During the Retreat I always had a question as to what it meant to 'Always wear a smile on your face' during healing/meditation.
That question was answered by one of the guest assistants.
As we know, smiling helps especially when sending energy to the heart.
Guest assistant put it this way. Imagine or picture yourself smiling. Sense and feel how that make you feel inside. Now hold that feeling whenever you meditation/do healings.
It's not so much the mechanics of smiling but the feeling evoked as a result of smiling.
Another was this, when doing Sword fingers imagine energy shooting out your fingers, through the blockage and reaching the end of the universe. It's sort of like the energy carries the blockage from the body and gently releases it to the end of the universe.
Oh, this was fasinating as well. Regarding fasting. Two tid bits to help. Ya know how sometimes one can get hungry/thirsty during the fast? Well, to alleviate hunger, you would open your mouth, collect energy, close mouth, chew and swallow making a noise in your throat. Making noise was crutial to moving the energy to your stomach as opposed to it going to the lungs. For those that tend to get thirsty ... imaging drinking plenty of water. I believe this works as energy is engery ... whether it originates from phsical matter of thought ... matters not.
Certain active exercises were greatly simplifies. Especially the seven steps. You could now just keep your feet planted. This aids immensly with balance.
For those that experience discomfort during mediation when you have your legs crossed when sitting, heres what I learned. At some point your legs will go extremely numb, your mind will be screaming for relieve and them wham, the energy channel opens and the discomfort disappears and you go real deep. I only experienced this with the right leg, the left leg was holding out. Point is, with patience and persistance, you can surmount the discomfort and eventually go to a higher level.
Regarding time. When begining meditations early into the Retreat, in the beginning it seemed like 30 minutes was an eternity. It can be when you are not in the emptiness. However, when in or close to the emptiness ... there is no concept of time.
Hours seem like seconds ... toward the end of Retreat it would be like "Oh this is good, want to stay here" then you would hear "And we are coming to the closing" and I would say "Ya gotta be kidding, not now!" Then you find out that you were meditating for 1:40 minutes ... and it all seemed like seconds! Amazing how the concept of time differs when in consciousness and when in the emptiness.
Addictions. I have learned that those that suffer from addictions can experience 'shifts' to the point whereby these addictions and their urges ... can subside or disappear altogether.
I will share more, these were some of the things that really stuck out for me.
Michael
