When I first mentioned I was considering a silent retreat at a dinner party around 6 years ago, there was a second of complete silence and then my friends burst out laughing. “You cannot live without your phone for 5 minutes! How are you going to handle a week of complete silence?” Good point, but at that time, right after my ex-husband #2 and I had split, I was desperate to find a quick and effective solution to my devastation and jumped excitedly at every “healing” idea. The two options I contemplated the most were a year-long around-the-world cruise and the silent retreat.
The silent retreat sounded very appealing. I had spent almost a year in frustrated, confused and totally useless conversations with my ex-husband that were intended to “save the marriage” but in fact just served as an outlet for all the energy behind the impending separation. Then, there were another several months of enraged, grief-stricken and tear-filled talks with my friends about the sudden craziness of our divorce. Naturally, I felt entitled to some quiet time in an all-inclusive (technically) lodge tucked in a beautiful forest Upstate New York.
I ended up going on a 10-day cruise with Tanya instead. It didn’t offer any solution to my abandonment issues, but it was an amazingly fun experience, highlights of which featured Tanya and I playing into the suspicion of our dinner table mates that we might be lesbians, and our alcohol bill of almost a $1,000 at the end of the trip. Oh, those yummy martinis!
But the silent retreat idea infiltrated my mind. I wasn’t obsessed with it, but I kept going back to consider this experiment once in a while, for the past 6 years. The time never seemed to be right though, and little by little I made my peace with the fact that it’ll always stay on my “Cool things that I’ll never do” list. Until all of a sudden, a couple of weeks ago I realized that here and now was the perfect time to do it! And I did it.
It wasn’t exactly the same thing that a beautiful Upstate New York lodge would offer. There were no people preparing healthy food for you, there was no collective energy produced by group meditation, there was no long walks in the forest. I did it all by myself, at my home here in Cozumel.
I had enough sense to share my intention with my therapist, who – as it turned out – apparently went on a week-long silent retreat once. She gave me some pointers that I wouldn’t ever think of myself. Together, we planned a routine for my 3 days of silence. She also warned me that it is not uncommon to fixate on one silly thought – for example, “I have a black bicycle” – and get totally obsessed with it to a point that you absolutely cannot get it out of your mind. Apparently, it is the only time when you are allowed to talk to somebody (a special counselor) when you are on an organized group silent retreat. After they help you release the invading thought, you go back to the world of silence.
Well, there’s really not much to write about. After all, it was exactly what it sounds – 3 days of silence. I didn’t have any WOW insights or powerful revelations, but there is something inexplicable in the silence that your body and mind apparently feed on.
Routine
It’s amazing how meaningless time becomes when you have absolutely nothing to occupy yourself with: no emails, no googling, no books, no radio, no movies. All you are “allowed” to do is meditate. This is very unusual, to say the least.
I set my alarm for 5AM (my therapist informed me that at the organized retreats this is considered the best time for the morning meditation) and woke up when it was still very dark outside. That reminded me waking up for school in winter, when my mom literally had to drag me out of bed every morning after multiple failures to appeal to my conscience. There’s no conscience when it’s still pitch black out! Your whole being considers this condition “night”. Of course, I was quickly reminded that I wasn’t in St.Petersburg in winter the second I stepped out on my terrace to go sit by the ocean. Even at 5AM this place is sticky hot. On the other hand, it was really my only window of opportunity to enjoy nature – I fell asleep at 8PM every night, because I woke up so early and, well, because there was really nothing to do!
From 5AM till 7AM I would be sitting on a stone in the ocean (literally), meditating, or trying to. I found it much easier to get into meditation here than in my room. Somehow I get almost immediately lulled by the sound of the ocean and can stay in this “trance” forever.
Then, I did yoga at 7AM at the beach, and went back inside for the rest of the day. I would even shut the metal curtains outside my windows, because otherwise it gets unbearably hot during the day, as my windows face the west side and the apartment gets baked in the sunlight. So I was confined to a complete darkness of the room, which was kind of conducive to the purpose of my exercise.
I would have breakfast at 8AM and go back to the yoga mat for another meditation. I alternated between Vipassana (insight) meditation, which is simply sitting and observing your thoughts and various guided meditations that I had downloaded from www.soundstrue.com for this very purpose.
Many people erroneously assume that meditation is all about achieving this state where you don’t have any thoughts. This is not true. I don’t even believe it’s possible to stop thinking altogether, no matter how spiritually advanced you are. A mind is a mind, and its function is to think. Meditation is about being a witness to your thought process and gaining control over the train of your thoughts, learning gradually how to bring your “stray” thoughts back into this moment of here and now, which is really the only moment that matters. One thought from a guided meditation really resonated with me, although I’ve heard it a million times before: past doesn’t exist anymore, future doesn’t exist yet, the only thing that is truly real is now. It’s all in our mind. Sometimes I think that The Matrix is not that far from the reality of things…
Anyway, I would meditate from 8.30AM till about noon, have lunch and perform the next thing on my agenda… “free time”. It’s actually funny. Time free from what exactly? I guess, free from the other 3 activities of the day – sleeping, eating, meditating. It’s not like you can occupy yourself with anything during this silent retreat, that’s the whole point – no usual 21st century distractions – it’s just yourself… During my “free time” on the first day I fell asleep for like 4 hours, but the next 2 days I would just sit on my bed doing nothing. Just thinking, witnessing my thoughts. For about 2-3 hours. Then back to formal meditation, then dinner, then more meditation and sleep.
Day 2: Rinse, repeat.
Day 3: Rinse, repeat.
Ironically, I’m writing all of this in the buzzing of El Coffee, THE coffee shop on the island – not that there are no others, but this one is extremely happening, always full and lively.
Insights
I had no mind-shattering insights during those three days, but I have to say that for days and days afterwards things have been coming up. I guess, I set something inside me in motion: my dreams, my thoughts, my observations – it’s not like they are drastically different from before, but really something has changed, I just cannot pinpoint what exactly it is.
I was surprised how easy it was for me to do this though: at the end of the 3rd day I was kind of sad that it’s getting over and thought that next time I’d definitely do a week (so I suppose, there will be a next timeJ). I didn’t really expect to be OK with not doing anything, just being, but you know, it’s not that bad!J The whole experience was very educational and peaceful and I think everybody should try to do it, although of course it’s so tough to create time for this type of thing in our busy lives. If you decide to do it, a word of caution – when you get back “into the world” after your silent retreat, do it very carefully and slowly. I wasn’t thinking about it and when I woke up on Friday, opened up my computer and immersed into reading emails and FB and chatting on Twitter and this and that – the usual – I got hit by a terrible heavy anxiety, and I’m not really an anxious person by nature. It was a horribly unpleasant feeling that came absolutely out of nowhere and wasn’t connected to anything in particular. It possessed me for hours until it finally disappeared as suddenly as it came in after my second dive around 4PM. I didn’t enjoy that.
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