic and might kill someone including me (Or I would have had to have killed him maybe to stay alive counseling this boy so I quit right then) so I wouldn't have to kill him to survive that situation.

However, the point being that the vision quest so changed me that I saw all these things much differently than I would have before and was so intuitive in a natural way then that I would likely have survived almost anything because I was so in tune with nature and who people really were (even criminals) that I could survive being around young criminals too and possibly even save some of them from early death or a life of crime.

by God's Grace

The point of all this being: "If you are more aware what human beings actually are at core you are more likely to survive ANYTHING including the Coronavirus Era we presently are all trying to survive worldwide.

By God's Grace

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