For all the well-wishing, permission-granting and vocal support: Thank you deeply for seeing me walking out and about, attempting this great big adventure. For all the unspoken worry, awkward pauses and slight bemused distain: I wish I could take you on retreat with me. It is the straightest path I know to an honest, earnest trust that the world is whole and that humanity is good; the simplest path between you and I, and us.
I sat a week-long retreat in an environment consciously crafted to give relief from the doing pressure of everyone's everyday, with teachers offering reminders that the simple act of being, and being aware of being, expands the horizons of a human. I sat with 95 others around my age, and we practiced in parallel our part of the Human Project. We sat in silence, which is to say we spoke very little, with much care. The teachers spoke with guidance, the bell rang with timeliness, the birds, wind, and highway sang the way they can; there is no true silence on Earth, but every small piece of quiet carries clarity with it. I settled after a while, able to watch the chatter and flash of my mind, the interpretation/narration of my imagination, at a relatively low volume and from a relatively stable seat. I let my eyes unfocus into the peripheral and my skin soften. The week I spent was not intense, neither dangerously volatile nor seductively blissful. It was simple. Quiet. Aware. Focused simply on breath, on body in movement through space, aware of others and the external world. After a while, my mind, so slippery and fast, itself relaxed a bit, and opened to awareness of the internal world. With perfect timing, just as I was ready to see with softness and clarity.
When I entered silence, I imagined dropping a small stone into a clear dark pool, a query without articulation. Before the week was through the delicate tides triggered by that small intention rippled their way back to me, intercrossing and threading together the deep things below the surface of the pool into one ephemeral crochet response. I have a disillusionment to see my way through, a break in trust to let heal, a gap between us -- between me and you, Life -- to step across. I will get there. It is today's Human Project.
