Preparations for a Meditation Retreat

Well, I did it. I’m official. I just received email confirmation (and it doesn’t get any more official than that) that I am signed up for my very first overnight mindfulness meditation retreat- a 5 day retreat to be exact.

Since getting the email, I felt a need to search the internet for some tips to mentally prepare myself for this new endeavor.

Here are some of the top website hits I got:

+“8 Survival Tips for Your First Meditation Retreat” by Marguerite Manteau-Rao from The Huffington Post, May 17, 2010.

+“5 Things That Might Surprise You about Meditation Retreats” by Brent R. Oliver from Tricycle.com, June 19, 2015.

+“Reflections on a Silent Meditation Retreat: A Beginner’s Perspective” by Chad V. Johnson, Ph.d from the International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 2009.

After reading through these articles, that were all well-written by the way, I definitely noticed some emerging themes.  The first was: pain.

All of the articles took special note to emphasize the physical toll of a meditation retreat.

Over the course of the 5 days I will be rotating between sitting, walking and eating meditation from early in the morning to well after dinnertime at night.

As Mr. Oliver notes in his Tricycle.com article,

“After lunch…it [the pain] starts to get intense. Parts of you will become uncomfortable almost the moment you sit down. Having lost circulation, other parts—important parts—will feel like they’re about to fall off.  By the middle of the second day, sitting can become agony. Just the sight of your meditation cushion can become hateful and nauseating. It will feel like most of your joints have been filled with powered glass and your muscles are just sacs of fire and ice hanging from your cracking skeleton.”

Damn, Mr. Oliver! Don’t try to sugar-coat it for me will ya?!

Seriously though, this point about the retreatant’s physical pain threshold and pain tolerance concerns me. In the past year I have had increasing knee pain, and I’m worried that 5 days of rotating mindful sitting and walking meditation will really get me up close and personal with that particular pain sensation in a way I never have before.

In my head I am preparing for this retreat challenge through inspiration drawn from my oldest friend who is a marathon runner.

This friend is amazing.  She’s run like 5 or 6 at this point and several half marathons.  Currently she’s training for our local marathon next month.

When I go to the marathon events to cheer her on at the various mile check points like mile 4, mile 15, and of course the big finish line of 26 miles and change, I find myself flooded with excitement for her.  I watch the determination on her face and the persistence in her body as she pushes forward that is beyond moving.

And that is just at the actual marathon.  Never mind that she has trained day in and day out for months before hand.  Rotating between longer and longer runs. Such a commitment.

Me, I’m no marathon runner. But I do see the value in every so often pushing the limits of what you think you can do into a whole other sphere.  I will hold my dear friend in my mind when my knees are aching on this retreat.

Another theme in these 3 articles about meditation retreats for new-be’s is the aspect of silence. A “noble silence” it’s called.

In Dr. Johnson’s article in the International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, he actually quotes the Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s website where he attended his first overnight meditation retreat to sum up the intention of a noble silence.

It says:

“Most of the retreat is held in silence-retreatants do not speak to one another. Writing and reading are also discouraged, so that retreatants can better stay with their own present experience as it unfolds, moment to moment. In this silent and mindful environment, awareness sharpens, the body quiets, the mind clears, and space opens for insight and understanding to develop.”

Up to now I have really enjoyed the noble silence at the day-long retreats I have attended.  Coming from a day job as a psychotherapist and a night job as a wife and mother, having a reprieve from actively listening and empathetically responding to others can be welcomed.  So for me, I think I’ll be like Ms. Manteau-Rao who noted in her Huffington Post article, “the odds are you will get used to not talking, pretty quickly” on a longer retreat as well.

However, I don’t know if I will feel the same about not writing or reading, and certainly not about having such limited contact with my 2 children.  I am someone who processes almost everything through words—stating the obvious here, I know—so to let go of that mechanism or tool for making sense of my experience through language may feel like a loss and will most certainly be a challenge for me.

