Last week, I drove from Baltimore to Montreal for the sole purpose of retreating into silence with a group of six strangers. This was the third time in my life I have attended a silent retreat. The first time was for three days, the second was for ten, and this latest was for four. There is fairly wide agreement among those I meet that this is a strange and undesirable way to spend time, but I do not agree. Yes, it might be strange, but in fact, I can think of nowhere I would rather be. Having tasted the vastness of awareness that opens so easily in communal silence, I have found myself craving it, especially following busy times in my life. After my longest retreat at Santa Sabina, hosted by Richard Miller in the spring of 2007, I swore that I would never again miss that yearly opportunity to move into silence with a group of like-minded folks and gifted teachers. As 2008 arrived, I was given a work-study scholarship to the May Santa Sabina retreat, but I was unable to accept it due to a schedule overlap with final exams for my first semester as an adult student. I have since left the mainstream academic world of final exams, embarking on a self-directed study of contemplative practices at Goddard College. While studying contemplative practices it seemed to make sense to incorporate some personal contemplation and so I included this retreat, held in the mountains an hour east of Montreal. The retreat was lead by Joan Ruvinksy who I met, in silence, at Santa Sabina in 2007. Joan was one of many participants, in addition to Richard, who led practices during the ten days in Santa Sabina. What follows is an essay on this latest period of silence including a description of my understanding of the nondual teachings/philosophy as I’ve absorbed them from Richard and Joan, an overview of the practices used, and first-person observations of my experiences of contemplative communal silence.

THE “TEACHINGS”
As Joan puts it, on retreat “we meet in the paradox of apparent teachings,” apparent being the operative word. I come away from encounters with Joan and Richard with the sense that there is nothing to be sought. “Practice or don’t practice,” still there’s just this. Richard and Joan were both students of Jean Klein, a French doctor and chamber musician who, as they put it, “never took himself to be a teacher of anything.” What was offered by Jean Klein, and in turn by Joan and Richard, is a freedom from the need to be a student. There are no methods to learn, no practices to engage in with discipline or otherwise. There is nothing to believe or adopt. Nothing offered in their apparent teachings need be taken as truth, but instead, can be explored using a radical empiricism of first person experience. In my time with them, these apparent teachers have offered useful guideposts with great patience, described here as I currently understand them:

Doing happens, there is no doer.
Perceptions, thoughts, and actions arise, all within unbounded awareness. It is only after the fact that the story of self as controller is instantaneously and convincingly crafted to own the sensation, thought, or action. The moment of ownership presents an opportunity to return to presence. There is a palpable contrast in the global feeling tone when one takes ownership of an event arising in conscious experience. The first is a closing around the event and the second creates space around it. For example, when the event is the sensation of physical or emotional pain, the automatic framing is that I am in pain. In contrast, the framing of this sensory event as pain is arising feels different in the body. There is a space created when perceptions are free to arise within an expanded attentional field of awareness.

This too.
There are many ways in which meditation teachers encourage opening to the good and the bad in our lives, to all that is. The following Rumi poem is frequently evoked in yoga circles.

Guest House
This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

When we close the door to shame or malice, we are in effect saying no to the present moment. Byron Katie calls our closing to the chunks of life we don’t accept as arguing with reality. The practice Joan offers during these arguments with reality is the useful expression “this too”. I have found it most useful when I become aware of a ‘no’ and, in fact, have begun to cultivate the practicing of listening for no. Attending to these moments when we wish things were other than they are illuminates their pervasiveness. It’s easiest for me to catch the arrival of no when I’m in physical or emotional pain. The identification with pain and the subsequent no happen quickly in the wilds of life, but relaxing into this too opens the experience up and the pain appears as but one of a myriad of perceptions arising in the present moment. While on silent retreat, I have had experiences where it feels as if I’m practically swimming in no, but gradually, there appear cracks between the no’s and I am able to open to this too.

There is no separate self, no separate other.
The first time I heard Richard present this idea, he described meditating on a rose long enough to realize that you are the rose. “There is no separation,” he said. This was many years ago and at the time, my mind balked at the apparent illogic of it interpreting it as some sort of semantic gamesmanship in which separation of my self from the rest of the world was merely a matter of perception. I have since heard this premise of nondualism framed in many ways, some of which have appealed more to my thinking mind than others. More importantly, I have had first person experiences of this nonduality which can best be described as an opening into pure consciousness in which my own previously identified self, as well as the perceived other, were both arising. Put another way, moment to moment, my own embodied being provides me with the capability to perceive the portion of the world with which I am currently in contact, both inner and outer. All of these percepts, whether originating from inside or outside this body/mind are arising within pure consciousness, hence no separation. The trap often comes by assuming that we are the self we have become so firmly identified with.

Until I arrive at a better understanding and ability to articulate these non-teachings, I will simply note that I have found the combination of doing happens and this too provide an applied philosophy that translates well into engaged living outside of the protective cocoon of silent retreat.

THE “PRACTICES”
During retreats with my nondual guides, there are many practices offered, though each is presented as completely optional. This is not a nondual school of the zen variety. Discipline is neither demanded nor encouraged. The teaching lineage was never embraced by Jean Klein, and so lost, but it is known that these are tantric teachings rooted in Kashmir Shaivism. Though there are ancient texts available for study and modern Indian teachers who continue to teach this brand of nondualism, Joan warns of closing around cosmologies, practices, and doctrines. The following is a brief description of the practices employed during these silent retreats. The descriptions are not here to provide instruction of how one might perform them, but instead to provide context for the experiences presented later.

Kapalabhati
The morning practice on retreat begins with kapalabhati, sanskrit for skull shining breath. This is a breathing technique which incorporates a gentle but active drawing in of the abdominal muscles during exhalation and a passive relaxation of those same muscles on the inhale. Each breath cycle happens fairly quickly and is relatively shallow. Kapalabhati is considered a kriya, or purifying practice, done before other breathing techniques of pranayama (energy/breath work).

