I’m back to speak to another common question about silent retreats – whether you need meditation experience. The real question might be: Is “meditation” what a silent retreat is all about?
(If you missed the last message about why anyone would choose to sit in silence for a week, you can check that one out here.)
The bottom line is that every retreat is different and every retreat participant is different. You can practice whatever you want on retreat, or practice nothing. It will be aligned to your purpose for being there.
If your intention is ‘awakening’ from the spell of thought or rediscovering and devoting to the still, silent being that never changes (this is what my silent retreat is geared toward), I recommend a combination of something that’s sometimes called natural, or true mediation, as well as some sort of inquiry.
NATURAL MEDITATION
Very simply, natural meditation (Adyashanti calls it true meditation) has no goal. Nothing is approached or avoided. It is simply resting in what is, as it is.
This is what Adyashanti says about it: “In true meditation all objects (thoughts, feelings, emotions, memories, etc.) are left to their natural functioning. This means that no effort should be made to focus on, manipulate, control, or suppress any object of awareness. In true meditation the emphasis is on being awareness; not on being aware of objects, but on resting as primordial awareness itself. Primordial awareness is the source in which all objects arise and subside.
“As you gently relax into awareness, into listening, the mind’s compulsive contraction around objects will fade. Silence of being will come more clearly into consciousness as a welcoming to rest and abide. An attitude of open receptivity, free of any goal or anticipation, will facilitate the presence of silence and stillness to be revealed as your natural condition.”
As you watch thoughts, identities, emotions, sensations, and sensory experiences arise and dissolve, your sense of identity begins to shift from what’s always changing to what never changes. This is your natural condition.
If you’re familiar with Salvadore Poe’s holidays, natural mediation is similar to those.
INQUIRY
Inquiry can look many different ways. It typically involves posing questions such as:
Who/what/where am I? (Or going through the process of following the sense of I and looking for oneself)
Where is the thinker? (Or following thought back to sense the source of it).
What’s always here?
What is the very essence of this?
Or my personal favorite, WTF is this?!?
You might also use inquiry to fully immerse in sounds, sights or sensations.
The point of inquiry is not to answer these questions. Rather, the question is posed with curiosity and a deep yearning for truth which makes it more like an arrow that leads you past intellect and knowledge, into the unknown.
Of course, you won’t be steadfast in one of these practices for an entire week. You’ll be distracted often, which is totally fine (distraction doesn’t matter in natural meditation anyway). You’ll be temporarily fixated on emotions or memories or fantasies, in what doesn’t feel like a “natural meditation” sort of way. You’ll get frustrated with inquiry and find your intellect trying to take over.
It’s all fine.
Please believe me when I say that nothing about the silent retreat experience will go according to plan, nothing needs to be any particular way, and you will benefit immensely even if natural meditation or inquiry don’t seem to be happening much.
It’s impossible to describe, but simply putting yourself in the path of this experience does the work. I strongly believe (yes, this is only a belief) that you will get what you need from this experience no matter how it goes.
Each day of the retreat will begin with a guided meditation which serves as a gentle “push” to get you started. I will also share various self-inquiry and other methods throughout the retreat that you can choose to practice (or not) during the silent sitting sessions.
Absolutely no experience with these is necessary.
Check out all the details of the February 2025 retreat here: https://dramyjohnson.com/silentretreat/
This retreat will be small, and space will be limited. Please reach out if you have any questions!
