[music] Hey fellow G&T, those of us like our spirituality with a twist. So question of the week is, have you ever been on a meditation retreat? Follow-up question will be what's special about the retreats that we're trying to run because this is our post retreat recap episode. Daniel and I are just going to do a little freestyle on this very freestyle episode where we're going to like kind of share a little bit about um our retreat thing over the weekend and a little bit maybe what we learned and a little bit like what we're trying to communicate through these retreats that we're running that maybe might have a little bit of our own to be French savoair a little bit of our own style.

Oo laa

ola la. So before that though, if you could do all the things that everybody always asks you to do, like, subscribe, share an episode with a friend, um, all the good things. Write a review, all the nice stuff, greatly appreciated. You know, we're trying to get our little spiritual message out to everybody. So, the more we can get that going, uh, it is appreciated. All right. Well, we don't really have much of a playbook for this one. Usually, we're all scripted up, but we're not this time. Um

I think maybe we'll like uh I know from my side I was thinking what's kind of unique about how we're doing this is what popped in my mind when we decided we're going to do it this way.

So I think one of the things I can share is that

well Eric before we give a little context

context for which part?

Well so so we we this weekend

Oh you got to tell the tale of what we did. Go ahead.

Yeah that makes sense. Okay so uh this past weekend we uh we ran a meditation retreat

half a week I guess. Right. started on a Wednesday, went to a went to a Sunday.

Yeah. So, we did we did, you know, like five days uh we did like a tantric meditation retreat, you know, Buddhist tantric meditation practices and and things like this. So, for us, this is something I mean, Eric has been going on retreat for many years. I've been going on retreat for many years. Just as just an aside on retreats, I would say, and Eric, you know, you feel free to jump in. Uh a retreat is a for those who don't know it's a time period that you take away from society away from your normal routine and you dedicate yourself to a certain thing. So you can have a horse riding retreat, you can have a yoga retreat, you can have uh you know they have like these dinner dinner retreats where you'll have meal you know like seven course meals that are paired with wines and and that's everything is based around eating and things like this. all kind retreats for everything. It's couples retreats, you know, whatever, right? Art, I don't know, business, everything else. So, the our retreat was on meditation. It's and it's basically to take your focus and learn and practice. So, that's kind of what we were doing together as a small group um you know, place kind of downstate Illinois for the weekend. And that's the that's the background, Eric. So, I just wanted to put that in there before we move forward.

Yeah. Yeah. And this is kind of like one of the, you know, we have lots of little side passions within this passion project of doing these podcasts. And this is sort of one of the one of the uh side passions, I guess you'd say, one of the branching passions,

you know, really wanted to be able to do this in a way where we'd ultimately able to operate um offer these kinds of experiences to people, right?

Yeah.

That's been kind of one of our goals, too. We keep we keep chipping away at our little podcast goals, but this is our second annual one of doing it. contemplating maybe doing one in the fall too, you know, because uh it's uh enjoyable for us and you get to share cool stuff with other people, too.

So, as far as like meditation retreats, um uh spiritual retreats, you know, um I'll just throw out some of the stuff that I think is really unique about like the experience of doing this together with you, Daniel, right? I did my first Zen retreats going back into my 20s. And, you know, Zen retreats are very serious, you know, kind of a steer. Not that we're not serious, but maybe we're not a steer. They have a certain quality to them. They're intense. They're a little bit like spiritual marathons. You know, that's so that was my sort of introductory experience to doing these things. And like, you know, you can always depending on how you learn something initially, you can always sort of make your comparisons back, right? This is my first experience doing this. How do other things feel kind of relative, right? And you know, since that time, I've done retreats in especially like Tibetan Buddhist stuff, obviously, Tantric Buddhist stuff, vajriana stuff. So I'll be able to make some comparisons there too. But just for you know like one of the things I think we're doing is there's a few things I think that are very unique and very cool. So one of the ones was that and this taps into Daniel's sort of shamanic part of what he's offering right. We do this sort of initial uh ceremonial start to the retreat. So we rolled up on like a Wednesday night kind of meet and greet. Uh you know we all get to know each other a little bit. It's a nice time to start developing a sense of spiritual community too. you get to connect with other people who are taking the time away to like um spend time working on themselves. It's actually quite moving you know you when you go there and you see wow people are actually care about this enough to take time and space out of their life to go and and devote you know some of them some of themselves some of their energy some some genuine work being done but this it's actually very touching so we got that part going on but what we've done the last two uh retreats and this really again comes from our desire to be integrative in our spirituality is Daniel does sort of a more shamanic based ritual for the first morning which I think is very unique and very cool. So, kind of like an option of what Daniel does anyway is kind of a cacao ceremony thing. And maybe I'll let you explain more about the cacao ceremony part, but you run one of those as the start of this. And I again, not something that, you know, I would have done in a Zen thing or in a Tibetan thing, but I think it creates a very kind of unique experience for the starting of that. Get your mind and your spirit into a certain space. Creates a bond within the group, too. So, I think there's all kinds of great things that happen there. I'll let you explain more about that Daniel because obviously this is your expertise but from an experiential side I was like this is a cool way to start and um not something I would have thought of but what I love about what we're doing is we each end up you and I each bring up different bring different aspects of things to what we're doing which I think is very nicely complimentary anyway.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I think so. Yeah. So, uh cacao ceremonies is how I start generally all of the retreats that I am you know part of or or leading anyways. I just so what is a cacao ceremony or at least what do I do and I've been doing this for a long time and actually this is a good segue you know maybe I could put a link in the description but the next one I'll be doing is June 19th in the northshore of Chicago uh in I think Kennallorth I don't know where the yoga studio is that sounds good though um so it's a combination of like a ceremonial grade cacao which is like a you know bitter chocolate if you will and it's infused with like cinnamon and cayenne and some honey and things like this uh and vanilla and it really it's a very they call it a grounding medicine but actually there's some vasoddilation qualities to the cacao and it it really it's a it's a bitter medicine so it's sort of a helps to relax the blood vessels in in Chinese medicine we could say right bitter

