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Go Into Your Cell And Your Cell Will Teach You Everything
By gartenfische | October 17, 2007
People who spend a lot of time alone become truly odd. Cases in point: Me. Theodore Kaczynski.
Being with people starts to feel strange (and I am sure they notice that you are strange). The capacity for small talk slips away; skills for participating in casual society erode. Moonmaid wrote about this not long ago. It’s comforting to know I’m not the only one experiencing this awkwardness. In her book, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith, Barbara Brown Taylor wrote about how you lose your public veneer when you spend so much time apart—you’re raw and exposed when entering a culture you spend little time in.
And that’s not the only effect. My spiritual director—my husband thinks this is a weird term—I guess it is—anyway, he told me that people who are alone a lot can start to think they’re crazy (maybe because we are?). He said it’s because everything comes up, there’s nothing to distract you. Which is absolutely true.
I am not complaining; I have known greater healing during this period of my life than any other. As Pema Chödrön puts it, “Life pulls you away from being fully present.” That’s simply reality, and for most of my life, there didn’t seem to be much I could do about it (single-momdom, for instance, takes a lot of time and energy). But lately, I am sort of, maybe, a little bit, following the Desert Father’s instruction to “Go into your cell and your cell will teach you everything.” Only my cell is a 2700 square foot home. The point is to spend time apart and in silence (including, and especially, interior silence)—the cell is more a state of being than a place.
When initially spending a lot of silent time alone, Chödrön said she started “climbing the walls.” As she put it, “The detox is so intense.” (As D. said, you start to think you’re crazy.) But then: “Gradually what begins to happen is you sink so deeply into what life has been distracting you from.” You get used to being with your weird self without noise and people to divert your attention. And you come right up against the reality you’ve been hiding from. You come face to face with yourself—the self you have created. It can be intense.
Chödrön said, “What we find if we’re not used to sitting quietly with ourselves, not used to meditation, not used to having any inner solitude in our lives—we find that we’re very threatened by nothing happening.” This is true, and I used to fight it—filling empty time with music or chatter or shopping or eating out; in fact, I once had a hard time being alone with no distraction. But once you learn to be with that discomfort, instead of running away, great peace and healing begin to set in. All that running is tiring! In spite of myself, I have been becoming wholer. (I can tell because I’m not finding so many pieces of myself scattered about the house.*)
So you get a little odd, but you get a little peace and a lot of healing, too.
I’m not saying I experience great peace on a daily basis; I’m not on constant retreat. (In fact, lately, I’m spending too much time on the great modern distraction, the Internet—I’m adjusting that now, ratcheting down.) But many, many hours spent alone, in silence, forces me to notice things that have always been there, I suspect, but which I was oblivious to. Like: my record album mind which, once the needle gets into a groove, doesn’t seem able to jump out; my pettiness (getting irritated at my husband for what?—no, you don’t want to know); my selfishness (sorry, I can’t come see you then because I don’t like driving in rush hour). So many thoughts, attitudes, programmed responses that weren’t questioned before—largely because my mind didn’t have the space to even notice they were there. I was like a well programmed robot: I like this, but I don’t like this; I will turn this way, but not that way.
But time apart, and the effort to still the thoughts, and especially, contemplative practices like yoga—and particularly meditation—bring great changes. Thomas Keating wrote, “The process of contemplative prayer is a way of releasing what is in the unconscious.” And with that release comes wholeness, healing, and, lo’ and behold, the desire to live more for others than just for yourself. The center of the universe shifts.
Chödrön explains that in her life, she goes back and forth, inward and outward. “I want to go deeper but the only reason I want to go deeper is to be there for other people in increasingly difficult situations.” Yes, the practice cannot be for me alone. (I think God takes care of that—the healing, in my experience, includes curing self-centeredness.)
So you go into your cell, but at some point, you come out. Otherwise, what good is this “everything” that your cell has taught you? You may come out weird and raw, but you come out.
Annie Dillard wrote, “No one escapes the wilderness on the way to the promised land.” In my experience, spending time in that cell is entering into the wilderness. It is hard, it is diminishing, it is jarring. It includes dark nights and doubt and confusion. It is all worth it. It leads to the promised land.
