Go deep inside, behind the cafeteria

Or you can stop where you are and you can go deep inside and become aware of what you don't want to be aware of. I had had my second awakening, which involved a huge heart-opening experience two weeks prior. then basically just walking around and kind of la-la, blissed out, totally content. Everything was shiny and bright and super vivid for the last two weeks.

Literally, the night before, I'd been looking at the little stopping and looking at all the flowers that I, you know, weren't used to seeing since I'm from Wisconsin. I was in California, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, oh, he's talking to me. That's interesting.

I was like, okay, so I went out after lunch and I went behind the cafeteria. There was like this little area with like benches, this deck area by the trash cans where all the staff went to smoke cigarettes. And I just went and sat there and meditated. And I just said to the, you know, to my body and to the universe, I was like, okay, I'm ready to see what I'm scared to see.

You know, what do I know that I don't want to know? And then I became aware of what I've been running from for the past seven years, which was my experience of emptiness from my first awakening. And that experience of emptiness was coupled with my best friend having a severe mental health illness that, you know, it's kind of, uh, I put it, uh, it, was very heartbreaking for me and very upsetting. And so I started crying.

And then I cried that whole retreat, almost the whole retreat. Well, pretty much the whole retreat, as much as I could cry hours and hours every day, four or five, six hours a day. And then I got off that retreat, and then I continued to cry, and I cried probably.