I think in the kidney yang part like people think of it as a kidney conic too right it has those sort of like tonifying qualities for our TCM people this is like

for our retreat it's good I'm sorry Danny for interrupting But it's fascinating because it kind of builds up like uh

what they would call the inner fire. It kind of sparks that

constitutional fire, you know, and we spend a lot of time thinking about the fire that's in the pelvis, the fire that's in that kind of like sacred space, right? It kind of creates that. And what I love about what you do with it is it has all these nice spike spicy acid things which are also kind of like

triggers for that fire too. Think of the alchemical fire of transformation gets a little spark in that first morning and it's very

Yeah. And it and it's nice for the blood. It's nice for the heart. The blood vessels are very relaxed.

Yeah. So everything is nice and open and then we do a bunch of a bunch of breath work, standing exercises, meditative exercises while we're seated and then some uh what we refer to as like holotropic breath work uh while people are lying down. So, it's a very, you know, sort of fastpaced breathing through the nose and through the mouth. Um, I guess those are the only places you could breathe through, but, you know, it's it's very it's fast-paced breathing. It's slow and it's long, then it works faster, then it slows back down. And it's done in a in a communal setting, and it's mixed with um, you know, I have gongs and bowls and bells and chimes and things like this that I, you know, people are taken to very um, you know, relatively intense places, I would say. you know, maybe slightly uncomfortable, but then on the other side of that little bit of uncomfortability is a deep relaxation. It's like ringing the rag out. You got to like really squeeze a rag if you want to get the water out of it, but then when you're done doing that, it's relatively dry. And this is much like how the body needs to be rung out sometimes. And so there are different opportunities for people to find themselves with uh you know, sematic release. So sometimes it's during the the standing part when we do some yelling or something like this, but sometimes it's when we're breathing really really slowly and really intentionally uh that people find such deep relaxations and they can let go, you know, they can let go of whatever is sort of ailing them and release it. Right? And so uh I've learned that pra, you know, a bit of that practice combining the cacao and the the breath work uh some years ago and have just been building on it ever since. And it's something that I've been offering to the public in in the public spheres for, you know, I don't know, probably nine years at this point and just perfecting it as as as the years go by. But it's a really great way to start things out. And it's it's an individual like baseball. It's an individual sport, but played together as a team. So, you're having your own experience. Your eyes are closed. There's people all around you, and you can hear them, but you're not interacting with them in the direct sense. But because you're doing it together, it's a shared experience. And so when we're done, everybody gets to kind of talk a little bit about their experience. And it's nice to hear other people's experience when you're having your own. It sometimes it it it fills some gaps in from where you might have heard something or thought something at one point and then somebody else had maybe a mirrored thought or some other feeling that came up at that time. really builds a nice sort of uh sematic bond but then also like a psychic bond because people were there sharing at the same time and it really does a nice job of weaving people's time together and it builds a connection that really lasts uh for the rest of the weekend. So it's nice to start that way. I think the thing from the experiential side for me now having done this like twice with you in these two retreat um experiences where it's happened is like again like something like you know a zen retreat or some of these other kinds of retreats could like be a little bit more austere and this is actually you could talk about the cathartic aspects which you know no doubt people would have that for me from the experiential side there's music you get to dance a little bit you get to like kind of like move your body around to the music and I'm like Okay, this is very freeing

with the idea of using the breath and uh again a little bit of something that's medicinal, right, as part of this too. And but then there's a part where you know uh you know Daniel just had music playing and you know you close your eyes and you get to move around in the space to the music and you sort of feel the freess of that and that's not going to happen in every single retreat space. I think it's a very interesting way to start something, right?

