Silence

Someone asked, "did you take a vow of silence?" and this is what I wrote:

The first retreat I went on blew my mind, it was 9 days on the Brahma Viharas and I actually got into puja. It was silent after a few days, inside the retreat house, but you could go for a walk if you needed to talk. A woman asked me to go for a walk with her, and I accepted. I didn't particularly need to talk myself, but I was eager to listen. So I made it my practice to listen to this woman while I was delving deeper and deeper into metta, and it was great, but I really did cherish the silence, and wondered if I made a mistake. I felt like that was the perfect metta conflict. She really needed to talk. I now know I have maneuvers to block going deeper because I'm not ready yet and I'm OK with that.

I've been on other retreats, where everyone knew the retreat house password, and instead of walking meditation in between meditation, they would all go check their phones. It was pretty hard to unplug. When I saw that I did it once too, and then decided it felt wrong.

When I was successfully in silence for long periods of time, and the night was ended by a puja, I would always have trouble falling asleep, it would get me so hyped. I had to skip it so I could get some sleep.

I did a week solitary, and of course no speaking to anyone. I wrote a lot, and read, so in a way I was allowed to intake and ventilate. True silence to me means no writing and no reading. That is really hard for me. It's not easy to do true silence for long periods of time, and that's really interesting to me.

After my solitary retreat, I went on a retreat, where everyone really liked my listening and talking to me. I'd been cooped up alone and I was open to people in a new way. I really appreciated that I could be there for others, but it didn't last. I also remember someone saying something to me, and I watched my mind for 3 days as I argued, interrogated, and pondered the challenging comment.