Retreat: A Time Apart for Silence & Solitude

Reading “Retreat: A time apart for Silence and Solitude” by Roger Housden, and learning about a few different spiritual traditions and their practices. It is meant to be a brief overview of each, but because the author had personally sought and attended these retreats, or in some cases he used participants’ first hand account of their experiences, I found the information concise but often profound in insight. He seems to have a broader breadth of vision than most I’ve seen about how a new spiritual ‘school’ and practice is grafted onto the Western culture, how the form is modified and transformed in the transplantation due to the differences in the ‘terrain’ that it has to adapt to. This may seem like a degradation of its original form if seen strictly through a fundamentalist’s lens, but often it proved to be an improvement which better suited its new ‘hosts’, sometimes even served to bring the teachings back to its earliest, purest, original form.

But most serendipitously, it brought home the realization again that I AM on a retreat, one less than conventional in format and setting, but nevertheless for the purposes, of more silence and solitude for contemplation and healing, amongst others. I am grateful for this reminder, because just as often I lose sight of what I am going through this for, especially when the voice of my inner critic and slavemaster is most strident, yet another reason to have this time of retreat. I see that what began as my quest, not to mention battle, for personal freedom has led to this life of retreat for me, and in it I have found more freedom than I have ever known in this life. Being in this landscape at this moment, I feel as if all the battles I ever need to engage are ones within myself. The world out there is not against me as much as I am against myself, even if it is true that I have taken on much of the conditioning of the world and built my own prison with it. I have the choice what to do with all of that too.

What Bothers

What bothers me the most these days?
Not having enough solitude and silence, both outer and inner.
I still fret about not having enough time to do all the things I want to do in a day.
I still can’t just do nothing
I resent having to take care of survival needs: shopping, cooking, cleaning, exercising, relating...
Underneath that resentment is my fear of being trapped. That old devil.
I have not accepted that the demands of those needs are part of life.
Might as well enjoy them.
What a difference it would make not to fight them.
Feel the gratitude of having so much abundance, so much colour, texture, life-giving sustenance.
Deepen into the pleasure of seeing, tasting, touching, smelling, sensing, and appreciating the goodness that is so accessible to me.
The comfort and joy in cleanliness, order, fitness, movement, wholesomeness, good company, simple kindness, resonance with another soul.
I am chosen for these tasks because I am the best candidate for them at this moment.
I have much to learn from these seemingly mundane chores, because they are a spiritual practice in themselves.
There is stillness in chopping vegetables. There is solitude in making dinner. There is surrender in just listening to another with ears and heart open, and mouth shut. There is dance in sweeping the floor.
If only I accept it, allow it, stay in it.
Then a song might come, and give me a new voice. Silence may descend, wrap me in its mantle of balm.
My fear will sprout wings and lift off into the light of day, proclaiming its new name:
Freedom! Freedom!

Touching Down

I’ve been doing this thing lately, of getting in contact with my body by saying ‘touch down’ to myself, and bringing my consciousness to the bottom of my belly, the pelvic floor. It has become a little ritual whenever I find myself thinking or trying to figure something out or reading for the sake of reading, and my awareness is like a clenched fist in my upper body. Then I say those 2 magic words, and it drops down immediately like a rock, my body opens up and relaxes. This also tells me that I am still gobbling without savouring, barely chewing, not deepening into the experience, whatever it happens to be. But my body catches it, and tries to reject it, tries to bar the stuffing, tries to say stop, no more.

Song of Stones

I am happy when I see the pebbled beach down by the lake. I smile in anticipation of the joy even as I am on my way there. When I catch sight of them it is as if I am meeting friends I haven’t seen in a long time. Love and fondness swell up like a tide, and there is a warmth that sweeps upwards, splashing the back of my eyes.

I’ve been amazed and mystified by this little phenomenon for some time now, and I’ve found no reason yet for the extent of its effect on me. At least not one that convinces my body. It is true that they feel like kin to me, and I love the stillness and constancy they are. But there’s something stronger and deeper that makes my blood flow towards them, that makes me want to hold them in my arms, as many as I can, that makes me wish they will be there, just the way they are, forever and always, holding me.

Somehow they speak of Oneness to me, and that is my longing. The thing that pulls at my blood? That’s the longing for Oneness. That’s the song they sing, those lovely stones. At last, I recognize them.

Strangeness of Stones

Woke up this morning with Sister Sunshine’s finger in my eye,
Brother Storm having left us after his visit to the city yesterday,
to an expectedly chilling reception by the populace.

Went down to the lake in the faux warmth of mid-afternoon winter,
Not even a seagull to beckon me, but I know why I came.
Stones on the beach, thousands of faceless faces looking up at me,
and a strange thing happens—it is still strange to me after the hundredth time—
that my breath quickens, my step falters, and I have to stand still,
when first my eyes filled with the sight of these stones.

