Upcoming meditation retreat

Poem:

Our upcoming meditation retreats are special and will double your practice. My role is to become the podium to not move and be silent. I will be like a dead tree stump. The practice will ratchet up naturally until the graduates hit twelve hours. We start with 2-3 hours advancing to 5-6 then comes 8-9 then finally 12. I don’t want it to come as a shock. Meditation is not to create stress. You are not actually sitting for 12 straight hours because you have to go to the bathroom. It will be more practical. At intervals you can have tea but generally you don’t eat. Each person should be doing double his normal or double his last session until he or she hits 12 hours. We don’t do overnight retreats because then you need accommodations and that leads to trouble. Since it is on the weekend you can not claim you are working. Most people can get rid of their family for at least one day and they need a personal break anyways. If it is Sundays you can claim it is for God anyways. You can practice before you come so your sitting is stable. If you want to talk you can take a walk. You can go out and come back. The totally enlightened can not be interrupted. When you make noise it does not register because they are already dead. Sitting with an advanced practitioner may be good for you head. After it is over you can brag on instagram the total time that you did not move instead. It might make you more beautiful. Some pride of practice is at first helpful. It would be as though you ran the marathon but on the astral plane instead. The excitement generated would be insane. Sometimes you have to meditate even longer to assimilate all the bliss in your head. The first session is for two hours if you want to sit for only one you can go sit with the children. The evening before you come you should do yoga and not eat much. The practice is grounded in theory but that has been already loaded. DS Poem October 27, 2018 Poem 1209 To disappear enhances— The Man that runs away Is tinctured for an instant With Immortality But yesterday a Vagrant— Today in Memory lain With superstitious value We tamper with "Again" But "Never" far as Honor Withdraws the Worthless thing And impotent to cherish We hasten to adorn— Of Death the sternest function That just as we discern The Excellence defies us— Securest gathered then The Fruit perverse to plucking, But leaning to the Sight With the ecstatic limit Of unobtained Delight— Emily Dickinson And a daylong retreat by seasoned meditators benefited their immune response at the genetic level –a  finding that startled the medical establishment. Page 253 altered traits. The surprise; the greatest increase in pre-frontal – amygdala connection correlated with the number of hours a meditator had spent in retreat but not with home hours. Page 259 altered traits Daniel Goleman & Richard J. Davidson #meditationretreat #alteredtraits