sarahcentric

Before we get into the meat (replacement) and potatoes of my meditation retreat we need to discuss dessert; the long-lost Keebler treat, Magic Middles. For those of you who don’t remember, Magic Middles were chocolate chip cookies with a fudge-y surprise in the middle. There were several varieties, but the most magical were the Mini-Middles. Was it harder for the elves to bake a million Mini-Middles or for their tiny hands to manage the unwieldy larger version? Don’t forget, the factory was based out of the knot of a tree where Ernie the Elf managed a pretty small crew, literally and figuratively.

I doubt the Buddhist nuns and monks I was practicing with had Magic Middles on the mind. But since this was a particularly difficult thought for me to release a few days ago I just have to get this off my chest now.

Why did they take these off the market?! WHY?!! ERNIE, PLEASE BRING THEM BACK!!

Ok. There’s the bell…

That’s a bell from last year’s retreat. Bells, bells, bells…my own personal Hell’s Bells.

Here’s the schedule from one day at the beginning of my 2007 Blue Cliff breakdown.

5:30am wake-up/45 minute meditation with the monastics
One of the other retreatants upon seeing me layered in three hoodies, not showered and exhausted astutely observes, “wooahhh, you look pissed off!” Thanks.
8:00 Breakfast
All meals are eaten in silence and as “mindfully” as possible. This is not fast food, it’s not even Slow Food. It’s food in Real Time which drives me to madness, or at least makes me cry. Through every meal.
9:30 Dharma Talk
A monk or nun talks about life. I cry.
11:30 Walking meditation
Meditative walking led by a monk which is slow, and once again, silent. I feel like I will fall down since my body is so accustomed to bullet-train New York City pace.
12:30pm Lunch
Cue tears.
4:00 Dharma discussion
A group sharing experience where I break down (SURPRISE!) and desperately ask, “Doesn’t anyone just want to go home and watch Project Runway?!”
6:00 Dinner
Tearful and tired.
7:30 30 minute meditation
Breathe in. Breathe out. Stay awake.
9:00 Noble Silence/lights out
No speaking until after breakfast the next morning, which feels like 3 days away since I had not been to bed this early since kindergarten. Sad and frustrating. So, you know, I cry.

The ding dong of each bell at Blue Cliff is an invitation to come back to the present moment and bring your awareness to what is happening right now. Go ahead and count all of those bells in the schedule up there. Don’t forget to add the extra bells of a telephone ringing and the clock in the tea room that chimes every 15 minutes. You have to pause for those, too. Now look at everything that happened in between each bell. I had to hustle my butt (as mindfully as possible, of course) to get wherever I needed to be and do what…PAUSE!

Since my thoughts in 2007 were far more challenging than the mysterious disappearance of Magic Middles from the market, all of this mindfulness was pretty relentless. It was a year filled with Death Cab for Cutie on repeat, three Oreo Cakester meals a day and hours staring at my bedroom ceiling…The Pits.

My mental situation didn’t improve until I used that break in the afternoon to hike in the woods by myself. At first, it was like going AWOL from Buddhist Boot Camp; a place where the Dharma police couldn’t find me. But by the second walkabout I was shocked to realize that was impossible. Even though I wanted to tune out, I couldn’t not be aware of what was going on inside of me and around me.

The confusion, questions, and pain of the year still rose to the surface. But now I could just be with them instead of hiding or tweeking. I was able to investigate the feelings and then let them go. Once I let some go, it left room to look at the other stories of my life- joyful, painful, hilarious and strange-then let those go, too. In the past, I thought freedom from those sticky thoughts came from willing them away. In fact, it comes from meeting them head on and developing a sense of altitude and perspective. It was like playing a really emotional game of Connect the Dots. I was working hard to make sense of it all, but this time I was aware that I was above the paper.

Boy, let me tell you…I walked out of Blue Cliff on the first day of 2008 like a bi-racial female version of Braveheart! “They can’t take away MY FREEDOM!” You know how Mel Gibson can barely handle that horse before the big battle scene but he still has the prunes to bring it to the British? That’s how 2008 felt for me…sans prunes of course. It wasn’t like I didn’t tweek from time to time, lots of times in fact. But I had faith that whatever came up I could somehow handle and make useful. Even if I couldn’t at that moment, I only had to remember to be patient with myself and make room for it as I moved forward. Knowing even that much made for a rewarding, exciting, exhausting year.

Now at the beginning of 2009, I find that it’s gotten much quieter up in these parts. I don’t know if it’s the concentration required to write a book, or something bigger like the emotional thrombosis the entire world seems to be going through right now because of this recession. Either way, it’s a pretty thoughtful time for me which turned to melancholy in the last days of 2008.

I was hopeful that Blue Cliff would provide another ecstatic inner shake-up. But it was different. There were only about 20 other retreatants there, as opposed to the 70 or 80 at the first retreat. The days were far more open since this wasn’t a formally scheduled retreat. It was more of an invitation to stay with the Brothers and Sisters for a few days. The Mindfulness Bell was moved to a different tree, and there was a brand new meditation hall. It became clear pretty quickly that this was not going to be a re-broadcast of Sarah’s Rockin’ Spiritual New Year’s Eve. I was a little disappointed that I wouldn’t be speaking in tongues this year, but at least there was some down time to write a little in the new space. I mean, honestly..there are worse places to write.

I wish I could figure out the stupid settings on my camera so you could really feel the size of this building. Is that panorama or something? How do you capture the view behind the altar of the valley that goes on forever …backlighting? If I could find the scratch and sniff function you would smell the new lumber and incense from the morning meditation session.

You know what, I should have just used the video camera. You can see how those mobiles above the altar turn so, so slowly. I also would have caught the two or three people who trickled in to practice on their own. You would have seen friends doing morning stretches in one corner of the hall, and an adorable couple practicing ballroom dancing moves in another. And in the third corner, you would have found me with a brown blanket around my shoulders hunched over my laptop.

We would cut to me in the center of the hall meditating, or just lying down and looking up…thinking. Eventually we would get to me standing in front of that window for I don’t know how long trying to process how much had changed in a year. 2008 began with me sitting in the middle of the woods feeling and organizing the end of some long, sad stories. All of that work brought me to this huge warm space with just enough decoration to direct my eyes forward into the amazing landscape ahead; the beginning of a new story.

There are definitely challenges ahead, but I’m starting in a much steadier place-from right here and now. I received some wise advice from a couple of industrious baking elves. Between what’s happening now and what’s to come, there is all of this magic in the middle.

Alright, this entry is bordering on Benjamin Button length territory. (I enjoyed the movie but weren’t you slightly terrified that he would start getting older again and we would all be stuck in Benjamin’s space/time problem?!) But I have to ask you to indulge me for like two more minutes. When I thought of what the title of this entry should be, I remembered this song from “Into the Woods”. If you’re not a musical theater fan and never care to be, I swear this is the only time I will ever make you do this! You don’t even have to watch the opening lines, just start at 1:20 or so. All you need to know is the Baker’s Wife is lost in the woods trying to avoid a giant, runs into a prince and has a one-time affair. Boom, done. The bizarrely perfect lyrics will do the rest, trust me.

Happy, Happy, HAPPY New Year to everyone.