I shared my story with the editor of The Noise, the local arts & news monthly, asking if I could write a feature article in an issue about my experience. He instead asked that I turn the story into a twelve-part series over the course of a year. The title of the series is: "Ten Days of Hell: And Why I Keep Going Back For More." I will publish the series on this blog, too.
I will be chronicling my story of attending a 10-day retreat of meditation and silence. I attended my first retreat in July 2010, and then went back for another retreat in March 2011. I anticipate attending another 10-day retreat in December 2011, when I am halfway through telling my story in The Noise. So, I enter this journey with a story to tell (my experiences thus far), but also unsure where it will finish as I continue over the course of a year with new stories to tell (my next retreat experience).
Let me begin by saying that I do not look forward to December 2011. In fact, it scares the crap out of me. It will indeed be hellish... painful, difficult, and mind-numbingly boring. But I'll get to that part of the story in good time.
Here's how this will work: My Noise column is limited to 750 words. I'll re-publish it here, but I'll usually add comments both before and after the column that could not be included in the print version. Oh, and a plug for The Noise, who I genuinely thank for understanding the power of this journey and sharing it with their readers: it's an awesome publication, whether you reside in Northern Arizona or not. You can see the awesome photo/art they are using along with my column when you grab the print version. It's in newstands, coffee shops and fun places all over N. AZ, from Prescott to Jerome to Flagstaff and beyond. Pick one up.
Now, on to my published column for the July 2011 issue of The Noise:
The windows are down and I’m driving down a two-line highway in the idyllic morning sunshine of a California valley. I have just come out of the gorgeous rolling foothills of the Yosemite wilderness from a retreat. I’m feeling great, free and alive – more alive than I have felt in a long time. Nothing could break me from this fantastic feeling.
Suddenly, an oncoming car moves out to pass, but doesn’t have the space. It’s coming right at me and can’t get back into its own lane. I don’t have enough time to move my car completely out of the way. My car is straddling the yellow centerline, and all I can do is hope we don’t collide.
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This is my first column in a yearlong series that explores my experiences with a ten-day retreat of meditation and silence. The retreat requires participants to remain totally silent for the full ten days. They call it “noble silence” which does not allow for any communication: no talking, no gestures, and no eye contact with other participants. Further, no cell phones, television, computers, alcohol, drugs, reading, writing, or contact with the outside world. To top it all off, there are ten hours of meditation each day.
Before going, I had never meditated in my life. Not once. I don’t do yoga or any other kind of spiritual practice that might have prepared me for what some call “Meditation Boot Camp.” Why did I do this to myself? How did I survive ten days of total silence and marathon meditation sits? Why did I go back for a second retreat? That’s all part of the story yet to come.
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Right now, though, I have a head-on collision to avoid. By the time the car gets near the collision point with my car, we both slow down enough that the car misses me by half a length, but hits the gravel shoulder on my right. It spins around and smacks into a barbed wire fence.
Now, I hadn’t yet spoken to anyone outside of the retreat center yet. I had just spent ten days in total silence, and I am a bit curious what it will feel like to talk with others, or to enter the hustle and bustle of a grocery story or restaurant.
I pull over, get out and approach the spun-out car. Five kids are slowly getting out, looking dazed and wobbly in a cloud of dust; all of them appear to be under 21. Fortunately, they appear unharmed and signal that they are okay. But when one of them speaks, I have trouble understanding her. Her voice is muffled, like she has a napkin in her mouth, and I quickly understand why. She is deaf. In fact, all five of them are deaf.
So. Let’s pause here, because I think we need a moment to process this: I spent ten days in total silence, and the first people I talk to upon leaving said retreat are… deaf kids. Deaf kids I have a near-head-on collision with. Now, you might think that’s a remarkable thing. And I agree with you. But I don’t think it is the most remarkable thing about that incident.
To me, the most remarkable thing was how I responded to everything that transpired. As the car was heading right for me, knowing that some kind of accident was inevitable, I remained calm. My heartbeat did not rise. After the car spun out near me, I calmly pulled over, checked traffic before exiting my car, and without fear, moved swiftly towards the accident, in hopes that the people involved were safe. I’ve been in accidents before, and plenty of near-accidents. Each time, I was frazzled, shaking, angry, and in shock. This time, my response was different. I was calm and acted without emotion or panic. It was instinctive; I didn’t control my breathing or consciously attempt to remain calm. This was my natural response.
And I drove off from my near-accident without having lost my feeling of freedom. I didn’t know it at the time, but that feeling would stay with me for months. My life had been powerfully changed. It had everything to do with The Ten Days of Hell I willingly put myself through just before this incident. The story begins next month with Day One.
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So, a couple of post-column notes and additional backstory:
1. Yes, it's totally true. When I left the retreat center that Sunday morning in July 2010, the first people I spoke to were deaf. None of this is fictionalized for effect.
2. The kids were shaken up, and I was there for awhile, waiting for the police to come. Right after I checked to see if the kids were okay, a woman approached who was a former EMT. She was poised and helpful in making sure the kids were taken care of. I stepped into the role of trying to slow down traffic. There was gravel all over the road from the car's spin out, and it created a dangerous situation for the kids and others on the side of the road when cars would speed over that gravel and send it flying outward.
Slowing down traffic was difficult, because few would actually slow down. At one point, I walked out into the middle of the road to force cars to slow down. That was not my smartest moment.
3. A fellow meditator who had left the retreat center after me pulled over when he saw me slowing down traffic. He recognized me, because we had actually spoken at the end of the retreat (meditators are permitted to speak in the afternoon of Day Ten). His name was Pierre. When I told him what happened, and that the kids were deaf, he said to me, "The universe is trying to tell you something, brother." Then he drove off.
4. After 10 days of silence, my own voice sounded so strange and foreign. Speaking for the first time had an "out of body" feel to it. Like I didn't know who it was that was speaking the first time I spoke.
5. For those of you who have read my account of this experience on my Facebook page, this new telling will be different. I'll be covering much of the same ground, but from a new approach. And there will be new elements to the story as I discuss my second retreat in March, and then my third retreat coming up this winter.
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