Alternate nostril breathing
Several forms of alternate nostril breathing practices are employed including nadi shodhana, viloma, anuloma, and pratiloma pranayama. These practices include various combinations/alternations of inhales and exhales through one or both nostrils. For instance, during anuloma pranayama (anuloma means “with the grain”) one inhales through both nostrils, exhales through the left while closing the right nostril with the thumb, inhales through both nostrils, and exhales through the right nostril while closing off the left with the ring finger.

Mudras
The word mudra in sanskrit means seal. Though many mudras are gestures that involve the whole body, the term is often equated with those gestures conducted using only the hands. A simple mudra most people are familiar with from images of meditating yogis is the cin, or consciousness, mudra in which the tips of the thumb and forefinger touch to form a ring and the remaining three fingers remain open. There are many mudras presented during the morning practices of these retreats. They can be done alone or in conjunction with the kapalabhati. Richard even teaches a sequence of mudras, one for each of the 29 syllables of the morning chanting of the Gayatri Mantra.

Yoga nidra
Yoga nidra is a form of meditation in which attention is directed to sensation, breath, feeling, thought, mental imagery, identity, and pure presence. One could contrast it with other types of still silent meditation that engage either open attention or sustained focused attention on a single object. In yoga nidra, attention is cycled through the body. In classical yoga nidra, this rotation of consciousness maps closely to that of the sensory cortex. Additional attentional exercises incorporate combinations of a large number of passive techniques, sequentially addressing each of the aforementioned realms of experience (breath, feelings, and emotions, thoughts, etc…)

Body sensing
The practice of body sensing appears to be unique to the students of Jean Klein. Body sensing could be thought of as yoga nidra in motion, bringing in the motor element missing in a still, supine yoga nidra practice. Body sensing is a moment to moment inquiry into unmediated sensation during movements that arise spontaneously. The language of the guide encourages the student to move effortlessly (or to notice the arising of a doer) with exquisite attention to sensation. Movement is invited to arise without will so that motion and sensation may be observed arising within an expanded field of attentional awareness. It is a practice that does not make much sense to the thinking mind but one in which the senses themselves come alive. The practice is heavenly for some and excruciating for others.

Partner gazing
This is a simple practice of using the eyes of another as the object in awareness. While it is quite simple, it can be a bit tricky. Many retreatants have described it as a difficult and uncomfortable practice during which self-consciousness, projections, judgement of self, and judgements of their partner arise. When one can relax into an open attention in which the perceptions of self and other arise within pure conscious awareness it can be a powerfully illuminating tool for dismantling limited concepts of separation. I have found this and other open-eyed meditation practices to be very effective techniques for guiding me fully into the present moment in which what arises is simply observed, not identified with nor projected onto the other. In contrast to the open-eyed sitting meditation technique of zen’s zazen, having an “other” with which to work illuminates moments in which the experience of self and other arise.

THE PROGRAM
Though I wanted to remain open to whatever the experience of four days of silence offered, the 650 mile drive through blazing fall color in the Catskills and Adirondacks gave me ample time to build up expectations. I was a bit concerned that four days was not enough time to settle into the silence but the first morning of awakening to the pre-dawn intoning of the tiny Tibetan cymbals called tingshas brought me right back to the slow oscillating, dynamic equilibrium of luxurious silence. Each day began with one hour of optional practice. This time is for one’s personal practice. The nondual tradition taught by the teachers with whom I’ve attended silent retreats is one that offers techniques as tools, not as disciplines. This non-dogmatic outlook attracts people from many different backgrounds and so all manor of personal practices might be in evidence during the first hour of the morning. Though I had planned to do my own, often lazy, hatha yoga practice, the stunning beauty of the mountain sunrise transfixed me and I spent every morning in the warm quiet kitchen, looking out the east-facing windows with a cup of black tea, milk, and sugar (ed. note On reading this essay, Joan pointed out that mountain-gazing is a yoga practice described in the ancient text, Vijnana Bhairava. Maybe I’m not as lazy as I think I am.)

At 7:30 a.m., the tingshas called the group together for morning practice. We began by chanting three rounds of the Gayatri mantra ( known as the celestial song of light), practiced kapalabhati with accompanying mudras, and pranayama followed by silent sitting meditation. Not that long ago, I would have read the preceding sentence and promptly labeled this whole business as suitable only for new agers. I consider myself lucky that my first yoga teacher was a former sales rep firmly rooted in western normalcy and that only later was I introduced to these practices in bits and pieces, never receiving a chunk large enough to be considered a threat to my supremely rational self. Even after several years of yoga classes, I was alarmed to learn that my yoga teacher training would include the presentation of something called “alternate nostril breathing.” Despite my trepidation, the practice, known as nadi shodhana, has become one of my go-to tools for dealing with stress, but I digress.

When the morning practice hour ended, we moved into our silent breakfast, free to do as we pleased until late morning when the group reconvened for body sensing and yoga nidra. In the past, body sensing has been the practice I most enjoyed while on retreat, but the first two days in Montreal it was especially difficult to do the practice. I simply wanted to be still. And who was stopping me? This is the kind of question that arises in experience hundreds of times a day during silent retreats, and once it surfaced in this context, I did, in fact, lay flat on my back during body sensing, with movements so small they could probably not be seen by an outside observer. As has been my experience in previous retreats, these micro-movements amplified the sensory volume to levels I have never before experienced, and allowed short durations of pure sensation, beyond thought, image, body awareness, or proprioception. It is the experience of unmediated sensation, and one that proves surprisingly elusive. It is difficult to illustrate to one who is currently engaged in reading but I’ll try, nonetheless. Once you read my suggestion, maybe you will take a moment to take a break from reading this essay to give it a try.

Close your eyes and bring your attention to the sensations arising in the inside of your mouth. As you shift awareness from left to right sides, top and bottom surfaces of mouth and tongue, upper and lower teeth, notice if you find yourself thinking about or visualizing these parts of your mouth. Continuing to explore sensations while softening the eyes away from mental images, softening away from thought and continue to experience the entire inside of your mouth as a mass of pure sensation arising in open awareness.

