#notetoself
be still, be silent, be aware. My trip is winding down, with only three more weeks left. In the coming days, I’ll be traveling back to Granada for a ten-day Vipassana meditation retreat. Ten days of ten hours of meditation. Nine days of silence. No reading, no writing, no eye contact, no talking –except to the teacher for a short allotted time with questions regarding the method. Extreme? Perhaps, but you might already know that I’m into that sort of thing. With no prior hiking experience, I did summit a steep and active volcano. More than anything I’m really excited about silence and being in an environment where the expectation is completely different than any other environment I’ve ever been in for an extended period of time: we will respectfully ignore each other to be in our own world and allow everyone else to be in theirs. Beautiful. Often times, we feel guilty, or are even made to feel guilty, for needing to disregard the presence of others to tend to ourselves. To be able to do that in community just feels amazing. Of course, I say that now though. It’s still an idea at this point. There is no shortage of testimonials about people wanting to quit, even monks and the guy who popularized the method wanted to walk out after a few days. But ten? Okay. I can do it. There will be no distractions, other than the ones the mind creates. No internet, telephone or any of the things I currently use to distract myself. “Interesting” might likely to be the best word to describe what’s about to happen. Once again, I’m reminded of how fortunate I am just to be able to participate in such an event. While it’s free (Vipassana is donation-based and first-time attendees are encouraged not to donate), I have the time. And how fortunate I am to be able to conclude my time in Central America with nearly two weeks of extremely personal time. Be still, be silent, be aware. The wisdom that will arise is infinite and deserves attention. It’s so easy to distract ourselves, even when we’re well-intentioned and seeking to grow. Probably especially when we’re well-intentioned and seeking to grow. There’s a dark side to the light chasers. Don’t run from it though. Apparently, what you resist persists. Our journeys will inevitably include rough patches. We will experience resistance from our internal and external worlds. In addition to gaining social skills, we’ve got to learn to master the ability to tune into our own frequencies and communicate with our intrapersonal world. Be courageous. This journey isn’t always fun, easy or beautiful. Yet, always worth taking. love&light…
leandra
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Sometimes we all forget how great we are. Sometimes we get caught up in our fears, our circumstances, our egos, our conditioning…whatever. It happens. But then there’s always that calm voice in our heads or steady urging in our hearts, gently directing us towards our greatness. It may require actions we don’t want to take. It may require breaking out of the mold of our lives. It may require us to stretch and rearrange ourselves to become more of ourselves. But we don’t always know that. We can’t always see it and we don’t always remember that this is life’s process. Echoing that voice or that tug in your heart are brief #notetoself messages, delivered weekly. These are literally my own notes to myself that I know others can relate to. They’re just what we need. A little pep…because everybody needs a cheerleader.
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