When we deliberately leave the safety of the shore of our lives, we surrender to a mystery beyond our intent.
Ann Linnea, Deep Water Passage
There are always uncomfortable periods on retreats, moments when you feel bored, angry, anxious, afraid, frustrated, ridiculous, lonely, or forsaken, as in “Is this the fun part?”
The beginning of a retreat can be especially challenging. You may have experienced anticipation and excitement getting started. Now you are on retreat. What next? Suddenly, or slowly, in the middle of the afternoon or on your fourth day or whenever, you may feel let down or at a loss as to what to do next. In her story about a solo wilderness trip, E. A. Miller writes,
The first day proved miserable. And there was nothing wrong. The pack was not too heavy, my legs felt fine, the dog was good company. But my practice of pretense had deprived me of knowing real sensations, and so I worried about the smallest things: Should I take a breath now? Should I go to the third lake today? Should I eat something?…Without an audience, without someone to direct my response, I was at a loss, unable to frame my own experiences.
You may feel your intention is too broad, too narrow, nonexistent, or insipid. The practices you planned, the books you brought, and the box of art supplies now seem too boring or difficult to look at. You may be swept with love for all life one minute, then with heart-thumping loneliness the next. Jamie, convinced her son was in danger, came close to getting in her car and driving 130 miles home. Dee felt so overwhelmed by her solitude, even with a friend retreating in her guest room, that she went so far as to call her ex-husband, whom she hadn’t spoken to in three years. Laura Wright, a retired lay staff officer for the national Episcopal church and a writer, told the story of a shared retreat she took in 1986. She writes in Rattle Those Dry Bones,
I went through the motions the first two days: praying, meditating, studying, singing. Very little was new to me except for some of the music. None of the ideas excited or challenged me…. By late afternoon Saturday I was tired of the whole process and ready to pack up and go home. I had had enough of those crying, laughing, bell-ringing females!
Anne Simpkins, editor of Common Boundary magazine, has had similar experiences on her week-long and ten-day silent meditation retreats.
For two or three days I feel like a complete failure. What I am not understanding is all the distractions have fallen by the wayside and I’m hearing the real stuff…. After four or five days, I experience a complete flip and I am able to pull myself around intuitively, rather than planning.
You may struggle with unpleasant emotions during moments of transition, during meals, when you are trying to just be, at a time of the day when you would usually be with your family, and while going to sleep at night. You may feel like you need to “do” something but you aren’t sure what that something is. Or you may feel what you are doing with your time is wrong, that you’ve made the wrong choice, that you’ve chosen the wrong time or place to retreat, that you don’t have the “right” activities or the best materials, or that you are squandering your precious time off.
These reactions are completely normal.
I have never gone on a retreat and not felt sad, lonely, afraid, confused, or that I was out of my mind for putting myself through this experience. There is always elation in the beginning—an hour or two exploring a new place or reading a new book filled with groovy practices I can’t wait to try. Somewhere along the way, I begin to feel down. Lost. At a loss. I look at the schedule I made, and it all feels like a complete waste of time. I suddenly, desperately, must go home and hold my child. I must kiss my partner, Chris. Sometimes on retreat, I want to escape so badly I actually would rather be working! Anything but settling down, turning within.
See Grief: Unplanned Grief.
Left to yourself, you are faced with yourself.
For a retreat to come alive, surrender is called for, surrender to the emotions welling up in your throat, surrender to your instinctual rhythm, surrender to the difficult discipline of being in the moment: float on your back, stare at the clouds and wait, heart open, mind hushed.
David Cooper in his spiritual classic Silence, Simplicity, and Solitude writes,
Without a strong will, a person is likely to leave a retreat early. It does not take long for the initial excitement to wear off, the doubts to begin, and the wondering about what we are doing. Pain and boredom soon follow, along with any combination of anxiety, fear, anger, frustration, criticism, or other negative mind states.
I remember reading this several years ago and thinking, “This does not sound like fun. I’m not going on a retreat. Forget it.” It all sounded too dry, ominous, and arduous. I wasn’t up to it.
What I realize now is that I interpreted “sticking with a retreat” through the usual lens of pushing myself to excel, and I was not interested in pushing myself on retreat if it meant self-flagellation. I needed to learn to exercise my will through compassion and self-kindness, by gently encouraging myself, by being present to all the sensations and feelings without judgment. So many of us would never talk to anyone else the way we talk to ourselves. We must not let this harshness take over when difficult feelings surface on retreat. These feelings do not mean we need to push ourselves harder or that we are failing. These feelings arise when people try to be alone with themselves and think about their lives, their psyches, their purpose.