This is the kind of guidance offered during both body sensing and yoga nidra, which was our last practice each morning. From 10 to 11:30 we moved like glaciers through a long body sensing practice, took a 15 minute break, and returned for 45 minutes of yoga nidra. Since yoga nidra is most often practiced lying down and the long drive had taken its toll, I struggled to stay awake during the first two day’s yoga nidra practices and fell fast asleep almost the instant I got supine. Lunch following yoga nidra was a riot of sensation, further amplified by the freedom from the distraction of the social demands of speech. Our time was unstructured until the late afternoon where the group came together for 20 minutes of silent meditation followed by a check-in to share whatever was arising. This introduction of dialog was a bit hard to transition into and out of and I wished the plan had been to remained in silence for several days before engaging one another. The act of speaking was so heavily laden with the emergence of my own sense of “I”-ness that I was not able to fully welcome it at the time. In retrospect, the contrast it provided was illuminating and reminiscent of coming out of silence after my last, much longer, silent retreat at which time I was painfully aware of the reemergence of my own personality. The third day of the retreat, our afternoon dialog was replaced with partner gazing. Though I was disappointed in having only one day of partner gazing practice, we were able to sit with three different partners in succession, each providing new insights. Silence returned as we moved into the dinner break and the evenings were spent chanting and reading poetry.

Each night I went to bed the moment the evening gathering ended at 9 p.m., falling quickly to sleep.

THE INSIGHTS
I’m afraid my insights will read like the nonsense William James found upon emerging from a seemingly insightful nitrous oxide episode. Everything he wrote down to capture the “fire of infinite rationality” turned out to be “meaningless drivel.” So it goes. What follows are random observations of what arose during the retreat, in no particular order.

Being elsewhere. For the first few days I found that each time I began to settle in and enjoy the silence I was pulled elsewhere. It was as if an epiphany or simply a good feeling was being co-opted by my personality, projecting it into the future and attempting to figure out how I could possess this good feeling and trot it out whenever I desired. My insights during these first few days just as often projected me back in time, eliciting judgements of how my ignorance preceding this wonderful new knowing were evidence of my lack of fitness as a meditation and yoga teacher. The tyranny of my identity became grossly apparent.

Dynamic equilibrium. I awoke during the middle of my first night to the sense that I was experiencing, in real-time, the firing of synapses, a sparkling network of transmission and feedback echoing like sound waves in a cave. It felt as if I could sense the interference patterns evolve into a steady state of softly oscillating patterns. The theme of oscillation continued throughout the retreat, fed by readings in the ancient text The Spanda-Karikas (The Divine Creative Pulsation). Pulsation, or as I was experiencing it, a dynamic equilibrium of gentle oscillation, was evident as subject and object repeatedly emerged and merged. This happened in partner gazing, during body sensing, and while just sitting focused on nothing, as my rods and cones tired and colors and shapes became only dimly present amid spreading ripples of dim and light not unlike those one often sees with tightly closed eyes. Once I began to settle into this experiential playground of openness in which all perceptions were heightened, though not necessarily distinct, it became harshly apparent when the tyrants of I, me, and mine arose to ruin the fun. This too.

The gap. As we sat with closed eyes during the morning meditation, there was an abrupt and fairly loud sound. During that afternoon’s dialog, Joan described how in the stillness of the morning’s meditation, a gap opened up between the sensation of sound and the formation of its resulting perception/realization that a bird that had just flown into the large window of our meeting place. I too have noticed the formation of these gaps between sensation and perception, but during this retreat, I was aware more often of the simultaneity of the two occurrences. Perhaps with a few more days of silence I would have once again witnessed the slowing of time and the opening of such a gap, but my predominant experience on this retreat was one of perception as a reminder to revisit the echo of sensation, attempting retroactively to experience it in a form unmediated by thought.

The power of an ‘other’. In keeping with my earlier experiences on retreat, partner gazing turned out to be a powerfully illuminating practice. My first two out of three experiences were full of the oscillations between self emerging and merging. The sense of “I” emerging was accompanied by inner dialog. In fact, inner dialog is often a reminder for me to sense back to the ground in which the dialog is arising. My sit with a third partner was similar to an experience I had at Santa Sabina. While this experience was not accompanied by the slowing of respiration that occurred in 2007, it did have a similar immediacy of presence. These moments are difficult to describe. It felt like sense domains softened and blended together and the air itself becomes more substantial as if thick and palpable, having texture and sound. In my earlier experience at Santa Sabina, this perceived thickness pervaded even cognition, as the thought process slowed enough so that the formation of thoughts themselves could be witnessed in realtime. An interesting paradox considering the simultaneous sensation of real-time immediacy, as if there was no lag between stimuli and perception.

Hypnogogic <-> Hypnopompic. When setting up for yoga nidra practice on the third day I chose to sit up. I wanted to stay awake during the practice but within minutes I found myself zooming down through the hypnogogic state at the edge of sleep. Since I was sitting up, the swaying of my head brought me back up through hypnopompic state that usually accompanies the transition from synchronized sleep to wakefulness. Following the practice I was puzzled and a bit frustrated that I had not heard a word that Joan said. Only much later, once I had returned from Montreal, did I realize what an interesting experience it had been since we normally have only one opportunity each day to experience each state and when going to sleep at night we are rarely aware enough to observe the transition. During that forty minute practice, I’d passed through both the hypnogogic and hypnopompic states, however briefly, about 20 times. In fact, it felt as if I was oscillating steadily between the two states. The phenomena present at the moment of ascension when full awareness returns is very much like that described in the previous description of immediacy of presence. As if reality is simple more real and completely unadulterated by thinking.

In the days since my return to interactive life it’s been difficult to sustain even glimpses of this unadulterated realness. The first few days I awoke early and continued the hour of morning practices but the perception of a self that needs to do things has whittled away more and more of the time allotted to just sitting. There are books to read, papers to write, classes to teach and the ownership of doing is returning so much more quickly than I’d hoped. While on retreat, the morning’s progression from darkness to sunrise was my most consciously open time of day. It was the time of day during which my oscillations between separation and union were at their slowest. It is also the time when, now home, I am most able to sustain the quickly fading insights of silent retreat. The sense of self as doer is back and any thoughts on when/if I will ever come to reside in just this is yet another attempt to hang on to the wondrous experience of being at play in each moment. This too.

if the shoe fits…

luftmensch (luft·mensch)
Function: noun
: an impractical contemplative person having no definite business or income
Etymology: Yiddish luftmentsh, from luft air + mentsh human being

There are precious few moments of silence in this life. So rare are the places we can find it, that some people complain of its deafening nature when stumbled upon, that it is too quiet to tolerate. We hold silence at times in church, for a few minutes at the end of a yoga class, and in pockets of the library. If we have a meditation practice we carve time out for inner silence, a space between the thoughts. I used that expression with a neuroscientist friend a few weeks ago and he asserted there is no space between thoughts, that thought goes on all the time, even if we’re not conscious of it.

