Day 1
“Maybe I’ll get a flu,”
I think, hopefully. “Or there will be a very localized apocalypse.”
I am driving to a
meditation retreat.
It’s New Year’s
Day, and shudderingly cold. I don’t want to be here. I think about my fireplace,
and the friends I could be spending time with, and the fact that I am about to
be without Internet for five days.
The theme of the retreat
is breathing meditation. As soon as I try to follow the instructions, my
thoughts, which I’d been drowning out over the past few weeks with parties,
sparkly things and bacon-wrapped food items, go to town.
You can’t even breathe properly.
Shut up. You are not welcome here.
Anyone else would be relaxed by now. You’re in this
beautiful mountain village, all snowy and peaceful, and you can’t relax. After all
these years, you -
I go for a walk.
I command myself,
for the next 30 minutes, come hell or high water, to concentrate on my in breath
and my out breath and nothing else.
Except I’m really
hungry, and it’s another two hours until dinner time.
Also, what I
should call my book? It’s so cold that my hair is freezing. When was the last
time I had my roots done? Wow, that little ice-covered cabin reminds me of Game
of Thrones, especially that great episode when in breath out breath, goddammit.
What’s happening
in Syria right now? It’s irresponsible not to know. I reach for my phone and
then remember it’s back in my room, turned off, which it will be for the next
three days inbreathoutbreathinbreathoutbreath.
I think of my fellow retreatants, all probably sitting blissfully on their
cushions, their heads turned towards the sun, their minds thought-free as I
storm up and down the same laneway because it’s one of the few that’s been
plowed.
I should just leave - just jump into my car and gun it back to reality, where I can drown all of this out with Netflix, Pinot and to do lists like a normal person. IN BREATH OUT BREATH, KARNEEF. I march back to the house, shake the snow off my coat, curl up on a couch, and take a nap.
What everyone else's meditation probably looked like.
I should just leave - just jump into my car and gun it back to reality, where I can drown all of this out with Netflix, Pinot and to do lists like a normal person. IN BREATH OUT BREATH, KARNEEF. I march back to the house, shake the snow off my coat, curl up on a couch, and take a nap.
Day 2
Nap-taking (and,
for that matter, storming through the countryside) would be frowned upon in
some of the stricter meditation traditions, but not here. In fact, Derek, who’s
teaching the retreat, has explicitly penciled naptime into the schedule, and
suggests that if we pass out in class, not to worry, we’ll absorb everything
via osmosis, anyway. I test his theory by falling asleep a few minutes later, my
forehead on the floor as if in some devotional yoga pose. I wake up pissed. Classes
are my favourite part of a retreat – like university seminars about death, sex,
human behaviour and the workings of the mind, plus great stories about
traveling with Burmese monks - and I missed most of this one, because I was
tired, because I can’t relax, because I’m doing this all wrong.
“I’m going out of
my mind,” I whisper to my friend Susan.
“Me, too,” she
whispers back. “But don’t forget: it’s Day 2.”
Of course. On every
single retreat I’ve ever taken in my life, the first three days have been an
orchestra of self-judgment, resistance and discomfort. And then, magically, it
seems to clear.
One day to go.
Day 3
Nope.
Day 4
To celebrate our
last full day, we head to a nearby Nordic spa – one of those places with the saunas
and hot and cold pools. Incredibly, the anxiety in my stomach which has refused
to fade over the past few days heightens at the idea of it. If I can’t calm my
mind on a meditation retreat AT A SPA, I am doomed for life.
We wiggle into our
bathing suits, wrap ourselves in spa bathrobes and disperse. I find a hidden
hot pool near the back of the property, inhabited only by a couple and a
lost-looking bearded man. I climb in and float, trying to feel grateful. After
all, there are people all over the world who are hungry, terrified, alone, and
here I am, meditating a giant outdoor bathtub.
You are a terrible person.
You are incapable of gratitude.
You should be -
I climb out of the
pool and storm inside.
*
Lest you are under
the impression that meditation is about being free from thoughts, here is a
story for you.
A couple of years
ago, I was in Australia, surrounded by beaches and beauty and abundance and love,
having a really difficult time. My marriage had just ended. I had just come off
two months in rural Uganda. I was trying to be in a new relationship. And I
didn’t feel like I would ever belong in the “normal” world again. I hadn’t
actually met Derek in person yet, but I reached out to him by phone. I gave him
the scoop, and he burst out laughing.
I’m not kidding.
He laughed his ass off. I could hear him tears wiping the tears off his face.
“You’re going
through some of the most stressful things that could happen in a person’s life
at the same time,” he said, finally, “and you’re wondering why you’re anxious?”
“I’m just so sick
of feeling bad,” I said.
It was then that
he gave me one of the most useful meditation instructions I’ve ever received. Instead
of trying to shove Feeling Bad Natalie away, he suggested, why not let her be
in the room?
“She can be on the
other end of the park bench,” he said. “Or, if that’s too close, then down the
street. Just let her be there. You don’t have to do anything else.”
This meditation
has saved my sanity many, many times.
Now, in the spa, I
face my reflection in the window. Feeling Bad Natalie stares back. There is a knot
in her stomach, tension in her spine, and so much shame. She’s a lost cause. She’s
in a white fluffy bathrobe, for godsakes.
We stare at each
other some more.
It’s
uncomfortable.
It kind of hurts.
“This isn’t easy,”
I say to her, silently.
Something from deep
down says, “It’s not supposed to be.”
I bathe in the
unease. I don’t yell at FBN, which, I realize, I have been doing all week. Minutes
pass, and I became more aware that as difficult as this is, it isn’t killing
me. Thoughts are masters of disguise – they sneak in from different directions
and with different agendas and convince us to believe them, again and again.
But the more we practice, the faster the instruction comes back. I’ve done this
a thousand times, and still, I forget.
Finally, the
heaviness lifts. I take a deep breath and go back outside to the hidden pool,
which is now vacant. I look up at the sky, and it’s like someone has washed a
dirty window. I had completely missed the ice-coated branches of the trees
sparkling in the moonlight; the sound of the wind; the deep, black velvetiness of
the sky. The spa is about to close, but I stay where I am, now overcome with
gratitude, until one of the staff members comes out, doesn’t see me, grabs my
bathrobe and heads back inside.
I chase after him,
and my friends laugh when they spot me from a window, a steaming blur of skin
and bare feet scurrying across the frozen ground. We go back to the house and share
a massive dinner, more laughter, and the kind of raw, juicy conversation that
happens at in these kinds of environments. And when I drive back home the next
day, to reality and phones and normality, I cannot, for the life of me, stop grinning.
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