Silent retreat

I have attended several four-day silent retreats on the Toco coast, facilitated by the Foundation for Human Development. At each retreat, designed for centring spiritual contemplation, participants did not speak to each other or look into each other’s eyes (also considered a form of communication). We were required to remain aware of the presence of others, but pass time in personal, non-physical-interactive reflection – walking around the grounds, spending time on the private bay, reading, sleeping, journalling and meeting twice daily for a guided centring meditation. At meal times we ate in silence, then wordlessly helped to clear the tables and wash and dry the dishes.

While some, like me, relish the opportunity for extended silence and willingly dive into its deep pool of mystery and treasures, others find it challenging.

Some people have expressed horror and discomfort whenever I told them of the retreat, stating that their love of talking would prohibit them from participating in anything that required prolonged silence. Not being able to speak to anyone at will or at length or to indulge in self-distracting activities would be torture.

After each retreat, I always had the sense of knowing the other participants more than if we had spoken. Upon meeting for the first time, silence inevitably replaced the usual mundane questions: “What’s your name?” “Where do you live?" “What do you do for a living?” Answers to those questions can slot people into boxes and inspire assumptions based on career, address/area, surname and other societal labels. The vibrations emanating from each other were all we had to go by.

On one of these retreats I was walking along the shoreline collecting heart-shaped pebbles (which I often find in abundance). One of them was unique: cream-coloured with a network of brownish-red lines like capillaries. I had never seen such a stone. I took a picture of it resting in the palm of my hand, our lines merging in colour and pattern. Despite its rare appearance, I decided not to keep it and threw it, along with the other heart-shaped stones, into the ocean when I was ready to leave the bay.

Two days later, after spending time outdoors, I returned to the bedroom and saw something resting on my pillow. To my surprise it was the unique heart-shaped stone I had thrown into the sea.

I accepted its reappearance without question. In my experience, simple yet somewhat inexplicable events and realisations can occur when one has the opportunity to spend more time with "Spirit," where all things feel possible.

In the words of Sufi Mystic Muhmad Shabistari, from his poem The Beloved Guest (from "The Secret Rose Garden"):

"Cast away your existence entirely

For it is nothing but weeds and refuse.

Go clear out your heart’s chamber;

Arrange it as the abiding place of the Beloved.

When you go forth, He will come in

And to you with self discarded

He will unveil his beauty."

When the retreat was over (and we could talk again) a friend who was also attending the retreat and who knew my proclivity for finding heart-shaped objects told me she had been walking along the shoreline, saw the stone and thought it looked like it was for me.

Amazed that the sea had churned it back up for her to find, I was reminded of the quote:

“If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.”

After those retreats of collective silence, returning to "normal" life, with its talking and doing, felt strange. So much about "the outer world" seemed unnecessary, like the "weeds and refuse" of Shabistari’s poem. So nourishing were the treasures of inner conversation, deep connection and resulting inner-outer peace and harmony.

This lockdown reminds me of those silent retreats – torturous for some, heavenly for others. I (and many others I know) have relished the slower, quieter, more reflective energy of the world and, across the physical-distancing chasm, have deepened connections with self and other in alternative, compassionate and meaningful ways.

Life, with its undiscovered fathoms, is an ocean, waiting for us to throw our hearts into it – not fearing "loss," but trusting that whatever is ours will be given.

Let us acknowledge and nurture what we have gained in this time of global withdrawal, coming out of it not to the world we knew, but to a world that’s new.