Once again, this business of discussing minds requires precise language, often necessitating defining terms we bandy about on a daily basis. In his book, The Mind’s Past, Michael Gazzaniga makes the sweeping declaration “all concur that the left brain is the site for language and thought.”1 (emphasis mine). I will take this to mean that either the right brain has no thoughts at all or he equates thought with internal verbalization. If so, I’m not sure I agree, but this definition works nicely for the purpose of an essay on the role of silence in contemplative practices. It’s like equating thought with inner speech. To avoid confusion I will abandon the expression space between the thoughts for the duration of this essay and replace it with inner silence, by which I mean the instances during which we choose not to engage our internal verbalization, judgment, narrative, planning, problem solving, dialog, and chatter. Notice I did not say that such things will not arise. They will. The practice is to meet them with silent observation. At first the dialog is continuous but without a foil (you) to engage with, there is a bit of tiring out of the chattering self. There are only so many balls you will bounce off the chest of a playmate before giving up.

It seems an unattainable goal to reach total inner silence, but, whether attainable or not, it is not a goal I’m advocating. Instead, I am suggesting that inner silence is the fruit of a regular practice which combines external silence and attentive unmediated observation. The method of practice I describe is an open, global, present-moment attentional focus in which all the inner noise makers above are simply observed along with everything else that arises in one’s experience, whether interior in origin (the pain in one’s back) or exterior (the breeze on one’s face). The practice is simply to observe experience, unmediated by judgment.

As a communal practice, the act of moving into silence is limited to the world’s spiritual and religious traditions and the kindergarten classroom. For some reason, once we get to the first grade it’s considered that we no longer require quiet time. Many who have embarked on a practice of silent sitting, whether alone or in community, discover there is anything but silence in their inner experience. Full blown narratives abound. Plans are hatched, problems solved, rationalizations spun, even when there is nothing pressing to do or solve or judge. It’s as if one’s brain (or at least one’s ego) abhors a vacuum. But what of it? Why is a periodic cultivation of inner silence a good thing? The conflation of this inner dialog with one’s sense of self provides a good argument for an engagement with silence. This is my contention, that in silence we cultivate a connection with our original selves, the one that existed before all the layers of crud weighed it down.

While there might be times when outer silence is observed or even demanded, as when expression is suppressed, inner silence can only be cultivated by personal intention. It is unenforceable by others. As a practice, this cultivation of inner silence can happen anywhere at all, even places devoid of outer silence though this seems to be orders of magnitude more difficult, especially if one is required to speak and interact. Nothing creates inner dialog faster than outer dialog, which might be a significant reason for the prevalence of silent retreats among contemplative traditions.

During silent retreats and in monastic life, there is a prolonged respite from outer dialog, a break from language. My own experience of breaking silence at the end of a ten day silent retreat was of curiosity at the apparent return of my personality, its return pointing to the departure I had not noticed. I wonder if this is not specifically due to abstinence from speech, after all, song and prayer are permitted in monastic settings. It’s only dialog that is refrained from. This brings me to my point, however late in this essay it might be, that the whole reason for choosing a silent practice is in fact to peel off the layers of you that are peelable, in affect, to get to the essential you, the you that is authentic and uniquely you.

As it turns out, the important part here is practice, not silence. Peace is a gift that arrives through countless thresholds. A practice of chanting or song holds our attention in a way that leaves a deep and embracing silence in its aftermath. A practice of effort in yoga poses or in focused breathing can do the same, as can one of fly fishing or trail running. But all of these can just as easily be plain doing, leaving us happier, calmer, or more buff but no more connected to our essential selves. There is a paradox here, that to arrive at one’s authentic self, one must move beyond the self we have created. I am not certain if silence is the path to the essential self or the gift of a practice of seeking self or if silence is, in fact Self itself. A days from now I will be engaging in the second silent retreat of my life which I hope will bring fresh insight into the benefits of silence.

My interest in yoga nidra expanded in parallel with many others including neuroscience, eastern philosophy, religious studies, and psychology. Teasing out the aspects of each of these broad disciplines that are relevant to me personally is an ongoing occupation. One common thread that has emerged for me is a desire to understand the process of self-actualization.

As it’s been described to me by a western scientist who is also a student of nondual Kashmir Shaivism, we arrive in our bodies with the ability to sense, thus beginning the rapid ongoing process of “separating to understand.” Taking vision as an example, we learn to perceive color, form, and depth through interacting bodily with our environment. As we realize what’s green and what’s red simultaneously with where “I” end and the world begins, we rapidly arrive at our sense of self as a separate being. Bolstered by the ability to label things as language arises, we continue to categorize the world in smaller and smaller chunks. “I like beans. I don’t like tomatoes. Lightwaves are made of photons. Living organisms are made of cells.” As our experiences blend with our unique predispositions, we develop elaborate ideas of self, what James Austin calls the I-Me-Mine complex.

This process of forming is common to us all though uniquely personal, a fact that has sparked my curiosity in personality typing systems, both mainstream (Myers Briggs) and esoteric (enneagrams, astrology, ayurveda). Abraham Maslow, Carl Jung, and Viktor Frankl, among others have provided us with ways of understanding how, once our basic needs of food, shelter, community, and self-esteem are met and we might move on to a process in which we put it all back together again. This is the process of reintegration, of self realization, individuation, and man’s search for meaning. Is this different from enlightenment? awakening?

