Three nights at the TMBCC

I just spent the last three days (Thursday night through this morning) staying at a retreat cottage in the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center (TMBCC), formerly known as the Tibetan Cultural Center, and thought I'd leave a few notes here about the experience.

A primary reason for going was just to get away and break the daily routine, and I was also hoping for some peace and quiet. A third reason for going was that I just feel a little more like meditating since starting yoga practice again two weeks ago. And finally, a fourth reason was to see if I could produce an OBE by getting away. I normally don't have so many reasons for getting away, but really, this was the mix of thoughts as I considered going away.

Brief notes from the trip:

• The first 24 hours were mostly just sleep. I was surprised at how tired I was, but my current apartment neighborhood has a fair amount of noise 20 hours a day, so it wasn't a huge surprise.
• The first night I had several recurring dreams -- dreams I hadn't had since the last time I stayed at these cottages.
• The front door on the cottage doesn't actually lock, but they make a point of giving you a key for the door. I had forgotten about this, and I always think it's pretty funny.
• Right away, the cottage reminded me of living in a rural cabin: a little too small, no tv, and in the woods.
• On the negative side, the cabin had many bugs, was very dirty, and the loud refrigerator spoiled the quiet. If I ever do this again I'll bring a cooler and unplug the refrigerator, but the spiders were so bad in the last 24 hours I really don't see going there again. I don't sleep too well knowing I'm sharing the place with creepy crawly things.
• I didn't have any OBEs, but on the second night I had stunningly realistic dreams. (Usually in a dream you can tell things aren't right, but in these dreams it was just like being awake.) If the bed wasn't so uncomfortable I'm pretty certain I could have had an OBE that night or the next night. Other than the noise of the refrigerator and a barking dog, the quiet absolutely helped with the lucid dream and OBE experience. I had forgotten how quiet it was here.
• Trying to keep this blog honest, the last two nights of the trip were dominated by sex dreams. When I woke up from one dream my feeling was something like "Oh, you think you have a clear mind, and you really think form is emptiness, and emptiness is form, eh? Well, what about this?", lol.
• In a funny event on the way out of town, I stopped at a new bakery, and as I was waiting to fill my coffee cup (the coffee was self-serve), a woman was standing in my way. I heard her say that she was looking for a stirrer for her coffee, so I said, "Oh, they're just over on the other side." With this the woman just stared at me as though I was the most rude person on the planet, and then walked over to the other side and got a stirrer. It made me wonder if she didn't really say anything, and I just thought she did, or if she thought my comment was rude. Other than the cashier, she was the first person I had spoken to since Thursday, so I also thought maybe I didn't say what I thought I did. Whatever happened, I thought the scene was pretty funny.