And as for the loss of contact with my kids…well, I just can’t think about that right now except to say to myself, I know they will be in caring, competent hands.

Though this issue of my children does bring up a notable absence in the 3 articles I found on the theme of mommy-guilt.

The decision to go away for several days prompts mommy-guilt in a big way. Now, I say mommy-guilt because I honestly don’t know if it is the same for dads out there (but I would be interested).

Mommy-guilt however is a particular disorder that presents itself when a mother decides to spend time or money (or worse, both!) on just herself.

The typical way I cope with this disorder is I begin to rationalize, and it goes something like this:

o   “I’m being a good role model to my kids. Showing them through my experience that there is value in cultivating a spiritual life.”

o   Or, “I would be supportive of my husband doing a similar kind of retreat.”

o   Or, when the guilt is really overwhelming: “Spending time and money on my spiritual development will help me in my career which is beneficial to the whole family.”

To be honest and fair, I sincerely believe all 3 bullets above.  But that’s not the point of course.  The point for me is to just notice the guilt, to tolerate the guilt, and practice a whole lotta self-compassion.  I will also continue to look for articles on this same subject to learn from the experiences of other seeker-mothers.

Another thematic absence from these articles that seemed noteworthy to me was regarding spirit and faith.

I am very much aware that mindfulness meditation retreats are inclusive for all spiritual and religious perspectives from orthodox to atheist, and that is a good thing that is not to be changed I hope. 

For me though, mindfulness meditation is a contemplative practice that does bring me into closer conscious contact with god.

I think this is something very different from what many describe as the experience of “bliss” that can occasionally visit you in meditation.  Not that I’m shooting down bliss. Bliss is great, and I’ve enjoyed it each and every time she knocked on my meditation door. 

Conscious contact with god is something different though, and would be like comparing fruits to vegetables.

Which is why for me this retreat brings the word devotion to my mind.

Like my marathon running friend, I draw deep awe and inspiration from individuals who periodically (or annually) make a decision to commit themselves to a spiritual practice as an act of devotion to the divine. 

Like Lent in the name of Jesus Christ, Ramadan in the name of Allah, or the practice of annually naming the ancestors who gave their lives for freedoms I enjoy, making the decision to periodically engage in a grand gesture that demonstrates the value of this primary relationships seems most sensible to me, and I look forward to the opportunity.

How have you prepared for a meditation retreat? I would love any tips you might have.

Spiritual Anchors

The metaphor of an anchor has always worked for me in my spiritual life.   I am someone who has spent much of her life feeling like I would just float away like a balloon if I did not have people, places and things to keep me grounded.  Therefore, whether it be on the meditation cushion or off, the importance of finding an anchor cannot be underscored enough for me. 

Spiritual anchors, in meditation and in life, can be quite diversified and can target specific areas of  the self that need attention and grounding (e.g. the mind versus the body versus the soul).  However, at the end of the day for me, all anchors—which to me are like tools in my tool belt—lend themselves to the same over-arching practice and intention of mindfulness.  All anchors help me to come back to the here and now in both mind and body and to not cultivate the seeds of suffering.

As more of a traditionalist in this respect, my go-to anchor has always been the breath.  Probably because it’s free, it’s always with me, it’s doesn’t require a lot of thought, and it feels good in the body to take in a breath with intention rather than unconsciously.

Another frequent anchor is use of sound.  My Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction class in 2014re-introduced me to this one.  Awareness of sound can be a fantastic anchor to the present moment, especially when in nature- though I’ve also heard of someone using it while waiting in the airport during a long layover. 

I thoroughly enjoyed sound as my anchor this past summer as I sat in meditation on my deck or by my screen door in the early morning hours taking in all the bird sounds waking up each day.  In fact, some days I would also be blessed with a co-anchor of a pleasant breeze or a flowery smell that lit up all my senses to the present moment.

