This post was originally published on The Mindful Word, a publishing collective with a focus on mindfulness and engaged living.
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 back house (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.
The first official day started at 6 a.m. and lasted until 9 p.m. and consisted of (roughly – hours and activities and aches and pains all blended together): sitting meditation, walking meditation, oryoki (a mindful, ritualistic meal, which explained the eating orientation), post-meal chores, general work period (tending the garden or food prep for the next meal, etc.), sitting meditation and walking meditation repeated several times during a two-hour block, a talk by one of the two practice leaders, second oryoki, post-meal chores, individual daisan (private interviews, or short chats, with the practice leaders), another two-hour block of sitting and walking meditation, full bowing (in which, I discovered, ten minutes felt like three sets of leg presses, and gave me sore jelly legs for the next three days), eye gazing, more goddamn two-hour blocks of sitting and walking meditation, third oryoki/clean/prep, break, final two-hour block of sitting torture, I mean meditation.
Every activity began and ended with a series of high-pitched bells, low-pitched singing bowls or wooden clapper, which soon had me responding like Pavlov’s dog, if Pavlov’s dog was a tired, resentful madwoman. I was frustrated to anger because I didn’t know what the bells meant or where to bow or which way to face for different meditations or what the meal procedure was or 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 caged animal or a prisoner of war being tortured for information. My ankles, knees, hips, lower back, upper back, shoulders and neck (did I miss any joint or muscle?) 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 fifteen years I’ve been attempting meditation, so if I hear one more person tell me to focus on my goddamn 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 during 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? Why did I hear contented sighs and delicate stretching when the bell rang? I came to hate the look of twenty versions of baggy, neutral attire, my ears started to formulate melodies from all the cracking knees, and I became intimately familiar with everyone’s socks.
But I wasn’t experiencing what I’d hoped for, wanted so badly, expected – inner goddamn tranquility.
By late afternoon on that first day (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 was plotting my getaway. On breaks I would stroll around the garden and scope out my escape routes. I counted the steps to the back house, to the closet with my personal belongings, to the back gate, to my car, to FREEDOM.
When I could take no more sitting cross-legged on the floor and “gently acknowledging and then letting go of each thought,” I fantasized about leaping up from my mat, kicking over the bell and crashing out the door with a shriek of “Fuck 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. It was like trying to tame a herd of wild horses: every time I would manage to throw a bridle on one of them, they’d all race off across the meadow, dragging me behind them by my rein-entangled foot until I cried uncle. Several times I silently, tearfully pleaded with it to please let me go, leave me in peace, back off just a little, just for a moment. It only got louder and more aggressive.
The second day was the same, except worse.
That’s it, I thought, 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 master of my own internal domain, and thus achieve some semblance of inner peace. But nothing has ever worked and, therefore, never will work. 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 traveling 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, lists were made, old dialogues were replayed, new conversations were rehearsed, a voice was narrating all this, and a song was playing in the distant speakers of my head (what was that damn song that 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 then after the meal, one of the helpers would ask me to assist with food prep because I was really good at chopping vegetables and she was grateful for my help (those other than students were allowed to talk, the show-offs), so I’d think, “As soon as this chore is done, then I’ll slip out the back door.” And then we’d have a break and I’d sink onto a bench out 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 a-ha moment.
By the third day, like any prisoner of war, my plotting mind had depleted my body of energy and it was just easier to fall in line at the sound of the bell and file back into the Zendo. But right at the end of that third day, I sat in daisan with one of the practice leaders and casually told him about this brief thought I’d had twenty 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 hard for about ten seconds. When I sat up again and wiped my eyes and smiled nervously at the unexpectedness of that sudden outpouring of emotion (not sadness, not exactly; more like release), I felt unclogged. Scooped out like a jack-o’-lantern with its hollow head and toothless smile.
I looked at this kind man for a moment and then it hit me. “This is why I came,” I said. “This 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.
And my aha moment was that if my unconscious belief is that I’m broken and 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 it would go against the fundamental belief I’ve been lugging around all my life, and if something worked out, then that would mean I’ve been investing in the wrong tenets all these years, and boy would that be fucked up.
When I’d told both these practice leaders that nothing had ever worked to stop my tornado of a mind (even in fantasy!) and therefore meditation didn’t – couldn’t – work, that was my victim mindset talking. So if meditation actually worked for me, then I couldn’t claim to be a victim anymore. And without that lifelong, deep, inner belief that I’m a broken person for whom nothing ever works, then who would I be? Fuuuck.
To paraphrase Eckhart Tolle, as long as part of my identity, my sense of self, is invested in my emotional pain, I will unconsciously resist or sabotage every attempt that I make to heal that pain. Why? Quite simply because I want to keep myself intact, and the pain (my brokenness, my victim mindset) has become an essential part of me over the last few decades. Even my unsuccessful search for a solution or healing 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 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 these three days, I suddenly loved the whole goddamn lot of them, throat clearing, knee cracking, goofy socks and all.
And then 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.
