By Chris McCall

Solitary retreats are a familiar experience for me. I’ve been taking off into the woods to retreat all of my adult life. After I had cancer ten years ago, I scheduled these retreats as many as six times per year to support my healing process. Retreating alone has been an important piece of my self-care and a way to deepen into my meditation practice.

One thing I know for sure–when you enter into a solitary retreat, or even a group retreat for that matter, your “stuff” will come up. If you can turn to this “stuff” with warmth and a friendly curiosity, you will get to know your mental and emotional habits in a more intimate way. I’ve come to expect that this will happen on retreat. It’s usually unpleasant, at first. My “work” will be to note the quality of my relationship with these thoughts and habits, and then to bring loving awareness into that relationship.

Dread is one of the first words that come to mind when my retreats approach. I have asked the question, “Why do I do this?” at the beginning of almost every retreat. Why do I have to sit alone with my feelings, when I could be at home on the couch with my fella, safe with my remote, performing tasks, which make me feel able and competent? The answer is, I continue to do this because my experience tells me that committing to being present and offering love to these aspects of my mind, is the most nurturing thing I can do for myself. I know that practicing in this way reveals deeper dimensions of being and it releases constrictive patterns in my body/mind. Simply “being” with love and presence is an immensely joyful experience. The voice of love inside of me knows that the gifts of practice are born from the inclusion of my light and my shadow within my consciousness. So, I unpack my bags and sit down with my resistance, as best I can.

Because of the coronavirus we have an opportunity to turn our isolation into a transformational and intentional experience. We can work intentionally with our boredom, our anger, our restlessness, our loneliness, our fear. In this very moment right now, we can offer loving awareness to these painful conditions, and in so doing, lay our burdens down.

Retreating can bring you to your knees. My friend, John Howie, the caretaker of Gilchrist Retreat Center, which has been the container for many of my retreats, said that a long retreat, “will summon the Gods.” What does one do in the face of such power? I want to say, be still. Be honest. Respect the experience. But these suggestions can seem simplistic when the Gods are coming from within the constellations of your own unconscious patterns.

I recall on one of my retreats becoming acutely aware that my self-rejection manifested as a persistent certainty that whatever I was doing at any given moment was wrong and I should be doing something else. If I was doing Realization Process practice, I should be doing Vipassana. If I was walking, I should be sitting. If I was sleeping, I should be meditating. This habit, which has manifested in many ways throughout my life, became obvious to me. That piece of the gift, becoming aware of the pattern, was illuminating and difficult to take in.

I decided to challenge this rejecting behavior with love and support. I would respond to the rejection with, “This is exactly where I should be.” Every time it came up, (dozens of times per day) “This is exactly where I should be,” was my mantra. It was terrifying. Could I be trusted with this authority? The voices of skeptical authority figures, balking at my frivolous dharma, murmured in the background of my thoughts. I finally decided that I was not a teenager playing a drinking game at a party and I would experiment with giving my own wisdom the authority. It was a difficult practice and a radical perspective and it was exactly the challenge I needed.

Meeting this emotional pattern with love and support, enabled me to relax into my self in a new way. I found a stability that I had never experienced before. This piece of the gift was precious and unexpected. I still visit this pattern, but I sometimes I see it coming from down the street, and it gives me enough time to pour the tea.

On another retreat, my mind was loud with unrelenting negative commentaries and the litigation of all of my past mistakes. I remember jumping up from every session as if it was time served. An accomplishment for sure, but it wasn’t what I was looking for. After almost a week of mental torture, my mind suddenly went quiet, a cool peace came over me, the birds were singing so sweetly, and my body felt soft and permeable. Why the change?

First, instead of pushing away the negative commentary or collapsing under the weight of it, I held it in my awareness and offered it love. It wasn’t necessary or even possible for me to fix any of these things that I was obsessing about. What was needed was to bring loving awareness into my relationship with my pain. Under the influence of love, I could see how my “issues”, my sorrow, my failures, my anger, my arrogance, my loss, and my longing, all grew out of conditions, as the Buddha says. While holding my struggle in a loving container, this growing out of conditions business was more than the instruction I’d heard many times. Loving awareness allowed for me to see the problems for what they were, without attempting to, fix them. To see them without the entangled energy of guilt, shame and fear, they became the story of a soul experiencing human suffering–this fact alone was all that was necessary for compassion to arise. A moment of genuine kindness toward my struggle made my heart expand inward. Love wants to hold your hurt in its embrace–all of it. Every last bit. One moment we see a dingy world full of restrictions, with presence and loving awareness, this same world is rich with beauty and assurance.

Another factor was simply practicing. My teacher, Gehlek Rimpoche, used to say that the definition of meditation was “getting used to it.” Getting used to focusing on your breath. Getting used to recalling the sensation of love in your chest. Getting used to bringing a friendly curiosity to your struggle. Getting used to “catching” your negative thought patterns sooner and sooner. Getting used to attuning to spaciousness. Getting used to identifying with the energy of love.

