On Retreat

If we choose, we can slow down for a few minutes and find some momentary calm, maybe even have a cup of tea. 

Yet the velocity and quantity of content of daily life are powerful forces. The endless to-do list, the excess of overwhelming information streaming into our consciousness, the seemingly accelerated sense of collective uncertainty, and all that life demands simply outweigh our capacity to reconnect to and nourish our deep reservoir of presence and equanimity. 
 
In short, we're swimming upstream. 
 
From the perspective of the mindfulness traditions, we need regular retreat, which is not the same as vacation. 

Just as the heart expands and contracts and cannot expand without also contracting, a balanced, creative life demands a rhythm that includes extended periods of non-doing and true quiet. 

Retreat is to remember what it’s like to breathe and to remember what it is to sense. This is our aliveness, and practice is the soul work of retrieving it.

Are you feeling scattered? Maybe stressed? Maybe many other things?

As humans, it's the most reasonable thing in the world to struggle. And it's the most reasonable thing in the world to want relief. We want the mind to quiet down and the heart to relax. 

Yet neither respond well to our agenda and preferences. And the deeper Self is not seeking a new mindset or three-step technique that can be practiced for a few minutes a day.

Like seeds that need time and nourishment to grow, awareness, time, and quiet are irreplaceable forms of nourishment for our inner being. 

On retreat, we learn to stop fighting with ourselves and stop denying ourselves the sweetness of real compassion, loving-kindness, equanimity, and joy. 

Practice dismantles the armor and rigidity around our hearts and reestablishes intimate contact with life as it is. 

Practice, if we let it in with sincerity and time, opens our eyes to truth. “Each new experience of truth,” writes A.H. Almaas, “deepens the soul’s contact with her own basic trust.”