The eastern nondual traditions of taoism, Zen, Advaita, and Kashmir Shaivism are, at their core, schools of reintegration, or in other words, waking up to true nature. Collectively, they present a rich and varied selection of techniques that include silent meditation, breathing techniques, chanting, walking, movement, dish-washing, and wood-chopping. Though varied, they are all present-moment attentional exercises. There is an emphasis on carrying this present-moment attention into an engaged life of interaction, not one of monastic seclusion. The understanding of their respective cosmologies is only of interest so far as it supports my own process of reintegration. I can embrace a mythology only in so far as it resonates with my scientific understanding of the world. For instance, the cosmology of Kashmir Shaivism is one in which the world came into being as an act of play by pure consciousness. Just for fun, consciousness coalesced into dense blobs of manifestation and found sensation! Sensation provided a mechanism for experiencing other blobs in the glorious fabric of consciousness. I have much to learn yet in the realm of science, but what I know so far presents no contradictions to this view of the material/non-material universe being condensed/rarefied areas of one primary stuff, however elusive that stuff might be to get a handle on.

Wrestling with my own process of individuation I have repeatedly come face to face with some recurrent themes that I’d like to delve deeper into. Each, in turn, has led me back into the present-moment attentional practices. They are as follows:

free will
Do we have it? Clearly, if there was a yes or no answer we’d have arrived at it by now and for this reason, I am not the least bit interested in having abstract philosophical or theological discussions about free will, nor am I concerned with questions of responsibility and morality. Whether one has the ability to do otherwise in any given situation is confounded by conflicting desires, external pressures, beliefs, conditioned responses and who knows what else. The more aware we are of the forces acting in any given moment, the more clarity we can have regarding the freedom/limits of our actions. My own experience with attentional practices is that they illuminate what’s present. Sometimes they illuminate preconceptions, desires, and/or agendas I didn’t know I had. My actions may precede in the same way but the illumination allows for a re-crafting of my personal narrative that incorporates far more humility.
My fascination with free will has led me to an area of neuroscientific study in which the origins of thought and volition are examined in relation higher processes of conscious cognition, one I hope to explore.

learning/unlearning
Though we are learning machines, a distinguishing feature of those who have reached the full expressions of their individuality is their ability to unlearn. In countless domains that include music, writing, fine art, psychotherapy, design, engineering, and cooking, to name a few, are examples of people who have spent substantial time learning their craft only to realize that they had to abandon what they had so painstakingly learned. This experience is so widely recounted that I believe that this unlearning process is necessary in the process of individuation. This is not just a conceptual process, it is physical, and it can occur either spontaneously or as the result of hard work.

Unlearning leads us back to an ability to respond authentically to the present situation, not using yesterday’s experience or data though, clearly, that earlier process of learning was an essential antecedent. Given my focus, it’s not surprising that I link this back to present-moment attentional practices. Unlearning is at the heart of the practice of yoga asana and the cultivation of Zen’s beginner mind. But I am also intrigued by the ways in which those outside of contemplative traditions cultivate this beginner mind. For instance, I heard a talk given by a conductor who described his spontaneous attempts to jar his orchestra into presence, to transcend their conditioned playing, which included rehearsing in the dark, or switching everyone’s position in the room. To me, discovering pockets of transcendence in non-contemplatives gives me hope that there are many roads that lead to Rome. Teasing out what it is about the myriad of roads that make them work fascinates me. Do all dedicated intentional practices, even artistic, scientific, and academic ones, lead to self-actualization?

change
Related to the questions free will and unlearning is our ability to act as we chose. These questions start to get interesting when we look at the aspects of self and action that we wish to change. Personally, I wish I was more organized, that I had a specific place to put my keys so I wouldn’t be running around the house looking for them when I need to be on my way already. I wish I would put things away instead of letting them pile up until I’m walking around in a big mess of an apartment. I wish I could be patient and kind even when totally spent. My particular desires for personal change are not new. I’ve been arguing with myself over them for years now. I assume everyone has similar desires though they are often directed outwardly as attempts to change someone else’s behavior, an even more ludicrous proposition than the internal variety.

I believe that changes are possible, at least some of them, though which ones and with how much effort are unknown. The changes require unlearning. The new behavior would demonstrate free will. At the extreme, the actions to be changed are pathological as in the case of addiction or compulsive disorders, but that’s only the extreme. None of us escape this life without experiences that prod us towards unlearning. Whether we label the activity as an illness or an inconvenience, the cure is tricky. Western medicine has not come up with a single reliable “cure” for nicotine addition or alcoholism much less heroin addiction. Could this be, in part, due to the reductionist view of patients as metabolic processes? If there is an attentional, spiritual, or cognitive component that is essential for the modifying of all behaviors including addictive ones, viewing an addict as broken machine will always fall short.

self-realization
While several eastern traditions provide practices that support the process of coming into full realization, becoming the best you you can be, western civilization is limited in its dissemination of tools to work with individually. Christianity gives us weekly worship, prayer, and the advocation of selfless acts of service. While we’ve got cognitive behavioral therapy, and various forms of psycho analysis, most people think of these as tools for handling dysfunctionality, not as practices to help one thrive.

These themes of free will, unlearning, change, and self-realization have, if not emerged from, most certainly fed back into my interest in yoga nidra which I now teach. While I’ve been introduced to many forms of contemplation, yoga nidra appears to be unique in the structure it provides for unlearning. Its hierarchy of attentional exercises move through successive realms of experience: sensory, feeling (such as hot/cold, heavy/light), emotional, cognitive (in constructs of identity and beliefs), and the abstract. In an effort to understand the common aspects of all present-moment attentional practices, I have increased my scope of study to include a broad range of contemplative practices. Whether one reads the texts of yoga & buddhism in all their flavors, or western religious text, there is a common advocation to actively grapple with the paradox of transcending one’s individual self.

By deepening my understanding of yoga nidra and other meditative practices I hope to get a sense of whether yoga nidra holds promise for expediting the process of individuation, especially in our western culture where discomfort is to be avoided if at all possible. Yoga nidra has some salient features in this regard: it is conducted lying down (though it can be adapted to a variety of positions if necessary, for instance, a friend with chronic pain due to advanced MS practices standing up), it requires no special (or even normal) physical abilities, and it often has significant observable affects after a single practice session. These features combine to make it uniquely accessible to the novice, so much so that I describe it as meditation with a toy box. In addition to its potential for supporting personal growth, I have heard enough anecdotal reports of its amelioration of chronic pain to be encouraged regarding its use in palliative care. And finally, if in fact, meditative practices can be shown to assist in unlearning, they could be quite effective therapeutically for post traumatic stress disorder, addiction, and compulsive behaviors.

