Part One: The Initiation

I am going to start at this present moment and then go back to the beginning. This is going to be a story in multiple parts.

I am currently sitting outside of my own cabaña at Balanjuyuc Cabañas in Mazunte, Mexico. My cabaña sits atop a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. There is a nearly full moon obscured by a cloud. Waves are crashing into a rocky shore beneath me. A long stretch of beach flows to the left. To the right is Punto Cometa, a long natural point with the best views of the sunset, where I just returned from my choir practice. As of this evening, I am a temporary member of El Coro De La Cometa, a group led by a French man who plays Roma music and has decided to give singing classes every Mon, Wed, and Fri at sunset on the point. When he asked how long I would be staying, I said I did not know. He said I’d be here a month then.

But, how did I get here?

For over a year now, I have been flirting with the idea of going on a 10-day silent meditation retreat. I know it is somewhat of a surprise that I would be interested in such a thing. I love talking. I love eating. I love a good beer. I have barely succeeded at meditating for 10 minutes. I love taking action and planning. I love a lot of things that do not coincide with 10-days in strict silence. Still, I am always interested in finding more ways to stay calm and less stressed in my life. And raised as a Unitarian, I have a questioning spirit. In the past, I have found spirituality in my intensive figure skating practice. Then, I connected with a new level when I biked across the country. I believe committing to practices that push your limits and force new patterns into your normal way of being are incredibly important to grounding and growing one’s self and spirituality. Part of the YOOT is developing practices and self-knowledge that can help me maintain a more balanced life moving forward. So that when I go back to law school and the intensity of the goals I commit to in my professional, scholastic, and personal lives, I will also maintain a rhythm that is more sane and healthy. I know it is a lofty ideal. But, it is worth striving for now.

So, with the time to try a meditation retreat this year, I set the intention. My initial plan was to do a Vipassana Retreat outside of Chicago. I have many friends who have completed Vipassana retreats, hence giving me confidence it would be a positive experience. I signed up for one in January, but then my best friend, Zacahariah, from Colorado College who has spent the last year and a half in the Peace Corps in Moldova had an interview in NYC. I could not pass up the opportunity to see him.

So, I forewent the meditation retreat and decided I would do the one I had researched in Mexico.

Prior to the New Year, I e-mailed the place to inquire about both their meditation retreat and yoga retreat. I heard back and they said to get in touch after the New Year to confirm, but that it would be possible for me to come. So, on January 2, I e-mailed. I heard nothing. Two weeks later, I e-mailed again. Still nothing. Another few days, I sent another e-mail. I scoured the website for a phone number, but found none. Still, I was not deterred. My friend had a friend who spent a month there and assured me it existed and was legitimate. I decided to just show up. The website said it began on February 3^rd, so I decided that I would take a Suburban (a big 12 passenger van) out to the coast on the afternoon of the 2^nd.

Sitting in seat three between Jaime, a fisherman from the coast who spoke some English and loved the Beatles, and another older Mexican man, I braced the roof of the vehicle for the 6 windy, mountainous hours it took to get from Oaxaca to Potchutla. When the discomfort overwhelmed me, I would picture the ride as an extended roller coaster, better than even those at Cedar Point. Or, I would imagine Jaime, my other neighbor, and me playing that game where you squish the person on the end every time you go around a bend, screaming and laughing together. But, that was inside my head. On the outside, I smiled and apologized when I’d accidentally bump into them, which happened nearly every 2 minutes. So eventually, I just smiled.

When I arrived in Pochutla, I got a taxi to Mazunte. My taxi driver quickly became my friend. He was the best Spanish teacher I have had yet. He would listen to me struggle and then speak slowly back to me in Spanish what I meant to say. I wish I could have rode around with him for a week. I think I would be nearly fluent after that. I explained to him that I was not sure if there would be a place for me at the retreat. I asked him to wait for me when we got there so I could talk to the people. He said he had a place to take me if it did not work out. He offered to take me there first. Maybe I should have said yes.

Instead, I arrived to the retreat center just as dinner was starting. I met Ana, the organizer, who looked shocked and a little rattled to see me. She wasn't exactly emitting the zen-like energy one would expect from a retreat center. But, she was organizing, and I know how that can be, so I decided to not react. They had just finished the mandatory orientation, and she had just given away the last tent. Hmmm… tents are the accommodations? I took note. Still, she was determined not to turn me away. So, I reluctantly bid my cab driver farewell, and decided to surrender to this experience.

As Ana hemmed and hawed about how to accommodate me, a fellow retreater approached us. He offered to let me use his sleeping bivy for the night. That would give her time to get me another tent from her house to sleep in for the rest of the retreat. So, I spent my first night on a terrace outside of the meditation hall, zipped up in a bivy with a mosquito net cover. I slept relatively peacefully as long as I avoided imagining the sack suffocating me which would instantly result in a brief breathing panic.

The next morning, I awoke to a terrace full of meditators and a gong. The silence had begun. I shuffled my stuff down stairs, grabbed my journal and joined the morning worshippers. I wrote my 3 morning pages to prepare my mind for what was to come. Soon, I was sitting on a yoga mat and a pillow at station 26. The room was full of 32 women and 24 men. Together, the nearly 60 of us were to exist in silence for 10-days with the following rules:

• No talking, eye contact, communication of any kind
• No reading
• No electronics
• Abstinence
• No touching
• No caffeine, drugs, alcohol
• Vegan, healthy food

Here is the first reflection I wrote after the first two hours of meditation:

“I am feeling stressed about my sleeping conditions. All this time to meditate, and be still. I am reminded of whoever that was—the hierarchy of needs. It is hard to reach a higher state of peace without food and shelter taken care of. I arrived late—after the orientation, and the orientation was supposed to be mandatory. So I wonder, maybe I should not have been let in. Maybe they should have said no. But, they didn’t and there is a reason I am here.”

So, I ate my puffed grain, fruit and coconut-almond milk. And I tried to have trust that everything would be just fine. I took notes. I listened intensely. I looked in and asked “Who am I?” I bared witness to my thoughts without reacting. I gave everything to that day, and settled into my first night sleeping in a tent on a hilltop.