I enjoy spending time alone and am very comfortable with silence, so I figured a three-day silent meditation retreat would be a piece of cake. And in that silence, while sitting cross-legged on a comfy cushion on the floor, I’d have an epiphany (maybe two!) and walk away a changed person.
I signed up for the Zen Center of San Diego’s retreat, also hoping that during three days of “forced” meditation, something would finally click and I’d “get” it. I would, at last, know how to meditate perfectly, and would never again abandon the practice in frustration and impatience.
Was that how it unfolded for me? Of course not. First of all, it wouldn’t be an epiphany if it were planned. And secondly, the universe delights in turning expectations upside down.
Had I made a mistake?
The first evening at the ZCSD was an introduction for newcomers: a tour of the premises, an eating orientation (a what?) and setting up our sleeping quarters. Boys in one building and girls in another, just like camp. Futons, sleeping bags and pillows were provided, and then we picked a spot on the floor in the backhouse (women’s quarters).
By the time I grabbed my sleep accoutrements, the only spot available was a slice of beige carpeting in the living room, right next to the front door and two feet away from a fellow participant. As a lifelong struggler with insomnia, this was like a smoker getting on a three-day flight.
That’s when I started panicking. I’ve made a mistake. I shouldn’t have come. Is it too late to cancel and go home? I don’t even care about a refund.
After everyone had settled in, we all sat for a meditation, which consisted of 30 minutes of my mind screaming at me. When I say “screaming,” this is what it looked like in my head (all layered on top of each other): a random song plays, a list is made or something is counted, old conversations are replayed, new arguments with imaginary people are rehearsed, arbitrary images pass through, and all the while, a voice narrates or explains what I’m doing to a non-existent audience. If it sounds exhausting, that’s because it is.
At 9 p.m., we were done, and it was off to bed. There was no talking, no reading and no writing, and there were definitely no phones allowed. These activities (even journaling), it was explained to us, leak energy that we’d learn to turn inward instead.
As an introvert, I hated sharing a small space with six strangers, hated washing my face in the bathroom and hearing the coughing or sniffing of the (impatient, I assumed) person awaiting her turn. I was ridiculously self-conscious about turning over in my narrow nylon sleeping bag, and cringing at what seemed like the deafening rustle.
My eyes snapped open every time someone sighed or moved, or a floorboard creaked, or the old house moaned. I lay awake for 10, then 20, then 30 minutes, willing my heartbeat to slow down, my thoughts to quiet and my body to relax.
I wanted to go home so badly that waves of anger and sadness coursed through me. And this was just the first night. Of the orientation. The three-day retreat hadn’t even begun yet.
Our first official day
The first official day started at 6 a.m. and lasted until 9 p.m. It consisted of half-hour blocks of sitting meditation and 10-minute blocks of walking meditation, endlessly repeated throughout the day; oryoki (a ritualistic, or mindful meal, which explained the eating practice) three times a day; chores; a talk by each of the two practice leaders, individual daisan (private interviews, or short chats, with the practice leaders); full bowing (just 10 minutes felt like five sets of leg presses and gave me sore jelly legs for the next three days); and eye gazing.
Every activity began and ended with a series of high-pitched bells, low-pitched bells and/or a wooden clapper, which soon had me responding like Pavlov’s dog, if Pavlov’s dog was a tired, resentful madwoman.
I was frustrated to the point of anger because I didn’t know what the bells meant, when or where to bow, which way to face for different meditations, what the chants were or what any of this meant. I was afraid to go to the bathroom, because I didn’t know how to “properly” leave the Zendo (meditation room).
How could I practice being mindful and reflective when I was spending all my time and energy observing everyone else, just to figure out what the hell to do?
By about halfway through that first day, I felt like a prisoner of war being tortured for information. My ankles, knees, hips, lower back, upper back, shoulders and neck (did I miss anything?) were sore, cracking and tight, my legs constantly fell asleep, my caterwauling mind DID NOT STOP for even a minute, and fatigue settled over me like a heavy, woolen blanket in the height of summer.
In both my daisans (one with each practice leader), my question was: How do I stop my monkey mind from driving me insane? And yes, I have tried everything in the 10 years I’ve been attempting meditation, so if I hear one more person tell me to focus on my breathing, I’m going to hit them with a stick. Everything these two teachers suggested, I’d already tried many times, unsuccessfully. (But no, I didn’t hit anyone. Mostly because I didn’t have a stick.)
Though we were instructed to keep our eyes closed during meditation and lowered at all other times, often the only means of escape from my chaotic, rock concert-esque mind was to open my eyes and sneak peeks around the still room. Why did it look so easy for everyone else?
And why wasn’t I experiencing what I’d hoped for, wanted so badly, expected, goddamn it—inner tranquility and an enlightened mind?
By late afternoon on that first day, I felt myself start to spiral into a full-blown freak-out. I was suffocating. I couldn’t stay another minute. I sat, “meditating,” but really, my racing mind was plotting my getaway.
On breaks, I’d stroll around the garden and scope out my escape routes. When I could take no more of sitting cross-legged on the floor and “being aware of the sensations of my body,” I fantasized about leaping up from my mat, kicking over the bell and crashing out the door, with a shriek of, “F*ck all y’all and your stupid prayer hands, too!!!”
Everyone, in turn, became an object of my judgment. The vegan food tasted like despair, and the temperature was either too hot or too warm or too cold. And my mind wouldn’t stop tormenting me. Several times, I silently pleaded with it to please let me go, leave me in peace, back off just a little. It only got louder and more aggressive.
Delaying my escape
The second day was the same, except worse. That’s it, I thought, as my body slumped, unable to hold itself in an upright position anymore. I’m broken. I’m so broken that I’ll never get fixed, no matter how hard I try or what I do. I’ve searched for a million ways into meditation in order to slow my thoughts, become the master of my own internal domain and thus achieve some semblance of inner peace. But nothing has ever worked, and therefore, never will. Why do I even keep trying? Maybe I should just get a lobotomy.
