And I’ve been asked a dozen times already: won’t you get bored?

Beginning sometime Saturday afternoon/evening – following a post-work nap and a drive to Maine – I’ll be on solo retreat until May 6. No cell phone, no television, no regular phone, and no radio.

I’m purposefully not bringing any books. I’ll divide my time between sitting and walking meditation, yoga, some leisure activities like photography, rowing a boat around a lake, and sleeping. A fairly simple and uncomplicated endeavour.

And I’ve been asked a dozen times already: won’t you get bored? Yes, I’m sure I will. That’s what I want to happen. I want to get bored and I want to be comfortable with being bored and not have to fill every moment with something. I want to relax and push less. I’ve gotten on this path of attainment and forgotten the path of already-possessing.

Still, I can’t help but feel some fear and sadness as the retreat approaches. I know I won’t have the crutches of work, friends, reading, and other activities to distract my mind from loneliness, loss, attachment. I leave behind a friendship in flux, and in my mind I’m not prepared for all the possibilities that could happen; I’m only prepared for the ones I’d like to happen. I believe these feelings will rise up with vengeance during my retreat, and I’ll have to sit with them… I’ll have no other way to deal with tough issues here and in other areas but to go straight through them.

The thought terrifies me so much that I’m numb to it right now. I can’t actually imagine what to expect. I’ve been filling my idle time, every moment, because my thoughts, allowed to wander, usually get me in to trouble.

I do have hope, however, that I can continue to use a technique I learned recently to allow these emotions to challenge me but not to overcome me: to see them, to explore them, to say “So this is sadness…” or “This is jealousy… and fear…” and to allow them to exist without identifying myself with them. I’ve done this a few times and discovered it helps avoid me from clutching to emotion as if it were my only possession.

Leaving for six days is an act of letting go: of myself, of my relationships with my dear friends, of expectations for the future. Anything can happen while I am gone. During the retreat, I hope that I will learn to let go of any idea of the retreat as a fix for problems, and simply sit and breathe and be present.