The following is a journal entry I wrote on the last night of my silent retreat with Adyashanti. It's now been a month since I started the retreat and life's doubts and insecurities have slowly crept back into my life. Even so, everything I felt and experienced from my time in stillness continues to hold true. And I am convinced that years from now, when I look back on the path my life has taken, this week that I spent by myself, with this teacher is one that has changed the trajectory of my life.
The last night of Adyashanti. The last night of silence. The retreat ends tomorrow at noon. I'm not ready and it's time. Time to integrate; to experiment; to see. There is a time for learning and a time for living. That is when we see if we have learned, what we have learned, how we have learned. It's the time to see if the teachings have life beyond word and feeling.
This week has been a revelation. No big awakening or mind-blowing visions but rather a quiet and profound deepening, returning. So many memories have come back to me this week along with the insight that time, space and knowledge allows. It started as a trickle and then today the floodgates opened up. Memories of adolescence, the divine disguised as the mundane, came back to me in vivid swirls of flashbacks: the teachers and teachings of my spiritual journey thus far: my first gurus at St. Joseph's Church, Father Piet and Sister Mary Lou; my 3rd grade CCD teacher; the time Mr. Dascoli, my high school History teacher, asked me to argue the existence of the soul; recognizing my trip to West Africa to study drumming and dancing was actually one of my first spiritual pilgrimages; and on and on.
There came to me an understanding that my life has not been a series of disjointed, unconnected, jumps from one thing to another but rather a thoroughly connected journey where each step has led me exactly where I am; perfectly where I need to be. And more important than that, realizing that I have never strayed from the path I have been trying to find all this time; the path of true being and authenticity; to spirit, divinity...dare I say...GOD. Recognizing that the same God that I spoke to in the bathroom countless nights during my childhood through a face full of tears is still with me. It's the intuition and the inner voice that guides me to this day. The one that was there for me through that tearful, confusing childhood; the one that stood up to my parents and turned my family life upside down; the one that told me to move to the Caribbean; the one that popped into my head after my beloved doggy Bronx died and whispered, "travel the world"; the one that guided me here - to Omega. The suffering has come not from hearing that voice but from invalidating it; consistently denying it as illogical and struggling to justify it's voice to the outside world. I may not be awakened but I've made it this far because I have made realizations and ultimately though all the chatter, I've ended up listening to that inner voice.
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