Who Are You?

The seven-day silent retreat sounded great until I paid for it. Non-refundable. I was locked in. As the date drew nearer, so did the fear.

No talking unless asking the teacher a question during the 90 minutes of morning or evening satsang, no writing, no music. No writing? So, what will I do for the other 21 hours of the day? There would be nothing to stave off the crazy. I thought about cancelling my reservation, but it had been expensive and money was dear.

I gave myself pep talks. You can hold your breath for seven days if you have to.

The minute I opened the door to my room, I was terrified. What if I break? An electric dread started behind my eyes and cascaded through my nervous system. I needed to go home before it was too late. 

For the first three days, I walked around a gorgeous rustic retreat wedged into the hills of Northern California—furious. My mind told stories, and I listened. And it was loud—a cacophony, a chorus of angry points of view, squeezing through pig eyes.

I didn’t like this person, or that one, or any of them - especially the one over there who was whispering, the two in the corner, cheating with hand gestures and shining eyes, that one, chewing with her mouth open, the one who insisted on eye contact to show how enlightened she was because silence was easy for her. I hated that sanctimonious prig the most. 

When I wouldn’t make eye contact in the dining hall, she ran her finger down my forearm. Shocked, I looked up. She had so much liquid compassion in her eyes I almost slapped her. I was the Peanuts character Pig Pen, except the cloud around me was rage. If I followed the rules and kept my eyes down and mouth shut, why couldn’t they? I had hornets in my blood.

Before morning Satsang, I took long walks in the hills. In the afternoons, I napped. The other hours, I fantasized about getting into the ugly truckling and waving bye-bye to these hard-core fanatics. 

On the fourth day, the teacher asked: “Who are you? Really?”

Sixty pairs of eyes blinked back. 

“Are you the cloud of mental noise? The stories you tell yourself? What you do for money?” Your role in your family? He smiled. “Are you your history? American? Born of those parents, who had that childhood - and therefore - is this way or that?”

Blink. Blink.

“What if you are not a woman or a man? What if you are not a body at all?”

I gazed around the meeting hall, at the backs of people’s heads or the sides of faces.

“What if you aren’t any of that?” Without taking a single question, he walked out.

A deep, luxurious silence continued to dive down and spread out. No one moved. A ghost image rose inside me: three thick leather straps buckled tight around my chest, pinned my arms to my sides. All my life, I’d been compensating, doing the best I could to drink and eat and take care of myself without my hands. And I’d been so angry about that. I stood and lifted my arms. The bands snapped and fell to my feet. I stepped over them and walked outside.

The mountains were alive, breathing, matching my breath, breathing me. And I filled with joy like a bucket held in a stream. I was joy. 

The following morning, in Satsang, we waited for the teacher—sixty silent minds. The air crackled. Someone snickered up front, rippling through us like the wind over a field. Over on the left, another one laughed out loud, gripping us in convulsions. There was nothing to stop it. We, the silent, had tears rolling down our cheeks, and my sides hurt. I was everyone and myself and nothing at all. And the funniest thing was, we had no idea why we were laughing. When it mercifully subsided, someone sighed, “Phew,” and we all started again. The joy was almost unbearable, except it felt so good - so loud. Every time we settled down, someone else chuckled. A woman back-snorted, and we couldn't hold back though the teacher was entering the room, and we weren’t showing the proper etiquette for Satsang. 

He’d scolded people for whispering in Satsang before, but this was much worse, which made it very funny.

The teacher took his seat on the platform. He closed his eyes, and we tried to follow suit, but the idea was ridiculous. It didn’t matter if eyes were open. Of course, he would chide us for breaking silence, but we didn’t care. When he opened his eyes again, they sparkled.

“You get the joke,” he said, and the silence erupted. We laughed for an hour. Everything was funny, every odd laugh, the woman begging for it to stop, the man slapping the floor. All we did that satsang was laugh. There wasn’t anything to say.

So, who are you?