A Decision to Retreat

Last luxuriously long shower with no one waiting at the door for me to hurry up...not for three months.

Tomorrow I get on a train to a remote retreat center in a cold, wet part of the UK for three months of silence and sitting. I'm a spoiled city girl, so this roomy hotel shower will be something I look forward to in early April when I will be heading back home. Or, perhaps, I'll forget all about such worldly things and look forward to knowing my mind more intimately. Probably a bit of both!

So, how did I get here?

Sorry about that but that song has always been a warning to me. I've always told myself that I don't want to be like that, wake up each morning "same as it ever was."

I've been working a great job for the past 9 years and have a great life in NYC: the job, the apartment, friends, money, and my health. I'm not supposed to want change now. You can blame it on ole reliable: mid-life crisis. Though, I wasn't in any crisis when I took a leap to go to art school over a decade ago. Since the gallery shows have faded, do I simply want to climb another mountain just because it's there?

This past summer, a dear friend and her husband took the leap to move out west and start their holistic business with a bang. Their bravery reignited my secret longing to quick my job, go on retreat and move out west closer to my family. I confessed my secret to her over lunch one hot August day and she said to look for signs and omens. Thirty minutes later there was an earthquake in New York City! My friend looked at me and screamed "Oh my god, your quitting your job, going on retreat and moving to Arizona!" I replied, "Oh shit."

If I had been in California, we would have just laughed it off, but a building shaking quake in the big apple is nothing to sneeze about. Was that my sign?

A week later, a young man in our office was killed when he was hit by a car while riding his bike. A week after that, a close friend suddenly passed away from a stroke. She had just sent me a necklace she picked up while vacationing in Arizona because I had told her I was thinking about moving out there.

Meditation: I may die today.

My friend told me to make up my mind before the place burned down. Then I had a dream of the building burning down. OK OK OK, I get it. I quit my great paying job, moved out of my rent stabilized central park west apartment, and am now on the eve of entering a three month silent meditation retreat.

That's how I got here. The surface of it, anyhow.

My meditation practice has grown over the past seven years and as I have attended more retreats, I began to feel, dare I say, a calling to go on a longer and silent retreat. One month didn't seem long enough and a year seemed out of the question. Three months seemed just right.

Some say I'm not ready, some say they envy me, some say I'm brave, some say I'm crazy, some say they rejoice, and some ask why. Why? Because. An artist creates because they have to. I feel a similar inexplicable necessity. I'm excited and nervous at the same time.

Everyone seems to think I will be transformed. I have no such expectations or desires. Thanks to meditation, I finally like who I am. The only thing I anticipate from the retreat is the experience of it, whatever that may be. Perhaps I'll be the same, just more of the "same as it ever was."

'till April...
<3

Dharma Dreams: Bleeding Hearts

A tall handsome man offered me use of the lower level of his home for my art studio. The space was pristine, high ceilings, clean, white, gigantic! It was more like a museum than a house! He said that I could use it for my art or for anything I wanted.

Just one hitch: I could never leave.

The temptation was obvious but I knew it was a trap. I would have all the time and space for my art making that I could ever dream of but I would be a prisoner there.

Not a good deal. 

I decided to be free instead but he was already insisting that I couldn't leave.

We stood in front of a very tall wall covered with images of a heart being squeezed by a hand, the fingernails were puncturing the heart causing it to bleed. I told him confidently that I was going to leave. Again, he insisted that I couldn't leave. I said, "Yes, I can, watch." I proceeded to jump over the wall of bleeding hearts with ease. Somehow I knew I could do it, there was no doubt in my mind. When I was on the other side I said, "See!" He said, "I don't believe it, you didn't, you can't." I said, "I'll show you again." I came back over the wall and easily jumped over it again.

I felt so liberated and joyful, I was free! I wanted to tell everyone how to do it, how to jump over the impossibly high wall of bleeding hearts!

But no one was around. Alone in an abandoned downtown sort of location with graffiti and trash everywhere, I thought to myself, where is everyone? Was I the last one to escape?

Then I woke up.

The Divine's Response to Artist's Block

I've been negligent in my writing duties as of late. I haven't produced anything in the studio for a couple of years. My artist is alive in meditation but absent in the conventional world of form. Although I admire the works of others very much, my own self discouragement feels like it is set in concrete.

As I contemplated a photograph of a beautiful tree at the edge of the sea, I asked the Divine (mother nature, God, Buddha, etc.) "what do you want to tell me?"

She answered the following...

"I want to tell you...
I love you
This is my creation for you...
Blue is my blood
the coolness of shade is my embrace
the light is mind illuminating intention
the lines are my veins.
You live in my painting.
I welcome any creation from you.
You exist to be with me
together in our creations."

I guess I better get to work!