While I frequently waffle on how deeply I want to get into the science of yoga nidra’s efficacy, for now, I continue to be fascinated by learning more about the neural mechanisms of meditation and the practice of yoga nidra itself.

sue borchardt

While on a ten day silent retreat, I kept a journal, hoping preserve my revelatory thoughts. When I reread these journal entries, I’m struck by the transition in my own handwriting. Each day the thoughts become more spacious, the handwriting less hurried and more precise. Some entries read like directives, advice to my future, less-centered, self. One such directive was take one picture a day. I was struck by the vividness of tastes and colors, the attention to which I hoped to carry back into my everyday life. This attention to the intricacy of sensation has been far more difficult than I anticipated.

Today, a year and a half later, I took a picture, more than one actually, possibly defeating the purpose of the contemplative minimalism of a single one. I was prompted by my notice of a few strands of weathered red leather and some rusty jungle bells sitting at the threshold of my back door. These bits originally made up a shiny bough of bells, not unlike a bunch of grapes, strung together by my grandmother, Marie. At some point I had hung them on the back doorknob as a way for my cat, Ivy, to let me know she’d like to come in. She used her doorbell until the weather undid it.

A stunning soon-to-be fall day drew me and a cup of tea to the back door, leading onto the deck. I will assume that my first thoughts on seeing the bells were fairly deep in my consciousness, flickers of firings not large enough to register consciously. After all, I had stepped over them countless times, their presence barely noticed. Next, I thought, would anyone else just abandon these mementos from grandma, day in and day out? Yes, but only a certain kind of person, one who, like me, is not so attuned to the chopping wood and carrying water activities of keeping house.

Despite the tinge of guilt, I was struck by the beauty of their present state. Mixed with the grey and tan leaves of last fall,they had been made even more colorful by rust. This is a beauty born of process, molecular changes created by sun and rain, by the batting of cat paws. The Japanese call this wabi sabi… the beauty of use and decay, the physical manifestation of processes. Appreciating the aesthetics of things that are falling apart seems to be a pragmatic skill. Everything falls apart eventually. Appreciating the lines on my own face, the big stripes of grey showing up in my hair, these things are challenging but doable. Not only that, they bring the ease that so often accompanies the ends of arguments with reality.

It appears as if I’ve found a place to land for the next two years. The first week in August I’ll be starting a low-residency Master’s program in Consciousness Studies at Goddard College in Vermont.

In designing my proposed plan of study I have incorporated coursework in the following areas:
Science courses focused on sensation, perception, and cognition.
Religious Studies and Philosophy courses focusing on spiritual growth and contemplative practices.
The scientific study of the effects of contemplative practice by which I mean all practices that bring us into the present moment.
Personal contemplative practice, primarily silent retreat.
The following is a preliminary draft of coursework to be completed as part of the Master of Arts in Individualized Studies, Concentration in Consciousness Studies.

Summer/Fall 2008
Literature Review of the Physiological, Behavioral, Biochemical and Neurological effects of silent, seated mediation (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, Vipassana Meditation, Yoga Nidra).
Functional Neuroanatomy*
Psychology of personality*
Physiology & Psychology Implicit and Explicit learning*
Personal silent retreat

Winter/Spring 2009
Literature Review of the scientific studies examining the effects of mediative movement including tai chi, hatha yoga, tandava (tantric dance), body sensing, and dance therapy.
Biochemistry*
Stages of Spiritual Development
Cognitive Psychology*
Personal silent retreat

Summer/Fall 2009
Literature Review of scientific studies examining auditory/vocal meditative practices including chanting (kirtan, qwaali, Gregorian), mantra repetition, rosary prayer, and musical improvisation.
Design study for practicum incorporating yoga nidra in transition population such as residents of a hospice, participants in a residential drug treatment program, or recently diagnosed cancer patients.
Understanding the role of extended abstention from speaking in contemplative practices. Survey the use of 10 day silent retreats and vows of silence in spiritual traditions.
Psycholinguistics* - Comparative study of neural substrates of thought verses spoken language and the relative affects on perception and awareness.
Personal silent retreat

Winter/Spring 2010
Psychophysics* - Study the mechanisms of reception, transduction and low-level perception of sensory stimuli.
Narrative - Examine the narrative process from both a neurological perspective (the regions of activitation in narrative verses experiential attentional focus) and a medical/spiritual perspective (the role of personal narrative and memoir in healing).
Implement practicum.
Personal silent retreat

* Courses for which availability of MIT coursework will be investigated.

I recently met a German conductor who told me the story of an opera. What I remembered of his telling was that it was about princess who is rescued (from what, I could not recall) by a man who asks her to marry him on the condition that she vows to never ask his name or from whence he came. On their wedding night she breaks her vow and asks the question, forcing the knight to leave forever, returning to the castle of the holy grail.

Being a lover of myth and symbol I’ve been mining this story for some recognition of its meaning but I’ve found myself stuck in the literal, feeling I was missing key parts of the story. Why wouldn’t she be able to ask him where he’s from and what do he and the holy grail represent anyway? Not remembering its name, I ended up reading the story lines of countless Wagner operas until I found Lohengrin. It turns out that this nameless knight only existed in her dreams but, despite this, Elsa calls on him to defend her life when she is accused of murdering her brother who has gone missing. She acts entirely out of faith, trusting that her fantasy man will appear as, of course, he does, saving the day and popping the question with his special conditions.