Of course words themselves are traditional anchors in multiple spiritual practices. Though not overtly identified as using an anchor, my very amateur understanding of contemplative practices such as Transcendental Meditation and Centering Prayer finds these to be more formal practices with a cognitive anchor- albeit possibly with different intentions.  Both practices encourage the practitioner to focus attention on one word or set of words (a.k.a a mantra) while in meditation or prayer.

Words, as any blogger would say, have always been an effective grounding tool for me. Over the years I have used several words or phrases in my meditation practice.  Many were borrowed from the experiences of more seasoned seekers whose books I’ve read, lectures I’ve attended, or interviews I’ve listened to. Here are some to name a few:

Be, here, now.

Now, here, this.

In. Out.

I am.

When I have used one phrase on the above list, it was often infused with meaning for me at the time, which made the practice more personal.

Most recently I have been using a phrase picked up from my recent day of mindfulness at Blue Cliff Monastery founded by Buddhist teacher and author Thich Nhat Hanh.  Here I congregated together with other practitioners one recent morning in the meditation hall in the spirit of sangha.  Then a monk led us in a meditation that used these words, or anchor, as we followed our breath:

“When I breathe in, I know that I am breathing in.

When I breathe out, I know that I am breathing out.”

This particular anchor really works well for me right now because I am trying to connect my meditation practice with my challenges in accepting reality as it is.

Taking a more wide-angle lens, the spiritual practices themselves (versus what we actually say or do in them) can be the anchor for our day to day lives.

For many years I worked side by side in community mental health with a very devout Catholic man, and every day before work (which began at 8:30 in the morning) he would attend mass at his local church.  This was a time before I had children of my own, and he had 4.  One day I asked him, after I had had trouble just getting myself ready and out of the house that morning, “why do you do it? It seems like another task to put in your already very full day of service none the less.”  And he of course responded that the practice of attending mass at the start of each day was extremely grounding for him, and by no means a burden of any kind.  The practice was an anchor.

My coworker’s words and practice stayed with me, even though I had no such practices or understanding of what a spiritual anchor was at that time in my younger life.  Though I had always been someone who admired devotional seekers from afar- even when I did not have any of my own to speak of. 

It is quite easy for me to stand in awe of others who wear their faith on their sleeve. As long as the individual’s devotional practices do not in anyway, directly or indirectly, interfere with or judge the way other folks search for spirit and truth, I feel immense admiration for those concrete practices that make a more visible and bold declaration of the sacred and holy.

Some of this appreciation comes from reading.  In both That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Buddhist by Sylvia Boorstein and Devotion by Dani Schapiro I enjoyed reading descriptions of what I understood to be the orthodox Jewish practice of fastening scrolls of Hebrew texts from the Torah, that are safely kept in square leather boxes called “tefillin,” literally onto the body- the arm and head specifically.  I could absolutely see how this practice, taken so literally from scripture, could be an act of worship and a spiritual anchor for the individual.

Watching others practice their spiritual rituals, in a voyeuristic sort of way I suppose, has also impressed upon me the beauty of a more public display of faith.  When I was in India in 2001 I spent some time in the state of Kerala which is on the southwestern coast.  Each morning I would wake up to the sound of the ocean outside of my hut, and I would come outside to see the local Indian men and women who would come each morning to engage in a practice of wading in to the ocean in full clothes while some sort of spiritual leader or figure would, what appeared to be, bless them in some way.  It was breathtaking.

Another religious practice found in multiple faiths that I have long admired and seen as a natural anchor in its purest (in other words: non-obligatory) form is the concept of Sabbath.

A little while ago I watched a youtube video of the Christian author and preacher Rob Bell called “Everything is Spiritual.” It’s an interesting view if you haven’t already seen it.  But one thing that particularly caught my attention was his reminder from Genesis in the Bible that suggests the value of Sabbath as a day of rest.

As a full-time working parent of 2 young kids, a period of total rest is out of the question because even if I am not actually commuting back and forth to the hospital where I work, I am still giving baths and changing diapers in my other job as a mother.

