The Surface and The Depths

As I prepare for a two week solitary retreat, I notice all of the distraction techniques that the other practioners are using to avoid a confrontation with the nucleus of their issues.  For the last two days people were creating all sorts of dilemmas to occupy their head space.  One man was digging into the racism present at the center naming various culprits, another was listing all the reasons why his job was the hardest pointing out that no one else had any work ethic, another was resurfacing last year’s debate on how to keep the road in decent shape blaming others for not sticking to decisions that had been made, while someone else was burying herself in party planning and sexual conquests. 

 

My first reaction was to get angry with them for creating their own misery and to try to get them to see clearly.  Then I realized that this was my own way of distracting myself.  I was so worried about how everyone else was behaving that I didn’t have time to look at myself.

When I stopped to examine my own mental state, I realized that I was excited but apprehensive about the upcoming retreat.  There is nothing easy about sitting with your own mind for 14 days without any distractions to remove pressure.  I did a 10 day Vipassana retreat and it was one of the hardest confrontations with self I've ever experienced.  On day 8, I was literally ready to escape the center claiming that the practice was pure torture.  Because all of our misery is created within our own mind, it can be a scary place to visit. 

In daily life, we constantly create distractions to take our focus away from the fears and sorrows lurking in our subconscious.  We work, play, drink, watch movies, and find all sorts of mundane issues to complain about.  All of these things occupy the surface layer of our mind keeping it just busy enough so that it doesn’t notice what’s swimming in the dark water below.

A silent meditative retreat removes all of these helpful distractions and leaves us sitting face to face with our real issues.  Everybody at the center was simply using these petty complaints and activities as life rafts keeping them floating above the depths of their minds.  

I now had more compassion for all of their negativity realizing that those who find the most things to complain about are probably the ones with the deepest troubles.  I let their complaints roll over me like marbles on a wood table knowing that they weren’t the real issue.  It was time for all of us to leave our life rafts behind and delve into the depths of our minds.