notes from the fresh edges of retreat.
november 2022.
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Yesterday I woke up at Spirit Rock. Today I am in Brooklyn. It is November 27 which for me means it is the day of the month that I send out slowly, slowly.
This retreat was so profound and also so mundane. That’s kind of how it goes on retreat. Thinking of the juxtaposition of the two, I am finding I don’t want to relate the retreat back to my life quite yet. I am not in a rush to make meaning of it, to say “and here is where the dharma of this retreat functions in my life.”
Instead, here are some notes from the fresh edges of retreat. Greeting you here, clumsy in my life and clumsy in my words. And with gratitude*.
RWK SAYS TO BECOME NATURALIZED
Between retreat and home is the shift from open awareness that nature cultivates and the focused awareness that city living requires. It is jarring as ever to make this shift. On this journey, I was aided by a conversation between Björk and Robin Wall Kimmerer about how we find home and become indigenous to place as immigrants.
Being naturalized to place means to live as if this is the land that feeds you, as if these are the streams from which you drink, that build your body and fill your spirit. To become naturalized is to know that your ancestors lie in this ground. Here you will give your gifts and meet your responsibilities. To become naturalized is to live as if your children’s future matters, to take care of the land as if our lives and the lives of all our relatives depend on it. Because they do.
-Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer
To become native to a place is to live as though your ancestors will inherit the land you call home. That you give to the land and it will give back to you in return. To look toward nature as a model and become naturalized as plants do. My first-generation self deeply relates to this. My Southern self living in the North relates to this. I feel far away from home in many ways. But a part of my system settles when the wheels touch down in NYC (or technically, yesterday, in Newark). Coming back from a week in which I was with land that is so very alive, I am aware of how this land (even in its built environment) has healed me in many ways.
NOAH SAYS HEALING MAY NOT LOOK LIKE YOU EXPECT IT TO
I entered retreat knowing that I would be sitting with an obsessive thought. It is a frequent visitor that I’ve had to cultivate a lot of compassion around, especially because whether or not I’d like to acknowledge this, I find this particular thought-storm very seductive. The Unwise Thought does not know that it is unwise. But I do. Because I have sat with it long enough to recognize it runs generationally deep.
At retreat’s beginning, dharma sibling Noah and I spoke about healing not looking how we expect it to. This conversation rippled through my retreat. My obsessive thought arrived, and with the mysterious nature of retreat practice, I found insight. What I thought was the hindrance of craving is actually the hindrance of doubt, the circling and spinning of trying to figure it out. The idea that if I just think about it the right way I will find the “right answer”.
In the year-long Sacred Mountain Sangha course, Thanissara and Kittisaro speak to the trickiness of this hindrance, how it undermines confidence and our inner sense of truth: “It's not the doubt of dhamma vicaya, which is a positive contemplative questioning and inquiry which has the hallmark of clarity. Instead, it has the hallmarks of fretting, worry, and confusion, which paralyzes and sabotages inner empowerment and well-being. If we are shaky in trusting our own sense of refuge and confidence in our inner refuge then there's a tendency to strive for certainty, which in turn gives rise to yet more doubt.”
Dawn and Djuna spoke of the antidote to doubt as returning to the body. Kittisaro suggested that I apply patience and softness (and, that if I didn’t experience papanca, I would be enlightened 🙃). Thanissara said that one day these thoughts will feel like passing ghosts.
Again and again, amidst the lather, rinse, and repeat of walking, sitting, bowing, chanting, I returned to my body. I don’t know that I can measure how much more I am in my body from retreat start to end. To let a pattern work through you is to give yourself space to not get it perfect. Letting go into emptiness, cultivating the ability to be with the mysterious and unknown nature of healing, and trusting that from the emptiness a truly compassionate response will arise. For now, I can be aware of how often I find my hand clenched in fist, despite the fact that in this life, really what I want is so much softness. I can unclench my fist each that I remember.
xo Jessica
*Specific gratitude to Jen who cared for Audrey while I was away, Julia who delivered me to Spirit Rock, Noah for shared presence throughout this retreat, Adriana and Dylan for receiving me pre-and-post-retreat, the teachers who carry the transmission of the Kuan Yin dharmas, and the unceded land of the Coast Miwok people on which Spirit Rock rests. And always to MY FRIENDS MY FRIENDS MY FRIENDS.
Inner Fields Sangha
Inner Fields Sangha is a BIPOC-centered meditation community dedicated to ecological wisdom. We meet the first Sunday of every month and for our meeting on December 4, I will facilitate a conversation on anger. Follow Inner Fields on Instagram for more information and sign-up to join us here.
Work with me.
You can find me weekly at Heal Haus, monthly at Inner Fields and five-days a week at Arena.
🌞