What is it about them that so captures my soul and being?
Is it that they are ordinary and constant, ageless and ancient, self-sufficient and impersonal?
Yet it is a feeling that I have known them forever, countless déjà vus ago
that we have been friends and kin, that we have shared something
thicker than blood, older than land—
we have been together in stillness
since the beginning of time.

Taking Sides

It seems to me that every other one of my periods is an easier experience than the other. This one was one of the better, no moods, no cramping, no ‘awareness’ even. And it is from the left ovary. Whereas the last one hurt from ovulation (right side) on into menstruation. I wonder what causes the difference; the cysts, which I’ve had for decades, or the masc/fem split, with the right side being the more aggressive? Or something else? Perhaps my body will tell me…

Apparently I already know the cause… I still rely on my right side, my masculine, more, therefore it gets more stressed out and depleted. AND I have not nurtured or replenished it enough to restore balance and health.

How to love my warrior? I thought I knew, but perhaps I don’t… My warrior, tell me how you need to be loved and nurtured…

I see a line of energy zigzagging back and forth from the 2 sides of my body, top to bottom, reminding me that my right hip has been sore and aching for the last week. I see that the left side of my body is black, the right side white, and the line changes colour as it stitches across. I am being sewn together. The 2 halves have to be brought into contact before energy can be exchanged. Now I have an aerial view of the process, and I see that it is actually a spiraling in 3D. At one point the spin reverses and I see that energy is now going from right to left, slightly less smooth in flow, and I understand that it is actually a stagnation of energy in the right side, an excess build-up that have lodged in certain parts of my body, causing discomfort.

