I was at a retreat here in the woods of Colorado a couple of years ago and the retreat leader said “Go smell the pines. They smell like butterscotch.”
Doubting her, I slowly followed everyone outside, found a friendly looking tree and leaned in to smell it with all the grace of a middle schooler figuring out their first kiss.
Butterscotch. So much butterscotch. Me and that tree stayed close the rest of the weekend and it was the most present I was the entire time.
This piece and the guided practice reminded me that real presence is totally possible, and reminded me how I can get there.
Also, I think that tree and I may be common law married.
lol thanks for the chuckle Joe. And for the reminder that certain things can be extra zingy about bringing us back to a calm, present, connected creature state. Your scented tree bonding situation feels calming to me just reading about it 💓 It reminds me of my favorite summer sun bonding moments- when i lay on my stomach on a towel after swimming and Im all wet and chilly- and then sun starts soaking into my back. The warmth spreads slowly into every inch and I feel cared for and held and so happy that I could just start purring. It’s one of the juiciest present states for me. Now if I could add butterscotch pine tree scented bonding to that scenario ;) I just might float off the planet.
Jeff, I entered a very emotional space while sitting with this meditation, and I'm still a bit shaken as I write this. I have chronic shoulder pain which I generally manage to ignore, but when it flares it demands my attention. So tonight’s meditation became about sitting with that physical pain.
Most often, when I'm meditating and something troubling seeps in, I try to look for the quiet space underneath it, an approach that you have suggested elsewhere. It eases the unpleasant sensation by reminding me that I am more than the physical or emotional pain.
Tonight as I listened to this meditation, the suggestion was to be aware of what I wanted to push away and try to accept it, to sit with it as it is. Sitting with it brought me to tears. But after a few minutes, acceptance also brought some relief from intense physical pain.
This morning (of course, while washing dishes...) my mind went to these two seemingly opposite approaches for working with physical pain -- either to sit with it or look for the quiet beneath it. My first thought was wondering how I would know which one to turn to in the middle of the night when my brain was spinning stories about endless pain. But the next thought was that maybe my dilemma was akin to balancing my warrior self with my caregiver self. And that maybe I will learn to trust myself to be open to what I most need in that moment.
Love this Jeff. Thank you!Awareness of awareness. As in your DNP with Juliana Sunday. Guiding us to be aware of the sensations in the body and introducing them to one another… comfort, discomfort, neutrality, mixed. Aware and accepting. Challenging and necessary. A forever practice.🙏
Thank you for this, I find it helpful to hear your perspective on different types of practices you try. It is funny and cool to think of you as a student when in my mind you are the teacher! We are all students and we are all teachers in certain ways though I think
So beautiful. Love the simplicity of this and the invitation to truly accept this moment as it is. I keep having the same realization over and over of how often I walk through life with that subtle sense of resistance.
That’s because it is the same insight, repeated again and again. 95% of spiritual practice can be boiled down to that one sentence. Sounds like it’s in your bones Sarah❤️
Jeff, I absolutely love this piece and your helpful insights! I’ve been using your meditations on Calm for the past 5 years and continue to use them daily. They are so grounding. I love all of them! They were also my safety net when I was going through a very dark time in my life. I would love to do a mediation retreat like the one you did at Big Bear. It sounds amazing! I live in Loomis, CA. Do you have any recommendations of similiar retreats?
Hi Annie. If you are in California, then you are essentially spoiled for good retreat centers. And good teachers. Anything “Insight “will have good teachers attached to it - Trudy Goodman runs Insight LA with my friend Christiane Wolf, and they are both excellent
Very envious of the Retreat Big J .. Vipassana is a fascinating area of practice .. in many ways different to the norm but also similar with the focus on a specific object or theme.. thanks for sharing .. always feels like coming home 🏠🐢x
Hi - this is a completely inappropriate place to put this, but I’m going round in circles trying to cancel my subscription (no offense, but not using it enough to justify the expense). Last time I tried to cancel, I ended up pausing by mistake and now it seems impossible to cancel. I’ve tried here and I’ve tried going to the website. Please can somebody help! Thanks
Hi Susannah! I work with Jeff here at Home Base - we definitely want to help out! I’ll send you a private message and we’ll get this sorted out for you!
