My first silent retreat

I went for my first silent retreat. It was short, just two and a half days, but impacted me in positive and unexpected ways. This is an account of why I chose to go for the retreat, what my learnings were while there, and what I’ve taken back from those learnings and incorporated into my daily life. I hope that this can be helpful for those considering or curious about silence, spirituality or retreats in general. Everyone’s experience can be different, and I hope that if you’re considering it, that you give it a shot and try it for yourself.

Why I chose to go for the retreat:

Life had been very hectic and fast-paced recently. I had been feeling tired and robotic — running around from project to project, deadline to deadline, and unable to find ways to be calm and present. I was unable to find the time to decompress and to put pause on the chatter of the brain and the endless list of to-dos. At some point last year, in the midst of fatigue and searching for a way to energize myself, a new realization started dawning on me — that I had to do something different to reset and tap into a way to break my patterns and calm my mind

A few friends from work had done silent retreats and came back to work visibly calmer and almost beatific. Their experiences encouraged me to say yes to simply being silent and giving myself access to an experience I was curious about. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect and was a little nervous about the experience, but at some level, I believed that being in silence would give me peace, or at least a restful restorative pause to think creatively about how to break the patterns of constant noise and chatter, both internal and external. I was willing to do the work to find that out for myself, and the only way to do that was to sign up and experience silence for myself.

My experience during the retreat

I was fortunate to book a place that seemed to be designed for silence intrinsically. The https://www.silentstay.com/ retreat Center has 25 acres and is surrounded by farmland on every side. It rests on a private gated estate with panoramic views and beautiful accommodations, and you’re treated to beautiful views of greenery, nature, rolling hills, springtime flowers and birds. You don’t hear anything here except the sounds of nature.

I checked in after a fun drive of 1.5 hours into a scenic cottage in Northern California. I was welcomed by the property manager who gave me a lay of the land. That was the last of any spoken words for the entirety of my stay, with the exception of the 30 minute guided meditation on both days.

Once I’d settled into my room, I felt like I should figure out what to do next. The orientation wasn’t until 4 hours away, there were no screens ( Phones, TVs, kindles, laptops) and we had been encouraged to leave our phones in our cars, parked down the hill from the cottage. I immediately started thinking of how to stay busy — should I go for a walk, take a nap, maybe stretch in my room? Maybe write something, or read some books? I was aware of a strange discomfort in not knowing what to do. I went for a leisurely walk by the center and napped and there were still 2 hours to go for the orientation and nothing else to be done. What does one do when the busyness halts, and 2 hours open up with no agenda and no screens to tell you what to do? I was hoping I could find out.

At the 30 minute guided orientation that evening, we were encouraged to use our time at the retreat to be silent and go inwards, beyond the external world, beyond even our own forms into the center of our being, and tap into an energy field of consciousness and compassion, for ourselves and others. We were asked to not do, but be.

During the meditation, I found my mind running from thought to thought. In that first 30 minute session, I experienced a storm of thoughts. I became aware of my inability to be thought free, and the irony of being in a silent retreat and unable to silence my mind was not lost on me. But for what it’s worth, I was acutely aware of everything I was thinking. I am told this is a step above about thinking endlessly and ‘mindlessly’. A sense of awareness about how our minds are behaving takes one from being the doer or the thinker, to being the observer of these thoughts, and I am learning that that is an important distinction and one step towards being more mindful. With all of that said, it was probably a minute or less in those thirty minutes where I was able to silence my mind and just be. The data-driven marketer in me thought, wow, that’s a low return on time investment. But the learner in me thought, it’s a start. Baby steps!

The next 2 days went something like this:

-2 meditation sessions of 30 minutes each in the am and the pm with all the 6 people at the retreat.

-Meals in the shared kitchen. Each guest had to bring their own groceries / meals for the duration of the retreat, and guests would sit in silence, sometimes together and in community. There was a magical quality about this experience of sharing silence with a complete stranger that made me feel calm and tap into a companion’s calm energy. I didn’t expect this to happen but it was a wonderful surprise to experience this bonding with complete strangers without any words

-Lots of reading — there was a small library with spiritual books. I’d never read a spiritual book in my life, but found myself seeking these books with interest and spending long hours reading, sometimes in silence in my room, or in the common living area staring at the fireplace, cup of tea in hand. I really really enjoyed this experience.

