In mid-November I checked into a convent and took a 48-hour vow of silence. No personal crisis precipitated this, just an interest in the whole concept of silence retreats, and being silent, and curiosity about what I could learn from the experience. Would I hear the voice of God? That was my ultimate question.
The retreat I did was a guided one, which meant that I had a once-a-day liturgy with a group of other retreatants and a once-a-day one-on-one spiritual direction session. Due to a mixup with my contact info, I didn't get the retreat pack in advance, like everyone else, so when I arrived on Friday afternoon, I had no clue what was actually going to happen. I asked the directors whether the void of information was part of the experience, like a pre-test. They laughed and said no, and apologized. I said no problem, it's good for me.
Aside from not speaking, we also practised modesty of gaze, which doesn't mean that you should be modest, but that you shouldn't make eye contact with anyone. This is because saying hi and smiling at someone are basically the same thing, and they are contacts that are forced on people and the kind of thing people go on retreat to get away from.
I loved this. I am a real hi-sayer and smiler. It drives Rara nuts sometimes. She complains, "Why do you have to say hello to every stranger you see?" Not doing this really felt like being on social holiday. I felt like I had a special privilege, like a child who is excused for not responding to an adult's question because her mother knows she's shy and wants to protect her. I was in no way responsible for making the other people around me happier. And no one was offended by my surliness, because I had an "in silence" sticker on my sweater. It was like being invisible, in the best possible way.
What do you do all day when you can't talk or listen to anyone, can't read or go online or watch television, have no work that must be done, no classes to attend and nobody to take care of? Well, you drink a hella lot of tea, for one thing, and spend a lot of time at each meal. You go for walks, but not off the grounds of the retreat centre, because your "in silence" sticker may not be understood and respected on the outside. You can walk the labyrinth, and do other spiritual practises like meditation and prayer. You can go to the 24-hour art studio and make some shitty art with wild abandon. You can nap, think, write in your journal, and float in the warm pool. And that is about it.
I slept more than usual, which is strange since I didn't have a sleep deficit when I went in. Probably I was just sleeping because I could. I practised calligraphy and found that I knew how to do it. I remembered that my grandma taught me how when I was very small.
I was taking a weekly drawing classes on Thursday evenings at the university during this time, and I could have done lots of drawing that weekend, but something stopped me. I think I wanted to bring as little of the outside in with me as possible. So I specifically did not do realistic pencil drawings( what I was studying ) while I was there. Instead I did abstract pastels, which I've never done before and I have no skill at. It was pretty fun.
I guess the idea behind stripping away the distractions of day-to-day life is that these distractions prevent us from really knowing and understanding ourselves. They prevent us from being able to adequately assess our lives, our choices, and our mental health and they prevent us from making choices that we can trust. In my own life, this manifests itself in a few ways.
1) Busyness, what is called "an insane schedule", or "an insane week" or whatever, can overwhelm me to the point where I feel like I hate my life. But in reality, my life is awesome, and the busyness itself is my only real problem.
2) Or, the busyness can be enjoyable and distracting in a pleasant way, making me overlook things that aren't good in my life. In reality, there's something wrong that I'm not dealing with but I'm able to forget about it most of the time because of the busyness.
3) If I manage to identify some problem that I need to deal with, and I make a decision that I think will help me deal with this problem, when it comes time to actually implement the decision ( which usually requires some sort of big change or self-discipline or doing something that is hard to do ) I weaken and second-guess the decision, thinking that the process I used to reach it was flawed in some way, or I was tired or depressed when I made the decision, and that it doesn't have value.
The silent retreat solved all of the above problems. 1 and 2 were obviously not issues when I was on retreat. Busyness was not really an option. I suppose I could have undermined myself and "cheated" and done things to fill my 48 hours, but I didn't, so I was able to reach clarity about my life and assess it. And guess what? I realized that I am profoundly happy. In the group time I actually said this, that all of my so-called problems ( e.g. my marriage is troubled, my career is going nowhere, my kids are bratty ) are imaginary , and I only believe in their existence when I am exhausted or stressed. So the true problems are exhaustion and stress and I can make changes to fix those. Especially since they are entirely self-inflicted.
The retreat solved the third problem too, because I made some choices ( about how to reduce exhaustion and stress and make sure my day-to-day life reflects what I truly value, etc. ) that weekend that I really trust. So, in the actual execution of these choices that has happened since the retreat, when I've thought "Oh man, was this REALLY what I thought was the wisest course of action? This is too hard!" I've always ended up sticking to the decision, because I know that that weekend I was wise. Everything else was stripped away and I could just listen to my own inner voice ( and the voice of God? ) and that I had clarity and I knew what was the right thing to do. If I had decided that weekend that I should only ever wear black socks ever again, then I think I probably would do it!
The thing that surprised me a little and spoke to me a lot was how much I missed my kids those two days. I've been away from them plenty and never missed them like I did those two days at the retreat centre. So there was a lot of information in that, too.
