My 10 Day Silent Meditation Experience: A Cautionary Tale
I’ve been dabbling in meditation for the past few years as a way of finding a bit more calm, focus and clarity in life. As much as I’d seen the benefits from it; being somebody with a super-active mind who is always on the go, it was very hard to make any kind of regular practice stick.
In the hopes of remedying this, and becoming the kind of zen master I had I wished I was, I decided that I’d bite the bullet and sign myself up to do a 10-day silent meditation retreat.
Over the years I’d heard of a meditation centre not too from where I live. It was free, allegedly secular and non-denominational, and didn’t require any beliefs for you to engage with it.
As somebody who is fairly allergic to the woo aspects of meditation, I was relieved that it wouldn’t involve the cleansing of my chakras or other kinds of new-age mullarkey.
After much consideration, and doing what I’d thought at the time was adequate research, I booked myself in for the week after I finished exams.
I arrived at the retreat a few months later, nervous, but excited to see where the following 10 days might take me.
We were handed a pamphlet including a list of rules to abide by, which included:
