As I was just mentioning in my last post, I’m going on vacation.

In a week I head up to my friend’s retreat house 9,000 feet up in the Rockies for two weeks.

Components:

• Meditation/internal exercises
• Breath work
• Martial arts
• Yoga
• Steam showers
• Reading contemplative texts
• Journaling
• Wandering through the deep snow in the woods [!!!]
• Healthy food
• Raw food?
• Fasting?
• Being
• Relaxing
• Visioning/being receptive
• Playing acoustic guitar?

Noncomponents:

• Technology [cell phone, computer, clocks, lights/hot liquid water?]
• Other people
• Doing/working
• Thinking/planning

Preparatory Reading:

• “Nature and the Human Soul” Bill Plotkin
• “The Ascent of Humanity” Charles Eisenstein
• “Creative Thinking” J. G. Bennett

Reading During the Retreat:

• “The Miracle of Mindfulness” Thich Nhat Hanh
• “Tao Te Ching” Lao-tzu
• “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” Shunryu Suzuki

I’ll be bringing a lot of intensity to this retreat.  I have some powerful questions for myself and the universe right now about how to interact with the world, and the answers feel more distant than in past times.  You could say I’m frustrated that the solutions aren’t more vivid.  Yet I think it’s exactly this kind of energy that I need to be taking into the retreat with me.  These conditions prepare the ground for creativity to enter.  I know my next step, and that is all.