Letting go of the need to win
My solo meditation retreat (Part 2)
This is a continuation from the previous essay, Illuminating the darkness within.
As it turns out, this time my darkness retreat ended up being a lot about humility. It was a brutal punch in the face of the relentless need to win.
Never give up. Never surrender. This refrain has echoed silently in the halls of my mind for decades. A stubborn white noise behind my grasping for achievement.
Soon after I entered the dark dome, the weather outside turned from hot and sunny, to cool and rainy. I was so preoccupied with sifting through the contents of my mind, I managed to miss what was happening in my immediate physical environment.
I was receiving food delivery twice a day: coconut water in the morning and fruit salad at midday. It didn’t occur to me to change my food request to hot food when it started raining. For several days, this continued. Meanwhile, my body began to chill out. Quite literally. My body temperature dropped without me noticing. By the time I realized, there was nothing I could do to get warm again.
Inside the dark dome, time tends to occur non-linearly. I have a collection of varied impressions but I cannot remember the sequence of events, nor can I connect cause and effect. I don’t know whether I felt cold first or pain first. Both were present.
I had physical pain in my body. There was a little ache in my lower back, a sore neck from sleeping in an odd position, some cramping in my legs. These small discomforts gradually got worse and seemed to spread and engulf my entire body.
At some point, I was stuck in a full body contraction, coiled up as tight as a spring from head to toe. Every cell of my body was screaming. I found myself curled up in the fetal position, shivering. I was unable to warm myself up and unable to move or do anything to release the tension.
I thought to myself, this must be what it feels like to be dying.