I wanted to speak a little bit on bringing this retreat experience home with you.
The retreat ends soon. We’ll have packing time and final discussions and remarks.
We are lifting noble silence tonight at dinner until 9pm. Why? As we start to come out of retreat, we want some practice in re-engaging with our normal everyday lives. Also we want to give more time to get to know each other.
But the retreat isn’t over yet. But sometimes it starts unravelling early. So please keep your incredible discipline and engagement all the way through.
for Zoom folks…
So first piece of advice to whoever is actually doing the driving - Drive Slowly! 20, 30, 40 miles per hour is a LOT faster now than it was when you arrived.
Leave plenty of room between you and the next car. Leave the radio off for the first hour of the drive. Take it slow, go back to basics. Pretend you are trying to pass your drivers test again. Relax into it, but take it easy please.
If there is no one waiting for you when you get back, that’s great. Settle in back at home. Don’t turn on the TV or do the normal things you do when you get back.
[Natural Born Killers after retreat? Don’t do it]
Just take a few minutes to walk around your place and examine it with fresh eyes. Don’t worry if the sink is full of dishes or whatever. But this is a great time to think of any changes you want to make to your living situation. Even jot down a little list before you fall completely back into old routines.
If there is someone waiting for you, or many people, it’s a little trickier. They can’t help but wonder how the week has gone, how are you, what did you learn, all kinds of things like that.
The approach that works best for me is to smile, reassure them it was great, and keep it simple. You do not want to launch into an explanation of the five Buddha wisdoms and their corresponding blocked energy patterns, or start diagnosing your friends styles.
Tell them about the schedule of the day, the food, how incredibly amazing the teachers were, how the weather changed every day, etc.
Feel free to share all about the tangible aspects of the place.
If your friend presses you for more details on the meditations or your emotional state, feel free to share what you feel like, but also feel VERY free to just say “I’m still processing it actually. Give me a little time to settle back home and think about it more…” or something like that.
Also feel very free to say things like “I just learned all this new material, these new tools, so I’m not really up to regurgitating them back to you right now. Maybe in a couple of days.”
If they keep pressing, feel free to say “It sounds like you are really interested in meditation. That’s amazing. I’d recommend you do a retreat with Lama Liz up at WonderWell this summer…” That usually shuts them up.
If there are people there, but they don’t want to know how it went, etc. that’s perhaps disappointing depending on your predominant Buddha family, but it’s not worth making a big deal of now. Just proceed as if there’s no one there as I mentioned before. Maybe one of the changes you add to your list is to get rid of the person who wasn’t excited to see you come home… but that’s up to you.
So now you are successfully home and unpacked. The first thing I would do, if you don’t have a meditation spot already, is set one up.
You want a little room or corner of a room where you can sit about six or eight feet from a window or a wall. Hang a beautiful painting or poster on the wall. Put a box with candles, incense, photos, offering bowls, whatever you love and appreciate, and now you’ve got a shrine.
It does not have to be a big deal at all. But it’s extremely helpful to have a nook in your home where you can meditate.
And for the coming weeks, actually for the rest of your life, but let’s start with the coming weeks, meditate at least a little bit pretty much every day. So at least 15 minutes at least five days a week. Do the three naturals practice. Reconnect with the buddha families. Just make the effort to carry the experience of retreat back into your daily life.
Natural Dharma Fellowship has online meditations every Monday and Tuesday nights and at least one Sunday a month, so that’s a great way to stay connected to this sangha. Lama Liz is teaching this Sunday, “Forest Teachings Part V: What the Sky Paints: Discovering Life as Innate Expression (Hybrid)” so that will be great. www.naturaldharma.org.
Then, at some point, you will naturally start thinking about another retreat. I couldn’t help but notice there’s an amazing one coming up in person and online starting April 22th with the one and only Lama Liz Monson called “Resting in a Rain of Lineage Blessings ” so that sounds worth considering…
If you are looking for something bite sized, me and three friends teach and practice Tuesday and Thursday mornings, 9am to 930 with an optional discussion session afterwards. And Wednesday night 7pm. You can find out more at www.mindfulaware.com
Finally, if you aren’t already doing so, please consider supporting Natural Dharma Fellowship with a recurring donation via the website. All amounts help. If you want to talk with me about making a very very large donation, I’m happy to have that conversation.
In conclusion, transitions out of retreat can be tricky. So please take it slowly, cut yourself and your friends some slack, and enjoy the freshness that you can see your old life with.
thank you