I’ve been on the edge of getting really sick all week. When an opportunity to go on virtual retreat came up, I jumped on it. My plan was to be on virtual retreat all day yesterday. In a virtual retreat, you stay home and meet the other participants by phone every few hours. Three calls for spiritual practice, two calls for Q & A. In between calls, there’s spiritual practices on your own: prayer, writing, mild fasting, napping and gentle exercise. Mild fasting means eating small amounts and stopping before you’re full. Writing is longhand, you don’t use your computer. You only use the phone for retreat calls. Like a live retreat, it’s a day of rest and connecting with the Divine (Source, God, The Creator, whatever word you’re comfortable with)
I was laying on the floor during the first spiritual practice call, listening to chanting and noticing that my rug needs to be vacuumed. Not noticing my heart opening or other sorts of retreat-y things. Noticing clumps of cat hair. So I chalked it up to resistance and kept going.
I tried to walk in nature as suggested as a between-call activity. I live in a city, so I walked on the beach and tried to ignore the airport and the financial district skyline. Not sure there was much heart-opening or connection-to-Source going on there.
I told the people I have ongoing projects with that I wasn’t available because I was on retreat. I forgot to tell my friends and family not to call me. My nap got interrupted with text messages and I missed the 3rd retreat call because I was on the phone debating the pros and cons of changing my cell plan. My own fault, I suppose, for not setting better retreat boundaries.
I was afraid I would be bored. I was right. By 1 I wanted to work. I wanted to find out who got eliminated on Top Chef the night before. I wanted to watch Project Runway All Stars and think uncharitable thoughts about Kara. I wanted to vacuum the rug. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, so a clean rug is a spiritual practice right? I chalked it all up to resistance and tried again.
I attempted one of the spiritual practices. It was nice, there was some Divine connection there. But it wasn’t nice enough to keep me from worrying about whether the citrus in the fruit bowl was still usable. And worrying about the expiration date on the chicken in the fridge. Nothing like a mild fast to create food obsession.
I finally gave up on the retreat around 3-ish. I hated on Kara. I vacuumed the rug. I returned my text messages. I juiced the citrus and checked the expiration on the chicken. I had a run of the mill day off.
Technology opens up so many opportunities for us. Most service providers I know have clients all over the world. They meet by phone, Skype or video chat. People hold conferences by webinar. Most of the time, it works. We don’t need to be in the same room anymore to exchange information. We live in a digital world, but retreats are one of those things that will have to continue to be analog.
If you’ve had a different experience on virtual retreat I’d love to hear about it in the comments!