Art of dying!
Whenever I am in trouble I think, “what would Jesus do?”
Then I pretend to be dead and disappear for three days!
Saw the above lines once in a meme and laughed out loud- but realised it was so insightful. The power of disappearance is underrated.
Art of Disappearing
Let me explain. I was in monastery life for six years. Every year we used to have an annual retreat, which used to last at least 5 days. These 5 days everybody would be in complete silence. 400 brothers not talking to each other nor engaging with another! It was as if you had an invisible boundary around you.
You are walking, having food with everyone, you even do a little bit of farming or something that is assigned to you. But it is like you are dead to the world. You are somewhere else entirely!
There would be a preacher who would be leading the retreat. They would take 2-3 sessions every day and give us nuggets of thoughts. Rest of the time went in reflecting on those, or meditating, or journaling and reading. It was like we were on spiritual adrenaline! Everyone would come out of those days like Jesus rising from the dead - with new awareness, new resolutions, new energy and joy.
Nothing Changes!
Nothing changes in those days dramatically. You just sit with yourself. You retreat to yourself. It is not what changes, but you realise what changed in you amidst all the noise that was happening around. It is like slowing down the car to see those sign boards with directions!
Silence. it completely changes the space around you. Just the act of not speaking anything!
The length of silence is also key - because it like peeling through the layers of onion. It takes time just because you need to peel one after another. Layer by layer.
These days we find it really hard to get that long stretch of alone time. I sometimes consciously pick 2 or 3 days as retreat - in silence, journaling, reading, thinking, listening to those long speakers/lecture sessions in YouTube. And all those retreat diaries have helped!
And somewhere in between I was also surprised to find that Gandhi also reserved his Mondays for silence.* (Only if he spoke those mondays also, we could have got freedom early! Disappointed!)
Concluding
“Silence” origins from the latin word silere which means to be quiet or still. Stillness, like what you would need when you thread a needle. Imagine that - that tiny slit in the needle and the thin end of that thread! You definitely need stillness.
You can truly find your nuts* when you are actually dead for 3 days. Pick up the habit of being dead to the world every now and then - just retreat. Into yourself. Into stillness. Into utter dramatic silence!
Go Nuts!
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A 4 year old kid was asked, “What did Jesus say after he rose form the dead?”
She replied with a jump and a pose “Ta-da!”
Meme: https://pin.it/7jPKck6Yx
Gandhi: https://www.mkgandhi.org/gandhiji/12dayofsilence.php
I used GPT to get suggestions for some sentences in this post.