Hey y’all, it’s KimBoo! I’m an author and a podcaster who is also a librarian, text technology historian, and former I.T. project manager. I write about a lot of interesting things, I hope you agree! Please consider supporting me so I can keep throwing errata & etcetera into the Scriptorium!
At the start of August, I spent ten full days at a meditation retreat in rural Georgia. I spent those days without interacting with anyone directly, without my phone or computer, without music, without books, without journals to write in.
It sounds so spartan when put that way, but the meditation retreat was very full in its own way. I’ve had people ask me if it was fun or if it was enjoyable, and the answer is a resounding NO. It was neither of those things.
What it was, though, was beneficial.
The reason I signed up for it was not to learn how to meditate (something I’ve been doing regularly since I was a kid) but to just get away from the high stress world I live in, with all the incumbent political crises and dopamine addiction and cortisol spikes. And I know, I could have just taken ten days at a resort and put my phone in the room safe, but I did not think that would be enough to really unplug myself from all the ambient anxiety and tension.
I’d still want to talk to people, to engage in activities like reading and writing, and find a way to keep up with current events. Look, I’m in my mid-50s, I know myself pretty well at this point. Even a spa resort would not do the trick, no matter how many hot stone sauna baths I took.
But a meditation retreat is actually pretty busy, believe it or not. It’s just busy in a very different way than most of us are used to being busy.
A vipassana retreat is very intense, and exhausting. For the first couple of days it might even be painful, as you train your body to sit still for 6+ hours a day. The first few days were a blur for me as I mostly napped in between meditation sessions, and at the end of the day I would fall into bed and drift off to sleep almost immediately.
Which meant that I had no opportunities to be bored or to hunt around for distractions. The lack of external stimulation combined with the internal effort to meditate for extended periods of time meant my brain could, for a change, decompress.
It’s hard to explain but I describe it as returning to factory settings. There are classes at the retreat, but they were exceptions to the rule of silence, something to look forward to at the end of the day. Otherwise, it was tranquility and a huge, empty space where the demand for stimulation used to live. By day five I was simply, easily at peace, going with the flow and very present in my body.
That is a state of being that is possible to attain in our regular, work-a-day lives, sure, but it is extremely demanding to maintain and real life always seems to muscle in.
For ten days, I did not have anything demanding attention: no emails, no breaking news, no text messages, no social interaction. The result was a clean sweep of distractions, and (eventually) ego.
Did it last, when I returned to the outside world? No, of course not. But what has stuck with me is the mental tranquility of possibilities, of being open to experiencing the present moment as I exist in it. I also know the world exists without my constant vigilance. I can “tune out” for an hour or a week and everything will continue and be ready to reabsorb me when I return to it.
(All that said, it sure was nice to be able to listen to music again. I think of all the things I never want to willingly give up again, is it music. I honestly did not consciously realize how much of my day is shaped by the music I listen to, and that’s made me want to learn how to play an instrument again.)
I know some people chase after enlightenment, or something like it, but I prefer a simpler life. It was enlightenment enough to live within the most fundamental kind of simplicity for ten days, rediscovering my creativity and inspiration and sense of belonging in the world.
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