The woman who organizes the annual 4-day silent retreat that I go to also organizes one-day retreats from time to time. I always go if I’m in the country. She lets us know way in advance so it’s no problem freeing up the time.

It’s held in a lovely meditation hall with a wall of windows looking out into an undeveloped meadow. If I wander out onto the front porch during walking meditation I can see a quiet paved alley between the houses and gardens which has seemingly untamed bushes and other green growing things along its stone walls.

The day is organized extremely well. In fact, truth be told, I have a feeling that the mindfulness instructor is a little bit obsessive compulsive. There are laminated notes here and there, including over the sinks in the bathroom and on the inside of the stall doors, with mindfulness messages.

This time there was also a covering over the big clock high up on the front wall which was a picture of a clock with the 12, 3, 6 and 9 in the right places but with the word “NOW” over the clock’s hands.

(how irritating is that?) – (foreshadowing)

There are always between 20 and 30 retreatants and this past Friday was no exception. Some are repeat offenders like me and their faces and habits have become familiar to me. Most are people I’ve never seen before. The hall is spacious enough for whoever shows up.

The day is basically set up in 3/4 hour meditation sessions, one right after the other, of sitting, walking, sitting, mindful eating and walking, sitting,  and a few minutes of small group talk to break the silence.

The sitting meditations are the noisiest I’ve ever experienced. She guides…alot. We’re silent. She’s most definitely not.

Okay, many of the people participating are beginners. I get it. From the very first retreat I wondered at how little silent meditation goes on, but the pickings are slim in Jerusalem so I’m grateful for the opportunity to experience the power of meditating in a group from time to time.

Grateful. Grateful. Grateful.

That’s me repeating a mantra of gratitude for the opportunity to sit mediation with the power of a group. And I really continue to be quite grateful.

On the other hand, this is where she was guiding us to be and where the rest of the group seemed to be and this is where I was hanging out….or maybe here…and moments of                                                                              here.

All of a sudden, it just seemed so serious and heavy. In the walking meditation, I kept looking around at everyone. They resembled nothing so much as zombies.

And then there were the handful of people who chose to cover up with a blanket and sleep during the mindful eating and personal walking meditation – in the middle of a very sunny, very pleasant day. Typical escape behavior, right? I started asking myself…”Jeez, who wouldn’t want to escape all this heaviness?” and wondering if it wasn’t just a tad depressing in the meditation hall.

I was thinking about my own meditation and yoga class. Did people sometimes go in search of a thick rope and a stool when they leave? Yikes!

For awhile I tried to come back to my breath like a good retreatant. I tried to take notice of my thoughts as they arose and let them go. I tried to focus on the sounds in the room to be in the here and now of it all. But my mind was

unruly and wild.

And I was liking it alot.

I was liking how my thoughts wandered to the yoga mat and to my backyard and to my daughter-in-law and granddaughters’ arrival in Israel later in the day. I liked how the sun felt on my closed eyes when I sat on the porch (mindfully) eating my lunch. I felt my heart smile at my (judgmental and sarcastic) thought about the clearly healthy cardboard-looking dark crackers, seeds and grapes my fellow-retreatant was eating on the porch and felt joyful at the decidedly un-organic rice and chicken in my own bowl.

When we broke into our small group at the end of the day there was that awkward silence there often is when breaking silence at a silent retreat. So I opened up with what I think of as my guilty pleasure smile and said, “I was rebelling in the meditation hall.”

Blank looks. “Rebelling?” they asked.

“Yep,” I continued. “I felt myself kicking out with my feet and pushing out with my elbows at the structure and direction of it all. I had thoughts and didn’t let them go. I looked around even though we’d been told not to lift our eyes to the height of people’s faces.”

They didn’t know quite what to make of that. I didn’t either. It just was.

The conversation moved off in a different direction. I continued my rebellion by commenting to myself that the man to my left, who I’d judged to probably be a bit of a cuckoo, was actually quite normal, nice and interesting.

My thoughts drifted as my partners spoke, thinking how women are so much more verbal and so often seem to dominate sensitive conversations with verbosity. I was wishing the other woman (with whom I became friendly at the 4-day retreat and have gotten together with since) would read my mind and create a comfortable space for the two men to speak.

Even before I collected my stuff and headed for the car I’d about decided that my rebellion in the meditation hall experience was one of the best meditation experiences I’d had in a long time.

After all, after twenty some odd years on the cushion I’ve pretty much got that focusing on the breath thing down. I’ve noticed about a gazillion thoughts and watched them float off like clouds in a blue sky, like the water truckin’ on down the river as I sit on the bank, like the birds flying overhead and continuing south to Africa for the winter months. You name the metaphor, I’ve pinned it to my thoughts as I let them go.

And go the do.

But the strength of the rebellious mind – now there’s a meditation experience I can’t remember ever having had before in quite this joyful way. Noticing that is noticing SOMETHING. Noticing my happiness in rolling around in it like a pig in…mud…and lustily rolling around in it some more.

Well, it felt great.

Meditation teachers refer to this phenomenon as ‘monkey-mind’ because it’s similar to the way a monkey will swing from tree to tree tasting a banana from each one before dropping it and moving to the next tree. Like these monkeys, we often jump from thought to thought without ever really being in the present moment.

But, hey! Bananas are one of my favorite fruits.