(Part 1 is here)

Imagine a world… a world in which you get to finish a thought. Several thoughts. A world in which your day doesn’t start out with a bombardment of finding out who wants what via email, doesn’t have multiple people during the day asking you, “Can I ask you a question?”, and doesn’t have a child interrupting you with “Mommy/Daddy! Look! Look! Look!” A day without phones ringing, email beeps, text chirps, or any electronica at all. No newspaper, TV, or reading of any kind. In fact, a day without speaking to anyone or being spoken to — times seven. That was my week of silent retreat.

And to say it was lovely is an understatement. For the first time, I was in a group of 84 people who did not know my name, were not going to know it, and I wasn’t going to have 84 other people saying, “You’re from Texas? What a long way from here!” (it was in Massachusetts), or “What a fascinating job you have!” and then give me their health history and ask for nutritional advice. It was kind of bizarre, really, to realize that you were actually dealing only with yourself, because then all sorts of interesting things came up.

Like my instant judgment of people — not without some reason, of course ;-) But how I would typically deal with that would be to interact with the person to see if they really WERE a jerk and then decide from there. But now I couldn’t do that, so Mr. Walks Heavy Like Elephant did not endear himself to me after a week of making the floorboards shake, and I wanted to slap the woman I saw give a completely annoyed look to an innocent person blocking her way, and say, “Hey! Remember we’re supposed to be practicing Loving Kindness?!?” There was Mr. Bangs Dinner Plates Unnecessarily, Man Who Huffily Thought I Was Cutting In Front Of Him For Dinner (I wasn’t), and Ms. Is It COMPLETELY Necessary To Wear Skin Tight Yoga Clothing? as well. I’m still struggling to let go of my judgments of them obviously ;-)

But what an unbelievable luxury it was to be able to rest so completely. I didn’t realize how much and how often people and noise don’t allow you to relax — I noticed this one day when I was lying on the bed in my room. The window was wide open for the breeze, and the door was open as well. But all I heard was birds and the sound of the wind in the trees — people were around, but nobody was carrying on some conversation, walking from one place to another, there was no music coming from other rooms, and no one “dropped by” to chat. I could just lay there in peace and quiet — it was amazing.

I realize I’m sounding rather antisocial, and it’s not that, God knows. But it really pointed out to me how often most of us can’t finish a thought and then we start calling that ADD, when really, it’s mostly just that we’re never not distracted. When have we ever been trained to focus?

We meditated (if you chose to) multiple times a day, and did walks, and rested, with the request that we not have brought reading material (another distraction), which meant that you were really with yourself, 24/7. Which for some people brought up lots of shit, but for me, I’ve worked through a lot of that stuff, which allowed me to just practice the meditations, and think. And think I did — I solved several problems, had several insights, and am already trying to figure out how to go back.

I’ve told my staff that if they want a happy Marlene, I’m going to need to do something like that a couple of times a year AT LEAST!

Insight Meditation Society —Barre, Massachusetts. Five stars for sure.