Word count:6298
hey leo here for actualised org and isn't this something different so this is more of a video blog style of video and I'll tell you in a second why that is and what's going on here but I'm sitting in my car and I'm outside my apartment complex and I'm getting ready to go on a trip so what I'm doing here is a solo meditation retreat it's going to be ten days well really nine days of solid meditation non-stop meditation in a place that I rented basically I've rented a house in the middle of a forest in Arizona I live in Las Vegas this what you're seeing behind me is Las Vegas sunny Las Vegas it's beautiful spring here right now in April and I am going to be doing a 6-hour drive all the way to the middle of Arizona where it's rather Foresti you might think that Arizona the desert but actually there's a forest there so in the middle of this pine forest it's going to be my meditation retreat and it's just going to be myself so this is an idea that I got a while ago from doing the pastina retreats now the Posner retreats are great I recommend you do them but the problem with them is that you're there with a bunch of people and to me meditation is at its peak when it's so low so when I go meditating I like to meditate by myself even when I do have a Posten retreat I'll just sit in my room and meditate there the whole day or the whole week and that's worked well for me because I tend to be a pretty introverted individual and I don't like to do group meditation to me that defeats the whole purpose of why I meditate so that's why I'm doing this solo trip that's the first time that I'm trying this out so it's a bit of an ordeal try to figure out the logistics you might think that oh well ten days by yourself that's easy as far as logistics but there's a lot of stuff so you have to prepare the food you have to plan everything out ahead because when I'm talking about meditating for ten days straight that's like every single day your mind is on meditation and nothing else no distractions no internet no cell phones not even going to the grocery store or not getting in your car so I mean you're fully committed to 24/7 meditation even as you're going to sleep and your head is hitting the pillow after a full day of meditating you are still maintaining mindfulness and you're still labeling and noting and doing the formal meditation practice what happens when you do this for 10 days straight is that you reach levels of consciousness that are simply have never been experienced by you before so anyways I digress I don't want to go too deep into that what I want to tell you here is that I packed my car for a full of stuff you can see I got food it's got a cooler with food and I got all sorts of gear back there but anyways so I'm going to do this trip and I want to record videos of it and then what I'm going to do is I am going to be meditating for the entire nine days and what I will do though is I will do one short maybe 10-minute video recording at the end of each day I'm thinking with just the insights that I had that would be pertinent to you so the idea of this video this whole series is going to be that I want to put together kind of a recording of what it looks like to set up a solo meditation retreat so that for those of you who are really into consciousness work and are really serious about it you have a template that you can use so I'll talk about the food that I prepare some of the logistics and planning that goes on how I structure my days and what exactly I'm doing some of the exact techniques that I'm using how I'm self inquiring how I'm meditating how I'm labeling and noting and so forth so hopefully that will be useful to you I will record a little bit more as I'm driving on this trip we'll see what the footage is like so this is a very kind of a raw unscripted I didn't plan any of this stuff I didn't think any of this stuff at a time for what I want to tell you and what it's going to be like because it's experimental so come with me on this journey I've been meaning to do more of these kind of like raw experimental types of personal development videos for a while but just the opportunity hasn't been presenting itself because I've been pretty busy but I think that in the coming years I will be doing more of these so that you can see what actual self actualization looks like in the flesh it's one thing for me to stand up and preach a bunch of theory at you that's well and good but then you got to take the theory that I talked about and then embody it by doing stuff like this and there's a lot of different techniques there's hundreds probably thousands of different techniques that that you can be learning and practicing to embody this stuff in your life the real key in this work is the embodiment component it's like the theory you know as much time as you waste watching my videos and listening to me or to other self-help gurus and so forth I mean that's well and good that's just as that's the beginning you see people think that okay yeah watched I watched a hundred videos and that's pretty good I'm all set no man that's just the beginning that's where it starts the couple hundred hours that you invest into watching some videos or reading a couple of books or watching some audio programs or listening to some audio programs yeah that then only tells you what you need to be