Silent Meditation leading us into The Meditative Space
The dynamics of our Silent Retreat can be compared with the ongoing movement of a pendulum: breathe in and breathe out, focus and let go, move and sit still…
Our daily programme follows the same pattern: time to be on your own, time to be together.
Also our Silent Meditation Session (from 09:30 to 10:30) is composed of short sequences:
• 20 minutes Sitting Meditation in our meditation room inside the house,
• 20 minutes Walking Meditation outside in the garden.
It does not crave much to sit still for 20 minutes – longer might be uncomfortable. It is also not too demanding to do the outside walking-meditation for 20 minutes. The idea is to have sequences which will provide a light sense of change, without having to strain yourself.
Sitting Meditation
We start the first 12½ minutes of the sitting-session with a piece of our own music “Glimpse of Eternity” which supports the process of falling into the Meditative Space.
It is our wish to create a situation where ”nothing has to be done” – which leads to ”sitting silently”. It is not the sitting silently in itself that is the goal. The purpose is falling into a state that makes you not to feel like moving.
We are not encouraging nor teaching a special way of meditating, of how to sit or how to focus – or unfocus – your thoughts or awareness. You can use your own preferred techniques or just be.
If needed we can give feedback or advise during the afternoon sharing session.
Walking-Meditation
After 20 minutes the gentle sound of a meditation bell invites us to slowly stand up, leave the room and enter the garden.
Walking Meditation is a practice of buddhist monks. A path of approx. 10 m where you slowly walk back and forth. Experiencing every step intensely: the heal touching the ground, the sole of the foot being massaged by the surface, the toes pushing the foot backward… and then the next step, and the next, and the next.. with the ongoing focus on the breath.
It is recommended to keep the same path all through the retreat.
We then finish the morning meditation with a second sitting session, this time without music.
Living Life from The Meditative Space
One could distinguish Meditation from The Meditative Space by defining Meditation as a programmed task:
We set up a form (Sitting/Walking), choose a starting & ending time and exclude all disturbances from the outside world. Such practice brings us to a still point in us.
Once the Meditation is over, we choose to live daily life from the Meditative Space:
We open up for the outside world, allow a multitude of impressions to have their play upon us and we respond spontaniously to them. Sometimes we can be carried away or overwhelmed but we know we always can reconnect to that still point in us.
So when our Morning Meditation Session ends at 10:30 we gather for our break, sit together for a while in silence and when the energy feels right, we get up and go each our own way.
Until we meet again for lunch and repeat the sequence from “movement to stillness to movement”… and so we continue the rest of the retreat.
The Purpose of a Silent Retreat
