Staying silent for a 10-day retreat was as hard as it was rewarding.
Hallie Bateman
"It's one of the hardest things I've ever done," Sara says, "but worth it."
My college roommate has just returned from a 10-day silent meditation course. She can't say enough good things about the experience. She tells me there are centers all over the world, and it's completely free.
Hmm.
Years pass. I keep it in the back of my head. Occasionally, when things feel very unsettled in my life, I apply to one of these 10-day courses. They get a lot of applications, I guess, because it took me until this year to get in. And I've felt unsettled a lot. By the time I received an acceptance notice this past April, for a course in June, I'd almost forgotten I applied.
Trusting my desperate past self that I need this, I confirm my attendance, and mentally prepare.
I'm excited to shut up for 10 days. I cannot wait to not hear myself talk. (You would not be surprised by this after hearing me talk for more than a few minutes.)
But I am nervous to go 10 days without my sketchbook. I have not gone 10 days, or even two days, without drawing since I began drawing seriously about five or six years ago. (You may be surprised by this when you see the quality of my drawings.)
The course is held in a small town called Shelburne, in Western Massachusetts. The day I travel there, from my home in New York, is June 17. We'll call this day zero.
Hallie Bateman
I'm late.
I'm late because I missed my bus this morning, so I have to take a train, and now that train is just sitting motionless on the tracks because it has hit a person.
I caIl my mother and tell her that my train has hit a person.
"That's terrible," she says. "Is it a very big train?"
How sweet of my mom to entertain the possibility that I am on a Lego train, and am calling to tell her the train has hit someone who is now giggling adorably in a pile of yellow bricks.
"Yes, it's a big train," I say.
Someone announces, though, that the person survived the collision (I didn't know that was possible?), but we are still delayed while they scrape them off, or whatever.
This is the last time I will talk to my mom for the next 10 days. She is skeptical.
"How do you know it's not a cult?" she asks.
"Hmm. I guess I don't."
Later that night I am sitting in a big meditation hall, cell phone gone, sketchbook gone, sitting on top of a little blue pillow, surrounded by a hundred or so other people on little blue pillows. There are four shadowy figures in flowy robes sitting on little thrones at the front of the room. One of them presses play on an iPod plugged into a speaker system. A voice booms:
"YOU MUST SURRENDER COMPLETELY."
Welp, guess that answers my mom's question.
The voice echoes:
"YOU MUST SURRENDER COMPLETELY IF YOU WISH TO PURIFY YOUR MIND."
Like the person hit by a train earlier that day, I am inexplicably, miraculously unfazed by this.
Sure, you can have my mind, I think. I can't work the damn thing anyway.