doing right because before you even begin you don't even know what you need to be doing so that just tells you what you need to be doing and maybe gives you some tips about how to do it some guidelines a template but then you got to go and do it so the theory is really just like one percent of all this work one percent of theory me standing up there preaching at you and 99 percent is you doing stuff like this meditation retreats cleaning up your diet reading books I mean that's an action step there's hundreds of hours of books you need to be reading so the list just goes on and on and on with all the different techniques and I try to share techniques with you in my videos so they are not so theoretical because I know how easy it is to get trapped in the theory but anyways I don't want to ramble on for too long I have a six hour drive ahead of me it's going to be a little bit tedious but the place that I'm going to should be beautiful it's a very kind of wooded area I rented a cabin through air B&B cost me a bit about $1700 for 10 days you can certainly find cheaper cabins this wasn't just a cab and this is really a full outhouse and I'll show you what the house looks like it should look pretty cool so you'll see why I paid a little extra for it but this should be a nice beautiful natural setting the reason I'm driving all the way to damned ass Arizona is because in Vegas there's a lot of amazing stuff in Vegas but one of the things I really don't like about it is that it's a desert so there is no greenery here I mean you see some palm trees behind me but there's no like natural parks there's no forests it's dry as a bone here for the whole year so I like to meditate in lush green jungle or forest II type environments so this is going to be my Arizona trip and then I'm planning another solo meditation retreat to Hawaii sometime later in this year probably actually pretty soon in a couple of months hopefully we'll see how my schedule looks but bitching anyways so so yeah so that should be cool I'll be in the jungle in Hawaii meditating so I want to show you some of that and I want to show you also how you can make meditation and this whole self inquiry becoming a sage becoming a mystic business you can make it pretty cool and adventurous so you might think of like a monk is this lame guy who just sits in a Zen monastery staring at a wall that might sound pretty boring to you but also you can make it an adventure you know you can get in your car travel around the country meditate different places go to national parks meet people you know go to seminars go to different gurus so there's a lot of opportunities like that out there which can make it a little bit more exciting for you if you're the adventurous type and you're also sort of like you want to get out of your house but of course you have to remember not to mistake all that external activity for actual meditation contemplation that still has to take place so no matter where you go whether Hawaii or Antarctica it doesn't matter where you're meditating in the end you're facing yourself there's nobody else that you can face but you and that requires turning inwards right so you got to turn inwards so you can't run forever and if you think that well leo so does this mean that I can't meditate effectively at home because now you're telling me I need to rent a a two thousand dollar house somewhere in the woods in order to go meditate no I meditate at home every single day for many hours I've meditated at home for hundreds of hours so the reason I'm doing this trip is because I want to do a very strict very serious solid ten days of meditating and that's hard to do at home especially for me because I work from home I have computers and all sorts of distractions there plus I meditate there regularly so it does get boring after you know hundreds and thousands of hours of sitting on my couch it does get boring so I do like a change of scenery sometimes especially for like a retreat setting so I think that shifting my environment is is a good tactic here there's something about going to a new place that kind of resets your mind resets your brain so now when you get there you're serious you're not screwing around also the money investment is also a nice thing because one thing you'll discover if you go on a 10-day solo retreat is that it's very damn difficult to stay consistent with it and to to stick through the whole thing I know because I've tried to start some in the past and then I failed one or two days in so this is sort of a advanced personal development here you're not going to be able to really pull this off as a newbie it's really challenging to even spend 12 hours straight fully mindful fully meditating using a formal technique let alone do that day after day after day for over a week that's a that's challenging to pull off so I'm a little bit intimidated I'm not sure how it's going to go so this is kind of part of the experiment why it's going to be fun is because you get to see what actually happens maybe I'll quit halfway through I don't know on the other hand I am optimistic because I've been meditating and self inquiring and contemplating now for like three years or so and I've been going to retreats that I've been learning from a lot of different non dual teachers traditions and gurus and at this point it feels like all