Experienced retreatants will recognize familiar signposts. “Oh, yes, this is usually when I crave chocolate so bad I smell it in the air” or “This is when I feel I have to call my son at college” or “This is about where I regret not staying with Marsha and having a baby.” These feelings signal that you are getting somewhere. Resistance is a sign that the psychic pot is being stirred, that ghosts are being disturbed from their dusty hiding places. Think of these feelings as a giant skull-and-crossbones sign left behind by pirates to scare treasure seekers away from their secret troves. If we try to push through these feelings, we will only bruise ourselves. If we “ride the waves of the experience,” as Frankie said of her first retreat, instead of trying to control the experience, we have a chance both to stick with an intention and to dissolve a layer of self-abuse. We can find through this experience a nourishing mixture of confidence and comfort.
It might help to:
Almost all retreats have tough, uncomfortable, lonely moments. Be gentle with yourself, and if you can, even if only in a spirit of perversity, welcome those moments.
Stories
Laura stayed with her retreat and came to compare herself to
a pitcher that had spent the past three days being filled up and emptied out. Filled day by day with prayer, study, songs, and laughter and poured out again in confession, tears, and silent meditation. On Thursday and Friday, I had been composed of ceramic: opaque and ready to crack if dropped. By Saturday I had changed into crystal: sparkling, sheer, and primed to shatter into a million pieces at the slightest provocation. But by Sunday, the day of rebirth and resurrection, I was sterling silver. I felt solid, glowing, reflecting light and images. I knew I might be dropped and dented, I might tarnish in days to come, but I could always be polished again and returned to a radiant, open, welcoming vessel.
When you can kindly take yourself by the hand and stay with your experience, you will learn to live with fear and the depth of your retreat will increase magnificently. This doesn’t mean that fear, boredom, and worries won’t return on subsequent retreats or that you can’t have a glorious time if everything is easy and flows perfectly. Neither is true. Just don’t let the demons block your way.
For Long Retreats
You might be thinking, “What have I gotten myself into?” Suddenly, three days, a week, a month seems like an eternity. “The secret taught time and time again by masters over the centuries is the need to persist, to overrule the internal resistance, to be constant in our efforts, not to waver,” believes David Cooper. It is extremely important on longer retreats to practice check-in, to have reasonable expectations, and to maintain a commitment to a schedule, even if that schedule is no schedule.
See Courage: Easing into It, What Will You Do?: Check-In, and Living Your Retreat Every Day.
For Mini-Retreats
Slow or uncomfortable moments happen during mini-retreats, too. It can be very frustrating because the limited amount of time scheduled for retreat may leave you feeling pressured to make every minute perfect. Relax. This feeling, this process, is part of your retreat. You can’t rush it, you can’t escape it. You can only welcome it and be kind to yourself as you experience it.
For Retreats with Others
Retreating with others is a ripe place to observe how you rely on or interact with others. If you are scheduled to be apart and discomfort sets in and suddenly you are dying to be with your partner(s), this is a good place to observe. Can you stick with your plan? Consider using what you are feeling to deepen your shared experience instead of getting busy or chatty to distance yourself from it. Call a deep listening circle. “I’m feeling really lonely and weird. I don’t want to run away from this feeling, but I don’t know what to do.” Use one another to produce loving discipline instead of to distract one another from feeling. One of the dangers in sharing a retreat is that you will hide in cozy friendship. While that might be easier, it also might rob you of a richer experience. And the more you use loving discipline in the rarified atmosphere of retreat, the more you can do it in daily life.
See Retreating with Others: Deep Listening Circle.
Big feelings on a shared retreat invite projection. Suddenly, your friend is driving you mad. You can’t stand the way she brushes her teeth or snorts when she laughs. Many of our complexes and struggles with relationship are activated on retreat, and they can become a huge distraction. When you find yourself having a strong reaction to someone on retreat, either positive or negative, it is almost always a wake-up call to your own process, a sign pointing to something in you that you are avoiding or discounting. Kindly observe what you are saying to yourself about this person, about how marvelous or appalling she or he is. Acknowledge to yourself that though you may not understand why you feel this way, it has as much to do with you as with the other person. Dialoguing with these projections in writing is a powerful way to learn about them.