This is Elizabeth and Shannon, two of the kindest, calmest, wisest women you could ever hope to meet. Yesterday they led a group of us through a day-long meditation retreat in the spirit of Dana, which is a buddhist tradition whereby the teacher makes the teachings available and the community reciprocates and supports the teacher as it can. Don't they look like they're glowing?With the students maintaining a "noble silence" we sat, and walked, and ate, and sat and walked again. All day long. All we had to do was concentrate on our own process and internal focus while Elizabeth and Shannon and a guest yoga teacher led us through the meditations and fed us. And the food was amazing. Sounds glorious, doesn't it?
Was I glowing after a day of silence, was I refreshed from a day without household chores, did I find some choice snippets of my true inner self after seven hours of meditation and meditative yoga and eating? Ah. No, no, and no. I couldn't wait to talk, I was glad to get home and finish some jobs, and I didn't map any new internal geography.
How could this be? This morning when I got up my first thought was that clearly I left my beginner's mind behind. Rookie mistake! I had, in fact, GREAT EXPECTATIONS. tsk tsk.
Yesterday my thoughts were running more like this: Okay, I was late, couldn't be helped, don't judge it, now you are here sitting so the good stuff is on its way. Curiosity . . . Elizabeth, kindly trying to reassure me that my lateness wasn't important, said the day had already gotten off to a strange start. What could that mean . . . there are many people here I don't know but I can't talk to them and this house, very interesting, look at that art, and those statues, just breathe, in, out, 1, in, out, 2, in out and back to 1 . . . wow this is not going well
now for some yoga, this will be good, and stop. I. have. never. done. yoga. so. slowly. Not even when I first started 17 years ago with Iyengar yoga, which is quite slow and methodical and particular about placement of everything from your mat on the floor to each finger and toe. What a lesson! There are tremendous amounts of information between the individual movements that are sandwiched together to make a single yoga pose. However I was clearly not in the frame of mind to appreciate this lesson.
What did I like? I liked eating in silence. It allows for so much more attention to be paid the quality of the food and the physical motions of eating, among other things. Pressure to be communicating with others was removed, so we were there simply being in each other's presence, which was strange and took some adjustment, and started to become beautiful.
I liked going for a fast walk after lunch. I liked wearing the blanket my mother-in-law gave us ages ago after her trip to Ireland--soft, warm, dark blue and green plaid. I liked finally being allowed to hear some thoughts and share some thoughts at the end of the day. For all the emphasis I've put on accepting my introversion lately, I sure was eager to connect with these folks through words. In a weird way I liked that it was a safe place to feel frustrated and impatient, and that I just sat with that feeling all day, unable to do anything about it but finding that it didn't have to make me unhappy or unpleasant to others.
What didn't I like? Being in someone else's house. So distracting! Their cookbooks on the shelf, stack of papers in the in-box, a single light bulb out in one of the fascinating mosaic fixtures festooning the extremely high, wood paneled ceiling. My instincts were to sniff out every corner and I didn't make sure I was early enough to do that even if it would have been acceptable.
PMS? Sub-consciously feeling I had a lot to do before leaving for our trip on Monday? Perhaps. Also possible that it is just like that sometimes. You can't settle in, the inner world stays tightly closed, and the time passes without progress. The judge holds court.
What are you doing?
What are you thinking?
What are you feeling?
What are you perceiving?
Now, on three, make them all line up! 1-2-3-GO!
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