What does that mean? I have been to a retreat or two, as my name implies, but I wouldn’t know what it means to consume one’s thoughts during a retreat.
My girlfriend went on a 10 day retreat earlier this year. She said that for much of the time there is literally nothing to do other than think. You are forced to acknowledge and confront the thoughts you have as a result of past experiences, which are easy to ignore and let fester when you have the distractions of daily life to keep your brain preoccupied.
During the retreat, there is regularly coaching on how to acknowledge these thoughts and feelings and let them go. So the idea behind these retreats is to give you the tools to deal with these thoughts and feelings and then put you in a situation where you are almost forced to confront them. That's what the parent commenter was referring to by "consuming".
My girlfriend had a fantastic experience and said that she is in a much better mental state than she was before.
Disclaimer: These are my thoughts as I understand it from secondhand experience. Definitely look more into yourself if it's something you want to learn more about.
It means accepting and letting go of stressful thoughts, insecurities which have been chronically keeping you up at night or worrying you unnecessarily.
That's the idea, sure. Is that also what happens in practice though?
I can easily imagine that if you're not being distracted on all sides constantly, those crippling insecurities and chronic stress all come into focus, because there's nothing else to think about.
For me, I started thinking in loops and got completely derailed. I became a bit manic, a bit depressed and a bit psychotic. There was also 2 hours of pure evil and 2 hours of equanimous love (which is awesome). I learned from these experiences that I am not my thoughts as I couldn’t identify with all of them, yet I kept thinking them. I also learned a lot about myself in general at the time. Ultimately, the whole experience was really educational. But at the same time, it was as crazy as a psychedelic trip yet much deeper.
But I don’t feel I experienced that I consumed my thoughts. If anything, I saw how I thought. I saw how I’m smart and how I’m crazy. And how being social keeps me sane since it breaks the loop.