The first time you catch your anger and attempt to focus on your breath, in order to gain perspective and work with it, you might feel better. The intensity of the anger could diminish, or you might find that you are simply taking deeper breaths while angry. It takes practice to see the results. We’re complicated beings. Our anger is tethered to judgment, tethered to shame, tethered to fear. There can be a fine line between observing our negative thoughts and bringing them into consciousness or rejecting them. Rejecting our anger or depression, will not eliminate it. In fact it cements you in a polarized relationship with anger and depression. Bringing loving awareness to these unwanted experiences allows for an unfolding to occur. It’s an opportunity to understand the unconscious beliefs that have held the negative patterns in place.

You can approach these patterns the way one might interpret a dream, as if each is a character representing an aspect of your own psyche. You begin to recognize the repeat performances of your fear and anger. Ah, yes, here is my old friend, Fear, the protector of my eating disorder. I’ve spent so many days and nights listening to her concerns. When she saw that I started to ignore her, she changed costume and told me she was just looking out for my health, as everyone should do. Of course following her instructions never felt healthy. In fact, listening to her usually lead me to sickness.

When I sit with her now, I don’t ignore her, but I also don’t entertain her advice. I locate the place in my body that contracts when she is activated, I hold her/my fear and the contraction in loving awareness. I hold her in my awareness with solemnity and tenderness. I hold her with a vow from my heart that I will never abandon her.

This is where the unfolding happens. The polarity between my conscious mind and the unconscious fear, begins to dissolve. I see how my vulnerability is covered over by fear. I offer love to that vulnerability, and it begins to unfold further, the contracted energy loosens, revealing a shimmer of energy, that had been blocked by fear. Loving awareness has made this energy accessible to my conscious mind. Loving awareness, is the only container big enough to hold the pain of human suffering.

Finally practicing being present in my body, brought me out of the land of criticism, conceptualization, and judgment. Practicing presence brought me home sweet home. There are many ways to practice presence. One of my favorite presence meditations is from Judith Blackstone. It’s a full body scan, toes to crown, inhabiting and attuning to the internal space of the entire body. When I first began working with the Realization Process, I couldn’t believe how good it felt to BE in my feet! It was like having a cellular massage, in my feet. I kept saying, “Wow, it feels so good to be in my feet!” People would laugh when I said that and I was like, “Why are they laughing? It feels good to be in my feet. What?” It’s a simple and profound practice, that can change how you experience everything.

I was meditating with my eyes open looking out a window with a broken seal and brown mold inside. Outside of the window was a tall dead weed, limp against a ripped screen. By practicing presence in my body, this view became a scene of exquisite beauty. I could test this throughout the day. If I glanced at the window while distracted with other thoughts, it was just a dead weed and a dirty window. Sure enough, if I grounded my consciousness in my body – feeling the internal experience of space, from toes to crown – there was nothing mundane about the weed, the ripped screen or the dirty window. All were part of a magnificent, vibrant, and complex tapestry that included my thinking mind and my body and the space between us. The weed shone as if it was lit from within. I not only saw this window differently, I felt it differently. To see the window from the space within my body, was more than a visual experience, it was to feel a warm and ebullient energy gently flowing through my body. Simply being in your body, changes how you experience the world around you.

When our thinking mind is contracted and cut off from the wisdom of the body, it’s not operating on all cylinders. By practicing being present in the body, you are teaching the places where you’re stuck or blocked, how to open. This is not the same as choosing to use your heart over your head, which just further fragments your consciousness. This is the integration of the head with the heart, and your toes, your knees, your sexual energy, your crown, your power, your ability to remain sound and whole in relationship to others.

This is the second time I wrote this piece. The first time I finished it, my computer froze, I had to shut it down and the piece disappeared. I believe a window popped up and asked if I would like to reopen the windows that were up when the computer froze and I clicked something. It was either, Yes or No, but I honestly don’t know which one I clicked. I clicked unconsciously and perhaps that’s why I lost the piece. Friends tried to help me recover it, to no avail.

I’ve been told that I’m “plucky”–it’s a habit. So, I busied myself rewriting and refused to be brought down by the disappointment. I lifted my energy in a way that is ingrained in the musculature of my body. I wrote. I made dinner. I visited my family online. There was an undercurrent of irritation in everything I was doing. When I visited my family, I could have told them about the loss of my article, but I was avoiding that feeling so I could have the experience I wanted to have–not the experience I was actually having.

When I finally sat down to meditate and brought my attention to my body/mind, I saw that I wasn’t having anything like the experience I wanted to be having. I was triggered by losing my essay. I felt tight and heavy in my heart and solar plexus. Maybe this was a sign that I shouldn’t be sharing these thoughts? Could this be confirmation that I should stay quiet?

Ah, yes, here is my old friend, Fear. She is calling out for my love and attention.

Chris McCall is the owner of Sing Ann Arbor. She teaches meditation, singing and songwriting online exclusively these days! Sing Ann Arbor hosts kirtan sessions the first Sunday of every month and weekly group meditations on Zoom. www.singannarbor.com