Create a lot of like uh it creates a tone that this is going to be free, this is going to be accepting, this is going to be safe, and it's in some ways it's going to be fun, right? Because you can feel the music, you get to move. I was like I was laughing because I think back in the day when the Doctor Strange movie came out, the first one, which was good, the second one, but the first one was a lot of fun. Daniel had um uh had called me like I had not remembered the release date. He said, "Our movie's coming out." And I was like, "What? Doctor Strange? That's us." I was like, "Okay, [laughter] great." Uh but you know, I was there and you know, it's one of those great things. Everyone's eyes are closed. You get to have the music. You get to vibe with the music. You get to kind of be in the space. And I was feeling very much like I was connecting to the energetic directional stuff, right?

We had kind of talked about connecting to the energies of the different directions and I was just sort of like moving my hands to feel the directions. I Doctor Strange except I didn't have the little metal wristband thing or whatever.

Yeah, you need that.

Yeah. But I really felt the space of it, you know, and like uh all of that kind of stuff as we were kind of doing the musical part. It feels very feels very freeing and it's kind of it sets a different tone for a retreat. Relatively speaking, it's a much more free way to start something, which I've come to uh from the two times we've done it, I kind of appreciate. I think it's kind of a great way to to do things. And by the end, you're kind of laying there at the end. You're kind of doing more of like a corpse pose kind of a thing, relatively speaking, right?

And um and then Daniel will do stuff that really has that shamanic feeling of like sound. So a lot of like gong and drum and flute and these things to kind of use the sound as like a kind of a closer out to the whole experience and you can kind of let your mind wander within all of that

you know and uh I think you know with Daniel's experience one of the things he's trying to do is to synchronize what he's doing with sort of what's happening within the members of the group too. So that's all very cool to kind of be a part of.

That's a unique thing, you know. I think that's very interesting what you kind of like brought into this, you know, from the shamanic side. The other part that's a little bit different, too, and it was alluded to in what you were talking about earlier is like the way that we kind of do group processing.

Oh, yeah. In comparison to traditional meditation setting.

Yeah. Where at the end of a session, you know, it's a this reminds me a little bit of like a group therapy thing too, to be honest. right? Where people get to kind of like share their experience with one another, right? And again, in kind of what you'd have to call a safe space setting, you know?

And uh I think we can definitely like testify that we're pretty like good at setting safe spaces because we had a lot of people who didn't necessarily know each other coming in and people feel comfortable but and within it, you know, so you can kind of like trust that the space is going to be held in the way that you can kind of be yourself.

Yeah. have your experiences and then also be able to share it with others. So like for me I got like a psych undergrad, right? As well as being like a you know TCM person, teacher of TCM, you know um but that feeling of like okay let's create a space where we can all share and that includes you know Daniel and I sharing about our experiences. I kind of described some of the stuff that was kind of emotional for me too. Maybe I'll share a little bit more of that later in this very pod. But um it was it's a it's a really kind of interesting addition to have, right? You know, again, I like a couple of things I think,

you know, again, with someone who's done a lot of different kinds of retreats, I think this is on Daniel's impetus to bring these two things in.

I vibe very well with both of them and I really connect to the idea of like, okay, let's at the end of a round, we can talk and share our experience. It has a it has a group therapy kind of a vibe to it on some level,

you know, like where you can kind of create that uh that uh community bond and people can kind of share their experiences within it. And like I think that's very cool, too. you got more you want to say about that Daniel or