I am a good sleeper but tonight, after snoozing soundly from only 11 to 12:30 I awoke to a clear understanding of Elsa’s arc. I absolutely love the unique clarity that seems to come only at the moment of waking. At the beginning of the story, we find Elsa in a place of uncertainty and peril but one in which she relies completely on a message from her soul. As so often happens in our real, non-operatic lives, Elsa begins to think her way into doubt and before long finds herself fearing the unknown origins of her savior, Lohengrin. It really makes no sense but it’s almost mind-boggling what we humans will do to our own lives simply to avoid not knowing. Who among us hasn’t experienced moments so perfect they feel pre-ordained. Moments where we find ourselves (possibly despite our selves) in exactly the right place at precisely the perfect moment only to think our way into the future and onto one of two paths of self sabotage: thinking we must forge ahead on the current path despite the soul’s red flags or, as Elsa did, thinking our way into fear and doubt.

So what was Elsa to DO once she found herself wracked with anxiety and fear about Lohengrin… about the unknown, really? I believe the way to weather these moments is to trace their emotions, stories, and doubts back into sensation. Simply giving our undivided attention to the sensations inside our mouths can be remarkably effective at snapping us back into the present and it is in the present moment that we reside in both the known and the unknown simultaneously - a space blissfully beyond thought. You will find that when fully in the present moment, no matter what you think is looming large, the vast majority of the time absolutely nothing bad is happening. The unknown, when not graciously invited, is like a vacuum that our narrative-loving minds fill with either escapist fantasies or dreaded possibilities, depending on our habits and disposition. Elsa began by narrating the unknown with a beautiful knight to rescue her and in fact, this is the reality that found her. She later allowed her fears to narrate a story of darkness in the unknown of Lohengrin’s origins and, by doing so, invited her own sad ending. My observations might lead you to believe I am advocating the power of positive thinking but no, instead of inviting flowery narratives and positive outcomes, I believe our true power is to be found in the much more difficult realm of not knowing.

It’s true that the opera ends by giving us a choice on how will we spin Elsa’s story: the sad one, in which we focus on the fact that Lohengrin must leave her forever, or the silver lining delivered when he breaks the spell that had turned her brother into a swan. But what if the story just is, like almost all the moments of our lives, neither happy nor sad? What if we choose to stay in the unknown of this moment, thereby holding space for limitless possibilities for Elsa and, in turn, for ourselves. Lohengrin is the call of our own soul, ever present but completely unknowable. It is not at all sad to know we each possess such powerful guidance but, of course, we fear its price. Reuniting with your own soul… what is it worth to you? Rumi said it beautifully:

I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.

Now my love is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let’s buy it.

A musician recently shared an expression with me, “God gave her a beautiful voice. Too bad he forgot the owner’s manual”. The idea that there could exist an owner’s manual for our gifts has captured my imagination in the days since that conversation. In keeping with my insatiable curiosity about the nature of human existence I am mining the potential of this human manual analogy.

How does the analogy of a personal owner’s manual play out? Is it written for us at birth or do WE write it. Is it a composition or a transcription? - our life’s work or a coded message for us to decipher? In my imagination, it is all of these things: a fantastical tome of byzantine complexity filled with sounds, images, dead leaves, buttons, scraps of childhood blankets, and of course, words: all personal clues to navigate everything from laundry to lovers’ spats. There are certainly things that are engraved in it’s pages such as propensities toward solitude or jealousy or earthiness… the ineffable qualities that make up our unique flavors. If we are students of our selves then there are, most certainly, things we wish to record as well but the recording of our own hard lessons learned seems to be permitted only in disappearing ink, by design. It’s a good design, I think, since we are not static beings. The book itself has about as much value as any work that has been edited every single day, presumably for decades, i.e. it’s a bit of a mess. No, it’s value does not lie in it’s completed artistic merit but in it’s aliveness - it’s organic, ever-changing nature.

We must study it’s newness daily, even if only with fingers on it’s covers or by leafing through it with closed eyes to smell this moment’s meaning. The choice to study and co-create this manual represents a choice to know our most intimate selves and, by doing so, understand our gifts. The embracing of our unique mixed-bag of strengths and weaknesses gives us the confidence to step up to the plate, to hear and then heed the call of our own potential, an admittedly frightening task.

The choice to study and co-create this manual also represents a path of service but don’t assume that I’m proposing we blindly follow a path of selfless service. I have a much harder path of service in mind for us to navigate, one of selfish service. Our language is lacking the perfect word since selfish has a negative connotation once its definition of seeking or concentrating on one’s own advantage, pleasure, or well-being is completed by the addition of with disregard for others. The brand of selfishness I’m advocating is one in which our personal resonance and dedication to our own fulfillment trumps all commitments, social conventions, and rules. I realize this has an Ayn-Randian ring to it but there are many ways to spin this guiding tenant of selfishness that lead to a personal joy and benefit to all that seem to be missing in Ms. Rand’s books. I suppose I’m advocating a more tantric spin on selfishness in which decisions are based on sensation, the feeling of what’s right in the moment. In tantra, movement, sensation, feeling, & emotion are some of our most powerful tools for transcendence. In this scenario, an action or inaction that is experienced as sensation (my heart just started pounding out of my chest), as opposed to story (that person should not have cut me off!), which in turn act as a guidance system of sorts. This first-person sensory approach to being human is not the exclusive domain of the tantrics. It is the investigation of subjective experience we find at the core of William James’ radical empiricism of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology.

We can sign on as a contributing editor to our own manual through the conscious choice of one of these first-person investigative practices: meditation, musical improvisation, psychoanalysis, hell, it can even be fly fishing. It all comes down to intention. Even the attention to which you devote to doing the dishes can bring you into the presence required to study your self through the senses. The reason we must practice during these uneventful and mundane moments of our lives is so that we are able to stay with the sensations of the tough stuff when it arises instead of being swept away in a storm of emotional patterning. As they say in the military, at times of crises one falls to the level of one’s training.

But what of it? Why should we learn to love the book of our selves, especially since it sounds like work? Good question since, in all likelihood, the work of editing the owner’s manual might give us insights into how we operate in the world and maybe even how we can better use our gifts, but it will say absolutely nothing about why we are here in the first place. The only reason I can come up with is to be happy or, if you wish to aim lower, at least to suffer less. By engaging each moment, whether it be through the breath, senses, or prayer we gain direct experience of the certainty that our human growth, through the fostering our gifts, is of the utmost importance, not just to our selves but to everyone we come in contact with. Over time, a practice of checking in with the senses leaks out of the contemplative space in which it began (a meditation cushion, a yoga mat, a climbing wall, a kirtan) and infuses each moment with ever-expanding awareness of the implications of one’s words & actions. The growing richness of your manual’s pages is simply what makes life so very enjoyable.

