Retreats

I wish I could connect to my spirituality. When you experience despair it can be so hard to access the faith that was there before and the despair can feel so much more real than what you had faith in like it is the ground of everything and believing in transcendence and the idea that I am an infinite being and that love is really real and all that can be really really hard. I wish I understood what I believe about the nature of life and the universe because right now I have no idea.

Maybe I go back to beginner’s mind and let go of everything I thought I knew about everything?

I was thinking vaguely looking into going on retreats and I don’t know if that would do it. In the past a few days with others made a huge difference but now I don’t really know. Still I think it is good to make the effort to connect with and be around others. It is making connections that seems to heal me and make me feel more grounded and stable in my life and I guess my fear is if I don’t have anyone to share my life with and take some interest in it and in sharing it with me it doesn’t mean anything.

So even little ways that I can share my life with others feel good, but it is when I have more consistent connections that I feel that. I’m not sure if a few days with others would have that effect right now. I don’t know who I am, and I am not sure if there is a retreat that would give me the experience of finding that.

There is a retreat going on in California next month that I kind of wish I could go to but it is only two nights and I think it would have to be at least four to make it worth the flight for that alone. I wonder what an ayahuasca retreat would do for me, if anything. Probably just freak me out, but I am not totally ruling out the possibility of trying it again. There is a yoga and horseback riding retreat and I must say that sounds kind of painful. I need some kind of stretching practice or something but going on a retreat to do yoga when I have next to no experience with yoga and considering that when there was a yoga component to retreats I’ve been on honestly it was my least favourite part? For me anyway it sounds more stressful than relaxing, but oh, if I could find a retreat that lets me come out of it feeling like I felt after doing hot yoga for a month! Also how much yoga can a person do in a day?

I don’t really see any retreats that really captivate me though. I want a retreat that lets me feel my heart. The retreat centre I used to go to a lot is supposed to get back to me sometime this month about, I guess, whether they are open to me ever setting foot in that place again. I may not have been happy with them but there are so many loose ends that I wish I could tie up. If they asked me why I am thinking of returning, it is that, and because I want to feel my heart. At the very least, if I go back there, I will feel it, in one way or another.

I don’t know what is in it but I feel like going back there might give me clarity on what is unresolved in my heart. I am so ambivalent. I do have issues but I am willing to take them as they are rather than expect them to respond to a crisis. I might have a permanently tainted reputation with them. Maybe I missed out on good things, maybe I severed my own belonging, in how I responded to these issues, or maybe I was right to want to make a clean break with them. I can take care of myself and I think if I return I would be able to intuit whether I am experiencing something real. I was so afraid to take inner leadership, so afraid of anyone believing in me, and I felt these perceptions of me that had nothing to do with me that I couldn’t control, so I perhaps made well sure that anyone paying attention to me would think the worst of me. That way I don’t have to worry about what anyone thinks of me. But I think I sabotaged myself by making them think about me exactly what I was most afraid of them thinking and I don’t know if there is any more chance for me to be seen as who I really am or to get a clean slate with them. From now on perhaps I will always be suspect. I did not approach things in a way I can be proud of or even feel good about, either, and I do have regrets. I want a chance to untangle all of this; I kind of got my hopes and dreams all tied up with that place and like it or not so much that is repressed in me and so much that hurts in my life is connected in one way or another with things I experienced on that land. And now, to have it just be over… it feels like there is a gap in my life… and I am probably the one who made sure that things were unresolvable. I wish I could get a straight answer about whether they meant to exclude me last May. It felt really personal. And I set boundaries the only way I knew how at the time: by pushing them away with all my might. I want to be honest about my defects; I just wish others would be honest about the defects they see in me. I feel like no one wants to tell me how they actually see me. I think I want to go back there, at some point, and feel my heart, if they will let me. I am glad it is a process and if it is not a good fit hopefully they will just refuse me. I hope they will only accept me if it comes out of real caring.

I want to see who I am when I am there. I want to know what my heart feels like. I want to be honest with myself and others and see where that leads. I am just a human being (or some kind of wounded creature) living a life of quiet desparation in the midst if the world…