I think in um a lot of ways the sharing of an experience in a communal setting after you're done is really great. Obviously there are downsides because if somebody has some kind of like amazing mind-blowing transcendental experience and the person next to them is maybe a little bit more mid in terms of what they you know what they had at that particular time. It could feel maybe in some ways uh competitive on a sense. Not necessarily that like you want to make your story sound better than the person next to you, but you might be comparing what you went through in in in contrast to someone else. And you might be feeling a little bit like, oh, well, I didn't talk to my deceased grandmother like they did. Oh, man. You know, so you might there might be a little bit of this kind of internal talk, but there's always some wisdom that gets passed forth in people's experiences. And it's often times the people that are reluctant or reticent to share that have some really profound things come through, not necessarily like in a grandiose way, but like in a really quiet kind of a way that uh transmits power, but like from a very close proximity. And that's really nice and I've seen that happen so many times. So it's just nice for people to be able to a talk in a public setting because that's such a very difficult thing for most human beings to do. So this is one way to be able to work on that skill in a very low stakes setting, right? Everyone's sitting on the ground. We just been breathing and dancing together for the last couple hours. So people are pretty chill and relaxed. Um, but then in another sense, it's nice to be able to hear other people's um, how do you want to say it? Like struggles and triumphs in the same time period that you were going through yours. So, it really builds a nice bond and to be able to share that over and over again after our sessions, I think really helps to build people's connection together. That's the SA about the Buddha Dharma and the SA, the sort of three treasures or three jewels if you want of the Buddhist tradition. I was just going to say that because it has a very strong SA feeling and it's not always obvious how you build that.

Yes.

And I think like that's been kind of a goal here too. You know, sometimes what happens in these things is everyone just kind of like goes off to their own space,

right? But this idea like let's consciously sort of share does create this sort of more SA community feeling,

And there's no compulsion to share whatever you don't want to share. Things are you keep them to yourself, right? But this idea that you have a meditation session and then we talk about the session afterwards is like quite interesting.

You know, couple of things I would say with that too, you know, based on what you were saying. One is everybody's going to have up and down sessions and that's something you learn too, which is kind of nice actually.

You know, the person who had a great session in the afternoon might find themselves struggling in the evening and vice versa,

right?

And it sort of puts some context of like, oh, everyone's going through this, okay? You know, I was I felt like I was [...] in Renzai in the afternoon like some great Zen master

in the evening I feel like a clown. [laughter]

It happens. It happens to everybody. And it happened on this very retreat, you know.

Some the people who were struggling in the afternoon, but in the evening they were like, "Man, that was the best session ever." And someone else was like, "Wow, I was like totally in the zone in one spot and that one was kind of more of a difficult one." So, you learn that,

right? It's also really interesting, I think, in the wrap-up aspect of that, you know, that we kind of talk about it as a group because there is kind of like a what some tandre texts will talk about like an an overmind, you know, a tandre mind that starts to develop between people. It was interesting because I was talking to one of the retreat participants afterwards and we were talking about what we felt about like one of the sessions and we were like amazingly like in sync.

And like and I don't know if you could put a timer to it exactly if our timing on things were perfect but the things that they were going through I was like oh yeah I could feel that. And that's kind of amazingly educational in of itself if you get the chance to talk about that because you start to realize,

wow, there really is a kind of interconnectivity.

I thought I was the only one who was feeling this. No, other people were feeling that, you know, in the group, too. Or sometimes, you know, we were talking about that you realize like, oh, this person's having a hard time. Oh, this person's in the zone. You can really start to feel people in this highly attuned way when you do these sort of shared sessions, right? Mhm.

We do it a little bit like sometimes in sodos then they turn and they face the wall, right? So it really kind of like you can get a group energy but everything is like facing towards the wall. Uh Bodhi Dharma, one of the founders of uh Zen in China like you know very famously meditated facing a wall for years and years and years. So it sort of has that feeling to it. But sometimes like when I was doing my Zen retreats, they'd make people face one another. make is the wrong word, but that's how you would situate people. And then you really feel that energetic exchange with like the other people in the group. And then you can start to realize how much you're affecting one another or sharing an experience together. It becomes kind of a joint experience and you can almost compare notes afterwards and say, "Oh yeah, I was like feeling this and that. Oh, me too." It's very interesting and you learn from doing that. But if everyone goes away into their own space, you never have a chance to do that kind of processing, right? So I think this is very very cool that you know this has become part of our routine. And it's nice in general, especially as society moves more further and further away, people move further and further away from each other. You know, we might be connected through, you know, devices or some useless chat platform. Um, to be able to talk in person openly in in front of other people as well, it just reminds you of the, you know, shared experience of humanity

and that visceral feeling of being in the same space. It isn't like, you know, we're just like

Yeah. Yeah. You feel the energy of being with other human beings in an energetic space, right?

And then you can also feel how that affects your shen if you want to use Chinese medical talk, Chinese cultural talk. Your mind or your spirit gets affected by this and people like, you know, are deeply affected by this. Mhm.

