“I am both the producer and the experiencer of stress.”
Jonathan Adams shared this; a sentiment he personally realized, and may ripple out to your day-to-day.
Life can feel...Like a quiet suffering of worry, anxiety and fear. We "suffer-fest" our way through. When we use meditations to calm ourselves, we apply the same ethic. Suffer. It's hard.
The idea of "deep retreat" or a longer practice gives your mind time to settle into quieter states, where patterns can actually surface. Ruminations of thought can become obvious, or laughable even. Energetic and physiological patterns rise, for integrations.
We can truly -- maybe for the first time, witness these sensations rather than become them.
If you can produce stress, you can also produce the opposite—peace, joy, even bliss—by changing the relationship you have with perception and reaction.
This retreat wasn’t about “positive thinking.”
It acted as an interruption: learning to notice the impulse to react…and letting the impulse pass without obeying it.
There is sharing, speaking, and conversation and then the "actual" meditation that Jonathan shares is 1.5 hours long. Experience it as you like. Watch the introduction for context, or fast-forward right to the meditation aspect. Enjoy.
