Hi friends – My birthday happened. I’m one year older. Good job mom for birthing me and making sure I’ve stayed alive this long!

As a gift to myself and with the blessing of my other half, I participated in a 10 day Vipassana retreat that kept me silent and pensive. I highly recommend it to anyone who can manage to be away from friends, family and meat for 10 days. It was a learning experience I think could benefit others.

It gave me some time to think about professional and personal goals, as well as self-care and self-awareness. I believe I made peace with myself and forgave people I love and once loved.

Since then, I think, I’ve been slower. I’ve been deliberate and mindful, and unabashedly selfish. While Vipassana helps to minimize ego by making us confront impermanence, it also makes you very loyal to yourself and reliant on your own inner peace. Whether it be our lives or minor experiences within it, nothing lasts forever. Coming to terms with that can be done with mastering 2 inevitable truths of human life: (1) we must develop the faculty and continue the practice of being self-aware to observe who we are and accept how we manifest peace and (2) we have the ability to control our reactions (in mind, speech and action) to external stimuli that may destabilize equanimity.

I’ve been tested so much since I’ve come back. Whether it be excitement over a new opportunity or my body’s violent rejection of alcohol after 14 days of abstention, small things have changed. This isn’t a miracle, just one method to practice mindfulness.

I encourage you all to read up on it, think it over, and attend a session if the spirit moves you.

XOXO

Oh, it’s free by the way… http://www.dhamma.org