Silent Retreat Experience: The Sound of Silence

Me while getting ready for my first day at the retreat

What does silence mean to you?

What role does it play in your life?

How do you feel about being in silence, even for a short time?

Most of the time when I share with people that I have done a 5-day silent retreat, their immediate reaction is horror and insisting they could never do that OR they think of it as 5 days of rest and relaxation without distractions and demands. 

"People seek retreats for themselves... But nowhere can a person find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in their own soul.”

Marcus Aurelius Meditations

I’ve done two 5-day silent retreats now and they have been very different experiences at very different points in my life. The first one I did was in 2018 as part of a MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) retreat to prepare for MBSR training. Something I had planned on doing but then decided I want to follow my own mindfulness focused work, rather than a clinically focused mindfulness program, like UMASS’s MBSR. 

When I went in 2018, I had no expectations but tons of curiosity. I knew it would be challenging to sit and meditate for hours at a time throughout the day but I also was so looking forward to seeing what the experience would offer me. I am, generally, not a meditator. I don’t have a regular meditation practice. I don’t have any regular habits in my life. I like going with the flow of each day and following my own inspiration. I despise routine and get so bored with it. 

In this first silent retreat, I learned that my mind was very hyper active, that I could definitely settle down more. I grew aware of my thoughts in a way I never had before. The practice of watching your thoughts is a powerful exercise along with the Buddhist teachings that “you are not your thoughts.”

"This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self." from Anattalakkhana Sutta: The Characteristic of Nonself

BUT this last silent retreat, led by a Buddhist teacher, brought this home to me in ways I had never thought of or experienced before. 

Answering these questions begins a journey of deep self-knowing. Your relationship to silence speaks to your willingness, not rightly or wrongly, to explore your inner world in an intimate and honest way. It shows how comfortable you are with you inner self, your thoughts, your body and your emotions and feelings. It speaks to your ability to foster some disconnection with distractions and input from the outer world and allow your inner world to speak to you. 

Early morning with the ducks at Long Pond Lake

When you think about it, your inner world is so much larger that the outer world. It is the space you live in on so many levels - physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. AND it is completely made by you. It represents YOU, not what is being given to you in any given moment. 

The greatest surprise wasn't that my mind became quiet. It didn't. The greatest surprise was realizing how much of my inner life had been covered over by constant doing, learning, creating, and helping. 

Silence didn't give me new answers. It stripped away enough noise that I could finally see what had already been there.

Where my first retreat left me feeling more connected to my self and my spirit, the second retreat left me confused and sitting in chaos. Luckily, I am further along on my soul journey, so this wasn’t too disconcerting. I knew the feeling and also that this was a phase, a powerful phase, that is the precursor to profound creation. It still was challenging to sit with these feelings in silence, day after day. I can tell you that I planned my escape every day from the sessions. Was it a coincidence that my mindful wanderings led me through the parking lot? I’m not so sure it was :)

I showed up though, on time, to every session. I committed to being fully in the moment, as best I could, and to see what arose for me. I realized how confused I was during the retreat, I didn’t realize how emotionally drained I was from all of it until I went to Will, the facilitator and teacher, at the end of the retreat to thank him and broke down in tears. 

The things that I can remember as the big themes of my confusion:

• Following my own guidance, and not necessarily the guidance of the facilitator (something he encouraged but wasn’t a part of my first silent retreat) BTW I’m a rule follower, who’s trying to relearn to confidently follow my own guidance, intuition, and needs.

• All of the learning and foundations I had built for my own mindful practice seemed inadequate and I was committing to a much deeper experiential connection with mindfulness.

• Anger, once again, raised its beautiful head. Anger at how I had been asked to abandon myself in one of my relationships. A righteous anger, rather than a cleansing one, like the anger that arose during my Camino.

• Anxiety and emotional stress, similar to my Camino were part of the experience too. They came from asking myself to do something that was uncomfortable in its realness and truth. Asking myself to commit to physical and mental toughness, something that isn’t a part of my usual daily life. 

What I came away with, was a clean slate that I am looking forward to exploring; to choosing what I want to keep and letting go what I don’t need anymore; to redefining what I am focusing on and how I am exploring me and nurturing and giving expression to my inner, authentic self in the outer world; to reshaping and redirecting my creations and offerings to reflect this new mindful core that I built in these five days.

Everything was magical here even the flowers they put out on the birdhouse

I honor that not everyone would benefit or desire to do a days long silent retreat, however, I do feel that spending regular time in silence, fostering it in your daily practice, and using it as a powerful tool to know yourself through truth, and practicing allowing your thoughts presence but not supremacy over your life. 

Can you imagine if you could let go of the power your thoughts have over you right now? The recurring thoughts fostering disempowering beliefs. The stories you tell yourself, rehashing memories and displaying them for you to experience over and over your shame, guilt, failures, hurts, traumas, fears. The stories you write of what could be coming for you in your life, usually nothing good.

We know innately to let a hot stone drop because it is burning us, yet we haven’t been taught the same things about hurtful thoughts. They are meant to be let go of just like the hot stone. (From Will Kabat-Zinn during my retreat)

Thoughts are transient. They come and go. If we can observe them through mindful awareness in meditation, we realize that they flow by like a river and, in watching them, we, in turn, realize that if we are watching them, we are not our thoughts.

I’ll leave you with these reflections on silence from my recent retreat and with the encouragement to take some time with silence in your own life and see what arises. 

Smiles helped along the way

Just remember to always live your life with love, acceptance, and allowing. Be gentle and allow yourself to be human. Perfection is not required, just a willingness to see and experience yourself.

Silence won't tell you who you should become.

It simply gives you the space to remember who you've always been.