Back from Retreat

first outpouring of 2025

Jan 07, 2025

I’ve emerged from my annual at-home solitary silent retreat, which was deeply rejuvenating. As always, there were dark moments and enlightening ones. It rained all week off and on, nourishing the earth and making us a little less prone to summer wildfires, but there were also many moments of glorious sunlight. I sat in silence most of the time, although I got some much needed work done around the house as well, and of course I prepared and ate meals. I took daily walks. Went twice to the fitness center and worked out in silence. Dipped into a few nondual spiritual books over the course of the week, including John Astin's new book, In Every Wave, The Entirety of the Sea, which I very highly recommend, and Peter Brown's new posthumous book Liberation Beyond Imagination, which I also highly recommend. I wrote a bit in my journal by hand, but stayed off the computer and away from my desk. I did get on my iPad and watched a crime thriller on Netflix one night just to mix it up a little. But mostly, it was a week of silence and solitude, doing very little, talking to no one—no email, no reading or writing articles, no holding Zoom meetings, no visits with friends. Simply being alive. Deeply refreshing. I highly recommend it!

I'll share a few passages from my retreat journal, then a short excerpt from my last book, followed by a short video clip from a recent podcast, and finally, a few words from the aforementioned book by Peter Brown that I came upon during the retreat and loved.

Glimpses from my retreat journal

Walking over the hill this morning, snow-capped mountains framed by a ring of clouds, and lower down, long columns of cloud drifting across green mountains—the landscape a bright emerald green, washed clean by rain, everything sparking with light. The footbridge flooded, water pouring over it, the creek overflowing, tree trunks under rushing water.

The beauty everywhere is overwhelming.

Just this—simply being alive—nothing to transcend.

Later, in my living room, hearing honking geese, seeing them reflected for a moment in the window of the building across from me flying past, a flash of motion, gone in an instant. The window pane emptied again, the sound fading away.

The openness of Presence. Vast emptiness. Open. Free.

New Year's Day, opening the shades, a small bird hopping toward me on the ground below my window, and I know that Spirit, Love, fundamental goodness is real.

Feeling very free and open. And then the old knot comes, the habitual effort to figure something out. I feel lost. Wanting to be free of this knot, free of self-concern and uncertainty, dwelling freely in not knowing, in openness, in simply being present here-now. But instead, there is now the knot, the straining, the inability to let go.

But it lets go anyway by itself as everything does instant by instant. Feeling again the non-substantial, dream-like quality of all experience. Simply being alive, just as I am, which of course includes the knot, the uncertainty, the pain in my hip. All of it okay.

Feeling the purpose of this life: to find the beauty, the wonder, the love in THIS life, to bring it forth, embody it, celebrate it, be devoted to it—finding the sacred everywhere in this ungraspable aliveness. Finding the resurrection in the crucifixion, the redemption, holding the wounds of the world in unconditional love. Finding the perfection in the imperfection. A lifelong koan.

By night, everything totally empty — no thing at all. Peace. Stillness.

The next day I clean the house. Cook a wonderful meal. By evening I feel bored, restless, lost—have a headache, am biting my fingers. Finally I'm able to just sit still. All is well again.

The next day, deep meditation. Everything disintegrates, moment by moment, my whole life, all world events, everything. Everything is no-thing at all. Feeling this. Dreams within dreams. Without substance. All the teachers, the teachings, it all dissolves. There is a physical sensation of rising above it all. Open. Free. Being nothing and everything.

It rains all day. I walk in the rain. Cook miso spinach soup. Drink Kukicha tea. Eat dark chocolate. Sit quietly. Then watch Netflix.

This living reality can be seen, experienced, understood, framed, described and engaged with in infinitely different ways. Is there actually a single objective reality outside all the different subjective frames? Can we ever know? Do we need to know? Or can we simply dance in the infinitely varied appearances, the fool on the hill, enjoying the Catholic Mass, the Buddhist silence, the Sufi Heart-Love, the experience of vast open spacious presence, the experience of being everything, the darkness and confusion, the knotting and releasing, the whole unresolvable dancing emptiness?

In my book DEATH, I have a chapter called "The Observer-Independent Reality that Doesn't Actually Exist." It begins with a quote from Zen Master Dogen: "Is it that there are various ways of seeing one object, or is it that we have mistaken various images for one object?"

Do I need to be any more resolved or settled than I am?

FREEDOM to be just as I am and for life to be just as it is, knowing there is no single correct way of seeing, experiencing or formulating it. This infinitely varied, holographic, fractal, kaleidoscopic living actuality. This so clearly seen, felt. The ripples in the pond, the rippling reflections, the sudden flights of birds, the bark of a dog, the sparkling raindrops hanging on the tips of glistening wet branches, each drop a universe, a jewel.