that stuff is sort of crystallized and only now do I really feel like I conceptually understand all the traps and the full scope of this journey and what I'm supposed to be doing what I'm sitting there on the meditation cushion so that being the case I think that there's a great opportunity here this week for me to experience some powerful mystical experiences perhaps an Enlightenment or some deep insights into my inner demons so shadow work is going to get done here so either way something's going to happen if it's not going to be an enlightenment experience that's okay you can't predict these things it's really not in my power to decide whether I'll have one or not whether I'll become enlightened or not that's not in my power to decide the only thing I can do is just put in the work and be very disciplined and serious about it so that's where my full intention and focus is going is to be very strict in my in my process in my method and to not quit it's not slack off it's not start daydreaming about stuff because I could easily start daydreaming up business ideas and travel plans vacations girlfriends sex food and all this sort of stuff so that's not going to happen this time I'm going to be very strict because I feel like I'm on the brink now I've had enough experiences now with psychedelics with some Samadhi states that I achieved in Prior meditation retreats various insights about enlightenment and reality that I've had just from contemplating on my own at home that now it feels like stuff is starting to crescendo and that there's going to have to be a crack or a break in the mind at some point and that's both intimidating frightening and promising and exhilarating because that's what this work is about and I'm really as I shoot more videos as I talk more at you it really makes me conscious of how much more I have to do to embody in myself all the things that I talk about and so that just makes me sort of like double down on my commitment to actually actualize the theory right you have to actualize the theory and what are the first three letters of actualize act how do you actualize you act on the theory how do you act on the theory well it's not as complicated as you might think it's not as murky might seem like well Leo I'm confused about how to actually act some of the stuff you say no really what's going on is that you're not serious you're not committed if you were serious and committed you would be committed and serious at all costs and then your brain would go and figure out how to actually implement some of this stuff but when you're just sitting at home and you're just watching these videos while you're cooking your dinner or something you're just listening to me I mean that's good you got to start somewhere that's good but if you're not going to get very deep in this work not as deep as man as a possible loop the reason you want to go deep in this work is because it's so ridiculously amazing the deeper you go you see maybe you've noticed that my tend to be long and they tend to be a little deeper than most self-help videos why is that because I want to share with you the beauty and power of the depth of this work not just the surface level stuff and not the middle level but like the very very depths of it it's ridiculously powerful and amazing and life transforming this is what you want the problem is that the deeper we go the more hardcore it is in the sense that you have to be more serious about it so anyways I'm rambling now I don't want to make this video too long but yeah so that's I just wanted to introduce a little bit of that and relate it to what you're doing in your life and how this might help you hopefully you can take the lessons from this and and then this will inspire you to go out there and get more serious about your own consciousness work all right I'm off I've got six hours of driving to do hopefully I can pull that off and my back doesn't start hurting and I'll see you soon with some more footage of the place that I'm staying at and the food that I'm eating and all this other stuff so here I am in the Arizona forests you can see it behind me there you can hear the cars because I'm near a highway I actually haven't arrived yet to my final destination but the since the Sun is setting I wanted to show you some of these Arizona pine trees you might think that Arizona is all desert if you haven't driven through it especially up north but actually towards the Grand Canyon which is where I am pretty close this giant pine forest National Park here and it's filled with pines so my final location is going to be kind of in this area but deeper so I still have a few more hours of driving to go but this is basically what I should be looking forward to some beautiful trees unlike Vegas where it's bone-dry so I'm excited to be out in the woods again especially when I'm meditating the best all right so take a look I just arrived and I've been setting up in my little cabin here in the woods in the middle of Arizona so the trip was longer than anticipated and there were some hiccups getting in but anyways now I'm inside here's the cabin you can take a look this is the main loft area the lighting here is pretty terrible I set up so my own lights which I'm going to use for shooting videos but this place needs some better lighting but anyways what I want to do now is