Daaayyuuuum. Feels good to communicate. This week was intense. At times I thought it was the hardest thing I've ever done but at others I thought it was the easiest. We basically did 4-5 hours of sitting meditation a day along with a lot of other meditation like activities including walking meditation and dharma talks. More realistically it was like 24 hours a day meditation as we were encouraged to meditate while eating, showering, using the bathroom, and even sleeping. It was an incredible experience and I feel like I have grown this week immensely. I had some deep realizations about my interpersonal relationships as well as some intense feelings of emptiness. This can also be described as ego-death or not having a self, or that I felt my body as one big happening rather than a series of feelings, pains, and emotions. I feel much stronger, smarter and able to control my mind and destiny. I would definitely recommend meditating to everyone and for anyone interested in meditation or being a psychonaut would recommend an intensive silent retreat. Just be ready because it is intense on the body and mind. We ended the retreat last night with a 3 steps 1 prostration pilgrimage. This was super intense and involved chanting, taking three steps then doing a prostration while walking up a fat hill. We probably did 400-500 prostrations in total but at the end felt awesome, empty and full of love. We were asked to thing "may there be peace in the world" during every prostration which definitely made me want to be a better person because everytime I said it it was harder for me to do bad things, if this makes sense. Tomorrow we start Life and Chan which is a youth seminar for Buddhism and has been described as "Southern Buddhist Revival" filled with singing and dancing. It's hard for me to put in words my experience this week but I would love to talk to you guys in person about my experiences if you are interested. Love you all!