I’m curious, did you notice you became more settled after the third day? It’s a somewhat common experience during sesshin to have something of a breakthrough or surrender on the third day and give oneself over to the sesshin, so the speak. I realize this is a different tradition, so curious if you saw evidence of a similar phenomenon.
Based on what the teachers said in the dharma talks, they expected most people to experience such a shift, and apparently most did. I didn’t get that, though—my amount of surrender kept going up and down.
I think I was most settled on the first half of the sixth or seventh day, where I had that experience of not making any decisions at all (and having a hard time remembering what it would even mean to make a decision) and just allowing all intentions relax themselves. That lasted until the successive relaxation brought up glimpses of some fear, and then that turned into powerful energy sensations in the forehead and strong and agential-feeling intentions to do something about those, and then I never had the same level of surrender again.
I’m curious, did you notice you became more settled after the third day? It’s a somewhat common experience during sesshin to have something of a breakthrough or surrender on the third day and give oneself over to the sesshin, so the speak. I realize this is a different tradition, so curious if you saw evidence of a similar phenomenon.
Based on what the teachers said in the dharma talks, they expected most people to experience such a shift, and apparently most did. I didn’t get that, though—my amount of surrender kept going up and down.
I think I was most settled on the first half of the sixth or seventh day, where I had that experience of not making any decisions at all (and having a hard time remembering what it would even mean to make a decision) and just allowing all intentions relax themselves. That lasted until the successive relaxation brought up glimpses of some fear, and then that turned into powerful energy sensations in the forehead and strong and agential-feeling intentions to do something about those, and then I never had the same level of surrender again.
I’ve experienced settling day as early as the second and as late as the sixth day. Agree that it feels like a distinct shift.