Hi- he’s been doing a great job trying- but I did end up getting charged -which he’s said you’ll reimburse, I’m not worried about it - but he reckons there’s a bug in the system. I do like your stuff a lot, but the time difference makes the live stuff less useful than it might be.
Jeff, this really landed for me. As a Zen teacher in the koan tradition, I recognize the territory you're describing from a different angle. What you're calling the metacognitive halo — being aware that you're aware — my teacher Joan Sutherland talks about as a kind of "backward step," the moment attention turns on itself rather than chasing its objects. The three poisons show up in koan work too, though less as objects of sustained observation than as the very structure a koan is designed to spring you out of suddenly.
What strikes me is how reliably the noticing itself does the work in your account. In my clinical practice as a psychoanalyst, it's rarely that clean — craving and aversion tend to need more excavation before they release. Which makes me curious: in your experience, is it the depth of concentration that makes the noticing sufficient? Or something about the retreat container itself? Or something else?
I really enjoyed this meditation. It's incredible how we're not satisfied with that feeling of complete surender to something pleasurable, but always want more. Just as I was starting to feel everything in my breath, becoming the breath, and the moment I started really enjoying it, there was greed for more of the same, and at the same time, fear of loosing it. Same as in everyday life. Thank you for this insight.
I’ve benefitted from your meditations on Calm for many years. Something led me to you here this morning. I was having trouble even naming what I was experiencing lately - scattered, unsettled, dissatisfied to name a few. Somehow your words and this practice nailed it for me - as you often do. Thank you!
I was at a retreat here in the woods of Colorado a couple of years ago and the retreat leader said “Go smell the pines. They smell like butterscotch.”
Doubting her, I slowly followed everyone outside, found a friendly looking tree and leaned in to smell it with all the grace of a middle schooler figuring out their first kiss.
Butterscotch. So much butterscotch. Me and that tree stayed close the rest of the weekend and it was the most present I was the entire time.
This piece and the guided practice reminded me that real presence is totally possible, and reminded me how I can get there.
Also, I think that tree and I may be common law married.
lol thanks for the chuckle Joe. And for the reminder that certain things can be extra zingy about bringing us back to a calm, present, connected creature state. Your scented tree bonding situation feels calming to me just reading about it 💓 It reminds me of my favorite summer sun bonding moments- when i lay on my stomach on a towel after swimming and Im all wet and chilly- and then sun starts soaking into my back. The warmth spreads slowly into every inch and I feel cared for and held and so happy that I could just start purring. It’s one of the juiciest present states for me. Now if I could add butterscotch pine tree scented bonding to that scenario ;) I just might float off the planet.
Yes!! I know exactly what you mean!! Sun and trees, trees and sun.
One of my mental comfort places lying on a rock in the sun in Muskoka with smell of warmed up Pineneedles in the air
wow that's almost the exact combo!! <3
So good. The ideal long-long-term partner.
Jeff, I entered a very emotional space while sitting with this meditation, and I'm still a bit shaken as I write this. I have chronic shoulder pain which I generally manage to ignore, but when it flares it demands my attention. So tonight’s meditation became about sitting with that physical pain.
Most often, when I'm meditating and something troubling seeps in, I try to look for the quiet space underneath it, an approach that you have suggested elsewhere. It eases the unpleasant sensation by reminding me that I am more than the physical or emotional pain.
Tonight as I listened to this meditation, the suggestion was to be aware of what I wanted to push away and try to accept it, to sit with it as it is. Sitting with it brought me to tears. But after a few minutes, acceptance also brought some relief from intense physical pain.
Tamar, that is exactly the medicine. It’s so moving. I tear up thinking about it. A form of honouring of your own real self that is beyond words.
This morning (of course, while washing dishes...) my mind went to these two seemingly opposite approaches for working with physical pain -- either to sit with it or look for the quiet beneath it. My first thought was wondering how I would know which one to turn to in the middle of the night when my brain was spinning stories about endless pain. But the next thought was that maybe my dilemma was akin to balancing my warrior self with my caregiver self. And that maybe I will learn to trust myself to be open to what I most need in that moment.
