I glimpsed heaven & it showed me the door (Jhourney retreat report)

The title is a double-entendre

I regret to inform you that the jhanas are exactly as advertised. These meditative states really are available as “bliss on demand.” Many people can access these states with a week’s worth of training. Once you have done so, you can experience various forms of heaven-on-earth using only your mind. This is a story about how I entered this heaven and then met the bouncer at its door.

The silent retreat that I attended was at a place called Kripalu, a yoga center amongst the mountains of Massachusetts. Kripalu did not immediately inspire confidence. The blocky brick facade was reminiscent of a low-budget retirement home or perhaps a state-run mental hospital. Inside, I found the halls thick with middle-aged women on pilgrimage to that most elusive of American gods: “wellness.” And then there was the meditation hall, which felt like a place where DMV employees might host their holiday celebration. (Internally, I started calling the center “Crapalu.”)

My internal “yikes” got louder, and it was already pretty loud: The retreat was hosted by Jhourney, a Bay Area startup that had seemingly applied tech optimization logic to scale access to the jhanas. I worried that it represented everything unholy about that mindset, namely the subjugation of all life to goals and outcomes, or – in the case of the jhanas – “attainments.” There are 8 jhanas that you can progressively attain, and I’d gathered that attaining higher ones makes you higher status.

I fretted that all week would be spent amongst dissociated tech bro types coaching me on how to instrumentalize my mind for achievement.

But I put these concerns aside because, for the past few years, my Twitter scene has been like, “jhanas! the jhanas! no really you need to check out the jhanas.” And there were the testimonials, which looked like this:

“Wait, but what exactly are the jhanas?”

A series of eight meditative states described by the Buddha in the sutras. The first four are states we already experience except hyper-purified and turned up to infinity: euphoria, tenderness, peace, stillness. Normal-euphoria is to jhana-euphoria as a candle-flame is to the sun itself. They are typically talked about as the best feelings one has ever felt. I heard them described as “harmonics of the nervous system.” Normally, these take months or years to reach, but Jhourney has applied its startup hacker mindset to bring that time down to one week for many people, including my friends who won’t stfu about it.¹

Given the extremity of their reports, I felt obligated to give it a go, even given the price tag ($4000-$5000, though the founder gave me a discount).

Well, as you may have guessed from the opening of this post, it was beyond worth it. Over the week, I saw every piece of skepticism I had dismantled.

The price tag

Most retreats have just one expert teacher that gives one-size-fits-all instruction to the whole room. Jhourney, by contrast, employs a large team of advanced meditators who give you ample 1-1 guidance. This makes them able to tailor the teaching to your exact mind-shape. The most impactful parts of the retreat for me were meetings with facilitators. (I give an example of one below.)

The team

The five facilitators were some of the most wholesome people I’ve ever met. Well-adjusted types with extremely clean energy.

This was a huge relief. I’ve come close to leaving the meditation world because it seems to attract (and create) people with artificial “spiritual personalities:” glassy eyes, or aloof smiles, or an unnatural vibe of peace™ that feels like maybe it’s being generated by some breathy inner voice of theirs constantly chanting “peace peace peace peace peace” to cover up the noise of other thoughts.

I always found this strange, because – in theory – these practices should make you much more raw and sincere. But at the end of the day, “you will know them by their fruits.” Thankfully, the Jhourney crew just seemed like normal people…who also happened to have access to that other thing Jesus talked about: “Behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”

They felt like peers, all of them under 50 and easy to hang out with. This was great for me, because I have issues with older authority figures after having been burned by a series of mentors and gurus.

The whole team was also…extremely hot, which at first was distracting. But then I remembered how I learn really well when I’m trying to impress a crush, so this fact about the team ended up working in my favor.

The teaching

So it is true that Jhourney has applied the engineering optimization mindset to teaching the jhanas. However, it’s good to remember that this is the same mindset that gave us wonders such as airplanes and air conditioning. Why shouldn’t it yield wonders when applied to meditation?

“Well, because meditation gets fcked by goal-oriented thinking,” I thought. Aha, but here’s where the cleverness of Jhourney’s pedagogy shines through: It has applied the optimization mindset to undermining the optimization mindset.

That’s right. And it’s necessary because nothing will get you further from the jhanas than results-based thinking.

The thing about the jhanas is they’re just like many other of the great things in life: love, creativity, healing, sleep, flow, and other graces. The more desperately you try to attain the graces, the harder they are to attain. They’re like trying to catch a butterfly. Run after a butterfly, and it will flee. Stay still, and it will alight upon you. Alan Watts called this “the law of reversed effort.”

On day one of the Jhourney retreat, you get a big textbook to read. (Jhourney is big on supplying tools for every type of learner: audio meditations, videos, social meditations, an AI chatbot trained on jhana-knowledge, and – yes – a big textbook. Thankfully, it’s engagingly written.) A big portion of this big textbook is about reversing the usual efforts that Westerners make to get results, especially in “meditation.”

We treat practice as a chore. We tense our mind to stay concentrated. We punish ourselves for distractions. We engage in mental “moves” to exert control. We measure ourselves against an impossible ideal. And instead of playing around with methods to find a version that clicks, we grind for hours (or sometimes years) on the same version, trying to get it right.

I have every single one of these bad habits. Unfortunately, they will not bring you the graces. They will not bring you into jhana.

There is, however, one thing that will reliably bring you into these heaven realms. It’s not very complicated. You do not need to memorize any sacred passwords to pass the bouncer at heaven’s door. You do not need to pass questioning by angels or know the 99 names of God or drink from the correct underworld river. The requirements are much lower. They are:

1. Bring up an open-hearted feeling.

2. Relax into it.

Just relax.

The one thing I find impossible.

Just relax

I cannot really relax.²

This has been true for as long as I remember. In fact, the more relaxed I get, the more restless I get. Do not bring me to a beach to lie in the sun. Do not use your breathy yoga teacher voice to calm me down. Do not assimilate me into the cuddle puddle.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to cuddle, but the idea of dissolving into a puddle fills me with mortal terror. Yes, that’s the emotion: mortal terror. Existential panic.

It’s the same emotion that shows up in the nightmares I’ve had most nights since early childhood. Here is a representative sampling of nightmares I had while on the Jhourney retreat:

• Dream one: The Xenomorph from Alien bursts out of my own belly but somehow I’m still the one in charge of hunting it down before it kills my family. 🤦‍♂️

• Dream two: I go check on my pet turkeys in my backyard and not only are they frozen to death, but now their pen has been replaced by a giant evil-looking ice palace run by a masked torturer.

• Dream three: After my friends and I are attacked by a Japanese spider-crab, we are cornered by uniformed mutants from “The Institute,” one of whom has a face for a torso, kind of like this guy:

People who know me are surprised to hear that I don’t know how to relax.

“But you’re one of the most relaxed people I know,” one of them even said.

I understand their confusion. I understand why people think of me as being “chill” and why several hippies have told me, “You have a very grounding presence.” If you were to spy on me, you might think, “huh, this guy who apparently ‘doesn’t know how to relax’ seems to enjoy his life quite a bit.” You would see someone who is comfortable doing things that people normally consider anxiety-inducing: public speaking, approaching strangers, publishing half-finished pieces of poetry for thousands of strangers on Twitter to see, etc.

My secret is that I cover up my lack of relaxation with something else: confidence. But I have not always been a confident person. My younger self took it as a given that the world was made of terrifying things. And so he dutifully went about conquering them. Finally, in my 20s, I had conquered enough of these terrifying things that I felt like Odysseus, the daring man, the great tactician, master of land ways and sea ways, able to meet any challenge.

Except – as it turned out on my Jhourney retreat – there was one challenge for which my inner Odysseus was ill-suited: the challenge of surrendering into the heart of being. I.e., the one challenge necessary to experience heaven on earth.

This was immensely frustrating. In fact, I struggled more during the Jhourney retreat than in any of the seven long meditation retreats I’ve been on. Which felt ridiculous for a retreat that was all about relaxing and basking as much as possible. On day three, I came close to abandoning the whole program. I was going to ask for my laptop back so I could just spend the time watching movies and finishing some writing.

Why am I like this? I thought. Why can’t I “just relax?” Why all the terror about something that people will pay thousands to go on vacation to experience?

I actually have a theory. The few times I have gone deep into this terror, I have contacted something inside me that feels extraordinarily young and preverbal.

Picture a baby born with a purple face. His mother’s cord is wrapped around his neck. He is clutching at this cord as it cuts off air to his brain. His first experience of the world is that it is killing him. That baby was me.

Maybe it was a few of you too. I wonder if you few have the same problems that I have.

I refuse, however, to believe that the jhanas are inaccessible to us. In fact, I know they aren’t, because in moments when I was close to giving up, I probably experienced at least a couple of them. Here’s how that went:

Jhana 1 (-ish)

It is 9:30pm. I come up with a theory: maybe the sauna at Kripalu can induce relaxation before the existential terror snaps me out of it.

I walk into the sauna. Oh crap: the hot facilitators are arrayed across the benches of the sauna like Greek gods in repose. Across from me is Matt, who is not only the retreat lead but also an actor, researcher, therapist, and probably also some sort of model. How am I supposed to meditate in such company?

Then I remember one of my sources of power: crushes. When I have a crush on someone, I am like a peacock spider or a blue-footed booby; I will do a virtuosic little dance to impress them.

So I take my seat in the sauna and adopt a new meditation intention: impress the facilitators.

First: I remember their instruction to use a “scaffold” to bring up an open-hearted feeling. I picture my (honorary) niece, who I am lucky to live with. I picture her delivering her answer to the question “What sound do dinosaurs make?” which, of course, is, “ROAAAARRRRR!!!” Open-hearted-feeling? Check.

The next instruction: Relate to the open-hearted feeling with the trifecta of curiosity, enjoyment, and relaxation. I struggle to relax, but I am world-class at curiosity and enjoyment. So I start asking “What’s this? What’s this?” of my consciousness, and I savor the answers, which are like lights that shine from nowhere to illuminate fine textures of my experience. I bask in these textures. Ooo nice. I smile. I bask some more. Nice!

Then something happens: It starts as a very pleasurable fizzy feeling in my heart and head. Holy crap that’s fun! The joy rises and rises and starts to pull me in. And then the terror starts.

Since I am dangerously relaxed, I am able to witness the unfolding battle of joy vs terror in real-time with amusement. “Which will win?” I wonder.

Joy makes its move: It travels all the way down to my toes.

Terror makes its move: It attempts to narrate the experience: “Hey, wow. So is this jhana one? Let me check: Is this the best I’ve ever felt in my entire life? Not yet. So maybe it’s more like ‘baby jhana one.’ Is that the right term?”

Joy: *begins to expand beyond the reaches of my body*

Terror: “Let’s make sure to keep track of every single thing that’s happening right now so you can post about it on Substack later. You might help people! Oh look at that, the joy is now expanding beyond the reaches of my body.”

Joy: *starts to fill infinite space*

Terror: “It’s interesting how this narration has a feel sort of like interference waves. Oh, I see, this very narration is my terror trying to disrupt the experience. Ha! That’s so meta! I predict that it will win against the joy. Oh no, am I hyperstitioning myself out of joy by predicting that? Yes I am. And actually that’s on purpose. Wow, my terror sure knows how to play a great game.”

Terror wins. The fizzy joy dissipates into thought. I open my eyes. All the facilitators are gone.

I start to think about this vlogger named Elisha Long who people keep sending to me with captions like, “This guy looks exactly like you, except muscular.” Elisha Long has built his brand on the concept of “retardmaxxing.” I sit there in the sauna and think: Retardmaxxing. Maybe that’s what I need.

Jhana 2

I am at a scheduled 1-1 with one of the facilitators in a room with a panoramic view of the Berkshire Mountains.³ I sit across from her, wondering if my eye contact is too flirtatious.

“Have you tried Aletheia?” she asks.

I haven’t.

She tells me that it’s a self-inquiry method that combines Internal Family Systems with nondual awareness.

Amazing, I say, let’s do it.

The steps unfold:

She has me start by finding a reference place in my body that feels like Self with a capital S, a place where I can feel pure presence. I find it in the heart.

Then she draws my attention to wherever else feels live. My belly feels live.

What’s the emotion? It’s anger.

What does it say? “Fuck off.”

Let it move and expand. OK.

What’s that like? Like a blue flame shooting up from my solar plexus, conflagrating my heart, and blazing into my head. It feels brazen and cocky, like my 20-year-old self.

Can you find Self in the sensation? Yes.

And now? The flame continues to grow but now it feels grounded.

Can you find enjoyment in that? Oh yes.

Make that feeling your meditation object. OK.

And then it happens.

Jhana 2 is exactly like Jhourney’s textbook described: “a bit like cuddling early in a relationship…warm, loving happiness.” But that’s a bit underselling it. It also feels like the world was made of the softest flower petals. Or like somehow a blanket of the smoothest silk is as fundamental to reality as gravity – more fundamental, in fact, since later I am pretty sure I was not experiencing gravity in that moment.

As the state crescendos, Jenny’s stopwatch beeps. It’s time for lunch.

“Keep glowing,” Jenny says.

I go to the cafeteria and sit under a painting of White Tara. I look out the window. I am grateful for the noonday sun. I am grateful for the snow and the trees. I am more grateful for my life than I’ve ever felt.

Jhana 3 & 4 (-ish)

It is 9:30pm. I return to the sauna hoping that the facilitators are there. They are, but they are leaving to throw themselves into the snow outside. Really? They’re only wearing bathing suits. I run after them. We exit the center. The temperature is below freezing. I find a nice patch and let myself fall backwards into it, bare-backed. The snow stings my skin. I make a snow angel.

We return to the sauna, shivering. I straighten my spine and set my intention, which – once again – is to impress the facilitators.