just kind of show you around a little bit and show you how I'm getting situated I'm organizing all my supplies so basically what's going to happen is going to be I'm going to be here for nine to ten days the tenth day is going to be basically the wrap-up day and today I'm just organizing everything I'm going to cook some food prepare all my supplies so that I can spend nine solid days just doing meditation and what I want to do is just show you around and show you what my supplies look like so here you can see the the den area this is where I'm going to mostly meditate those blinds over there they open up so there's going to be a lot of light here during the day but I just wanted to show you because I arrived here in the middle of the night what it looks like here's the kitchen here are all my supplies we've got water all sorts of cooking supplies mostly cooler full of food this is most of my supplies in there I've got a lot of frozen berries for smoothies almond milk I've got cut-up pre-made vegetable soup ingredients I got a bunch of broccoli carrots green beans and all that stuff that you saw in my soup video I've got some basic supplies here like rice rice oatmeal vegetable stock potatoes olive oil a bunch of bananas a bunch of pineapples here I also bought some more foreign jizz and mangoes but this is mostly what we've got going here this is what it looks like it'll be a lot nicer during the day and then let me show you the bedroom so that's the bedroom here yeah the lighting is terrible sorry about that test just how this place is this is what you get when you shoot raw without preparing anything so it's a very rough let's say but I think this is going to work out fairly nicely it's about 50 degrees Fahrenheit outside 45 maybe actually so it's fairly chilly but during the day it should be around 70 to 80 degrees sunny all week so the weather should be nice as I was driving in here I couldn't really see the the forest too much but I did see some giant trees so I think that it'll be pretty nice outside there should be some hiking trails I heard that there's a stream somewhere around here a little stream so I'll go check that out tomorrow maybe show you some footage of that but that's it for getting set up so this is a pretty nice setup if you want to plan a retreat then this might be some of the best of the accommodations that you might find if you want to go cheaper and more threadbare then you can do that too then you'll you'll have to scrap by somehow and not have all these amenities but I do have a refrigerator I have heater air conditioning and pretty much everything I need here so this will definitely work out and it's in a nice secluded area so I shouldn't have too many noises and neighbors disturbing me so I unpacked my cooler it was completely full and let me show you what was inside of it so basically what I did is that soup recipe that vegetable soup recipe that I showed you in a prior episode I've got ingredients here that I've already pre chopped up all organic vegetables for two bachelors of that soup so that should be plenty for the next ten days I've also got over 30 eggs here I've got some lemon for the soup I've got spinach baby spinach for the smoothies that I make here's the almond milk for those smoothies so that's mostly all of that and then in the freezer I have a ton of frozen blueberries and other vegetables and other berries which I'm going to be using for oatmeal toppings and for blueberry smoothies and some stuff for the soup as well and then as far as produce I have three pineapples giant and watermelon and those are some of my dry goods they're rice and oatmeal and stuff that's my water I have ten gallons of water each one of those is one gallon there's more in the car and then I have various fruits mangoes ton of bananas and a whole bunch of oranges so I'm hoping that that's kind of last me for ten days we'll see how that goes so this is just kind of a rough estimate that I made and will see by trial and error if I'm going to need more or I'm going to have too much so right now what I'm going to do is I'm going to make a batch of my soup which will last me for a whole week I got that ready and I'm pretty much done for the night hey it's morning of day one and now you get to see my place in the daylight so I just want to show you what this looks like this house that I've rented it's got this very nice glassy loft area which was where I'll do most of my meditating on this couch here you can see the glass comes around there and also what's nice is that I can meditate outside too so if we go through here there's this balcony some benches and you can see we're sort of in the middle of this pine flash oak forest there's all these Oaks but I guess it's not summer yet or spring enough yet that they haven't grown their leaves so they look kind of dead but there are some nice pine trees in the distance they're up there so that's what it looks like and there's actually supposed to be a stream down there baffling down there is a stream but there's no water I guess it's too dry this season so I didn't luck out there all right yeah I just want to show you around what this place looks like I'll also be doing some walking meditation actually quite a bit of it because sitting straight for 10 hours is way too hard on the back and on the ass so it's good to be