In desperation for some kind of solution that would finally work, I tried to imagine whom the most enlightened person on Earth might be, and visualized travelling halfway around the world to visit them at the top of a mountain, for spiritual healing.
Even in fantasy, where anything can happen, I remained unfixable. Even in my imagining, I kicked my way out of their sacred tent in hot tears, with an anguished cry that NOBODY could help me and I was doomed to a continued life of TORTURE.
Then I remembered an indigenous tribe in some South American country that holds ayahuasca ceremonies, led by a powerful shaman, to cleanse the mind of psychological wreckage and evoke a spiritual awakening. I pictured attending one of those potent ceremonies, drinking the herbal brew and then… looking around at everyone else having deep and profound transformations. And kicking my way out of their sacred circle in hot tears, because I was terminally broken.
Meanwhile, during this psychic search of mine, my mind continued to make lists, replay old conversations, rehearse new ones, etc.. And that damn song was always playing in the distant speakers of my mind, although it ended as soon as I became aware of it.
I wanted to run away so badly and so often, but for some reason, I didn’t. I stayed for one more minute, one more hour, one more block of activity. Just when I’d put my hands on the floor to get up, oryoki would be announced, and I’d think, “Oh, well, I’ll stay for lunch and then I’ll flee.”
And after the meal, one of the helpers would ask me to assist with food prep because I did a good job last time, so I’d think, “As soon as this chore is done, then I’ll slip out the back door.” Then we’d have a break, and I’d sink onto a bench in the garden in the crisp winter evening, with a mug of hot tea warming my fingers, and think, “OK, after I rest a bit and everyone heads back inside, then I’ll run away.”
Finally, an aha moment
By the third day, like any prisoner, my plotting mind had depleted my body of energy, and it was just easier to fall into line at the sound of the bell and file back into the Zendo. But near the end of that third day, I sat in daisan with one of the practice leaders, and casually told him about an aha moment I’d just had 20 minutes prior, while sitting in tortuous meditation with a broken body and shattered spirit.
The moment I told him, I bent over and sobbed into my hands for about 10 seconds. When I sat up again, wiped my eyes and smiled nervously at the unexpectedness of that sudden outpouring of emotion, I felt… unclogged. Emptied out.
I looked at this kind man for a moment, and then it hit me. “This is why I came,” I said. “This moment is the reason I’m here.” He nodded, with tears in his eyes.
I had the clarity of windshield wipers in a snowstorm. My story has been: I’m broken, I’m unfixable, there’s something so inherently wrong with me that nothing ever works out for me, even when it works out for other people (even stupid, untalented, mean, lazy, broken, couldn’t-care-less people). But not for me. Never for me.
And my aha moment was that if my unconscious belief is that I’m unfixable, that I’m always a victim (of life, of circumstance, of automatic faucets), then of course, nothing will ever work out for me. It can’t, because that would go against the fundamental belief I’ve been lugging around all my life. If something worked out, then that would mean I’ve been investing in the wrong tenets all these years, and boy, would that be f*cked up.
When I’d told both these practice leaders that nothing had ever worked to stop my tornado of a mind, and therefore meditation didn’t—couldn’t—work, that was my “Oh, woe is me” mindset talking. So if meditation actually worked for me, then I might not be unfixable anymore. And without that deep, lifelong, inner belief that I’m a broken person for whom nothing ever works, then who would I be?
To paraphrase Eckhart Tolle, as long as part of my sense of self is invested in my emotional pain, I’ll unconsciously resist, deny or sabotage every attempt that I make to heal that pain. Why? Quite simply, because I want to keep myself intact, and the pain has become an essential part of my identity. Even my unsuccessful search for a solution is part of that.
This might all sound self-indulgent or ridiculous, or high and mighty or unimportant, but trust me when I say that this was huge for me. It was a realization—a deep, bone-rattling, sob-producing, eye-opening realization—that I needed. Badly. You might even say it was an epiphany.
And in the final hours of the meditation retreat, when the teachers gave a talk, and a handful of participants briefly shared their experience during the three days, I suddenly loved the whole goddamn lot of them—throat-clearing, knee cracking, goofy socks and all.
When the real retreat began
On my drive back home to Los Angeles, I cried more tears of release. I noticed the crisp and colourful details of the landscape, and felt at home in my mind. That night, and even several weeks later, as I sit here writing this, is when the real meditation retreat seemed to begin.
My steps are less rushed, my actions are more conscious, my heart is fuller and, perhaps most importantly, my mind is subservient to me. It may still be a monkey, but at least it’s on a leash now.
I suspect that my experience isn’t unique, perhaps even fairly routine, and I’m pretty sure that this newfound peace and mindfulness will eventually fade away into a sweet and cherished memory. And I’m scared of never experiencing it again, and once more getting stuck in my “nothing ever works for me” mindset. But I trust that if—scratch that, when—needed, I’ll find my way back to the ZCSD, or to another Zen center, to attend a different meditation retreat.
So my first three-day silent meditation retreat wasn’t the rainbows-and-unicorns experience I’d naively expected. But it turned out to be exactly what I needed.
And by the way, I just realized what the song that kept randomly playing in my head, when I was supposed to be meditating, was: “Monster” by Eminem:
I’m friends with the monster that’s under my bed
Get along with the voices inside of my head
You’re trying to save me, stop holding your breath
And you think I’m crazy, yeah, you think I’m crazy.
Well, that’s not fair.
"LEGGI RELATIVI" A COURSE IN SELF-MASTERY: Finding God at a small-town Kundalini Yoga retreat»