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Please don’t misunderstand—I’m no hermit. I’ve got my family, friends, neighbor-friends, yoga friends. But I spend the entire day most days all by my lonesome. So, Ted and I, we don’t have much in common—he should have followed Bonhoeffer’s advice and been wary of avoiding community altogether.
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*Thomas Merton: “The first thing you have to do before you start thinking about such a thing as contemplation is to try to recover your basic natural unity, to reintegrate your compartmentalized being into a coordinated and simple whole, and learn to live as a unified person. This means that you have to bring back together the fragments of your distracted existence so that when you say, ‘I’, there is someone really present to support the pronoun you have uttered.”
Topics: contemplative living, God, Christianity, life |
October 17th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
There is an element to your writing that I am hard pressed to define… There is something in your words that grabs my soul in a particular way that is both challenging and yet completely enriching Gartenfische.
This post was exemplary of that. You cut through a lot of clutter and say what must be said. And then you populate this with some outstanding examples from Bonhoeffer to Kacynski to Pema and others.
When I read this I was struck by the fact that I have longed to go on a silent retreat for years but that I have lacked the courage.
October 17th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
When I saw you and Theodore Kaczynski in the same paragraph, I thought, “Whaaat?” But as always you pulled it all together into something beautiful and revelatory.
I was just thinking yesterday how I would love to go on a monthlong retreat, into the cave, and get some of the extraneous junk out of my mind. I don’t think it will happen anytime soon, though.
October 17th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Wow! I was just talking with a friend about some of this. Your post really spoke to that and added much richness that Iwould like to pass along to her. I will give her your blog addy so she can look at it herself.
I can relate so much to what you say here. I wasn’t able to work at my profession for a couple years for health reasons. Had to come up against a lot of that “stuff” in there. I’m not saying I am healed, but a lot of healing took place. As a person of faith, I know I am a work in progress. Alway have been, always will be.
Going on a retreat, soon, would be good. Now that I’m back at work, the space in my head gets filled so fast. I really have to work much harder to make space for solitude. But I do go into that cell. I try to listen to God. Sometimes I’m able to hear that voice.
October 17th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
Fran, Thank you, thank you, thank you. You are such a blessing. I know what you mean about getting up the courage for a silent retreat–I want to do that, too. Even though I spend a lot of time alone in silence now, I think a retreat would be much more intense. But good.
YM, Thank you. And yeah, I think that a retreat would be great for you because you have so many family duties, but I can see how that would be very hard (what do you do with the kids for a month?!). Someday!
Chuck, I know what you mean about the healing; I wouldn’t say I am healed, either, but wow, I see a lot going on and am so grateful for it. I’m glad you are able to find time for the cell. It’s much harder when you’re busy, but maybe even more necessary? When I was younger, I didn’t appreciate it enough to try to make the time, but I don’t know that I’d be able to do without it now. I’d have to fit it in somehow.
October 18th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Garten, thank you for your thoughts about your silent lifestyle. Sprinkling the quotes in add a lot, and you’ve bought my mind back to Pema Chodron, whom I haven’t read for more than a several years. I’ve always had problems with small talk with acquaintances or people I don’t know. but that’s just me.
October 18th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
Jan, thanks. Small talk has never been my forté, either. It’s just gotten worse. :)
October 18th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
I loved your Dillard quote. She is one of my favorites.
October 19th, 2007 at 10:39 am
Diane, she’s one of my favorites, too. That quote came from “For the Time Being,” a great book. :)
October 19th, 2007 at 10:42 am
I just returned from a 10 day silent retreat that is part of my Mindfulness Yoga and Meditation training. I am changing the look of my blog and once it’s complete, I will write about it. It was not fully silent as we had to interact with the yoga teachers, but we spent most of the time in silence.
I suggest if you really want to explore deep settling and going inward, partake in a full 10 day vipassana retreat in the Goenka tradition.
October 19th, 2007 at 11:11 am
Welcome home, Linda! Been missing your blog.
I look forward to reading about your experience.
December 14th, 2007 at 10:02 am
[…] feel like leaving the house and seeing some friends, which is very much different than going into my cell that will teach me everything. I’ve not been avoiding that cell intentionally, I just don’t have the energy left to […]