"The Name of the Game" or "Ximena vs. the 49-Day Retreat"

As I sit there, a tiny neurotic thought appears in my mind. 49-Day Retreat? More like “Day 1,2,3,4...26,27 And 22 Days Until I Get To Eat Pizza Again! 

When I had chosen to join the retreat, I would see the experience as a whole and would never consider what it would mean to be there, day by day, going through the process, so at times a certain frustration would kick in, a feeling of nothing happening except me being there for many more days. 

The name of the game is “Ask Yourself `Who am I?’” And I try to play it to the best of my ability, after all I am here willfully, even joyfully, or in other words “I even paid for this”. 

But easier and far more attractive is the other game, the one that I have been playing most of my life, the one that all of us are secretly obsessed with, the “Follow That Thought” game. 

Truth be told, it’s been so long since started playing that game, that the following seems to happen all by itself, but if it doesn’t, the thoughts have been training a lifetime to keep me following them, so they will shift as many times as they need as long as my attention is there consciously or not. Sometimes the thoughts say “Go lie by the hammock”, other times they turn into full stories, about all the lovers that I’ll have after this, about all the lovers that I haven’t had, or about what I should do after this retreat is over. 

I am truly so well versed at this game that I often forget that the “Who am I” game even exists. In all honesty, what’s even the appeal? Why sit in silent meditation asking this question that often times I can’t even grasp, instead of lying by the hammock and going through a commentary of all the people in my life. It simply doesn’t make sense, at least not in my mind, at least not most of the time. 

Still, I am here, voluntarily,  heart invested in this journey, because despite it all, I wanna know who it is that I really am. 

It must be around day 25 and I’ve been doing so much self-judging on how poorly I am performing at this “spiritual endeavor of great courage” (read sarcasm) that in the middle of my post breakfast daydreaming hammock meditation, I stop myself from following yet another thought yet another judgment and ask myself the question “Who am I?”.

I observe how the planning mind wants to creep into the inquiry, pull me back with all it has to say, after all, a girl has got to have a job if she wants to keep paying for these fancy retreats. 

Perhaps if I had what I would consider more interesting thoughts I wouldn’t even question them, but they all seem so worldly, so shallow, that I don’t want to be so caught up in them anymore, I want more depth, I wanna feel the “magic of retreat”.

Observing the futility of this thoughts, I play with a thought, a thought that in all fairness could be real, though I play with it with the hope that it is not. I’m just trying to bring myself into shock, to force the view on how all that mind activity, in this precise moment is useless, and it’s making me forget why I am here. So I say to myself: All of these plans, all of these relationships, all of these structures that you are attaching yourself to so badly, could’ve collapsed during the time you’ve been here, all of this things you call “your reality”, could be gone by the time you come out. 

Now, if I would’ve tried to fill that imaginary collapse with new possibilities I would’ve entered into a whole new level of imaginations, or even into anxiety and despair. Only by allowing myself to rest on the void that collapse created, could I experience the freedom of this present moment and therefore accept any possibility. After all, whether I like it or not, at one given point all of this will collapse, it could start by me or by the world that surrounds me, but this world will never cease changing and transforming, so what better time to start making peace with this idea than now?

One of the thoughts that likes to visit me more often, is the thought of failure, after all, my spiritual ego is crushed. Here I am, in the big leagues of meditation retreats (or at least I thought so) and I spend most of my time having imaginary neurotic conversations with the man that cooks our meals, (I really would rather not have anymore quinoa for breakfast and have some chilaquiles instead), fantasizing about having a life that deep down I know I don’t really want, or some other thing that is definitely not part of any prescribed spiritual practice. 

Meditating? Yes, I try, but in lack of a watch, I can’t tell whether I’m doing 5 minute sittings or longer ones. Hatha Yoga? I also try, and even though I’m getting stronger, every time I feel the very narrow limits of my physical body and will, I get extremely triggered and drop directly into judgment, either towards myself, or anyone who represents the opposite tendency; strong and willful. 

It seems that at an unconscious level I’ve been playing every spiritual community favorite, the “I Am More Spiritual Than You” game. But how to feel good about myself if I’m not judging others or putting them down, while thinking myself to be better? I yet have to figure it out. 

One day I write a letter to my teacher, and when his answer comes back it becomes clear that I have to engage in a new version of the original game. It’s name? The“Love Yourself” game. Yet this is the game that scares me the most, the one that I deem impossible, the one that seems to have absolutely no basis on reality, that seems just like a wild fabrication of someone who can love him or herself, because they are worthy of it. But me? For sure I’m gonna lose. At least with Who Am I?, I had had some formal training, this? This is just madness. 

Still, that’s all my Heart truly wants, to feel that love and adoration that I have always been throwing outwards reflected upon myself. To come into the recognition of who I truly Am through and act of Self Love. Every retreat we are reminded that “The lovers of love, are loved through their love”, so beyond success of failure, I will play this game. 

The next week I received yet another letter from my teacher Sahaja, bearing the most beautiful reminder, “Your Heart is unconditional love”, it read. 