What was interesting to me though, was after watching this Rob Bell youtube video that referred to  Sabbath as defined as rest, I had greater awareness in my meditation practice of how much “work” I was still doing unconsciously while sitting on the cushion.  Though I frequently use an anchor, like those listed above, my mind still routinely jumps up and begins to problem-solve or make lists.  It’s like she (my mind) just can’t seem to remember for more than 30 seconds that we are not working right now, we are resting with god in focused attention and (relative) stillness.

Since this awareness, I have started using the word “Sabbath” as my word-anchor in meditation.  I have actually always liked the sound and meaning of this word, though it has no roots in my own secular upbringing.  But now it is also helping me to remember, as written in Ecclesiastes in the Bible, that “there is time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens” including spiritual practice, stillness and rest. 

Let’s let our spiritual anchors help us return to these noble intentions, moment by moment, day by day.

What spiritual anchors do you use to stay grounded?

A Visit to a Monastery

I had my very first visit to a monastery a few days ago- a Zen Buddhist monastery to be exact called Blue Cliff that was founded by Vietnamese Buddhist teacher and author Thich Nhat Hanh. 

This may sound strange, but for me, this visit was a long time coming.  For a while now I have been intrigued with the narratives of other "lay people" (meaning people who are  not monks and nuns) who feel drawn to monasteries as well.

In my last post I mentioned the writing of Kathleen Norris who has long documented her fascination with and involvement in Christian monasteries.  I have also read about author Sue Monk Kidd's pilgrimages to multiple Christian monasteries in her books When the Heart Waits, Traveling with Pomegranates, and First Light.  Time magazine journalist and author Pico Iyer has himself shared in interviews that he regularly visits a monastery in northern California to replenish himself.

Replenish.  After going myself now, I completely get that.  For starters, as you can see in the photographs above, the rural New York landscape is breathtaking, and as deceased Irish poet and theologian John O'Donohue noted, beauty matters.

Yet beyond that, I found it pretty amazing how quickly I was able to fall into the slow, mindful, rhythm of monastic life.  I think some of it speaks to the welcoming atmosphere of the monastery itself and some willingness on my part. But I think there is also some sort of magnetic appeal because it strikes a cord with a deeper wise knowing inside of us that says a sigh of "yyyeeeessss..."  There is something that just feels "right" about it.

For example, what seemed like every hour on the hour (I didn't have a watch so I don't know for sure) a large community bell would ring, and that signaled for everyone on the monastery grounds to stop exactly where they were for a moment of mindfulness- coming back to the present moment in both mind and body.  This norm or culture of the monastery did not seem (to the outside looker) to be a burden of any kind to the monastics or lay people that day.  On the contrary, folks seem to welcome it, and I was no exception.  In fact, I found myself asking, "why don't we do this outside of the monastery walls?"

There is certainly more to contemplate and unfold from my day of mindfulness at Blue Cliff, but that will be all for now as it is time to get my son off to school and me off to work for our day of service and vocation- another cultural norm of monastic life.

For today though, I will try, and maybe you can too, to stop on a regular basis throughout my day for a 10-15 second pause during which I will take in one or two fresh breaths of oxygen into my hard- working and well-deserving lungs.

Be well.

Revisiting Thich Nhat Hanh

This Labor Day weekend I am going on a pilgrimage with one of my dearest friends.  We are going to travel 6 hours round trip to visit the Blue Cliff Monastery in Pine Bush, New York.  According to the website, this monastery is one of several established by Vietnamese Buddhist Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh “to share the practice of mindful living.”

I have long wanted to visit an active monastery ever since I read the book Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris in which the author shared her experiences of visiting and experiencing aspects of monastic life of the Christian tradition.

I myself have never been to a monastery that was active with monastic men and women.  The closest I’ve come, and this is really not close at all, is visiting several cathedrals in Italy where it was permissible to watch and listen to the monastic chanting, and spending time at 2 former Christian monasteries that had since been converted into centers for spiritual exploration.