I would say in terms of like memorable sits, we had kind of a really interesting one on uh whatever that was. Was that Friday afternoon? There was like a little like tornado siren started going off.

And we were kind of like, okay, what do we want to do? You know, we're still going to sit. And we kind of like relocated down to the basement, right, of the space, you know, do cautions, right, as meditators, right? Um so we kind of relocated our sitting uh accutraants down to the lower level, reset things up and we did our kind of retreat there and it was a really I mean different people might have different experiences with that. was very memorable for me, right? Because uh you know the uh the sirens weren't going off like uh perpetual air raids or something like that. But you know there was like thunder and lightning and crashing and a little shaking power went off you know but we kind of kept doing our little you know safely doing our little meditative thing in the downstairs and it had a lot of like interesting energy within it right

all the storm clouds were going and everything was happening and then we were kind of like in our little space doing our thing and I think that's a that's a sit I'll like some sits you just remember

right I'll remember that one it was unique enough right

and at least for me a lot of the group energy felt very very good. There was a certain intensity to it.

Right. Maybe everybody focused in a way just because the situation was so had an intensity to it [laughter]

and it was cool. So that was kind of an interesting retreat and uh uh a little an interesting sit. It's kind of sit you'll remember and you any more about I can I want I'll share a little bit my reaction to it but I'll throw it to you Danny. What' you think of it? Um I I wanted to just maybe pivot just a second and and just acknowledge you know we always like to acknowledge but that like you know spirituality is not devoid from reality. It is part of reality. Reality comes from the sense of spirituality. Spirituality comes from the sense of shared reality. So it's not you know being transcendent of reality is not necessarily leaving it in the mirror and going to some you know heaven-like place. What Eric? They there's a term for this in in the Zen tradition. I think they're called like awaken zombies or something like this. Like

I mean it's that Zen deal where you have to like blend the conventional and the ultimate. Right.

Sometimes they'll like have these co-ons where it's like I'm enlightened now do the dishes.

Right.

You have to be able to combine ultimate reality and conventional reality. Yeah.

Yeah. And so even while we were on retreat, you know, we're trying to be focused and trying to have our teaching and and our conversations wrapped around practice, but you know, we end up talking about, you know, some political things and some uh different situations that people go through that are difficult and are questioning the motivations of other people and trying to drive home points of compassion and inclusiveness and different experiences that are, you know, in the same vein and it's to highlight that like even though we are lucky and are definitely conscious that we are fortunate to be able to a have a practice that is such a a deep and grounding and and cultivating force in our lives meaning me and Eric but then to be able to share that with other people in a way that like we feel is pretty authentic like that we have received genuine teachings things that probably go back quite some time. Obviously, there's some evolution as time goes on and different teachers add different things, some iterations. Uh but yeah, that the seed the the voice that was created is still alive in the teachers who gave it to us and to those who we shared it with. We're we're grateful to be able to do that one simultaneously. 1 a we realize that the you know the world is a [...] mad place simultaneously and there's a lot of you know people who are suffering and things going on that are are happening simultaneous so it's not lost on us and I don't think it's lost on our retreat participants that this is a very um you know it's an honorable thing to be able to participate in a to have the time or money to be able to take time off and to acknowledge the difficulty of other people and so we take this time really to dive in and cultivate ourselves so that we are even more helpful. We're are we shine even more in the world. We can be our best selves for more of the day than not and try to impact as much of the people around us as possible through our actions, words and and our beings. Uh so I just wanted to mention that so that you know I say it for myself even not for the audience.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was kind of an interesting when I woke up on Saturday morning. So, this was sort of part of what we're trying to do with this. And I don't even know this was it was partially planned was that it kind of became what a mix of what you would call a teaching retreat and a practice retreat. In a practice retreat, you're spending most of your time like meditating. If I did a Zen practice retreat, you might meditate 12, 14 hours in the day or something, right? You know, in between you take little breaks, but it's focused on like the practice aspect. And then sometimes you have things that are teaching retreats. you know, you don't do as much practice, but people are presenting the ideas of the practice, right? And this was sort of a blend of the two in kind of this really nice way. And we had like for what you were talking about, Daniel, we had a lot of like somewhat interesting, sometimes intense discussions, right? The world, as we've been acknowledging in our podcast over the past year and change, right? Hasn't been the most easy place to live, right? For a lot of people, it's kind of chaotic. People were bringing some of that stuff into the space, too, a little bit, right? But we're not going to like ignore the reality of that too. That's part of life as well.

