Allen Taylor

Eric Hundin

Thanks for your comments. No, I did not practice meditation before attending the retreat. I’d tried it a few times, but usually I’d just get bored / frustrated and give up on it pretty quickly.

You mentioned you’re hoping the retreat will help you to be better at meditating with more regularity… I expect it likely will help with that.

Since the retreat I haven’t been meditating much, although I do very occasionally when feel the urge; it’s nice to know that now I have the ability and experience to do so properly when I choose to

I can see the value of just accepting who you are, but I find it is easier said than done. I’ll check for that book @ the library.

I hadn’t heard of Byron Katie, but her website looks interesting at first glance – I’ll check it out in more detail. Thanks again for your thoughts,

NNB

I am thinking about attending a retreat with this group in Illinois. I meditate now, and find it very helpful. But I have never meditated for more than half an hour at a time and struggle with maintaining a daily practice. Also, I find it much easier to read books about meditation and to talk about it than to actually do it. I am considering the 10 day retreat in hopes that it will help me be better about meditating with greater regularity.

You mentioned that you felt that this experience did not largely change you. In the book When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, Pema Chodron talks about how you can still be the same old person even after many years of putting work into meditation and this this is okay. She says wanting ourselves to be someone different than who we are is a form of aggression towards the self. When I first read this I was disappointed–isn’t the whole point to be a different person??? But then I realized that she is right about the importance of accepting all of ourselves and having a loving attitude towards ourselves.

Are you familiar with Byron Katie? She is not a meditation person, but her work is a great compliment to meditation practice in my opinion. There are some youtube videos of her that give you an idea of what she is about. Her first book is called Loving What Is and I highly recommend it. You can download worksheets from her website that explain how to do the work:
http://www.thework.com/index.asp

Warmly,

Charlotte