Retreat -- day 1

 February 1, 2021

 

Today is the first day of the very mini retreat. I woke with excitement wondering what this immersion into Rilke’s Letters on Loss might lead to. My friend had picked the theme of loss for he had lost someone close to him a while ago. I went along with it despite not having lost a close one in the last years. The hugest loss for me, to death, was my father when I was ten. My friend had allowed me to pick whose words on loss we would read, hence Rilke

 

I wondered about the losses I wanted to keep in my mind when I read the texts. I thought of my hopes from this retreat. I made a list:

·      What I hope from this retreat is to understand the shape of my days and see if I can change it. 

·      The losses I feel are more about the loss of my life in India.

·      About the loss of India itself - the one i loved.

·      The loss of creativity and discipline in my life. 

·      The loss of control in this year of Covid.

·      Perhaps the loss of the one friendship which still lies un-understood within me.

·      My father’s passing when I was ten is the biggest loss to death for me, but it is quite far back in time and the intensity of it is low. When I think of it now I see that the consequences of that death also changed the course of life and there were more losses after. Loss of family connection completely for a very, very long time as we didn’t bear the separation of our father/spouse from us well and couldn’t process the grief. Loss of financial stability. Loss of a male protective force that led to further losses. Loss of a way of life.

·      But if one thinks of loss, one cannot help but think of gains... Hmm… 

 

I wanted to document my time during the day too. Already that intent changed what I did in the morning. I didn’t check the news but wrote down my dreams in my journal and focused my hopes for the day. I did chat with friends on WhatsApp but only till 9 am after which each moment I accounted for. The time included things that I needed to do – like prepare and eat food, shower, a nasal rinse.

 

I read eight letters, marking out passages that I wanted to think about or those whose texture I liked. After lunch I made notes from the read letters and added things I wanted to explore further. 

 

·      We must learn to die. That is all of Life.

I must learn to endure constant change. To allow the death that each change brings, mourn it all deeply and let it assimilate within my blood.

Like covid – the year 2020 is part of my past. How do I let it become part of me deeply? So I can be transformed by it.

·      She lived for others demands and there was an entire life within that was untouched by the others. She was the opposite of what she wanted to be… and both ‘she’s’ would be equally true, and equally unreal. 

To explore – what in me is like this? Create a character like this.

·      Only those can go away from us whom we never possessed. 

Possession (or double possession) flings us back into ourselves with such enormous force and demands such extremely solitary development that can keep us occupied forever. 

Not sure what I feel about this.

·      Does the person who passes away not leave all the things he has begun in hundreds of ways to be continued by those who outlive him… if they shared an inner bond.

Is this indeed so?

Also — make it a task of mourning to explore all that the person expected of you and hoped for you.

My dad and what he might have wanted? Explore that moment in time in 2001 before I flew away to the US, in his study that became my bedroom. What did he originally want of me and how did that shift?

·      Death presses us more evenly and deeply into life and places the utmost obligations on our slowly growing strengths.
Death fully felt has never remained an obstacle to life for a surviving individual since its innermost essence is more knowing about life.

What is the essence of death?

·      Experience pain in all its fullness – for it is the great life experience and leads everything back into life… as everything that reaches a certain degree of greatest strength must.

Deepest pain leads to greatest life? Also Yin and Yang?

A great weight with its tremendous pressure has the task of forcing us into a deeper, more intimate layer of life so we may grow out of it all the more vibrant and fertile. 
I seem to have lived by this a lot since the late 1990’s and gained by it, but has it failed me somewhat in the last years? Why?

·      Pain teaches us what intensity can be. Pain’s stubborn insistence of a specific location forces us to become one-sided. Pain seems to push out the soul from the place it usually occupies. 

Explore. Particularly the last.

·      Faith in (not God) but human beings. That every person is capable of the pure and the magnificent. 
Explore in terms of Hindutva and Ram and the dehumanization of life in the name of God and how contrary that is to the very essence of any religion.

·      Attach oneself somewhere to nature, with unconditional purpose to what is strong, striving and bright… Move forward even if it can only happen in the least important of daily tasks. 
Each time we tackle something with joy, we transform not only this and the next moment, but we also rearrange and gradually absorb the past within us.

·      Without this (nature and solitude) kind of support I do not think I will be able to muster the concentration that would reveal to me the quietest, most guarded spot of my inner nature where new sources well up.

What kind of supports might do the same for me?

 

Using bullet points in a blog post for the first time ever, I think. I feel a need to share even this raw content. For documenting this process is part of the journey of this retreat. And there is another part of me that wants to wait till I can mould this material into a form readier for consumption. Both are equally right and equally wrong. 

 

It is 2:57pm and time to take a breather by going to the gym. Will chat with my friend at 5:30 and see how his day unfolded.