You're trying to understand. I woke up on Saturday morning and I was like, we didn't get a chance to talk about it. I kept thinking maybe there's some point during the one of the teaching sessions where I would make this point and it just it never felt like it was its sweet spot to bring it up and you didn't want to bring up something that would be like tangential, you know, to what was happening in terms of the flow. Uh, but it was one of those things where you wake up and you're like, "Okay, I want to see if I can maybe present this idea and see how it will hit with people." You know, one of the big ideas that comes up when you do Buddhist tantra is the fact that we're spirits that are connected to matter, right? We're spirits that get entwined with, you know, our physical bodies, but, you know, we have that sort of that quality to us, right? You know, and so that is part of like Buddhist tantric philosophy and that came up in part of the discussions we were having. So if you can think like we're spirit and energy connected with matter connected with sometimes in Chinese medicine they call that jing right the physical essence of the body and the the spirit the energy and the jing comes together and they'll call this sometimes the three treasures in the Chinese medicine or in the dowist world but I was going to make the point with people especially after I heard a lot of the discussion things that just sort of naturally veered in these ways that were also you know spirit energy and matter that's then tied to like I was think I use was using the Bob Marley phrase the system [laughter] as in the Bob Marley song fighting against the system we my favorite Bob Marley songs uh you hear it in the one drop give it a listen it's a great track but um you know he has that line about being in a system right and like you know we live within a system too you know we we incarnate into this system that we exist with other beings within and um you know that I think from a Buddhist tantric point of view is what you might call collective karma. All of a sudden you're in this shared system that you share with the other beings around you, other human beings in this case, right? Within this shared system and a lot of what was happening was people were asking questions about the system per the Bob Marley song, right? Because people are asking a lot of questions about the system now, right? And like what is going potentially wrong with it and how we have to transcend it or how we have to transform it. And so that was sort of a part of the energy of what was happening in that retreat to my eyes.

I think a lot of people are thinking about that question. You know, from a Buddhist tantric point of view, it's I think the way I would want to frame that or model that would be okay, we're spirit connected with energy and our bodies, but that body and our our lives have been kind of also entwined with like a system that you kind of like become kind of entwined with as well, you know, and then you may feel good about that system or bad about that system, right?

And I was just like thinking about having that as part of our teaching retreat. The other point I wanted to make around that was something like if you start looking at the system around you and you're questioning it, one of the other things you wonder is like why don't these other beings question this? Which is kind of like comes up I think in those retreat spaces too.

I'm questioning this system. Why aren't why isn't everybody questioning this system? Some people are

some people seem like they're not like what's going on here? And I just wanted to talk about like the karmic aspect of that which isn't always said this explicitly I think in the Buddhists and tantric teachings but I think could be I think this is like something you can kind of share about this which is like if you incarnated in a certain system in the Bob Marley sense over and over again you are sort of used to that system and that system seems almost natural to you classically if you get to like the old school like the historical ical Buddha, you know, like uh there was like a cast system and if you incarnate into a cast system over and over again, you can kind of sort of like your it's like your consciousness and your spirit gets conditioned into believing that that that there's actual casts and people come from the outside and you're like, "What what the [...] is this? There's no casts. That's some crazy ass talk. This person isn't intrinsically like this and you're like this and this other one's over here into these groups. That's [...] wacko." Obviously, you can see that. And Buddha was like, "No, there's no casts." Right? That's a crazy thought, right? To think that there,

you know, and we have our own versions of that. Whether that's, you know, people think that people from different races are a certain way or people think that people from different genders or sexual orientations are like this or like that, that's crazy talk,

The fact that, you know, some people have all the money and other people don't get [...] that's crazy talk. You know, that's just being born into a system maybe over and over again, you know, where you just get used to the way that system works, you know, and you can feel that tension in you sometimes where you're like, okay, maybe I'm not entirely from this system and I feel the tension and I'm going to question it. And then you wonder, why aren't these other beings questioning this system as intently as I am? There's a um does a lot of political com commentary Jennifer Welch and she talks about growing up in the south

and just watching how you have these like kind of the southern preacher culture where that person runs off with everybody's money [laughter]

and buys a big fancy car and everybody else is poor and you're like why does that seem okay to them? And like you know if you get to the Buddhism of it if you've been in that over and over and over again that just seems natural to you know like of course that's just how it is. But if you step into that from the outside, then I think growing up even as a girl, she felt like I'm I guess I'm not from here, you know, on some level, right? This looks crazy to me, but this all seems natural. So, I was going to share it with our retreat participants. That's a deep thing. But I thought a lot of like that was happening as it should be. I think a lot of people are asking, okay, Bob Marley song, you got a point. Fighting against the system, questioning the system. Okay, we have to do that now. We're just in that

that thing. And that came into some of the retreat energy as well and some of the conversations that we had during the teaching parts and in between sessions. Kind of a longer thing, but I thought I would share it. You know, I thought it was interesting.

