My week in silence; The other side of meditation

Everything I’ve ever heard about meditation has always focused on its ‘stress relieving’ properties. It’s ability to magically, somehow, make the world brighter, slower, and a less stressful. Everything I’ve ever heard about meditation has always been about the end ‘result,’ the final ‘goal’ of being a stress free, relaxed and happy person all the time.

And that’s where this all goes sideways. You see, there is no end ‘goal’ of meditation. But I didn’t know that when I began.

I started meditating a few years ago chasing the ‘goal’ of relaxation and happiness. I have struggled for the larger part of my life with anxiety, depression and PTSD and meditation seemed like as good a way as any to rid myself of these ailments forever.

So I jumped in head first — Obviously. I took Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction foundations course and completed 200 hours of yoga teacher training. I started meditating regularly and much to my unfortunate dismay, my anxiety, depression and PTSD went nowhere.

Instead I was met with insight. Insight into who I am, and the suffering that comes with being stuck in the endless, mindless existence that so many of us fall prey to.

After meditating for a couple of years, I decided I was ready for an intensive retreat. I’m invested, it’s time, it’s happening. I googled meditation retreats within driving distance with scholarship options — I would not have been able to attend otherwise.

I spent hours pouring over retreat options on the internet, and I applied only to one. On a small island off the coast of British Columbia I found a small, sustainable farm that hosts a new year’s reset retreat every year. It was perfect.

By some miracle of the universe, I found myself there a few months later, staring up into the night sky wondering how on earth I managed to arrive at this moment in time. My entire life led me to that one moment, and there I was.

I knew no one, had no idea what I was doing, and had no idea what to expect. Still, in the time leading up to the retreat, the path my mind took most often was one of expectation. Expecting revelations beyond measure, transformation, and a whole new me by the time I arrived home. Quite the tall order for myself.

The first night all thirty five retreat attendees took agreements of silence and began to get acquainted with the space. Our first group meditation had me spaced out, running after fleeting thoughts, and obsessing over the coming days in silence.

I feel trapped. Trapped in my body and trapped in my head. My skin is crawling, and my mind is grabbing on to anything it can.

How was I going to not speak for six days? Who are these people? What if I don’t like the food? What if I NEED something?!

The questions kept coming, and I kept looking for answers. It felt like never ending waves driven by never ending currents crashing into me over and over and over again.

I continue to sit there with my eyes closed, silently losing it inside my own head, grasping and attaching to anything that comes my way. I wonder what my dogs are doing. I wonder when the rain will stop. I wonder how I will make it to the end of the week.

Just as I’m about to say F*** this and go to bed, a tiny bell rings, signifying the end of our first, group meditation.

I open my eyes, stretch my legs out in front of me, look around at everyone else, and realize that a lot of other people’s expressions match my own. I’m not alone.

My feet softly pad the floor as I make my way to my room — just off the meditation hall. I crawl under the comforter and my weighted blanket and find that sleep comes easily with the sound of the rain falling outside.

The morning bell rings at 6am — time for our first sit of the day. I flop out of my bed, brush my teeth, and find my meditation bench in the hall, still wearing my pajamas.

Our teacher sits on a bench at the front of the room and says nothing. She quietly comes in, takes her seat, and closes her eyes. And then doesn’t move for almost an hour. Silent guidance.

Within a few minutes my back starts to hurt. It is not used to being in this unsupported position. How the hell was I going to do this? What was I thinking coming here?

My knees start to hurt. My neck. My shoulders. Everything somehow hurts. My mind immediately jumps to the worst case scenario and takes off with it: My body is turning against itself. I’m not going to make it. I’m going to die here on this meditation bench.

And then calm and collected comes to the party. Clearly I’m not going to die here. Come back to the present moment, Kendall. Focus on your breath. Your body just needs to adjust.

My internal monologue between panicked hypochondriac and soothing mother figure ricocheted repeatedly with no slowing in sight.

And this goes on. For forty five minutes.

The tiny bell rings — breakfast. Thank god, I’m starving. I don’t know how I could have possibly sat there for another sixty seconds, and the bell is a welcome relief to myself. We all slowly get up and wander sleepily in the dark over to the barn where the food is cooked and served. Oatmeal, yogurt, toast, and fruit. A simple meal, with almost all local ingredients grown and prepared on the farm.

I stand silently in line, keeping my gaze down, I get my breakfast and go upstairs from the kitchen area to the eating area and sit alone and eat my breakfast in silence. No one looks at each other, everyone takes their time.

About an hour or so goes by and we all meet again in the meditation hall for another forty five minutes of silent, group sitting. After my back hurt so much that morning I’m apprehensive to sit back on my bench, but I take my seat and try to get comfortable. Everyone in the hall has cushions, blankets, benches, chairs and big fluffy sweaters to aid them on their meditation journey. I wonder how everyone else’s backs and knees and shoulders are feeling.

