Travis #171

feed.xml

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-<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" ><generator uri="https://jekyllrb.com/" version="3.6.3">Jekyll</generator><link href="https://kryptokommun.ist/feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" /><link href="https://kryptokommun.ist/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" /><updated>2024-01-03T02:49:01+00:00</updated><id>https://kryptokommun.ist/feed.xml</id><title type="html">kryptokommunist’s blog</title><subtitle>May you be happy, friend.</subtitle><author><name>Marcus Ding</name></author><entry><title type="html">What I learned about meditation, love, and trauma on and after a TWIM retreat with Delson Armstrong</title><link href="https://kryptokommun.ist/meditation/jhanas/therapy/english/2024/01/01/what-i-learned-about-meditation-love-and-trauma-on-and-after-a-twim-retreat-with-delson-armstrong.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="What I learned about meditation, love, and trauma on and after a TWIM retreat with Delson Armstrong" /><published>2024-01-01T00:00:00+00:00</published><updated>2024-01-01T00:00:00+00:00</updated><id>https://kryptokommun.ist/meditation/jhanas/therapy/english/2024/01/01/what-i-learned-about-meditation-love-and-trauma-on-and-after-a-twim-retreat-with-delson-armstrong</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://kryptokommun.ist/meditation/jhanas/therapy/english/2024/01/01/what-i-learned-about-meditation-love-and-trauma-on-and-after-a-twim-retreat-with-delson-armstrong.html">&lt;p&gt;I have been practicing tranquil wisdom insight meditation (&lt;a href=&quot;https://library.dhammasukha.org/books.html&quot;&gt;TWIM&lt;/a&gt;), a powerful loving-kindness-based meditation system, for the last half a year with a special focus on forgiveness practice. Through that, I already discovered that I and my friends often use shame and guilt to try to control each other. After becoming aware of that I dropped a lot of these patterns. When I started on my meditative path I started with a guided &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5a028RS5Ck&quot;&gt;TWIM metta meditation&lt;/a&gt;. During that practice after a month I accidentally dropped into the first and second Jhana, thinking I might be having a stroke. So after practicing different models, I returned to TWIM, knowing its power, since firstly living kindness simply feels good and also many people report that it’s the faster path and that it helps avoid dark night of the soul type of episodes.&lt;/p&gt;
+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" ><generator uri="https://jekyllrb.com/" version="3.6.3">Jekyll</generator><link href="https://kryptokommun.ist/feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" /><link href="https://kryptokommun.ist/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" /><updated>2024-01-03T02:54:14+00:00</updated><id>https://kryptokommun.ist/feed.xml</id><title type="html">kryptokommunist’s blog</title><subtitle>May you be happy, friend.</subtitle><author><name>Marcus Ding</name></author><entry><title type="html">What I learned about meditation, love, and trauma on and after a TWIM retreat with Delson Armstrong</title><link href="https://kryptokommun.ist/meditation/jhanas/therapy/english/2024/01/01/what-i-learned-about-meditation-love-and-trauma-on-and-after-a-twim-retreat-with-delson-armstrong.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="What I learned about meditation, love, and trauma on and after a TWIM retreat with Delson Armstrong" /><published>2024-01-01T00:00:00+00:00</published><updated>2024-01-01T00:00:00+00:00</updated><id>https://kryptokommun.ist/meditation/jhanas/therapy/english/2024/01/01/what-i-learned-about-meditation-love-and-trauma-on-and-after-a-twim-retreat-with-delson-armstrong</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://kryptokommun.ist/meditation/jhanas/therapy/english/2024/01/01/what-i-learned-about-meditation-love-and-trauma-on-and-after-a-twim-retreat-with-delson-armstrong.html">&lt;p&gt;I have been practicing tranquil wisdom insight meditation (&lt;a href=&quot;https://library.dhammasukha.org/books.html&quot;&gt;TWIM&lt;/a&gt;), a powerful loving-kindness-based meditation system, for the last half a year with a special focus on forgiveness practice. Through that, I already discovered that I and my friends often use shame and guilt to try to control each other. After becoming aware of that I dropped a lot of these patterns. When I started on my meditative path I started with a guided &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5a028RS5Ck&quot;&gt;TWIM metta meditation&lt;/a&gt;. During that practice after a month I accidentally dropped into the first and second Jhana, thinking I might be having a stroke. So after practicing different models, I returned to TWIM, knowing its power, since firstly living kindness simply feels good and also many people report that it’s the faster path and that it helps avoid dark night of the soul type of episodes.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/TWIM/bhudda.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;!--more--&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/TWIM/meditationhall.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 
-&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/TWIM/bhudda.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
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 &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/TWIM/outside.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/TWIM/forrest.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 &lt;p class=&quot;caption&quot;&gt; Going for a walk in the forest on the last day, the forest and sun rays were captivating as I saw the with fresh eyes like for the first time.&lt;/p&gt;
 
