My experience in our Self Retreat/Solitary Expedition
I have been blessed to have a beautiful meditation cabin (Kuti we call it) in the bush part of our Kurrajong property built by my gorgeous husband to retreat into. We recently finished building it, so I wanted to try it out, allow myself a mini self-retreat or as we are also calling them – a Solitary Expedition.
It has been a wonderful getaway you could say for the last 3 days, 2 nights. While it hasn’t been as strict as I normally like, mainly from seeing my doggies every day and on one day driving into town and back x2 for my husband to get his car serviced + 1 night I invited him to also meditate down there together. But surprisingly even with all those interruptions as well as having a bit of my mind analysing the functionality of the cabin, I can feel and notice the difference it has made.
I noticed it when I was walking down to the cabin after looking for Sabzi (one of our dogs who likes to go wondering when there’s no one at home). I noticed I normally look down on the dirt path but this time I was looking up and around, aware of my surroundings, aware of myself and my thoughts. It’s this openness and clarity that meditation can bring so almost instantaneously.
Don’t get me wrong it’s also been hard work, after the initial relief and bliss of being here in the bush by myself to just do meditation and yoga, then the work begins ( I mean when you start meditating for longer periods of time) you realise how busy your mind actually is, it’s a bit painful. Painful in the sense you know ( because I have experienced this before from periods of my life) when my thoughts were quieter or at least I wouldn’t get lost in them like I was now, and here I am getting very lost and fused into my thoughts.
So I practised, and in a solitary retreat – this part I can see is actually harder than if you were on a group retreat. The kind of mandatory sitting in a group setting helps to really quick start your practice and prepare the mind. But on your own, you have to bring in your own discipline and make sure that rather than spacing out and relaxing which is super nice, you sit your buttocks down, but a timer on, decide the amount of time and meditate with your practice.
I also found that pushing yourself to do longer sitting is also helpful. I mean that’s the whole idea of retreating – going deeper than you normally can -to have more time to practice. Initially, the body and mind will not like this idea, so mixing it up with lying down, sitting and walking is sometimes helpful. Getting to know your groove, takes a bit but in the end, that’s individual as well. For example, I found doing yoga helped to settle my mind and body, or sometimes just a cup of tea before sitting for long periods in meditation.
My other companion to this process which I think is super important is compassion. It’s amazing how judgemental and critical your mind can be – against yourself! Really not helpful. The longer I practice meditation – I find these thoughts creeping up “shouldn’t you be better at this by now?” it plays in the background…”gosh you’re so distracted!” ( like I already don’t know) But for this, I like to remind myself it’s not a race, there is actually nothing to achieve that you don’t already have. And it’s a process of uncovering that. And self-compassion.
Another helpful antidote for me is remembering and putting into perspective how much I practice vs how much I operate in the other way of life. If I meditate even 2 hours of the day and then the rest is operating in life with all its business, no wonder my mind is still sometimes being taken over.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter, it’s all part of it, can you remain open and accept even not wanting to accept, your off to a good start.
