spiritual retreat

DIVINE TRUTHS AND HOLY CHOICES

The significant question of the day: What does my soul tell me are Divine truths and am I living in harmony with all that I know to be holy truths.

Today is the 5th and final day of my personal online spiritual retreat with Caroline Myss. There’s two more classroom sessions tomorrow and the next day. We were instructed to arrive with no expectations. I had none. At this very moment I can’t really articulate what it is that I have learned or achieved. Wait, I do have one observation. I see or I now admit that all my chaos and distractions have been for the avoidance of facing/answering the difficult questions/situations/truths.

I am sure I am not alone in all of this. It is difficult to face our mortality. It is not death itself that I am afraid of. It is the journey, the process. How will I be able to cope with my mother’s leaving? That has been a possibility the winter before last. I felt as if I had died a thousand deaths of fright that time. It’s only when I accepted that possibility, that the fright passed. It’s much like falling off a tall building. I accepted that I was falling. I could land with a thud. I didn’t. It was a soft landing. My mother proved to be a tough cookie and is holding her own.

I hope I am stronger for the next round. I feel I am. I am standing tall, trying to face the truths of this life. They are the same for everyone. We are born, we live and we die. There’s no getting around that. But I do believe in a force greater than ourselves. I draw my strength from that. I’m feeling my ancestors blood in me. I’m hearing my grandmother’s voice. There is a Tian/heaven, she cried when she was imprisoned by the Communist in China. My grandmother survived having to kneel on gravel, having cold water poured over her head and people throw angry words and stones at her. I come from good stock.

I know right and wrong. I have always tried to walk the higher path. I am not sure that I have always succeeded. It is difficult to make the hard choices but I do. It is my nature. I cannot do otherwise. How else would I know if it’s worth it if I don’t make those choices?Life is hard. I suffer for it. We all suffer. What would life be without a hitch? It would be a big yawn, would it not?

I’m not sure if I had answered the question of the day. But it is more than enough for now.

 

 

 

HOLY SILENCE

I shed more of doing today to contemplate on what is holy within me. I survived without being connected and doing all the time. I tried just being with me today, observing what’s around me. It was not as difficult as I thought. It felt strange at times, especially in the morning. I like the quiet, the time before the world wakes. But it’s been a long time since I’ve just sat. I usually bury myself in a book. So on this day of purposedly entering into ‘holy silence’, I’m fidgety. How am I going to get there?

To settle myself, I did my morning qigong routine that I have abandoned in my busyness. Returning to the familiar movements eased my discomfort. In the flow came the memory of my trip to Halifax in 2002. I had experienced my holy silence on the campus of Mount St. Vincent University. I was looking up at the Motherhouse and the large cross on its top. I saw Jesus on the cross and I felt his warm arms around my shoulders. A silence fell around me but I could hear birds singing and the hum of a lawnmower in the distance. It was surreal.

Maybe it wasn’t what it was. It could have been just the stress of travelling on my own. It was strange how I ended up in Halifax and renting a car. I get lost alot, even at home. But I got to Mount St. Vincent without a hitch from the airport. Strange that I couldn’t figure out how to work the radio on my rented Kia. It took some effort to figure out the wipers, but under the duress of rain one night, I got lucky or a miracle. My week was driving in silence from Nova Scotia, across the Confederation Bridge into Prince Edward Island. It was a holy trip in holy silence. Only then, I had not been aware. Now I do. Hallelujah.

What did I do the rest of the day? I hung out, just being, sitting in my sanctuary on the deck, sipping tea. I watered the garden, making many trips filling the watering can with stored rainwater. I picked some beans and peas. I pulled some weeds. Then Sheba and I picked our raspberries. There was no hurry at all. I had no thoughts. I listened now and again to see if there was any incoming messages in the air. There was none. Only silence. Maybe they’re still on the way. I did realized while I was looking around that I have been living mostly in my head. I am in this physical world but I am not often of it – until today.

Today I let go of my usual ‘doingness’. I let go of the Internet and went into my Innernet to search what is holy within me.

 

 

 

BEYOND THE CHAOS

I am embarking on a journey of a mystic without a monastery. I’m walking the Camino Trail of my mind. Today I am contemplating the question: What is truly of value to me?  Have you given it any thoughts on it for yourself? It’s a difficult one. I’m glad to have the guidance of Caroline Myss and the company of hundreds of others like myself from around the world. We’re all travelling together in cyberspace. What a marvellous gift of technology in this energy age. I’m grateful.

For these 5 days, I’m shedding the outside world/influences/distractions as much as possible. I’m going deep within to meet the stranger residing there.  I will be happy to have arrived at the end as in Derek Walcott’s poem, Love After Love.

The time will come 
when, with elation 
you will greet yourself arriving 
at your own door, in your own mirror 
and each will smile at the other’s welcome, 

and say, sit here. Eat. 
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart 
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you 

all your life, whom you ignored 
for another, who knows you by heart. 
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, 

the photographs, the desperate notes, 
peel your own image from the mirror. 
Sit. Feast on your life. 

I am devoting today in examining the external distractions in my life. How much of what is in it is truly of value? How much is just distraction? Even though I am retired,  I have been so busy and occupied and unable to stop. Today, I stopped all the unnecessary busyness to go deep within myself. What is of value to me?

I’m still thinking on it. I am surprised that I could stop and be quiet and still. I am surprised to feel how restful it is to do so. I don’t miss the franticness of doing. I love the quietude, of deliberate slowness, of hearing my thoughts and the steady beat of my heart. I love having the time to walk Sheba in the late afternoon. Not to do just a quick poop run around the block but taking time to smell and chew grass. Then to sit on the bench in the park and gaze what is before me.

I’ve been very distracted and tired. I like the silence but need to be doing something all the time. My mind is always occupied with something and somewhere. I have deluded myself in thinking that I am in the present moment. But it is seldom here, in me and with me even though that is what I profess to strive for. I am fooled by myself because I am ‘creating’ painting, drawing, sewing. I can be/am distracting myself by all that as well as other things. I am distracted rather than being engaged when I read crime/mystery books.

So how do I come back to myself? I have to spend more slow days like today. Stop the busy doing. Pick raspberries with Sheba. Tend to the garden. It needs watering, weeding and harvesting. Maybe in the process, I will know what is truly of value to me.