I Am Here: Bringing the Retreat Home

Before leaving for a retreat in Romania, I had been sitting with what seems like a very simple question:

Who am I?

It is a question I have explored in different ways for much of my life.

I have studied many therapeutic and spiritual traditions. I have attended retreats, taken countless notes, learned practices and tried to understand myself more deeply.

This retreat felt different.

There were no notes to take. Nothing new I needed to learn or remember.

The teaching was about waking up.

The understanding was that fundamentally we are already awake. Our True Nature has not disappeared. It can simply become obscured by our habitual thoughts, desires, worries and fears.

One of the metaphors used to describe this is the sky and the clouds.

The clouds come and go. Sometimes they are light and scattered. Sometimes they become so thick that we can’t see the sky at all.

But the sky is still there.

I Am Here

During the retreat, something became very simple for me.

When I wasn’t thinking about the past or anticipating the future, there was just this moment.

And from somewhere inside came three words:

I am here.

It wasn’t an intellectual answer to Who am I?

In fact, there wasn’t much thinking involved at all.

I was here.

There was something very peaceful about that.

Irrespective of how many retreats I have attended or how many things I have learned over the years, this felt new. Perhaps because, for once, there wasn’t anything I was trying to learn.

I was experiencing it.

And then, of course, I came home.

The Clouds Came Home Too

It didn’t take long for ordinary life to return.

Things needed doing. Thoughts appeared. Different parts of me had opinions. My mind wanted to understand what had happened at the retreat and decide what I should do with it.

The clouds hadn’t disappeared.

Initially, I wondered how I could hold onto that experience of presence.

But even that question contained a kind of effort.

Was I now turning being present into another thing I needed to get right?

I’m still sitting with that one.

What I do know is that I had experienced something beneath all the thinking.

The sky was there.

And knowing that feels different from merely understanding the metaphor.

But What About the Clouds?

Something interesting happened after I came home.

One morning during meditation, rather than trying to quiet my thoughts, I allowed them to come.

And they came.

Memories of people I have loved. Places I have lived and visited. Animals that have touched my life. Experiences that brought joy and others that brought pain.

Instead of seeing these thoughts as something taking me away from myself, I found myself recognizing:

These are part of me too.

My memories are part of me.

My relationships have shaped me.

So have grief, love, fear, joy, mistakes and choices.

My body carries its own history.

The different parts of me have their stories too.

And at the same time, there was something in me able to observe all of it.

This has left me with another question.

Perhaps discovering who we are isn’t about getting rid of the clouds.

Our Own Experience of Life

I have also been thinking about how differently each of us experiences the world.

Even people within the same family can remember the same event quite differently.

One person remembers what was said.

Another remembers how it felt.

Someone else may barely remember it at all.

So what is the truth?

Perhaps there is the event itself, and there is also the way each of us experienced it.

Our experiences become part of the stories we carry about ourselves, other people and the world around us.

Some of those stories may change as we understand ourselves differently.

Others may remain important parts of who we are.

This is one reason I am becoming less interested in finding one final answer to Who am I?

Bringing It Home

I have been home for a little while now.

I still think.

I still worry.

My different parts still make themselves known.

The clouds still appear.

Perhaps the difference is that I have now experienced, even briefly, that there is something else here too.

I don’t have to make the clouds disappear to know there is a sky.

And I am beginning to wonder whether bringing the retreat home has less to do with holding onto a particular state and more to do with remembering to notice what is here.

Sometimes that may be peaceful.

Sometimes what is here may be sadness, irritation, fear or a mind full of thoughts.

Perhaps all of that belongs too.

I don’t know yet exactly how this understanding will find its way into my everyday life.

For now, I am curious.

And when I notice myself becoming lost in trying to work it all out, I have three very simple words to return to:

I am here.