Practicing connection
I vividly remember the conclusion of my first 3-month retreat. After 12-weeks of silence, solitude, and seclusion, the teachers rang the gong to mark its conclusion and invited us to talk once again. I wanted to run from the room.
My precious bubble of peace and ease seemed to vanish in an instant, and social anxiety rose up like a tsunami. “Oh god”, I thought, “maybe I should become a nun”. A lifelong vow of silence seemed favorable to the chit-chat I foresaw ahead of me. I longed for a return to the sparkling stillness I’d grown intimate with in the preceding weeks. Of course, I wasn’t the only one feeling that way - no matter who you are, coming back into social connection after a long retreat is intense. Everything is louder, faster, more vulnerable and jarring than before. Not mention that the shy, awkward, uncertain parts of me had been having a nice long nap, and felt rudely awakened.
Fortunately, that day was the beginning of another kind of awakening for me - the realization that connection was a practice I needed, and ultimately wanted, to turn towards. I didn’t want conditionally dependent peace & ease - one I could only experience when alone, when the world was silent, or at best I was one-on-one with a close friend. I wanted freedom in all conditions.
I know many of you have your own flavors of this story, especially in recent years as we turn outwards post “social distancing”. There is both a deep hunger for connection AND great hesitation at the thought of it. In these times, connection as a practice becomes even more powerful. It invites us to open to the shaky, joyful, vulnerable ground of human relating so we can find out what’s possible inside of it. To make the relationship between us and another(s) a space of inquiry, where we learn more about ourselves, others and the nature of this reality we all live inside of. And maybe most significantly, it trains us to stay connected to ourselves, with all our quirks, desires, sensations and emotions, as we open to deeply see and receive others - or simply have some fun together!