During the retreat, here are the themes that emerged for me

• I struggled, especially initially, with things to ‘do’ to kill time. I felt a force within me just wanting to do things and plan my day from one thing to do to another. I planned my day — walk, breakfast, stretch, read, etc. Eventually, the moments that I allowed myself to just be, were the ones that I felt the most connected to myself. It was in moments that I felt the most peaceful and serene, and these were the moments when I noticed the silence, and became aware of myself or my surroundings in the pauses between doing. This “being” although rare, was extremely restorative for me.
• Just a little openness and healthy curiosity towards spirituality can go a long way, and it certainly did for me. On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d be close to 2 in terms of my attempts at understanding spirituality. However, I did believe that there was an unseen, unmanifested world we’re not seeing on the daily, and it is an awareness and consciousness of the magic of this world that is our gateway to bliss and peace. While I didn’t understand it, I was intrigued by it, and had a high desire to experience it in my own way. This openness and curiosity kept me going beyond the periodic moments of uncertainty and “what am I doing here?”
• A contrast between not wanting to relive the past and remembering it with mindfulness and courage. Often in moments of silence, thoughts and memories from the past came up, and I was able to go deeper into those thoughts than I had ever gone and observe them with a completely different vantage point. I would find myself sitting in silence and feeling things I had not allowed myself to feel and the tears would start rolling down my cheeks, I was able to sit with that emotion, and feel more compassion for myself, and for others. This was very powerful for me. This harmony of having full compassion for myself and for another person was not something I had been able to achieve for these same situations ever before.
• The concept of time becomes somewhat elastic. Hours seemed to go by too fast sometimes, and yet moments seemed to elongate endlessly. At one such time, I realized I’d been staring at a candle for what seemed like more than two hours, marveling at the way the flame gently leapt into the air, melting the sides of the candle. I kept shifting between a sort of hyper awareness of the candle, and looking beyond it into a world where the candle didn’t exist at all.
• I learnt that spiritual books aren’t so bad. I had always dismissed them and the general self-help category as ‘not for me’. However, when you have hours on end, you pick up books you normally wouldn’t pick. I read a few books by Eckhart Tolle and Thich Nhat Hanh. Not everything made sense to my somewhat scientific mind, and I had to read and re-read some sentences over and over again to internalize them. I struggled with some thoughts, but some other ideas opened up my mind to a different consciousness of the world around me, and the world within me. One such idea is how Buddhism thinks of life and death as mere doorways in our existence. Our consciousness exists before we are born and after we die. I’m so pumped about exploring this more, with more openness and less judgment and all the ideas I am going to learn about.
• Phones, digital media and the news are the enemy of being in the present moment. Admittedly, I cheated. I checked my phone 5–6 times in the 2.5 days. I simply couldn’t resist. It gave me a sense of connection with the world outside. These moments gave me some sort of rush in the short-term,, but every single time I kept my phone aside after long moments of browsing and texting, I felt like I’d diluted my sense of peace, and almost always, it took me longer to get back into a silent space where the mind was without chatter. In hindsight, I did myself no favors, and when I go for my next retreat, I’m definitely not cheating with the phone.

What I’m taking away from the retreat

I came back feeling calmer. The 2+ days had seemed too long and intimidating in the beginning, but when it ended, I felt like I needed more time to do the work I had started to do, and ‘feel’ more silent. I’m promising myself that I will do more of these retreats in the future. I think we all need ways to reset and rebalance, and for me, this kind of reset was much needed.

I’m also thinking of ways I can give myself access to this kind of experience on a daily basis, and ways on incorporating some of these practices without necessarily having to pack a bag and check out of real life. I’m making some real changes to my everyday, and I realize that this is an ongoing journey. It’s never done!

I’m reading more. I’m reading more books on spiritual and individual growth. Reading has always been a passion, and I’m finding more time to do that, and doing it more mindfully and unapologetically. Sometimes even in the middle of the day as opposed to the ten minutes of reading at bedtime before I drift off. I’m enjoying this me-time. Reading has always been meditative for me, and reading spiritual books gives me a sense of calm and curiosity. I thrive when I feel those two emotions.

I’m feeling more relaxed and I’m more curious about things and subjects I wouldn’t have been, and I find myself approaching people and situations with more kindness and compassion

I’m truly asking others ‘how are you?’ and listening to them. Truly listening. I’m meditating almost everyday ( again, baby steps!). Sometimes, I find myself either falling asleep to the meditation tape, or unable to calm my mind at all. But I’m hopeful that one of these days, I can strike the balance of being awake while meditating and still being noise free. Rarely, very rarely, after a particularly tough workout and a bunch of errands behind me, I’ve been able to meditate and experience a moment of clarity and calmness, and I am encouraged by knowing that perhaps that’s what this is all about. I’m stretching my body after my workouts. I’ve incorporated yoga twice a week into my workout schedule. This from someone who has NEVER done yoga before. I’ve been more of a weights, lifting and cardio type of girl with minimal stretching.

But this girl is finally embracing a slower way of living, and definitely embracing more silence. If you’ve read this far, I hope that you can take your curiosity for silence to the next level and try it for yourself.