You know, always think about it from a Buddhist point of view, you know.

Yeah. Well, that's part of the thing is as you begin to learn and and develop yourself, there's the aspect of deconditioning.

That's absolutely part of what we're doing. And and you know, conditioning is is exactly what keeps us separate. that that keep that gives us the strong feeling of you and I, of me and you, of dark and light, of duality essentially. And so taking down those walls between even just people in in in a small community and literally like a half a dozen people does help to do that in a regular basis where you get to see eye to eye because, you know, I make this argument all the time. I think when you're in person and you're arguing with somebody, usually, not always, but usually, we want to find consensus. Even if we're disagreeing, it feels much better, at least for me and, you know, my life to okay, fine. We're going to agree to disagree

or people will people will argue, but it doesn't get vitriolic in the same way that it does correct the toxic spaces. Right.

Yeah. Exactly. when you're shouting across, you know, social media spaces or you're speaking through the media or you're

you can't say that stuff to someone's face.

No, you can't. And you wouldn't

you wouldn't you just like actually can't even if you tried, it'd be really hard.

Yeah. You just such an [...] saying those things.

That wouldn't do it, right?

Yeah. Because you see because you're I think it's you feel the other you feel the other person. So there's some level of like uh I don't know. I don't know that I want to do that. It's not, you know, they they're nice in person, right? Versus the character that they project and and you know, share to the rest of the world

or the stereotype I have them them in my mind or something.

Exactly. Exactly. So, yeah. So, that's that's part of the thing that happens is

they weren't like it was interesting because it wasn't like there was a lot of debate per se, though. There was a little bit, you know, some people like to like debate, so that's okay.

Yeah. They debate in the courtyards, right? You go out in the courtyard and you debate. [laughter]

Yeah. totally fine. But the the sharing of it was interesting. You could feel that all of us each in our moments was like still, okay, how does this fit into what's happening in the world at large? And I was like, yeah, you know, it's one of those things you sort of go if you reincarnate over and over again into a system, it starts to seem normal, natural to you. It feels like, okay, of course that's obvious. There's casts.

Of course, I'm in England over and over again. Of course there's lords and underlings to the lords. Of course, why wouldn't there be? And yeah, you step in from the outside. Well, that's just crazy talk. I mean, America over and over again. Of course, there's oligarchs that own everything and everyone else just struggles to get by and they dominate everything. Of course, it's just like that.

Yeah, that's how it is.

And Carnegies and now, you know, whoever you want to put on the top of that pyramid now, you know. Okay. Of course. Of course. You know, it's crazy. Yeah.

Yeah. Retreat is uh a place where you go to reprogram yourself intentionally.

Yeah. That's if I if I want to sum it up, it's it's intentional reprogramming.

I had like uh as we get to the end of the episode, maybe we'll like eight nine minutes left or something at the most,

I like in that afternoon one when it was all thunder and lightning, you know, you get into these little kind of altered states of consciousness and you have these kind of interesting thoughts. you're concentrating on the practice, but sometimes, you know, the signals are coming in and like I shared it afterwards with the group and I was like, "Okay, well, listen, I'm a little bit of a Carl Jung mood over here. I hope it's okay with everybody." But as I was hearing the storm guard car uh storms coming through, one of our retreat participants the day before as we were just discussing things outside the session, there was sort of religious conversation going on a little bit and they were saying, well, you know, the god of the Old Testament, Adonai or Yahweh, that was a storm god, you know, and he just brought that issue up. So, we're sitting and the storm is blowing through and the thunder and the lightning is going and it was like decently intense.

And uh we had done some episodes uh maybe a couple years ago now at this point where we talked about Carl Jung's answer to Job. You can go back and flashback to those episodes if you want to check it out listener. Uh but you know it's really like some people say this is the most profound Carl Jung book or something or at least the most personal one where he really tried his best he could to kind of share some of his deepest ideas and uh I was really having you we're doing this tantric retreat which is all about like the energies meeting the female and the male energies being in union right

classic tantra though of course just to say if you're uh a gay person you don't have to visualize it as male and female you can visualize it however you want we talked about that issue too.

Maybe more.

It's got to be spicy. You want it to be saucy.

