Diving Right In

I'm not all that experienced with meditation, but I've definitely become more interested in it in the past few months. Before I left, I started going to a place in Minneapolis called the Common Grounds Meditation Center. This is a great place to visit if you're interested in trying it out. They have a decent website and a meditation schedule posted. It's run by donations.

Anyway, I looked into mediation retreats here in Chiang Mai, and the same temple where I did the monk chat seems to have a promising program. I made reservations for a retreat this upcoming week. I will have a long day of teaching classes then I'm going to head right to the temple. I will miss the opening introduction to Buddhism, but I will make it in time to catch the bus that will take me and a small group of other yogis to some faraway secret location in the mountains...? That's what it sounds like anyway. It will be two days of quiet time, mostly in meditation with some breaks for food and chanting and discussions. I am very excited and curious as to how I'll handle the whole thing.

No...I'm downright terrified. I'm really good at distracting myself in real life so I don't know what kind of scary things will happen in my mind when I force myself to sit still for two days. I've been practicing on my own and I can maybe sit still for about 30 minutes. For example, I was meditating this morning and had to stop abruptly because I had this brilliant idea to do a retreat. So I got up and made reservations. Yeah. I have a problem with sitting still.

It's funny how I've lived with myself for as many years as I've been on the planet and I'm extremely scared to hang out with myself and my thoughts for a mere 48 hours. It's like a blind date with my mind. I think I'll learn a lot.

On another note, if you've read Eat Pray Love, you'll understand why I'm starting to feel like a spitting image to that story. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.