“It seems to me that one of the commonest features of human life is what I sometimes call secrets hidden in plain sight, things we know but don’t want to know and thus find systematic ways of evading or ignoring or denying. And I suppose the fundamental answer as to why we do that is that if we knew these things we would have to change our lives, and we don’t want to change our lives.” — Parker Palmer

Saturday I had agreed to participate in a full day meditation retreat.  During the week leading up to it, I was anxious about it. How was I going to be “still” for 8 hours? Although it had seemed like a good idea when I signed up, as the date neared I kept thinking of everything else that I should be doing. I had overbooked myself with commitments and in the coming week, there’s too much work to deliver.  I could use Saturday to get some of it done. Besides that, I hadn’t slept well in the past week, and I was very tired.

I thought about making excuses in advance, but when it came to a face-to-face-opportunity to do it, I didn’t. And then the morning of the retreat, I thought about just not showing up and making excuses and apologies later.  Too often I don’t say “no” to an invitation when I should.  But the problem is not so much that I can’t say no, it’s more like I don’t take enough time to make the decision in either direction – yes or no. I don’t delay a bit and carefully check my calendar for conflicts or surrounding events, and more importantly, I don’t carefully check in with myself to see if I really want, can, or need to do the thing. “Yes” is my default answer to social events and work-related requests, and “yes” comes immediately — all too immediately — and I often find myself regretting the “yes” later, because either I felt too pressed for time, or didn’t really want to do whatever I  agreed to do.

Finally I went to the retreat, because even though I was feeling the time pressure of my to-do list and rash about saying yes to the day, I felt pulled by people I cared about to hold to my promise to participate. During the first sit, the chatter in my mind was so loud. I couldn’t get still. And I had all sorts of pain in my body. My knee ached, my hip ached, my shoulder ached. Where did all this sharp pain come from so suddenly? What a mess I  am, I thought. What a mess, what a mess, what a mess. My thoughts bounced from one thing to another like a pinball, landing nowhere. Return to the breath? Ha. The only thing I could return to was the thought that this was going to be a horrible, agonizing day for me.  We did walking meditation and then another sit. My mind was a siren whirring about deadlines, bills to pay, household tasks to be done. On and on and on and on and on.

It changed for me during the second walk. I looked up and I noticed one of the participants walking slowly. I thought I had been walking slowly, but in comparison to her, I had been speeding.  I think I laughed out loud. Look at us. How silly we are. How silly you are, Mary Ann. I laughed (quietly this time) about myself. How silly that I take myself so seriously. The laugh changed everything. And then I slowed down.  In a very slow walk, concentrating on the movements and feeling in my feet, the pain I had felt all morning began to dissipate, the speed and the volume of thoughts dissipated, too. Instead of screaming, my thoughts were less intrusive. I began to imagine them like a river moving past me. I heard my thoughts like I would hear the sound of a river, and  I watched the flow of my thoughts, like I would watch a river flowing — from a distance. For most of the rest of the day, I could keep my distance like that. Maybe for the first time in my life, I experienced being separate from my thoughts.

I am now, more or less, back to my freaked out self, a million thoughts whirring at once most of the time. I have probably lived almost every minute of my life that way. It’s pretty hard to change.  People actually say to me that I am serene, or calm. I guess I hold it together on the outside. But inside, the siren whirs.

Still, I liked that new  feeling I had at the retreat, that feeling of being separate from my thoughts, of seeing them at a distance, but not being engulfed by them. And so since that day, I have been taking short moments during the day to try to recapture that thoughts-are-a-river feeling. It helps. The work, the bills, the dwindling bank account. It’s all still there. I am just a little less stressed about it.

I’m not sure if this is the “River of Sound” that Kornfeld meant me to practice (#3, page 47), but I think it’s at least close to the idea. It helps me to imagine my thoughts and feelings floating and tumbling in an actual river setting — the Niagara River at Three Sisters Island, just a bit upriver from the falls. How many times in my life, I stood on the edge watching and hearing the tumbling rapids, enthralled. It’s easy for me  to recall the look and sound of that place, and the feeling of being drawn by the flow. There is a fierceness and beauty to the rushing water that attracts me, and I love it. But if I got too close, the rapids could swallow me in an instant. So I keep my distance. The river is there, but I don’t wade in.