Make it spicy. If you're not into the ladies or not into the fellas, change

spice it up.

Spice it up. It can be you and another one of whoever you like, right?

And if you love yourself, then two of you. [laughter]

I've talked with like some ladies about that. Like one person I like find most attractive is me. [laughter]

There might be some fellas like that, too. I shouldn't just leave it to the ladies. But actually had the conversation with some like you know secretly. Yeah. Anyways, uh it's really funny. But uh you know the storm clouds and the storm god was going through and I was thinking okay man it's like why you know if it's a storm god why is this god so angry? You know and I was just having those thoughts go through my head as we were doing the meditation and I was like oh because he doesn't have his consort he doesn't have like his his significant other. he doesn't have his love and he's so pissed off

his bae or his boo [laughter] and I was just like that's so interesting you know and you know you could take that either literally you know I told my son about that and he was like you literally believe in the storm god and I was like that's not the point

the point is that somehow you invented a really angry divinity

it becomes the point that's isolated from its its pair it's not able to have love from the other half of the divine, however you want to frame that. And that makes for a very angry divinity.

And I was like, okay, I think that's a truth. I really see the depth of that, right? Change your orientation to what the divine is. Make it about intimacy and love and connection and sensuality. You get a different divinity. You probably get a different culture on some level, right? Reframes everything.

And I was just having those thoughts. I was like, "Okay, cool. I'm gonna share this. I let it go at some point and I was I'll share this with the group afterwards. We'll see if it hits or doesn't hit. But I was like, "Yeah, that really feels something like that." Yeah. And then the other one I had that was kind of personal was I had a little bit about, you know, the one sit we did was a little bit more intense and I was like, "Okay, how are people handling the intensity of the sit?" It turned out good for a lot of the people, but I was like thinking, okay, you know, maybe some of the group is like, you know, someone's knee is hurting or maybe someone's having some other things. And it turned out to be kind of true. There were some people who had a more we go through ups and downs, right?

And you know, it kind of even when it's a little bit rougher, it feels good at the end because you kind of like you went on a journey, right? So it pays off in the end. One of the guys who was having kind of a tougher sit in that particular session said he just started laughing, you know, that it was okay, this is a tough one for me. And he laughed and he got back to it, you know. Um but as I was sitting there I was thinking okay I'm feeling a lot of compassion for the group and I was like a little bit worried about people in the group. And then a really interesting thing happened for me. I started thinking about um I had a really strong sense of like um uh one of these Buddhist uh goddesses Tara right love and compassion. I really felt her, you know, and uh then I had this moment where I was thinking about like uh you know, she has a maternal quality to her and I started thinking about my own mom. I grew up in a household where it was pretty uh emotionally and physically violent and I remembered my feelings of wanting to protect my mom and it was very moving for me you know and as far as like I think what has been part of the retreats that we've been doing which I think is a great idea that you brought into it Daniel was afterwards I was able to share that with the group you know and people like okay cool great that you share and that makes it easier for other people to share so you know those are sort of my maybe two of my I had some other retreat experiences that were good there a bit more on like insights into the practice, insights into the meditations, but as far as emotional stuff, that's just a couple of them just to give a feel. Any particular good ones for you you want to share or

No, that's good.

Feels good. Okay.

Yeah, that feels good.

All right. Episode?

Yes, sir. Well, uh, you know, we want to thank all our our participants who are there. If you listen to this, thanks for attending. Uh if you're interested in uh attending something in the future, please feel free to hit us up at jynantragmail.com. We'll get you on the list and when we do something again here hopefully in the next, you know, 6 to 12 months, then we will definitely include you on that and and get you hooked in. We also, you know, offered it online. So for people who can't make it maybe in person, but want to attend online, you know, from the comfort of your own home or hotel room or cardboard box outside of a large building, whatever. As long as you got Wi-Fi, you're good. We'll make it work for you.

Yeah, we'll make it work for you. Uh so again, you hit us up jinnantragmail.com. Uh you know, like, comment, subscribe, do all those things. Uh we appreciate it. Uh you can leave us also a message on the the Instagram at uh the Jin and Tantra podcast. We are working on some uh more regular I think written output. So, you know, be on the lookout for, you know, stuff like this, but we'll we'll also keep everybody updated.

Substack in the offering or something.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So anyways, we appreciate everybody tuning in. You know, this is a labor of love like we always say and uh we appreciate all the the kind of interaction. So, you know, feel free to drop all of your uh comments and concerns below and uh we will definitely do our best to get to you. So, for Eric, this is Daniel. We'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace.