With the hope that verbally describing his retreat experience will help integrate the experience and perhaps inform and inspire others to go on retreat, Peter describes his recent 2 week self-retreat, during which he got a staph infection and had to get medical treatment. We often have agendas for our lives, and unexpected events like this on a retreat may seem like a setback, but the practice is to help establish ways and means to see how the mind creates suffering, in this case illness, and learn how to deconstruct the suffering self to find peace and clarity.