Reading Peter Brown, feeling so free, then later re-watching John Butler's beautiful interview that he did maybe a decade ago on Conscious TV and being re-turned to Silence, to Stillness, to God, to Spirit. Such different beings, these two men, and I love them both. I AM them both, Peter might say. We are all One Whole happening, the One behind all the masks, the no-thing-ness that is so abundantly full.

from my book DEATH: The End of Self-Improvement:

Truth cannot be put into words. It is alive, ever-fresh. To be awake is to live in devotion to Here-Now, without the handrails of any ideology, belief system or authority. Sometimes devotion means that I sit on a cushion and engage in something that looks like formal meditation. Sometimes it means I sit in my armchair watching the clouds blow past the mountains or feeling into the fear and anxiety that is sweeping through my gut or my chest. Sometimes it means I pick or bite my fingers and notice that I am compelled to do this and unable to stop myself, and that this, too, is an inconceivable movement of life itself. Sometimes it means discovering anew that there is space here for everything to be as it is, and that in that spacious and unconditioned awareness, empty of all judgments and goals, everything changes, and the truly new emerges.
— from DEATH: The End of Self-Improvement

What Do We Mean by the Word ‘I’?

Here's a short 5 minute video clip from my recent appearance on Simon Mundie's podcast (the entire audio can be found here). This short clip focuses first on what's wrong with self-improvement and then moves on to explore what we mean by the word "I." To what exactly does that word refer?

Being Yourself: The Lazy Man’s Yoga

I'll leave you with a bit I absolutely loved from the final chapter of Peter Brown's newest posthumous book, Liberation Beyond Imagination (edited by Nic Higham):

We are constantly faced with the paradox of being human—essentially being flawed—within the context of being this transcendental, inconceivable, infinite, divine fullness. This paradox is a continual knife-edge that never goes away in my experience. As nearly as I can tell, I am a realized being, the real thing, yet I am also flawed.
I am a semi-functional human being with a ragged, poorly integrated personality, obsessions, and desires. I am just a schmo, and yet I am also God. Go figure! The good news is that you don’t need to stop being a schmo to realize you are God. If that were the case, we would all be doomed. The fallacy of simplistic spiritualities is the belief that we must correct our flaws or solve the dilemma of our pathetic failings. Fortunately, that is not the case.
You already are God; you cannot not be God. It doesn’t matter that you’re a schmo. What a delightful and potent fact that is! People are so intrinsically full of self-loathing that they assume that anything good requires them to be better or to be a better version of themselves. But that’s just a fallacy. Thankfully, it is not true, or we’d all be in trouble. The best you can do is be yourself...
If you’re feeling stuck or fucked up in your life, that’s okay. Acknowledge those feelings without trying to apply an antidote or fix them. Instead, sidestep the urge to fix and seek some degree of contact with the amazing presence that is always here. This presence, by its very nature, does the dismantling for you effortlessly.
This approach is delightfully easy and fun. Simply connect with the openness, the presence, and the amazingness, even if only to a small degree. It’s no problem if you snap back into old patterns. Just repeat the cycle. Each contact with this amazingness does the work for you. The nature of this presence is self-verifying; it proves and demonstrates itself over time. As you continue to engage with it, what you truly are becomes clearer, and what you thought you were becomes less relevant.
You don’t need to do anything special, figure anything out, or deconstruct old patterns. You can be very laissez-faire and relaxed, letting yourself bounce around as you wish. The main thing is to make intimate contact with this actuality, this presence occasionally. Over time, these moments of contact will do all the work for you. So, that’s good news. This is truly the lazy man’s yoga.
— from Liberation Beyond Imagination: Discovering Spiritual Freedom Through the Truth of Experience by Peter Brown

As best I can tell, Peter is saying pretty much the same thing I was saying in the above-quoted excerpt from my book DEATH: The End of Self-Improvement. It seems to be what John Astin and Darryl Bailey and Tony Parsons and various others are also saying, each in our own unique and somewhat varied ways. After many years on the pathless path, years that have included a wide range of practices and non-practices, I continue to find this the most relaxing, relieving and liberating message. It boils down to the simplicity of being alive, being just this one bottomless moment that we cannot not be, this aliveness that never begins or ends, this radiant presence that never departs from itself—ever-changing, ever-present, always right here, right now. Just this!

Wishing all of you a wonder-full 2025!

Love to all…