My First Meditation Retreat: What Happened When I Gave Myself the Gift of Silence (Part I)

Sunday evening I arrived back home in London after a long coach journey from Newton Abbot, a small town in Devon, South West of England. My five-day silent meditation retreat had ended, but the journey of transitioning and integrating what I practised and learnt there has just begun...

Contemplating upon the impact this retreat had upon my consciousness, an interesting analogy came up.

I had the image of an old version of Microsoft Windows, with too many programs running in the background, a few viruses attacking the system, an annoyingly slow cursor and a very desperate user, who can't get his computer to properly work anymore.

Well, that's a slightly inflated version of how I was before my retreat.

My mind was all over the place, drowning in sensory overload, trying to maintain some level of self-regulation but failing to recognize the extent of its own limitation.

Simply put, there was too much noise and not enough space to truly honour what really matters. I seriously needed a breather. Sounds familiar?

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Well, this meditation retreat was a total reset to my system. I cannot recommend it enough to anyone who feels the need to take a break from the busyness of their lives and just... take a deep breath, let their hair down and look within for a few days.

Honestly, I can never cease to be amazed by how beautifully things align in my life at times, as if following a divine plan?

How could I have known a few months ago, when I booked this particular retreat, with this particular teacher, that this was exactly what I needed at this time? The power of intuition, baby. It never lets me down.

This article is intended to convey some of the highlights of my experience. I am sharing them with the Steemit world, hoping that what I learnt may prove to be beneficial for others on their own journey of introspection and awakening.

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After being shown around my new temporary abode, I made myself a cup of tea and sat down on a sofa in the lounge, waiting for dinner.

At that point, something inside me cracked wide open. All the accumulated tension and inner drama of the previous days suddenly came to a halt and I found myself heaving a deep, quite sensual sigh of relief. I was free to just be, once again. My inner child spontaneously awoke, and I felt carelessly carefree...

We were advised to refrain from reading, writing or communicating with anyone for the duration of the silence, so as to truly delve into the contents of one's own consciousness without interference or distraction.

I must confess that my greatest concern was the abstinence from writing. I challenged myself, however, trusting that I would find significant learning in confronting my fear.

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And oh, sweet God, I did indeed...

By giving myself the chance to step away from the compulsive need to write, and the associated turmoil when I don't write, I learnt the truth about this inner dynamic and its roots in my childhood conditioning.

Basically, I was subconsciously programmed to believe that if I didn't record those precious things I wished to preserve in my memory for later use, I would forget them and they would be gone forever!!!

The industrious 8-year-old Bristena was still alive and directing some of my adult behaviours, essentially believing that not writing equals failure, loss of knowledge and, more importantly, disappointing her mommy and teacher.

Wow, that fear was underpinning so much of my intense relationship with writing...

I feel that bringing awareness onto this matter is now allowing me to be more relaxed about my writing, so it can come from a place of true desire of sharing, rather than fear of loss of information.

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Because, truly, the real learning happens way beyond the surface level of cognitive activity... These inner shifts and movements occur of their own accord, whether or not I choose to consciously engage with them in written form. And that is something my dear friend Anu told me about a while ago, but I was still stubbornly resisting...

"Oh, I need to process all this!!!" As if the intensity of my feelings had to be given voice necessarily through writing, for me to really understand what is going on... That may be partly true, but this need to be in control of my process and the frustration generated by lagging behind with my own processing was truly making me go insane...

Hey, relax, chill down a bit girl... 😃

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So right, I didn't write for five solid days and it was great!!! When I wasn't meditating, I was floating down various thought streams, and I trusted that they were taking me in the right direction... No matter how scary they got at times!

Indeed, my first difficult moment was actually the first evening of the first day.

I realized that I was going to be faced with the void of nothingness, of formlessness, of emptiness, for five days in meditation. My mood dramatically shifted from the previous pure bliss into a paralyzing confused state of fear and shock.

Girl, you're going to enter the void...

Isn't it true that so many of our choices are unconsciously taken from that place of fearing boredom? Fearing doing "nothing"? Fearing being unable to justify our existence through relentless doing? Fearing the dangerous unknown...?

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Being in charge of our daily schedule and next steps in life makes us feel in control. We do everything we can to avert our attention from facing the fear that indeed, we don't know what really is going to happen, that life is always unpredictable, that the only thing that doesn't change is that everything changes...

I was pondering how many of my daily movements are based on finding something to fill this empty void, the void that is forever present, the void I can never truly escape, no matter how many distractions I choose to indulge in... However, as my friend Mike once told me, "On the other side of nothing, there is everything..."

And, indeed, everything is what I found when I plunged into the abyss of nothingness...

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To be continued...

All pictures are sourced from Pixabay.

Thanks for taking the time to read about my experiences and insights. It means a lot to me if any of this resonates or touches your heart in any way.

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If you enjoyed this article, or if you have experience with meditation yourself, I would love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.

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Bristena
#DiaryOfAFreeSpirit