I settle in and close my eyes. My imagination takes over immediately, and I get swept up in the inevitable wandering of my mind. The thing about meditation is that in the silence and stillness, there is now room for everything else to come through. As soon as we take away the busyness of our everyday lives, what we are left with is space, and our mind immediately tries to fill that space with anything and everything it can.

Darkness has a hunger that’s insatiable
And lightness has a call that’s hard to hear — Indigo Girls

When trauma has been such an integral part of your life like it has been for mine, meditation can feel claustrophobic and smothering. Whenever I find the darkness behind my eyelids, long lost scenes of trauma flash before me.

As I notice my mind wandering, I get mad at myself, judge myself for not doing better, being better. It is so difficult to stay right here. I start to notice my immediate reaction to myself when presented with not getting something perfectly correct all the time. I notice that I immediately jump to judging myself as ‘not good enough,’ when things are not going perfectly, as I think they should be.

How am I supposed to sit here with all of this? But then again, that’s what meditation is actually about, isn’t it? Learning to sit with uncomfortable things, even painful things, and cultivating kindness and compassion toward yourself even when your immediate reaction is judgement and criticism.

It’s nothing short of magic in the making and its a beautiful sight to bear witness to.

After forty five minutes of sitting, the bell rings yet again and we are off to our first walking meditation of the retreat.

If you have no idea what walking meditation is and were to encounter a group engaging in this practice somewhere out and about, you would think you discovered a mass sleep-walking phenomenon. The pace is slow, no one is looking at each other, and still no one is speaking.

Around the farm there are gardens and greenhouses and walking paths around ponds. But it’s also winter and its raining and cold. I put my coat on and step out into the wet darkness that defines the first few days.

My boots sink into the mud, and I take one slow and steady step after the other, feeling my heel sink into the earth as my opposite toes start to float away from the ground behind me. This is much better. My breath slows to match the rate of my steps and I fall into the present moment. There it is, ease.

When we are constantly thinking and moving and striving and doing, our brains and bodies are on constant alert, perpetually preparing for something more. But when we are able to slow down, and pay attention, even in moments of stress or panic, there is a sense of ease to be found. A pervading pull toward balance, able to be found in all things; we just have to pay attention to it to gain access to its profound abilities.

The walking meditation goes much better than the sitting meditation, I have something I can actually focus on and feeling connected to my body in movement helps me with being in the present moment. But the bell rings sooner than I want it to and now I have to return to sitting and the inevitable difficulties it brings.

On and on this goes, alternating between sitting meditation and walking meditation with breaks for resting, and eating.

By the end of the second day, I am exhausted. Who knew doing nothing was so incredibly draining? Who knew meditation would not be relaxing? The things that come up during my meditation are relentless. My mind will not yield to my constant efforts to stay, here and now.

At any and every opportunity I am thrown into trauma scenario after trauma scenario. Moments and memories from years ago, but also things that have never even happened. Hypothetical what ifs, chances that were never taken, decisions that should have been made differently. Details lost in time flipping over and over again in my head.

Again and again and again I come back. I come back to my breath and come back to my body in the present moment in space and time and I try to greet myself with kindness and compassion. I allow what appears to appear and I come back. That’s what this practice is; a constant returning to myself with open arms and a heart full of space.

By the end of the fourth day I have settled in. I know the schedule, I know what I will encounter in meditation, and I know I have the ability to cultivate space and kindness and compassion toward myself no matter what appears. Judgements and criticisms of my own experience only leads to more suffering, so the Buddha says. And I believe him. Because I have experienced this on my own meditation bench.

After years of meditating, I finally start to see what this practice cultivates. What this practice is about. It isn’t about relaxing, or relieving stress. It isn’t about breathing or sitting for as long as possible.

It’s about stepping back from the small controlling ego mind that wants to have a hand and a say in everything, and connecting with the larger, truer self we all have access to. It’s about learning how to be with yourself, here in this present moment no matter what that means.

By the end of day six, I don’t want to leave. I want to stay here at the farm forever and come back to myself again and again. It’s easier here, there aren’t so many stressful, difficult things here. After a life I describe at best as challenging, my entire being craves ease and softness and allowance. I’m learning to find balance.

In my short time meditating, I have discovered that this practice is like coming home. Coming back to the self in the only moment we have. Like tuning into a homing beacon I never knew was on, and as the journey continues, realizing that the homing beacon is bringing me back to myself.

This practice teaches patience, allowance and compassion and it teaches it in a subtle way. In a way that builds slowly over time. And then all of a sudden, you are sitting in a meditation hall in another country, after you haven’t spoken for days and ideas and philosophies that have been repeated to you for years finally settle into your bones and you catch a small glimpse of what this practice really is.

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