From my interview with Samir Heffley, who is on the board of directors for the nonprofit Osho Meditation Center in Boulder.
“If you are able to give yourself enough time some time to just be alone with yourself, even for seven days, you will be astonished at how difficult it is. And then you will understand a very important thing: a lot of times we make our lives so busy because we’re quite afraid to be alone.”
“It’s a beautiful thing to really meet the truth of who you are, and it’s so liberating. And then you start being less and less afraid, which is huge. There’s so much fear in the world. Not just surface things, like what if I lose my job or what’s happening to the planet, but when you face the fundamental fear inside yourself of your aloneness, your whole relationship to fear changes in the world.”
Interested in learning more about silence and solitude than just my article (scheduled to run Jan. 8)?
Here’s a behind-the-scenes glimpse at my notes.
Mary Aitoshi Casey II, of Boulder, owner of the Boulder Quest Center
www.BoulderQuest.com
“All of this stimulation is coming in, and if we don’t find time to quiet everything down, we don’t hear our own voice, that inner wisdom.”
“We’ve gotten so used to not hearing our inner voice because we’ve been trained not to, that we have to really consciously go there now.”
“I think we’ve actually lost the skill of being bored. Where, if we’re not hyper-stimulated, we feel like our life must be too plain. Where we bought into this story that hyper-communication is where you want to be all of the time. But that hyper state is only sustainable for about 45 minutes, maybe an hour and half. If you watch how they do it, the Secret Service, or lifeguards at the pool, you have to take breaks, because you can’t stay at the red alert stage. Without breaks, you become less effective and the creative part of your brain, the prefrontal cortex, shuts down.”
“Turn your chair away from your computer, and if you’re some place where you’re worried about being seen like you’re not doing anything, put a notebook in your hand and a pencil in the other and close your eyes like you’re thinking about something, but don’t think about anything. Anyone who sees you will assume you’re doing something productive — and they’re right! Rest is one of the best things you can do to improve your productivity.”
“We just forget how much we’re checking it. Like check these boxes: I check my e-mail while going to the bathroom. Um, I probably don’t need to do that. It takes me twice as long to walk home because I am texting while I am walking home. Yup. We just don’t realize that we’re spending all this time with our electronics — and then we wonder why we have no time.”
“Solitude. It’s your chance for yourself to talk to you. And you’re so worth that time. Think of all the people that we give time for their voices to talk to us, and what percentage of that time we give to ourselves. … If you took 100 percent of your listening time, maybe 1 percent — if you’re lucky — we devote to ourselves.”
“We’re like, yeah, I can take care of you and this and I can hold a job and have a baby and cook the meals and clean the house and do all these things. And for a day or a week, giving that much of yourself, you can probably do it, and you probably feel really jazzed. But it will start to weigh on you and deplete you if you don’t take that solitude and get back in touch with why you share and give so much, and why you love the people that you love and that you’re giving for. We can forget that we love our children and husband and wives because we’re not listening to ourselves. All I do is do the laundry; I don’t love anything! What do you mean love? I don’t have time for that!”
“That’s that solitude piece. It’s where our new ideas come from and where our hopes and dreams take root and take form.”
“You have to know your own brain to know what it is that stimulates that sense of your inner voice being open and present and talking. It kind of makes your brain feel full. Like it’s, well, all lit up and glowy like a light bulb. Otherwise, the light is coming from the computer screen and not from inside you.”
“That solitude taps you into your wisdom, and that’s what you put out into world instead of putting out reactions. And then my reactions control my experience, rather than me creating my experience on purpose.”
“This is a time of year when people get really crazed, but then it’s also a time when they can see I did lose control of my experience here. It’s a great time for this message to come in. It gets old to do everything off of willpower.”
I have a cool job. I get to talk to some of the most interesting people with interesting perspectives. Sometimes I wish I could just transcribe my interviews, so people can read all of the quotes in context. One single article sometimes doesn’t feel like enough.
So I have decided to put some more excerpts from my interviews on here, in case you want a little *more* than the paper has space for.
I am currently working on a story about the importance of solitude and silence.Here are some of my notes on the importance of being alone.
Johann Robbins, of Boulder, who offers guided silent meditation retreats.
The groups are usually 15 to 20 people who spend time together, yet silent, in the mountains for 10 days or so. Robbins leads about four to five retreats per year.
He has also offered wilderness canoe retreats.
More info: http://www.impermanentsangha.com
“The silence is what creates the solitude. If you go into the wilderness alone, that creates solitude because there’s no one to talk to. If you go in with a group and everyone’s chatting, you won’t have that impact. But if you’re with a group and everyone’s quiet, you get the same solitude, but the power of the group. The intention on being silent makes it easier to quiet your mind than even being alone.”
“The idea of practicing in nature for me isn’t sitting with your eyes closed watching your own mind. It’s sitting with your eyes, ears and whole body open and watching nature — but without trying to think, compare, analyze or judge it. Rather than allowing the associative mind to go onto whatever train it does, you bring it back to the present: What am I actually seeing, not what am I looking for or thinking of.”
“Nature reflects back to us our inner nature, our pure inner nature.”
“My view is that we’re essentially good, and we get overlaid with behaviors and conditioning that makes us maybe not so good: greed, hatred, delusion. … You don’t see those things in nature. You see violence in nature — it’s not like it’s some fairy tale — but there’s no malice behind it. When the snake eats the rodent, there’s no anger. It’s just life. … Nature is only reflecting what’s good in us back to us, and not reflecting anything else. Just what IS. It’s a powerful place to feel safe, at home, their own goodness, to feel our right place in life, without all of the striving and the stress, anxiety and fear and competition.”
“The way the mind gets habituated to a certain level of intensity and activity, there’s a lot of fear that propels that. So to confront that head on by stopping everything is scary.”"We all try to escape our own minds in different ways. Some do it destructively with drugs and alcohol. But when you go on a vacation, change jobs or partners, essentially what you’re trying to do is change your mind. Your mind is saying, ‘This doesn’t feel good. If I change the external circumstances, my thoughts will be more pleasant and thing will be easier.’ But a lot of times we find we’re back to the same situation and things haven’t really changed. … We’re all trying to change the externals to make the internals feel better.”
“At a certain point, what if we look inside our own minds? The causes for happiness and unhappiness are in our minds. If you can be happy with what is, then you’re happy.”
“Just by paying attention to something, we change it, we purify it. We don’t have to try to change anything. We just see it, we watch it, and in watching it, it self-purifies.”
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