‘I have no idea what I’m doing’, I thought to myself as the gong rang out to signal the start of our 6am sunrise meditation.
I had half closed my eyes, assuming that meditation was best done with them shut, but I still did my best to peer around and see how everyone else was doing.
It was like me to get competitive even in a silent retreat – miles away from civilisation and with all our electronic devices and other exciting worldly goods safely locked away from our tech-addicted clutches. It made me twitch slightly.
I was pretty sure I was the only one in there who had never done a meditation before, let alone a 2 week silent retreat. This was the whole point of coming here though, I reminded myself. Breathe. Let go. Focus on me for a change. Nothing like throwing yourself in at the deep end.
The problem was that everytime I closed my eyes, I saw Jason screwing his PA in our bed again. In what was our bed. He had always prided himself on being so different and yet, in the end, he was as seedy and low-rent as they come.
To make myself feel better, I of course started back on the best self-care tricks I knew of. Escape to another country, in this case Bali. And of course, some outrageous flirting. I had already been making eyes at the hot, brooding figure who I’d spotted across the vegan buffet on the first day. Though to be honest it seems everyone appears somewhat brooding when you can’t talk.
You’d think that the lack of chat coupled with the vast quantity of lentils served each day would encourage you to look inwards rather than around the room for what’s on offer. In reality though, it just served to give you ample time each day to fantasise about what you’d do with them with 10 minutes alone.
I opened my eyes a tiny bit more just to spy on hot Jesus and felt myself blush in spite of myself. Is this what they meant about picking up on people’s energy, or was I just a giant perv? I think they make documentaries about people like me, going to retreats to ‘heal myself’ – aka: get laid.
13 April 2021
Prompt: Remake yesterday’s work
For today’s post, I took the words suggested by my friends as a stimulus for yesterday’s piece and inverted them. I took the opposites (more or less) of ruminate, traverse, breath, and took those 3 new words as my starting point instead.
Ruminate – Traverse – Breath
became
Dismiss – Linger – Inhale
Living in SIN 