I ask the heat of the sauna to turn off my brain.

This time it happens quickly. I think of my niece. (“ROAR!” she yells.) I sink into the open-hearted feeling. Jhana 2 catches me by surprise: I am in the dimension of the softest, blooming, infinite lotus. “Woah! What do I do now?” I think. Right: enjoy it. I sink in. Then I come up with a clever trick: What if I adopted the view that the jhanas were like steep “attractor basins,” or like magnets pulling me toward them. Or, what if instead of me seducing them, they seduced me?

It works. There is an experience I could describe as awareness being “pulled” through a state transition. The new state is perfect peace. The phrase “I could stay here forever” drifts through my mind. Meanwhile, as if in a separate dimension, existential terror begins to rise, and to trigger narration: “Is this jhana 3?”

The terror notices that awareness is being pulled into another state-transition. It ramps up narration, and ramps and ramps until there are at least two streams of simultaneous thought. But it’s losing control. A new state of consciousness is arriving, and now it’s here: vast stillness, infinite stillness, impossible stillness—

But just for a flash. Now the narration has ended and it’s just pure terror and oh I’m back to just sitting in this sauna with my thoughts and again the facilitators have left. The maintenance man taps on the door: “Hellooo? 10PM! Sauna closed!”

I walk back to my room reflecting on the three states I was just pulled through. I arrived at the retreat thinking that the jhanas wouldn’t be like any state I’ve ever experienced. Partially that’s true, because of their purity and their intensity. And yet at the same time they’d felt very natural. They felt – as stereotypical as it sounds – like coming home.

The door swings both ways

Odysseus, the daring man, the great tactician, master of land ways and sea ways, has a plan for every island. Cyclops? Stab it in the eye. Sirens? Plug your ears. Witch? (She’s turned your men into pigs.) Make her promise no funny business and then bed her (obviously). But when Odysseus finally arrives upon his own island of Ithaca, he is disoriented. He struggles to recognize it.

Despairing, he weeps. It takes a literal goddess to show up and tell him: idiot, you’re home.

Then Odysseus proceeds to do the only thing he knows how to do: tactics, cunning, control. He returns to his house in disguise. He makes clever plans for how to defeat the home-invaders who have taken up residence there. Then he slays them all. Home is his final conquest.

I respect this about him. I have engaged my entire adult life through tactics, cunning, and control. However, as it had turned out for me, the real homecoming cannot be a conquest. In fact, it was the exact opposite. It required a laying down of arms. A yielding inward. Something I was not fully willing to do.

I did not return to New York a transformed being trailing transcendent light. I still have my nightmares. I still narrate my own experience in real time. I still run into the bouncer at heaven’s door, and he is me: purple-faced, clutching the cord, convinced that the world is trying to kill him.

But now I know where the door is. And after all this time, all this questing, all this searching for home, the key to heaven’s door reveals itself to be laughably simple:

First, open your heart. This is something I have learned how to do.

Second, just relax. This is something I will learn how to do. Finally facing a lifetime of deep-seated preverbal terror seems like a small price to pay for getting to go to heaven while I’m still alive.

Heaven is not something gained, it is something unforgotten.⁴ Watching my niece run around the apartment this morning, roaring and wearing a devil mask, I can tell she is already there. I would like to join her.

If you have any tips for me, let me know.⁵

1. Some critics of Jhourney will say that people on Jhourney retreats aren’t practicing the “real” jhanas. They are typically influenced by the Visuddhimagga, a text written after the sutras that presented dramatically more strict requirements for what counts as jhana. Regarding this debate, I’m a little like “who cares?” The bottom line is that Jhourney has figured out how to bring lay people into life-changing altered states.

2. OK this is not entirely true. I can deeply relax under very specific conditions that are so esoteric that I almost don’t want to mention them. I find I can relax:
(a) when engaged in “energy work” (giving or receiving)
(b) ~1 hour into contact improv
(c) when around people who have the vibe of being “magical creatures” – someone you might mistake for being a dryad or elf or nymph or fae or vampire or selkie. Don’t ask me why.

3. I realized after writing this that it conflates two separate encounters with this facilitator. But this version feels even more representative of my overall experience, so I haven’t edited it.

4. One intriguing possibility: many animals as well as members of pre-agricultural tribes spend a huge portion of their time idling. (16-20 hours per day for lions, for example.) Is it possible that they’re just chilling in jhana all the time? If so, I think this might have implications for how Effective Altruists think about the horrors of wild animal suffering. EAs tend to assume that most animals have net-negative lives. But perhaps the utilitarian calculus is actually that “the natural state” is – on balance – positive.

5. Specifically: for engaging preverbal existential terror so that I can learn how to relax into the heart of being lol