Love this Jeff. Thank you!Awareness of awareness. As in your DNP with Juliana Sunday. Guiding us to be aware of the sensations in the body and introducing them to one another… comfort, discomfort, neutrality, mixed. Aware and accepting. Challenging and necessary. A forever practice.🙏
And ever
Thank you for this, I find it helpful to hear your perspective on different types of practices you try. It is funny and cool to think of you as a student when in my mind you are the teacher! We are all students and we are all teachers in certain ways though I think
All students, all teachers, and all peers. All at the same time!
So beautiful. Love the simplicity of this and the invitation to truly accept this moment as it is. I keep having the same realization over and over of how often I walk through life with that subtle sense of resistance.
That’s because it is the same insight, repeated again and again. 95% of spiritual practice can be boiled down to that one sentence. Sounds like it’s in your bones Sarah❤️
Jeff, I absolutely love this piece and your helpful insights! I’ve been using your meditations on Calm for the past 5 years and continue to use them daily. They are so grounding. I love all of them! They were also my safety net when I was going through a very dark time in my life. I would love to do a mediation retreat like the one you did at Big Bear. It sounds amazing! I live in Loomis, CA. Do you have any recommendations of similiar retreats?
Hi Annie. If you are in California, then you are essentially spoiled for good retreat centers. And good teachers. Anything “Insight “will have good teachers attached to it - Trudy Goodman runs Insight LA with my friend Christiane Wolf, and they are both excellent
Thank you, Jeff
Love love love this. A very special one for me.I miss working on these! Thank you again, Jeff.
Very envious of the Retreat Big J .. Vipassana is a fascinating area of practice .. in many ways different to the norm but also similar with the focus on a specific object or theme.. thanks for sharing .. always feels like coming home 🏠🐢x
Love this and Thank you! And what an amazing pic of Big Bear…looks like a painting.
Thank you so much for this, Jeff! Very helpful.
Hi - this is a completely inappropriate place to put this, but I’m going round in circles trying to cancel my subscription (no offense, but not using it enough to justify the expense). Last time I tried to cancel, I ended up pausing by mistake and now it seems impossible to cancel. I’ve tried here and I’ve tried going to the website. Please can somebody help! Thanks
Hi Susannah! I work with Jeff here at Home Base - we definitely want to help out! I’ll send you a private message and we’ll get this sorted out for you!
Thanks Joe 👍
Hope Joe got you sorted out Susannah, sorry for the complication!
Hi- he’s been doing a great job trying- but I did end up getting charged -which he’s said you’ll reimburse, I’m not worried about it - but he reckons there’s a bug in the system. I do like your stuff a lot, but the time difference makes the live stuff less useful than it might be.
Jeff, this really landed for me. As a Zen teacher in the koan tradition, I recognize the territory you're describing from a different angle. What you're calling the metacognitive halo — being aware that you're aware — my teacher Joan Sutherland talks about as a kind of "backward step," the moment attention turns on itself rather than chasing its objects. The three poisons show up in koan work too, though less as objects of sustained observation than as the very structure a koan is designed to spring you out of suddenly.
What strikes me is how reliably the noticing itself does the work in your account. In my clinical practice as a psychoanalyst, it's rarely that clean — craving and aversion tend to need more excavation before they release. Which makes me curious: in your experience, is it the depth of concentration that makes the noticing sufficient? Or something about the retreat container itself? Or something else?
I really enjoyed this meditation. It's incredible how we're not satisfied with that feeling of complete surender to something pleasurable, but always want more. Just as I was starting to feel everything in my breath, becoming the breath, and the moment I started really enjoying it, there was greed for more of the same, and at the same time, fear of loosing it. Same as in everyday life. Thank you for this insight.
That was exactly what I needed, my favourite Jeff signature meditation.
I’ve benefitted from your meditations on Calm for many years. Something led me to you here this morning. I was having trouble even naming what I was experiencing lately - scattered, unsettled, dissatisfied to name a few. Somehow your words and this practice nailed it for me - as you often do. Thank you!