I said to the wanting-creature inside me:
What is this river you want to cross?
There are no travelers on the river-road, and no road.
Do you believe there is some place that will make the
soul less thirsty?
Be strong then, and enter into your own body;
there you have a solid place for your feet.
Think about it carefully!
Don't go off somewhere else!
Kabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of
imaginary things,
and stand firm in that which you are.
(Excerpted; by Kabir, a 15th century poet and mystic)
I am emerging from a 5 day meditation retreat with Shell Fischer of Mindful Shenandoah Valley. It is the first in-person retreat I have attended since Covid isolation began. I have been longing for it, and my meditation practice has suffered from not having in-person retreats. Five days was a good start, although not enough. As I heard Shell read this poem at the end of one of our sits, I thought of the hardships of the past years, for me and for my clients, and how I have been, in the face of my own hardship, hiding myself from my clients in order to survive. This is not like me. I have, in the past, widened my circle of awareness by bearing my own suffering well, and knowing it deeply enough that I could know others, and be a sturdy container of the vulnerability in us all. But these years, these Covid years, and for me cancer years, have not acted the same way in me, and I have changed my agreements with myself. Somehow, in this round of cancer, I have tried to hide my suffering, my exhaustion, my confusion, my loneliness.
Retreat reminded me of many things, but first to rise was this: I cannot hide any more. This is what I have to give. My exhaustion, my confusion, my ability to show up to myself without hiding. My ability to show up to you without you hiding yourself. The safety of my container. The truth of my own two feet. This is what I have to give to you. This is what you have to give to yourself. The ability to stand solidly in your own feet, knowing with intimacy your lived experience, and being willing to be vulnerable about it.
Meditation retreat is not easy: it involves 8 - 9 hours of meditation daily, and it involves noble silence, which means not only no speaking, but no eye contact, no reading, no writing, no music. Only the internal experience, attended to with rigor, with ancient practices of paying attention that, though difficult, expand your ability to be in your own life. As we are deeply with our moment-to-moment experience, we become more responsive, more flexible, more compassionate, more connected to all of life, with our sense-doors as the vessel of knowing.
I am committed to knowing together. Knowing that my suffering does not interrupt my ability to hold yours, but enhances it. As long as I know what’s happening to me. I am not extremely ill, and am taking good amounts of rest, and will be fine for now. But knowing what it’s like to be in a human body that can be harmed, that suffers harm, that bears unwellness, that can be lost — that is priceless, and informs my life. So I refresh my willingness to see that more clearly as I sit with you. And we will do that work together.
