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.