There is nothing quite like being silent in the company of other people to bring a precious sweet sense of the profound to an experience.
Yesterday the fall afternoon sun shone, the world was bustling with bicycle riders, dogs, runners, leashes, litter, motors, sirens, green leaves.
Our collective group of inquirers, all on retreat together here at my cottage, went on a walk with one important piece of structure: no talking.
Well, I also mentioned going on this walk as if you were living one of your turnarounds to a stressful belief we had just examined.
How would you walk as if there were no problem, that the way it went before had its benefits? How would you walk as if you knew all was incredibly, inconceivably, amazingly well. How would you walk as if things were OK, as if you didn’t need to fix it for right now?
How would you walk, where would you glance, what would you see, how would you hold your shoulders or your arms if you didn’t believe that stressful thought?
As we walked, I turned around and saw our silent group, such adorable and sincere people. All supporting each other to investigate our mental activity that hurts.
Over a fence, someone smoothed the skirt of a bride’s white wedding dress on a lawn, through another fence children screamed with glee in a playground, past the bushes ducks quacked while kids jumped off the end of a dock, in the distance two jet skis zig-zagged like beads on the water.
Abundance everywhere, literally the earth, the environment, the atmosphere teeming with activity, life, chaos, movement….
….I felt tears well up with the joy of it all.
Have you noticed how unusual and how powerful silence can be?
This hasn’t always automatically felt like a good thing. By the way.
Generally speaking, if you take away activities that you do regularly and you’re a little nervous about what it will be like without them…
….you’re pushing up against your zone of comfort, as they say.
When I first went on a silent retreat I thought I’d go bonkers.
I was up at 2:30 am unable to sleep, too dark to take a walk in the woods. The rules were no talking, no reading, no electronics.
What am I supposed to do, just lie here? Jeezus Christ!
I thought I was going to have a heart attack, or that my head would explode.
I had no idea how much stimulation I normally wanted, to cover up this dreadful experience of being in the world full of silence, without being friends with my own mind.
Of course, I got used to it.
And went back for more. It was never as bad as that first time again.
Yesterday as we all walked together I noticed thoughts still crank out, or stream by, like ticker-tape reports: that young couple on the bench may think its weird with all these totally silent people standing on the dock around them, I need to go slowly enough so no one gets left behind, trees, asphalt, light, its weird how this human view is through eyes mostly in the front 180 degrees of the body, I’m the leader, I love the feeling of the cool dirt on my big toes that are sticking past the edge of the flip-flops I’m wearing, wow those spiders are jammin’ with their webs everywhere, grass, breeze, dogs.
Observations, thoughts, fading in and out. Nothing true, nothing grabby. Sensations.
Being.
Doing The Work, questioning our stories, slows everything down.
Right now, it’s possible for all of us to relax, and welcome the thoughts or stories that come by for a visit.
Those troubling people who we have encountered, at any time in our lives, they are amazing. Just thinking about them, my mind grows curious, open, interested, and willing.
“Eventually you will realize that it cannot actually hurt you to go beyond your psychological limits. If you are willing to just stand at the edge and keep walking, you will go beyond.” ~ Michael Singer
Even if you can’t actually walk, physically, either in your body or on the planet, there’s internal walking, noticing, moving, being.
Watching the stories, writing them down, questioning them, diving into these stories by telling them to others with the sincere intention to understand it differently, not justify it or react to it with fear, sadness, pain, hurt.
“Whatever it takes for you to find your freedom, that’s what you’ve lived.” ~ Byron Katie
That includes this moment of silence, this moment of being with others in an intimate way, connecting with peeps on the journey, being totally alone, suffering, feeling joyful, having time and space to sit and write and inquire.
Even if you just had a rough encounter out in the world, a less-than-optimal exchange, a bad memory enter your mind, or you were late, you disappointed someone, you became nervous…..
…..now you are here, quietly reading this.
“Without opening your door, you can open your heart to the world. Without looking out your window, you can see the essence of the Tao. The more you know, the less you understand. The Master arrives without leaving, sees the light without looking, achieves without doing a thing.” ~ Tao Te Ching #47
Much Love, Grace