But this weekend is different. This weekend, I will be attending an event called A Day of Mindfulness that is part of The Miracle of Mindfulness Tour when the monks and nuns who live in Plum Village, the monastery in France where Thich Nhat Hanh resides himself, visit the other monasteries established by Thich Nhat Hanh worldwide, and I am super excited!

Therefore, I have spent this past week revisiting Thich Nhat Hanh’s classic book Peace is Every Step to prime and prepare my mind for this event.  If you have never spent time with this book, I’d certainly recommend it. 

Below I’ve included just one small excerpt from the mini-chapter called “What’s Not Wrong?”  It happened to catch my eye because my last blog post had been titled “Why Not Me?” which struck me as similar in message.

In this piece, he says:

“We often ask, ‘what’s wrong?’ Doing so, we invite painful seeds of sorrow to come up and manifest. We feel suffering, anger, and depression, and produce much more seeds. We would be much happier if we tried to stay in touch with the healthy, joyful seeds inside of us and around us.” We should learn to ask, ‘what’s not wrong?’ and be in touch with that.”

After reading this I was moved to try to shift my perspective to one of abundance rather than scarcity in terms of all that is “right” with my life and the world around me--a shift that typically does not come without intention—and I must say I found it helpful in the sense that it re-calibrated my mind to something less distorted by emotion and judgment and more based in reality.

I am certain this one-day journey will be a catalyst for more shifts in my perspective.

One last note, this week I was also re-listening to a favorite song of mine “One Voice” by the Wallin’ Jennys.  If you aren’t familiar with it, I’ve included the lyrics below.

Song lyrics are sacred to me.  Before I learned to pray or even understood how a poem could be holy, I was being held by song lyrics. 

The lyrics to “One Voice” reminded me of what the possibilities might be for a whole group of men, women, children, lay people and monastics who come together with the single intention to practice mindfulness in unison.  What might that be like? What organically unfolds when a beautiful acapella voice suddenly is joined by a harmony?  The words in the photo above are written by Hanh.  I look forward to the experience of joining with others as we embody this practice and message.

More to come…

"One Voice"

By the Wallin’ Jennys

This is the sound of one voice
One spirit, one voice
The sound of one who makes a choice
This is the sound of one voice

This is the sound of voices two
The sound of me singing with you
Helping each other to make it through
This is the sound of voices two

This is the sound of voices three
Singing together in harmony
Surrendering to the mystery
This is the sound of voices three

This is the sound of all of us
Singing with love and the will to trust
Leave the rest behind it will turn to dust
This is the sound of all of us

This is the sound of one voice
One people, one voice
A song for every one of us
This is the sound of one voice
This is the sound of one voice.

Why Not Me?

I once overheard a conversation between two people, a man and a woman, talking about a mutual friend who had recently died of cancer. 

It was clear that the man had been in deep intimate relationship with the dying friend through the ending stages of their friend’s death. While the woman had been supportive from afar, and therefore inquiring about how the dying friend’s spirits were over the course of the illness.  In other words, how did she handle the process dying?

It was such a strange dialogue to listen in on that felt sort of voyeuristic and wrong, but since we were sharing the same space (and I was completely intrigued to hear the answer) I eavesdropped on to how the man responded to the holiest of questions: how did this friend face her own mortality?

And the answer was: with humility, grace, nobility and love. What a combination!

The man explained with a story.  

He said he was at their friend’s house one day expressing his grief to her. He spoke about his sense of anger that she could get sick with cancer when she had lived such a healthy lifestyle and had contributed so much in her career and relationships. He emphasized that she was so young and had so much life left to live, that the whole thing just seemed so unfair.  “Why you?” he said.

But the friend apparently did not get swept away in this man’s grief, anger, or her own poor me’s. Instead, she simply said, “Why not me?”

I honestly don’t remember what was said after those 3 words, “why not me?” because those words just stopped me right in my tracks. It was like god, or my own wise mind, had reached right down inside of me and said: “Pause here. Pay attention to what is happening.  Take this moment inside of you.”

