Just finished watching The Sage of Arunachala a documentary on the well-known sage, Sri Ramana Maharshi. This dude was amazing! He had his “initial awakening” at the age of 16 and a few months later went on a sacred journey to Arunachala Hill (a sacred spot in India). After arriving there he basically meditated and taught non-stop for the rest of his life! According to his disciples merely being in his presence (especially through eye-contact) would propel one into deep samadhi.

If you think that’s cool, you should have seen the footage of him with his enlightened cow! According to Sri Ramana the cow, who had lived at the ashram for 20 years, attained full-liberation upon dieing (that’s one wise cow). MoOoOoOoOo

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Emily gave me a white choclate covered fortune cookie! It was awesome, but the fortune was a bit strange. It read, “Remeber to simplify your life! faaonline.com lets your certify loans, access reports and much more.” Come to find out CitiBank gave it to Naropa’s financial aid department. Go figure.

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Lloyd Burton, a local teacher in Denver, mentioned a retreat that’s happening in little over a month, so I decided to send in my deposit. Yep, I’m signed up for another one. This is a 8-day retreat with Steve Armstrong and Kamala Masters. I’ve sat with Steve, who’s a great teacher, and his I’ve heard his partner Kamala is excellent. It’s going to take place at Wilderness Trails Ranch in Durango, Colorado. If you’re interested in attending it’s Sept 25 - Oct 3 and you can find more details here. When every moment of life is practice…

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Got my finances work out, and am heading back to school next week. I’ve got 4 semesters left before I can claim my undergrad degree (shooo, it seems like I’ve been in school for ages). I’m taking some cool classes this semester (one with Zen Priest Fleet Maull and another with Tibetan Master Reggie Ray). Looking forward to another semester filled with incense, gomdens, airpit hair, and reflection papers (if you’ve been to Naropa you know what I’m talking about!)

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The other day Emily and I came home and noticed that our new neighbor had tibetan prayer flags hanging from her porch. Hmmm, I thought, must go and investigate this. Talked to her, and found out she just moved from the Shambhala Mountain Center, after living there for a couple of years (meditating & teaching yoga). Renn (yes her name is Renn) is in the Contemplative Psych. Grad program at guess where? Naropa. Apparently her roommate, who is coming down in a few days, has also been living at the Shambhala Center, and is now making her way back into the ‘real world’ (well, I don’t think you can call Boulder the ‘real world‘, maybe more a buffer between the real and surreal world). In any case we’ve got some cool upstairs neighbors!

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I just registered the domain vincenthorn.com. Oh lord, I sicken myself, but figured one day I might want to use it. Hey, everyone is doing it. For now I’ll probably point it to Numinous Non-Sense.

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Dropped my fiance off at work (her 2nd day @ Naropa) and then hit the meditation hall. After coming out, I saw a dude from a previous class (Alex) and he says, “Hey man, looks like you just got off the cushion.” At that point I realized how ridiculous I must have looked (walking around with a stupified smile and glazed over eyes). After speaking with him I thought about how I either come out of a sitting blissed out or completely pissed off. That seems to be the nature of a contemplative practice. It either feels great, or is the most painful experience imaginable. The cool thing is, neither experience necessarily means there is growth happening; in fact some of the most tremendous growth happens after hours and hours of mind-numbing suffering. Damnit!

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On my last retreat I had 2 cool ideas. One was to write A Practical Guide to the Contemplative Retreat (which I did), and the second was to create a page that had information concerning all of the teachers I’ve had the opportunity to sit with (or study with) over the past few years. After about 10 hours of non-stop writing and coding I’ve finished My Guide to Spiritual Teachers, and to be honest I think it rocks! There are some well-known teachers there (Ken Wilber, Joseph Goldstein, Roger Walsh) and some not so well-known teachers. My hope is that people will be able to use this page so that they can plan out their future retreats and workshops (or to avoid certain retreats/workshops as the case may be .

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