Today You Are On A Worldwide Mindfulness Retreat

The majority of the planet has been forced into a mindfulness meditation retreat (whether they want to or not). When the best thing that we can do for the world around us is to stay home and limit our physical interactions, it feels like the world is inviting us to turn inward and become utterly aware of who, what, and where we are today. The world so rarely feels as “one day at a time” as it does right now.

In the past week and a half of social isolation, I slowly found myself getting to the mindset of the semi-silent meditation retreat I am so grateful to have been a part of this past September at Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center in the mountains of northern New Mexico. Though I am still doing my fair share of talking in physical form to my immediate family and in virtual form to family and friends, the practice of simply being aware, which I would learn is the essence of mindfulness, is coming back to the surface of my psyche like it did on the retreat. Maybe it is for you too.

We are forced to be aware of this truth everyday these days: “what can I do today to make the environment I’m in and the world around us a better place?” in addition to “where is a healthy place for me to put my attention?” I’ve been thinking that these are ultimately the questions of life, quarantine or not.

Perhaps it has never been more clear in our lifetimes that there is so much beyond our control, despite how much we try and fool ourselves in our daily lives that we know what is to come. All we can control is how we behave individually and how we choose to respond to our lack of control. Awareness… and how we respond to this awareness… is all we are capable of controlling (also whether we want to or not).

When there is so little to impede our awareness — no Starbucks orders to make, no train times to follow, no dinner reservations to be late for — awareness becomes more accessible. And as every meditation instructor will tell you, this enhanced awareness is the practice and gift of mindfulness, that doesn’t mean it’s easy. In fact, that is where so many challenges lie. But in turn, those same challenges can become gifts. As we become more aware of the world’s suffering, we become more aware of the world’s joys as well.

As the Zen teacher, Koshin Paley Ellison says, “How do we hold the beauty and the sorrow together?” That is the practice of mindfulness meditation and also the practice of life.

When I returned to civilization after the retreat this fall, it became so inevitably clear to me that our minds are natural complicators. Sometimes it feels like our neurons bend backwards to make sense of things that will never make sense at all, and only when I sat with myself in silence did I realize the lengths our mind will go. Our minds detest disorder, discomfort, and uncertainty, and today we have no choice but to sit with this trifecta.

The universe is inviting all of these natural foes of the human experience into each of our secluded houses, to become aware of them, even to sit with them, and practice dealing with them face to face. But the whole world is in it together.

Billions of bodies, hearts, and minds are quietly sitting with uncertainty. It is undoubtedly painful but it can also be heart opening if we let it. We are all sitting on the meditation cushion of planet earth with an itchy left ear and a sleepy right leg, uncomfortable, but so very intertwined. We are all in the belly of the beast together finding healthy ways to “be”, and is there anything more human than that?