It’s like I was intended to contemplate what those words meant; to that friend and to me. 

Afterward, I decided she meant that we are all in this together.  We are all in the being-human club. And unlike most clubs, this one is totally inclusive rather than exclusive.  Which means, every human being is entitled to the costs andthe benefits of this big ‘ol family that is totally egalitarian.  Nobody is more special or more loved than anybody else. And, nobody is protected from life’s imperfections, tragedies and ultimate mortality- from the Queen of England to the homeless orphan in India.

This may sound strange, but I found this idea comforting. It gave me a sense of interconnection and humbling reality acceptance that was grounding in nature.

Now, fast forward 6 months to yesterday when I received confirmation that a beloved of mine has Alzheimer’s Disease, and up pop those words again in my mind “why not me?”

When I notice those words echoing inside me, I think: “here I have come full circle.”  But then I realize, “no, this feels different.”

Though I feel sad, incredibly sad actually, I am not finding myself engaging in the type of resisting reality thought patterns that in years past I would have very easily slipped into. 

“It’s not fair.”

“Why does it have to be this way?”

“Why him?”

“What if…”

Etc. Etc.

I’m also not engaging in resisting reality behavior like problem solving or trying to control others: “Do this! Do that!”

What I do notice, alongside the sadness, is a new feeling of compassion and interconnection.

Of course I have experienced compassion before, but not generally when I’m upset about something in myown life.  

I very easily feel compassion in my work as a social worker and psychotherapist.  I feel it in my role as a wife, mother, and friend. I feel it in daily activities as simple as driving down the street through the city I work in when I see women and children leaving the local homeless shelter.  In all of these situations I feel enormous compassion towards others.

It has been hard though, when I feel like something of mine is being taken from me. For example, 

·        if my health is declining,

·        if my beloved’s health is declining,

·        if I am losing my job or my car or my things,

·        if an individual is walking away from our relationship.

Historically, in circumstances of personal loss and grief I have had little experience with compassion and even less of interconnection.

Yet yesterday and today I find myself thinking:

“How many other people are hearing the news of a loved one’s diagnosis?”

“How many other people are going through loss right now and I don’t even know it?

And the weird part is, I’m finding these thoughts comforting, not depressing.  

I’m also finding it beneficial to think of myself, or maybe more accurately to feelmyself, as part of the being-human club.  Rather than standing outside the club with my nose pressed against the window looking in, I feel like I am part of something larger. I feel like I am not alone.

What is the possible explanation for this change? 

Well, the honest answer is: I don’t know.  But my best guess, and I’m actually a pretty good guesser, is my regular practice of meditation, spiritual reading, prayer and yoga.

I’ve heard people say that they feel like a poem or a song or a painting is “working on” them, and it took me a long time to figure that phrase out. I’d think: “what does it mean to be ‘worked on?” “And how can an inanimate object or an idea possibly ‘work on’ us?” 

When I put this phrase in the context of contemplative practices though, it made perfect sense to me.  Meditation is “working on” me. Prayer is “working on” me. Yoga is “working on” me. 

Like a piece of sharp glass in the ocean gradually morphs into sea glass, so too does compassion and interconnectedness grow inside of us as we engage in contemplative practices.  There is no one day that the glass goes from being sharp to smooth, it is a seamless process that is invisible to the naked eye and too nuanced for our light speed human sense of time and change.

Of course science and the work of neuroscientists like Richard Davidson atThe Center for Investigating Healthy Minds in Wisconsin is beginning to corroborate what long-term practitioners have taught and shared for thousands of years of human history in regards to the fruits of contemplative practices like compassion.  And for that, I am very grateful because science is the first language of most westerners.

But just for today, I think I’m going to avoid the western scientific translation of truth, and I’ll just stick with what I know inside my heart.  Which is: Just for today, why not me?

How do you embody the words “why not me?”