3 crucial struggles you’ll face during a silent meditation retreat
You must be pretty deep in your Google game that you came across this Medium article. Checked out all of the local retreats and realised they’re too expensive? Read up on Suan Mokkh and realised it looks like heaven but it’s going to be a real challenge? Booked tickets to Thailand and are figuring out how to get to this monastery for registration day last day of the year, so you start the New Year on this note? Here’s what you’ll face regardless of a retreat and time of year.
A disclaimer before the trip you take, get yourself in the right mindset where you can rely on yourself to dissuade you from giving up. A list of motivations behind it, a mantra to repeat every day when it gets tough. Get to the right attitude so you start your resort in the ‘quitting is not an option’ mode, instead of ‘if I can’t stand it, I’ll…’
1. Whatever triggers you in your day to day life, will trigger you on another level in the silence.
Whether it’s getting up early or disorganised people – there’ll be no escape. You’ll need to go into the loving kindness zone and find it deep within you to forgive people for your own insecurities and triggers. Or the easier way out, you can have an inner chat and tell yourself the retreat will last a bit shorter if you get over the trivial annoyances. Because if you manage to get over the trivial at a peaceful resort, where you get the whole day to be bored, you’ll definitely not get triggered when you’re facing multiple things during the day.
Ways to cope: see number 2. Also, follow the same route you follow in real life, a list or a gratitude check in. A loving kindness meditation, for instance, where you think of a trigger person and imagine them happy and calm.
2. You’ll learn how to be an optimist or you’ll remain a quitter.
Quite a dramatic statement. To break it down, I’ll use an example of a fore and after thought. What might go through your mind: ‘no one’s here in time, which affects the group energy, that’s even more important here in silence’z After thought: ‘I come early because it’s when I focus best, so let me use these few extra moments to meditate a little longer’.
Ways to cope: when out of the meditation hall, see how you can apply this to a variety to real life situations you’d usually use to catastrophise.
3. You’ll either embrace the spiritual or deny it.
Half way through, I realised buddhism isn’t for me. Which meant, strategy number 2 had to be deployed in order for me not to give up on the main reason I attended the retreat – meditation.
Ways to cope: even if you realise your goal has changed, modify the experience towards the new goal. Then if this happens often to you, see if you can make a switch from ‘waste of time’ moments to ‘strategies towards a new goal’ tactics.
You’ll have plenty of silent time to evaluate each and every one of the struggles, so use it to begin with to notice the biggest triggers. And from midway point onwards to see how you’d apply the learnings to face the known, once the silence is over.