just walking and being mindful and noting and labeling while walking so I'll be doing that as well let me show you what this cabin looks like from the outside that's my car and that there is the house not really cabins pretty solid house so there's a bunch of trees although this is a pretty steep slope but I also want to try meditating outside too just sitting meditation outside I already scoped out some spots down there there's some some big trees you can see that there's a tree over here that would be a nice spot and also there's a there's another tree over there that big pine tree right there that's also a pretty good spot I have a lawn chair that I brought with me so I'll be doing some meditating there as well that's what the house looks like [Music] [Music] [Laughter] this [Laughter] [Music] you know [Music] you [Music] we [Music] hey guys look I want to show you something cool can you see it watch I'm going to zoom in on this thing whoa look at that he's a giant huge ass Falcon and he's got this beautiful camouflage he's really hard to see I barely spotted him walking through the trail here pretty windy you can hear the wind this is the only way and shoot he's probably gonna fly away in a minute but I wanted to show it to you because it was pretty cool this tree is gigantic so this this bird is probably half my height he's huge absolutely huge let me see if I can walk up a little closer to him pardon the shakiness because I'm walking on some uneven terrain here let me zoom out a little bit so it doesn't look terrible I'm gonna walk him a little closer he's probably going to get spooked and fly away here oh man I'm making a lot of noise [Music] [Applause] [Music] Oh [Music] you and [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] Oh [Music] you you Oh [Music] I am in the mountains right outside the area where I did my retreat my retreat is basically over and I just wanted to show you how lovely some of the nature and the scenery is here it's really bright so I'm going to put on this hat and talk a little bit while I show you around so I'm on this nature trail up in the in the mountains or Hills I guess you would call them and there's a beautiful view up here and I bet you wouldn't think that northern Arizona was like this but this is actually northern Arizona I was quite surprised at how green it is you'd normally think of Arizona at the desert let me keep walking I'll show you some of the mountains and some of the view there so the sun's going to set in a couple of hours it's really beautiful perfect weather here a little bit windy which is why you might hear some noise in the background as I keep talking so let's walk here a little bit I finished my retreat it was eight to nine days the last day was kind of iffy I basically half-assed it I didn't meditate all that much the final day I was way too Restless but I learned so much on this retreat I got so much growth on this retreat that I'm already in my mind planning several more for this year in different locations I'm not going to come back here because I want to do new locations every time I'll do Hawaii and some other cool places for you and get some beautiful footage that I've shot and there's beautiful footage here that I shot of the creeks that I'll show you there's like huge birds of prey flying around here sometimes vultures and falcons and stuff I managed to get some footage of a falcon but anyways yeah so this retreat was so powerful in terms of how much I've grown I didn't get any enlightenment experiences like I was hoping but I felt like I made massive progress on understanding how self inquiry works just a lot of subtle insights that we'll have to formulate more carefully here to come to the win I'll have to formulate those insights a little more carefully and then methodically to share them with you and I've got tons of notes at least six pages of notes worth of insights for new videos and ideas I want to share with you and then I'm going to talk about how to set up the retreat so if you're doing a retreat like this or if you want to and you've been inspired by this episode then I will tell you how to get the right food what quantities other considerations and tips and guidelines that you need to make sure you can make the best of this review look at this it's awesome pretty pretty cool stuff here there are houses down there that's basically roughly in the area where my cabin was that I used for this week-long retreat and and yeah doing a retreat like this out in nature is ideal actually you can get enlightened much easier if you do it outdoors than if you do it indoors the trick is of course you have to brave the elements and you have to find a suitable location where you can do that so if you like camping and stuff like that then there are a lot of opportunities for you and if you live in the US there's a lot of beautiful areas national parks campgrounds and so forth but I think getting a cabin is pretty important because you need a kitchen to cook and so forth but yeah doing it outdoors where you can really get in touch with nature and most importantly out of your typical environment that you live in with all your distractions and internet and friends and family and all that nonsense so you can get all that out of the way and then it's basically like hitting a reset button on your mind everything becomes