 &lt;h2 id=&quot;forgiveness-practice-trauma-and-finding-a-safe-anchor-in-the-heart&quot;&gt;forgiveness practice, trauma and finding a safe anchor in the heart&lt;/h2&gt;
 
-&lt;p&gt;This has been the second silent retreat of my life after the 6-day silent retreat with Catherine McGee at Gaia House earlier this year. I started with forgiveness practice for the first three days of the retreat. That meant that I would observe all the thoughts I had throughout the day and forgive them. And I was in for a shock. The whole day my mind was thinking thoughts that were completely referring to the past. My thoughts were mainly going back to replaying situations from my childhood and school as a teenager. Silence at the dinner table due to being on a silent retreat? My mind wouldn’t care and started thinking about being in trouble because there must be some conflict at the dinner table. Looking deeper of course that was how my childhood dinner with family looked like very often. My mind did not care that I was now an adult sitting with meditators at a silent dinner table.
+&lt;p&gt;This has been the second silent retreat of my life after the &lt;a href=&quot;/meditation/jhanas/therapy/english/2023/04/20/my-first-five-day-silent-retreat-jhanas-and-alexander-technique.html&quot;&gt;6-day silent retreat&lt;/a&gt; with Catherine McGee at Gaia House earlier this year. I started with forgiveness practice for the first three days of the retreat. That meant that I would observe all the thoughts I had throughout the day and forgive them. And I was in for a shock. The whole day my mind was thinking thoughts that were completely referring to the past. My thoughts were mainly going back to replaying situations from my childhood and school as a teenager. Silence at the dinner table due to being on a silent retreat? My mind wouldn’t care and started thinking about being in trouble because there must be some conflict at the dinner table. Looking deeper of course that was how my childhood dinner with family looked like very often. My mind did not care that I was now an adult sitting with meditators at a silent dinner table.
 
During the first days of forgiveness meditation, I forgave every thought I had. I had some tears coming up at times, but was never able to really let go and cry. In hindsight, since I could totally do that after the retreat I think that some part of me was holding back and was not feeling fully safe to allow feeling the grief. At times I could also catch some suicidal thoughts, a car going by and some thought of jumping in front of it would come up. I forgave myself for that and also used some IFS moves to ask that part of myself for its reasons. A couple of days later Delson had me switch to loving kindness practice. His presence was such that it felt like he was practicing what he was preaching. He felt very present in the moment and it felt like whatever emotion/worry etc. I threw at him would dissipate into equanimity. Besides the technical instructions the interviews conveyed a deep sense of trust in the process and it felt like the core message was: Everything will unfold by itself, accept whatever is arising.
  
Then after some time, I would start to have trouble falling asleep. A lot of fear would come up before sleeping. The most magnificent thing I noticed there was how my consciousness would be pulled by some force into the past, some traumatic memories. I did not access them, it was just a hunch. And then I could immediately feel how consciousness would be pulled back to my heart. I would then invoke some metta and lie in bed with warmth spreading out from the heart in my chest and I felt protected from this movement of mind trying to pull me into the past. After that experience, I was sure that I want to permanently have what Delson called a lighthouse or anchor in the heart. According to Delson that is the only kind of real safety we can have and it made a lot of sense to me. It made sense not logically, but experimentally it became very clear to me that this is true and incredibly powerful and valuable.&lt;/p&gt;
 

index.html

@@ -187,6 +187,8 @@ <h1 class="post-title" itemprop="name headline"><a href="/meditation/jhanas/ther
  <div class="post-content" itemprop="articleBody">
  <p>I have been practicing tranquil wisdom insight meditation (<a href="https://library.dhammasukha.org/books.html">TWIM</a>), a powerful loving-kindness-based meditation system, for the last half a year with a special focus on forgiveness practice. Through that, I already discovered that I and my friends often use shame and guilt to try to control each other. After becoming aware of that I dropped a lot of these patterns. When I started on my meditative path I started with a guided <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5a028RS5Ck">TWIM metta meditation</a>. During that practice after a month I accidentally dropped into the first and second Jhana, thinking I might be having a stroke. So after practicing different models, I returned to TWIM, knowing its power, since firstly living kindness simply feels good and also many people report that it’s the faster path and that it helps avoid dark night of the soul type of episodes.</p>
 
+<p><img src="/images/TWIM/bhudda.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+
 <a href="/meditation/jhanas/therapy/english/2024/01/01/what-i-learned-about-meditation-love-and-trauma-on-and-after-a-twim-retreat-with-delson-armstrong.html">...mehr lesen</a>
  </div>
  <div class="post-meta post-tags">

meditation/jhanas/therapy/english/2024/01/01/what-i-learned-about-meditation-love-and-trauma-on-and-after-a-twim-retreat-with-delson-armstrong.html

