It’s a week away but I’m already thinking about it.  Next Monday I begin a nine-day silent retreat at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, USA.  It will be my eighth time at IMS. 

Here’s a photo of the meditation hall:

There’ll be 80 or 100 of us at this Buddhist retreat.  Every evening one of the teachers will talk to us about what the Buddha had to say … usually about the workings of the mind but sometimes the opening of the heart.  Other than those times, it’ll be pretty quiet!

As well as the silence, we “yogis” are encouraged not to make eye contact with other participants.  Prolonged silence tends to bring up life issues.  There’s no TV, Internet, music or books to distract the mind.  So … the person I pass in the hallway may at that moment be grappling with something huge.  Leave them alone.

I’m a social person.  I love talking and looking into the other person’s eyes.  It’s one of the reasons that my recent spiritual life has focused on the practices we do in the Evolutionary Collective.  But there is a place for another spiritual way.  I’m about to be immersed in silence and a type of aloneness.

I intend that my fifteen days in the US will be an expression of loving the human beings I’m with – in the meditation hall, at the airport, at my pre and post Airbnb, on the streets of Boston.  Asking nothing in return.

A little smile is growing on my face.  I will give to human beings whom I don’t know and whom I will never meet again.  Letting go of relationship, embracing love.