Through it I knew that it wasn’t truly me who was gonna be doing the loving, I just had to allow myself to become more transparent to what was already there, what had always been there, this sacred Heart radiating unconditional love. All I had to do was relax and accept, letting the Heart hold it all in love. 

At that moment, acceptance was the only playing card. It was not about changing, or suppressing, or improving, just about accepting myself as I was, as I am, exactly where I was in my own journey; laziness and all, judgments and all, comparisons and all, crappy meditations an all, imperfect past and uncertain future too. All of it, holding it in acceptance, letting the Heart shine its love clearly, through the ceasing of the mind that wants to make a judgment, through the mind that expects things to be a certain way. 

And everyday I still felt like I had failed, like I was failing God by constantly forgetting, but I started learning to accept that as much as I could too. All the feelings where still there, and are still there, yet their grip on me had become looser. 

Having to accept my own limitations, my own conditioning, my own ugliness and still loving myself. From the perspective of Ximena there couldn’t be anything harder, since self-love seemed like the luxury of the perfect. But the silent touch of acceptance, key word here being “silent”, brought a healing release and in it something started to get revealed; that love that is engrained in all my being, that Heart of unconditional love that Sahaja was talking about. 

Often times, the name of the game changed again, revealing itself as what it was, just a game. Everyday was different, every moment a new flavor. Sometimes I had to laugh at the realization of how long I had been lost in wild fabrications, without a moment of self awareness, other times I had to cry, looking into memories of times when I had hurt people out of my own contradictions, limitations and conditioning, sometimes I cried in a heart felt way upon the recognition of the love that had been received, of all the blessings that had and have always been there. 

Despite everything that seemed challenging at the level of thought, having the opportunity to be with myself, without many distractions, without interactions or anything to do, gave me the chance to know myself as I had never dared to do. I found marks in my body I never knew I had, I saw with all clarity a few of my controlling tendencies, I kept a diligent track of my digestive movement and many other things. 

The constant feeling of failure also thought me to go beyond expectations and to try to truly see what the moment had to offer. Despite my meditations not feeling deep enough, I took the time to try to truly feel and experience and understand what it was that I was really doing or trying to do. Perhaps I saw it myself, perhaps I was forced to see it, but suddenly the magic of life revealed itself as one thing: simplicity. 

Towards the end, I started to feel the impatience to see the retreat through, to know what would be to be back into the world, to know what would happen, which one out of all of my plans (which I had written down all the way to Plan F) would come into fruition. 

All of you, who were already out in the world, understating a bit more of what was unfolding would’ve advised me against this behavior. But so would any spiritual teacher, remembering that any thought, even the good ones, are just obscurations of the reality that holds everything in place all the time. 

On day 48 of the retreat, as I walked out of my room to go watch the sunset, I saw a note by my door. It read something along the lines, “As some of you may have heard before entering retreat, there’s a new virus that has been rapidly spreading throughout the world...”. Not all of the details where there, but we were gently being warned about coming back into a world that wasn’t exactly as we had left it. 

The following day, as we drove back into town the full load was handed to us. We heard about borders closing, schools closing and people actually dying. All of us started laughing at the van, and not because it was truly funny, but because each one of us was being forced into acceptance and surrender. Nothing to do except to flow which what had been handed, to learn to navigate a world that had its own plans. 

I was amused by the fact that my prediction of a collapsing world had turned into a reality. The futility of all the planning I had spent hours on really hit me in the face. 

I still came out from retreat with a feeling of defeat, in “Ximena vs. the 49-Day Retreat”, Ximena had lost. But what kind of sorrow could remain in a defeat that held the possibility of surrendering the idea of who I think I am? Only freedom, only peace, only joy. 

The days passed and now I could see the process, now it was a 49-Day Retreat, now I could understand what it all was worth. 

How I wished I would come out glowing like and angel, looking more connected than ever. How I wished my ego could build itself up in this experience. But in that sense, I had luckily failed. If I would’ve succeeded, the more the illusion that self-love could only come from achievement and recognition would’ve been solidified. 

As I completed the whole experience and went back into “normal life”, I realized that there was no way I could’ve truly fail at it, because the experience that I had was teaching exactly what I needed to learn in that precise moment, whether it was fancy or elevated enough for my taste, whether it was enjoyable or not, whether I was ready for it or not. 

It’s been more than a week now since the retreat ended, and all the little things that I learned in those 49 days seem more relevant than ever. 

Currently the name of the game seems to be “Stay At Home”, but within that game multiple other games unfold. Perhaps the most important of them all is the recognition of the game itself, playing along and dropping all seriousness without sabotaging ourselves and losing deliberately. Perhaps the “I Don’t Know What’s Gonna Happen” game would be an advisable one. What I can say for myself is that I am really allowing myself to dwell in that uncertainty and trying my best to play along with what the world and my inner reality have to offer at any given moment. 

Trust, self-love and simplicity. This triad will pave the way for whatever is to come.