Firstly, I want to acknowledge Jeff Carreira, whose eight month “Intensive” ended with a four day retreat last weekend (June 7-12). My book was an “articulation project”, which each participant created in some form. Writing it, and presenting it at the retreat, has left me with an experience of a deep emptiness. At this point Becoming’s urgency, at least as I had encountered its most intense aspects, has vanished from my experiential environment.
On the last day of the retreat, Jeff had us go for a “saunter” (R.W. Emerson style) with a partner and share the history of our spiritual path. One thing I’d forgotten in my reporting, but came at the end of the walk, was that at times when I was very young I often felt like I was at the bottom of a vortex of energy, much like water going down a drain. It seemed inescapable, as that intense flow was driving “me” downward. The experience was what I would describe as depression. On occasion, however, I’d drop into a deep silence. I was safe there, but the world always called me out of that space – for dinner, chores or just the noise of parents and 5 siblings – and the doorway out of that space led me back through the depression energy.
When sharing this with my partner, what came to me was that I felt very much in tune with that silent space and that the energy of wanting to be a recluse, which has been growing very intense over the last 6 months or so, was the call to go “home” to that silence. My retirement is approaching and represents a time that I could actually do that for the first time in my life and I can remain there if I so choose, though I was not conscious this connection. What came up in thought form was “I want to go home”. It brought me to tears both the moment that I saw it, and when I shared it with the group shortly thereafter. What is most curious now is that the intensity of the pull to be a recluse disappeared for a time. I am having sensings of it, now and then, since the weekend but the cognitive understanding of the link quickly releases its gravitational pull.
What really fascinated me, in looking at it later, was that I saw that this was not an individual experience but several experiences, which occurred in rapid succession. The observation of the energy itself clearly occurred first. This was followed by a longing for the experience of that silence – a “missing” it – which seemed to instigate the experience of grief, which arose next. This was followed by the thought “I want to go home” which revealed that I had named it “home” at some point. After that came the recognition of the relationship to the “recluse” energy.
It is obvious to me that as my experience of moment-by-moment time slows, the demarcation lines between experiences, and their interconnecting energetic tendrils, become more visible. Their visibility reveals the cognitive links, which seems to be the glue that holds them together. The dissolving glue begins to disperse the associated energies and the “I” becomes free of that pattern. What held the attention of the mind is losing its form, its relative substance, and what was graspable is beginning to become ephemeral in that dispersion. The loss of its gravity makes “me” more buoyant and I rise, though into what I don’t know. It is, however, experientially vast at the moment (a very long waveform). This occurs in conjunction with, and was almost assuredly precipitated by, the writing, the retreat and likely my other spiritual practices as well. It would appear that it is just the beginning of a separation process from that silence/depression/home/recluse linking, which I assume will leave me completely free of it at some point in the future. The linking between energy flows and naming them seems to provide a substance that can be held by the mind and the gravity of that collected energy keeps “me” in its orbit until it is seen anew.