When we arrive at sufficient understanding and acceptance of both our neuroses and talents, there is an inevitable softening of the boundaries of self-hood and we become free to engage life with less fear of feeling foolish or different. Maybe we can even throw out the manual and trust that we already know what to do in this moment: that the answer to what? is listen, the answer to how? is yes, and the answer to why? is because it feels right.

One section of ramblings here at contemplate this… is titled meaning mining and though I am convinced that the process part, the mining, is a key to my personal evolution and fulfillment, the meaning part can be a bit of a red-herring. (For some background on the practices of inviting unknowing and avoiding declarations, see interview with a conductor. ) This should not have come as a surprise to me as I have long proselytized on the value of process over product but, as has been my experience, the good lessons are so good that I like to learn them over and over again!

It is with this in mind that I have been following the trail of bread-crumbs, that is, sticking to the mining regardless of the apparent absence of clear meaning. For whatever reason, I have been inundated with cathedral experiences of late. A couple months ago I found myself recounting the story line of an oddly inspiring short-story titled cathedral in the eponymous book by Raymond Carver. I call its inspiration odd due to the dark and mildly depressing tone of the character narrating, a man who reluctantly welcomes a blind man, his wife’s former boss, into his home. They are brought together by circumstance and share a transcendent moment of connection during which the narrator comes to draw a cathedral, flying buttresses and all, while allowing the blind man to place a hand on his and so to see the glory and grandeur through the movement of pencil on paper. It’s a beautiful story that I read long ago and I have no memory of why I was describing it recently.

A long-planned family vacation to Spain came and went this last couple weeks and brought me into full contact with beautiful and inspiring cathedrals I’ve not experienced since being a college art-school freshman in Florence. I was so drawn to them I found myself setting off on my own to every cathedral I could find regardless of planned agenda of the rest of my family. There was a surprising amount of variation in color, light, materials, and feel as seen in the photos I took. The most significantly unique is, not surprisingly, Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, still under construction in Barcelona. The spiritual & historical significance of these structures boggles my mind - structures so ambitious in scale and detail that they required generations to bring into being. Does this kind of creation have any parallels in realms not devoted to glorifying god? I am awe struck.

Visit the photo gallery for cathedral shots from Barcelona, Granada, Toledo, Cordoba, and Seville.

During my own struggles developing a personal meditation practice I have often grappled with the question, “What’s the point of sitting still?”. I’m guessing I’m not unique in that I was raised in a family that put a high premium on productivity of the material kind. My grandparents on both my mother and father’s sides appeared tireless to me, personifying what I later identified as a protestant work ethic. Both my paternal grandparents were artists in the most un-bohemian way imaginable. Though they lived on a lovely wooded lake, my grandfather gave me sketching and drawing assignments in the height of the summer beauty (which was all too brief in Wisconsin) that I dutifully undertook in his studio while ski boats buzzed the lake below. My father affectionately nick-named them Rommel and Göring.

Entrained by these deeply rooted early life-lessons, my successes in embracing practices of doing nothing have been hard won but, I’m happy to say, the tangible (material?) benefits of these practices are becoming apparent to me. More interesting to me than why one should meditate is the question of what happens to our “selves” over time when we consciously choose a contemplative practice. But first, what does it mean to contemplate? Are there differences between analyzing, ruminating, and contemplating?

Analysis, while it is taken up in pursuit of understanding the true nature of things, uses the brain to do so, and while rumination comes close to the mark, neither word has made the leap into the non-mental realms of creative, sensory, & movement practices. Contemplate comes from com- intensive prefix + templum space marked out for observation of auguries (temple) and is defined as to view or consider with continued attention . You could think of it as a practice of cultivating inner quiet. My own experiences with attention have validated science’s assertion that our brains are limited in attending to more than one thing at a time (though we have become expert at the rapid context switching dubbed multi-tasking). Deep attention requires us to release thinking and attend with our whole being which is exactly what a contemplative practice is, whether it be mindfulness meditation, qigong, yoga, or art, among others. It’s a listening for that which is beyond thought.

The instant you realize you and your mother are separate beings you being to develop your concept of self. In the western world the ego is king and often it is only after we are frustrated with our own patterns of relating to the world (both people and circumstances) that we challenge our ways of being. In our culture, listening and watching might begin with the self-reflection and introspection of analysis. The process requires us to attempt to view our selves and our actions objectively as if we were an outside observer.

In attempt to make our inner observer as objective possible I suggest that the observing self has no personal agenda so It’s often described as a witness . I envision the relationship between self and observer is one being inside the other. While it might seem to make more sense conceptually (at least from a world-view centered around ego development) to place the observer inside the self, I have found it extremely helpful in my own practice to reverse this relationship: instead of the witness residing in you the relation becomes you exist in the witness.

There are countless spiritual traditions that describe the self/ego as something to be destroyed or deconstructed but one of my teachers, Richard Miller, suggests that we are, instead, to become students of our own personalities . After all, the unique gifts of an individual shape what one is able to give, and those gifts are developed in the process of ego building. I often think of the building of skills and self as adding to a large pot of soup from which we are then able to serve ourselves and others. If we arrive at a point of realization that the self we’ve been building has a greater purpose then the choices we make concerning what to place in the pot are filtered through a lens of service. Challenging our own actions and decisions in this light is a never ending process but it is supported by contemplative practices which, effectively, make our egos more permeable or transparent.

Softening the boundaries of our egos allows us to experience more overlap between our own will and the will of god. I realize I’m treading on delicate ground by introducing god into the conversation (even a lower-case god) but you are free to substitute the term of your choice (God, consciousness, the one, source, the universe, muse, void). If you are, like me, still shedding the language of a Christian upbringing, you might prefer to think of this as the dance of your self and your dharma. Through your own evolution as a human being you may find you have consciously chosen to be in this dance. The continued practice then becomes to determine who is leading as you wait for the next movement to reveal itself.