@@ -183,20 +183,20 @@ <h1 class="post-title" itemprop="name headline">What I learned about meditation,
  <div class="post-content" itemprop="articleBody">
  <p>I have been practicing tranquil wisdom insight meditation (<a href="https://library.dhammasukha.org/books.html">TWIM</a>), a powerful loving-kindness-based meditation system, for the last half a year with a special focus on forgiveness practice. Through that, I already discovered that I and my friends often use shame and guilt to try to control each other. After becoming aware of that I dropped a lot of these patterns. When I started on my meditative path I started with a guided <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5a028RS5Ck">TWIM metta meditation</a>. During that practice after a month I accidentally dropped into the first and second Jhana, thinking I might be having a stroke. So after practicing different models, I returned to TWIM, knowing its power, since firstly living kindness simply feels good and also many people report that it’s the faster path and that it helps avoid dark night of the soul type of episodes.</p>
 
+<p><img src="/images/TWIM/bhudda.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+
 <!--more-->
 
 <p><img src="/images/TWIM/meditationhall.jpg" alt="" /></p>
 
-<p><img src="/images/TWIM/bhudda.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
 <p><img src="/images/TWIM/outside.jpg" alt="" /></p>
 
 <p><img src="/images/TWIM/forrest.jpg" alt="" /></p>
 <p class="caption"> Going for a walk in the forest on the last day, the forest and sun rays were captivating as I saw the with fresh eyes like for the first time.</p>
 
 <h2 id="forgiveness-practice-trauma-and-finding-a-safe-anchor-in-the-heart">forgiveness practice, trauma and finding a safe anchor in the heart</h2>
 
-<p>This has been the second silent retreat of my life after the 6-day silent retreat with Catherine McGee at Gaia House earlier this year. I started with forgiveness practice for the first three days of the retreat. That meant that I would observe all the thoughts I had throughout the day and forgive them. And I was in for a shock. The whole day my mind was thinking thoughts that were completely referring to the past. My thoughts were mainly going back to replaying situations from my childhood and school as a teenager. Silence at the dinner table due to being on a silent retreat? My mind wouldn’t care and started thinking about being in trouble because there must be some conflict at the dinner table. Looking deeper of course that was how my childhood dinner with family looked like very often. My mind did not care that I was now an adult sitting with meditators at a silent dinner table.
+<p>This has been the second silent retreat of my life after the <a href="/meditation/jhanas/therapy/english/2023/04/20/my-first-five-day-silent-retreat-jhanas-and-alexander-technique.html">6-day silent retreat</a> with Catherine McGee at Gaia House earlier this year. I started with forgiveness practice for the first three days of the retreat. That meant that I would observe all the thoughts I had throughout the day and forgive them. And I was in for a shock. The whole day my mind was thinking thoughts that were completely referring to the past. My thoughts were mainly going back to replaying situations from my childhood and school as a teenager. Silence at the dinner table due to being on a silent retreat? My mind wouldn’t care and started thinking about being in trouble because there must be some conflict at the dinner table. Looking deeper of course that was how my childhood dinner with family looked like very often. My mind did not care that I was now an adult sitting with meditators at a silent dinner table.
 
During the first days of forgiveness meditation, I forgave every thought I had. I had some tears coming up at times, but was never able to really let go and cry. In hindsight, since I could totally do that after the retreat I think that some part of me was holding back and was not feeling fully safe to allow feeling the grief. At times I could also catch some suicidal thoughts, a car going by and some thought of jumping in front of it would come up. I forgave myself for that and also used some IFS moves to ask that part of myself for its reasons. A couple of days later Delson had me switch to loving kindness practice. His presence was such that it felt like he was practicing what he was preaching. He felt very present in the moment and it felt like whatever emotion/worry etc. I threw at him would dissipate into equanimity. Besides the technical instructions the interviews conveyed a deep sense of trust in the process and it felt like the core message was: Everything will unfold by itself, accept whatever is arising.
  
Then after some time, I would start to have trouble falling asleep. A lot of fear would come up before sleeping. The most magnificent thing I noticed there was how my consciousness would be pulled by some force into the past, some traumatic memories. I did not access them, it was just a hunch. And then I could immediately feel how consciousness would be pulled back to my heart. I would then invoke some metta and lie in bed with warmth spreading out from the heart in my chest and I felt protected from this movement of mind trying to pull me into the past. After that experience, I was sure that I want to permanently have what Delson called a lighthouse or anchor in the heart. According to Delson that is the only kind of real safety we can have and it made a lot of sense to me. It made sense not logically, but experimentally it became very clear to me that this is true and incredibly powerful and valuable.</p>
 

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