A question is forming: Will there always be 2 sides – even as I see the question form, I also see the answer… There will always be the 2 qualities – masculine and feminine – of energy in me, but there needn’t be 2 sides. That's only my perception. They don’t have to take sides, be fixed on one side or the other, as my ‘understanding’ had locked me into believing. They are meant to be constantly in flow, in a swirling, stately, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, dance.

~~~~~~~~~

I also noticed that I could not sleep deeply until I consciously relaxed myself into trusting that I am not merely escaping from the world, that Osho’s wisdom isn’t gospel, and that the only ‘thing’ I ought to follow is my inner compass, because it is connected to Source. What plagues these days are doubts about my purpose and my path, am I doing what I ought to be doing, which is supposedly non-doing, but am I doing that? Still attached to outcome, still self-flagellating, still… not still. I think, I’m afraid, that part of what I have to give up is my mental bread and butter: books, movies, knowledge and all manners of brain candy. Will I have to give up writing too??! Goddess help me. Is this the next bottom I have to hit?

A Right-Sided Headache

What’s going on? I am having a right-sided headache radiating from the occiput for the last hour or so, down into my right shoulder. The sensation is of heat and congestion, and yes, I do feel bothered. Michael gave me a quick massage of the neck and shoulder before he left, and I think that may have loosened something into the system… What is it? Some tension that’s been held there, something I’ve seen and not let go of. Something I saw last night in the movie “Milking the Rhino”, about the conflicts in conservancy projects in Kenya and Namibia. What I found most difficult to swallow was that EVERYTHING in our world has become a commodity, including wildlife. Even wild animals must serve a legitimate purpose (according to us, of course) before we can allow them to live. In fact, forget conservation and all that goodwill stuff, it is a dog eat dog world and every man must be for himself or he’s toast. Do I want my baby to survive or the lion’s baby if it comes down to that? Do I want my baby to survive or the rest of the world, if it comes down to that? I cannot abide the shortsightedness of the everyman-for-himself party; I question whether all calamities and injustices and suffering are according to divine will; and my heart breaks for the animals we believe we must harm and kill and make to serve our agendas. It seems like a ball of tangled barbed wire bouncing around inside my mind, and I cannot make peace with it…

Take a step back, another voice said, and you’ll see a bit more. Yes, there is much fear and destruction, ignorance and hate, but there is also love and kindness, nurture and healing. All of this is going on at the same time, all over the world, all the time. It will continue to happen, as it has always done before, for millennias. When the ice age came countless species were wiped out, their deaths no less painful than by any other means. Entire habitats were destroyed, no less disastrous and threatening to the survivors than environments are today. For the most part, no humans were around to mourn these losses and devastations, and the animals didn’t really complain or bemoan their fate. But if you look a little deeper into human hearts, not the ones full of vengeance and greed, but the ones decrying warnings and blames on the oil spills and carcinogens and water shortage and global warming and urbanization, how many of them are bleeding for their own pain and fear and loss? Even you, who claim to love animals more than human beings, will you hand over your beloved cat to feed a starving lion? No, you couldn’t, because of the attachment you have with your cat is stronger than your love for all animals.

We, like all animals, are made with all of our instincts calibrated for survival and perpetuation of the species. So it’s not surprising or much of a stretch to admit that we are afraid of running out of resources for OURSELVES, not for the animals or any disappearing way of life, because they are a part of those resources that sustain our own survival. We, even those of us who call ourselves advocates for the Earth, are little different than the men in Namibia who wanted the lions killed because it was more important to them to keep their cattle alive, so conservancy be damned! Can anyone ask these men to give up their cattle for the sake of the ‘world conservation of wild animals’? who wants to be first? Here in the land of milk and honey and lotus blossoms, will any of us advocates and activists stop reproducing and adopt because the world is gravely over-populated already? No. But not because we are egocentric and shortsighted and utterly selfish as a race, as I would have liked to point the finger at ourselves. But because we, along with all the rest of creation, are all living and dying and creating and destroying and birthing and killing according to that divine purpose, however it may appear to our little eye, our lives as a blink in Time.

This is the new voice I hear coming out of myself now, this voice that calls me to accept, simply accept, what is. Allow the rancour, the rage, the sorrow, the pain as well as the joy, the comfort, the celebration to be felt and experienced. Then let it all go, all of it, the pain as well as the joy, the tears as well as the laughter. Don’t fight it or resist or get hung up on any of it. Let it all wash through you, as fully as it need be, then leave you clean and empty, just your own Self, in need of nothing.

Fallout from Daoism

So I fell off the wagon of my fast at about 9pm last night and ate up a storm. Consequently, although I can’t pinpoint exactly what or how, I woke up at around 2am, thrashed and tossed like hot oil in the deep fryer of hell for hours, my body insisting on clenching and withholding information on the cause. I suspect though, it could be because I am facing another big piece of letting go, dropping down to the next spiral. It seems that whenever this is about to happen, there’s something from the deep that has yet to see daylight, that senses its imminent ejection and throws a big tantrum, the immature though sometimes ancient demon it is.

I don’t have a name for this little darling yet, but I have the feeling this all came about since I embraced Daoism. Perhaps its name is Doing, and I am replacing Doism with Daoism. This is no small demon then, but a collective menace (that’s one face it has anyway) disguised as human condition. At the moment though, I must confess that I feel stumped as to how ‘not to do’, because from what I could gather so far, it seems to be a balancing act between do and not-do. Maybe that’s the problem I have, by seeing it as two absolute and fixed states, do and not-do, when it is really one piece of continuous flow, this way or that way, contingent only in the moment. What to do or not do cannot be anticipated. It can only be known when the moment comes, by seeing which way the wind blows, which way the tide flows, hold your horses or spur them on.

Naturally that goes against much of what our society is made of, dates are set way ahead, time is booked, you have to pre-register and pre-pay, whole lives are driven by down payments on everything from movie tickets to seats in a synagogue to relationships to a place in heaven, even on dying and death. If you don’t invest, you won’t have return. This is called planning ahead. And like all rules and beliefs we live by, there is some truth in it. It is true sometimes that you have to sow in order to reap, but the key word here is ‘sometimes’. Because it is also true that sometimes the soil needs to be left alone to fallow, a business needs to coast in order for a foundation to be solidified, relationships to be built, a person needs to leave her familiars and be alone to untangle and realign herself with Life. But as it is now if any of these things are to happen, we would have to get off this runaway train we are on that never stops and will never stop, because its only destination is: Future. But even before getting off, the idea of jumping from a high-speed moving vehicle is the stuff nightmares are made off, never mind that you’ll only be left with the shirt on your back, okay, maybe a backpack. Still, I consider it better odds than waking up one day in the hospital with a broken body or cancer, because Life has had to get you off the train somehow.

I’ve survived the first of such tossing from the train, and it’s been a continuous series of smaller (or at least less jolting) disembarking and dispossessing of personal baggage since. I am still besieged by fear though, every time it’s about to happen, right down to the wire. But the fear no longer paralyze me. I thrash and burn, squirm with discomforts of every kind physically, emotionally, and spiritually, but I know that fear has no permanent hold on me. It’s just doing its death dance on my nerve endings, but the dance will end. I know I will go through with this, because every time I do, a little piece of fear is replaced with trust.

So I try not to look ahead (does trying qualify as doing?), now not even right or left. This reminds me of the little autistic boy in the documentary Horse Boy, who put band-aids beside his eyes like blinders on a horse. Although they never explained why he did that, I think I know the reason, at least the message he gave me. There is so much pain and pleasure, love and hate, beauty and horror in front of me now. Deal with that, be with all that in this moment. It is enough already without me trying to take on what could happen later on. No wonder he just shrieked and rolled around, he was in so much pain and anguish, being born into this world of too much too fast, with nothing to hang on to.

The Pool

This morning as I lay
waking slowly, I saw
a pool of water inside my body.
When I was lying down, it spread
along my back, covering my entire spine.
When I sit up, it fills my belly,
submerging my pelvic floor
and everything within.
The water is warm and silky,
rich and giving.

Mellow
and marinate.

I find my stillness in it,
wherever it happens to be.
This was the gift I found
when I slid into the pool,
mind, body, and all.
Molecules swell,
Matrices thicken.
Vessels dilate,
Cells oxygenate.
I swear I did not know there were
parts of me so thirsty and starved.

Wallow
in self-love.