I believe I totally resolved the issues that I entered the retreat with. Turns out I was profoundly attached to understanding. More precisely that I really deeply believed that I would only be worthy of love if I understood correctly. That led to all kinds of stupid behavior.

I’m so grateful to have had this opportunity. And I’m grateful to have a teacher, @soryuforall, who trusts me enough to push me into parts of my mind that I have spent my whole life running from. It’s rare (and getting rarer) in this world.

I’m back on the internet! I ended up getting an extra month of retreat for good behavior. 🤠 These were the most challenging and rewarding 74 days of my life. I am filled with gratitude for the @MonasticAcademy, @soryuforall and the Buddha. ❤️ https://t.co/ldGrPQIETX Quoted tweet from @dthorson: 1/ I’m going into a 45ish day

Once I made my way through that pain I discovered a quality of being that was more peaceful, present, and joyful than I have ever known.

But also in the wake of this seeing were many days of profound confusion, helplessness & fear including the terror of going insane. It’s as if the belief that I needed understanding was protecting me from encountering all this pain.

In the wake of this seeing – Tons of shame and anxiety evaporated, seemingly for good – I could feel reliable and vivid self love effortlessly whenever I wanted – I intuited the next steps of projects I’ve been struggling with for a long time

I broke through that belief and realized that I don’t actually understand anything, that I’m totally loved anyway, and that somehow the fact that I’m loved for no reason is way better than being loved for reasons.

2/ I’ve been seeing ways I deceive myself and deceive others, causing pain where there didn’t need to be pain. Ways that I’ve been serving an identity project instead of serving truth, even while claiming to be serving truth. Patterns that caused me to hurt people I love.

1/ I’m going into a 45ish day silent solitary meditation retreat on Friday 🫠 These past months I’ve been reckoning with aspects of my being that I buried deep in my psyche. Even after thousands of hours of meditation practice, dozens of retreats, I was still blind to them 🧵

4/ It has gotten me in touch with an exquisite tangle of protective mechanisms that I would probably have died not seeing, were it not for how I trapped myself.