clear and back into focus you feel like you're you're back with your ancestors up here look at this beautiful sky it's perfect it was cloudy earlier today but all the clouds went away and now you've just got this beautiful sky and all these huge pine trees I love pine trees so this is like the ideal location and of course you want to have decent weather so it's not too cold so you can spend time outside so yeah it takes some planning you got to plan it out but I think that if you're serious about personal development you should be doing at least two if not four of these retreats per year for yourself this is so low this is just you nobody else you plan it all you run it all and you get all the juicy insights for yourself from the days and days and hours and hours and hours of isolation meditation contemplation self inquiry all that good stuff so so yeah you got to plan these out and for you know how do you manage to pull off for these vo that's like one per quarter well most people won't be able to because they just don't get that much vacation time and this isn't like a vacation this is like hard work stuff so so yeah that tells you that you got to maybe rethink your job situation plan more time for inner work because that's really the biggest problem is that you're so distracted by the outer work of your life that you neglect the inner work and our society doesn't even allow you to really get time off to do the deep inner work the stuff that will grow you but you know that's a that's incumbent upon you to figure that out for yourself how to do that I have the luxury of doing that because I work for myself and that's one of the reasons you should start working for yourself is so that you have time off to to invest in this inner growth stuff but this is really butyl bit into the Sun yeah this is a this is how you grow I mean sitting at home and watching videos and reading books yeah that's nice going to some formal meditation retreats like the Posada that's also really great they'll set up and organize all the stuff for you but then the next level after that is doing it all by yourself all alone Renaissance man style you know like BIA as they did in the old days or like some shamans probably still do today so this is basically a form of shamanism that we're talking about you could either you can even combine this with some psychedelics although that can be a distraction I specifically didn't take any psychedelics with me to this retreat because I knew that I would be tempted to use them and I wanted to focus all my energy on her BIA the really hard inner work not to say that you don't get that with psychedelics but you know the manual kind of work is the hardest and then I'll probably do some of these with psychedelics just to see what that's like and compare and contrast but basically I've been experimenting with different techniques I'm going to keep experimenting in the future because I want to share with you the best techniques that I find for all sorts of stuff and I'm not just talking about enlightenment you might think oh well this is all for enlightenment yeah it could be for enlightenment but it could just be for analyzing your own life if you have some psychological hang-ups some relationship problems some family problems you need to figure out your life purpose you need to figure out your diet and your health you know you need to detox you need to unexcelled from porn internet bad food and all this other kind of stuff or you just need to contemplate and work on other you know facets of your development not just enlightenment not just spirituality but there's a lot of stuff for you to contemplate from your work to your family to everything else all that stuff needs to be contemplated you know your emotions need to be contemplated and seriously thought about I thought about doing these retreats where I don't focus on enlightenment at all but I just sit there with a journal for a hundred hours for a whole week and I just journal in journal and journal in journal sort of like a self psychotherapy session you know one long-ass it's like a therapy session and then if you combine that with some psychedelics you got a winning formula for some real serious inner growth there I can I can feel that so there's a lot of opportunity and possibility here I want you to start to get creative with this whole personal development journey customize it to your own desires you know go to the places you want to go go to the places you find beautiful maybe it's the beach maybe it's some tropical island maybe it's in the forest maybe it's in some snowy winter land up on on some mountain you know whatever is available to you whatever you like this has been such a rewarding experience for me that I wish I had had done it sooner I was planning for about a year to have to do it but I just couldn't find time and now what I'm going to do is I'm going to I'm going to pre-plan these ahead of time so I'm going to put in one of these per quarter when I get back home right on my calendar so that my work revolves around these retreats and not the other way around you see so that's that's all about getting your priorities straight well I think I'm done here I showed you some of the beautiful scenery I hope it's inspired you and I hope that you seriously consider doing one of these retreats for yourself