The resounding meditation bell rings, the echoing soundwaves attuning our nervous systems to the task ahead—quietude and stillness.

The dimly lit spare room lined with sitting cushions and kneeling chairs atop cherry wood bases, raised platforms supporting the roomful of seekers, is where the magic—or struggle (or both)—begins.

A few feet from the zendo entry sits an altar crowned with a young Gautama, his tilted head effaced, bathed in muted gold. Lit candles and other artifacts adorn the Butsudan. Gatherers silently enter, bow, and move to their appointed seats, fist in palm held at their haras, and await the ringing signal to begin.

Recently, I attended a three-day silent retreat in the mountains. The local meditation center offers this intensive a couple times a year, which has tempted me since I began receiving its weekly newsletter. Despite slim resources and time, and too may reservations, I took the plunge.

The yoga retreats I attended before were a combination of yoga, meditation, and dharma talks but none focused on Zen Buddhist meditation. Learning a new tradition was as big a draw as resetting my mind and body. Poor sleeping, eating, working, and scrolling habits had me in an anxious and imbalanced state. So, despite the half dozen reasons not to go, I went.

Meditating for four hours a day in 25-minute intervals tried me. I knew it would. My daily rituals include meditation, but not like that. As a seasoned yogini, I thought I knew how to meditate, even as an erratic practitioner. Some days, I meditate for 10 to 15 minutes, rarely longer, and often not at all. The daily discipline in a wildly fractured life of too many obligations and not enough downtime tests me—again and again.

But there I was, up in the mountains with complete strangers, fighting myself in a highly ritualized meditation practice, punctuated with dharma talks, nature hikes, journaling, and clean eating. With too little sleep and a sluggish digestive system (despite outstanding organic and locally sourced ingredients whipped up in deliciously prepared veggies, soups, salads, and fruit) in the high altitude, I wrestled my thoughts, complaints, and judgments.

However, the tiny wins—focused moments of still, suspended time—planted seeds and habits that continue to bear fruit many weeks past. The stillness of meditating bodies, sky-scraping trees, echoing chirps of a single bird lost in the stony mountain greys, tans, and whites of Idyllwild, California, soothed a stale soul; the tender warmth from the sun’s brief peeks above the clouds awakened submerged serenity.

A Sliver of Light and a Whiff of Success

The retreat was named “Way of Clouds.” Most of the weekend was cold and cloudy, but on the final day, sunlight warmed the cool mountains, stones, and trickling brook. Shedding a flannel layer or two, I bathed in the cloud breakthrough, grateful, buoyant among the stony mountain basin sights, smells, and sounds. I carried the crisp blue of the sky in my pockets, like smiling electricity, into the dark zendo. My light shone, even if only for brief seconds.

Despite immersing in a new practice, I learned little about meditation techniques but confirmed that nature, silence, and reflection are powerful medicine. These spiritual tools connect mind to body (an illusory separation), un-anchoring the spirit. The steep path to mind-body melding may not be pretty (and the ROI statistically unprofitable), but powerful glimpses, like touching the gilt frame of a Rembrandt, bring us closer to the prized center and, thus, worth the climb.

I tasted a hint of peaceful blankness. It seemed an abeyance, a pause, and suspended flight. Although, clearing the runway for takeoff was like toggling a stop-go switch, one step up—stuttering, falling, retracing steps—and two steps back. My mind and I arm-wrestled, and I lost most strength tests.

The three-legged race comes to mind. As a kid, the three-legged race—two people, three legs (adjoining legs tied together)—taught me cooperation. Racers had to synchronize two strangers’ bodies to one goal, one rhythm, one speed, negotiated instinctively, intuitively, in breathless silence. When one ego-driven partner plunges forward for the win, dragging along another’s stumbling body, the pair typically loses.

Connecting to spirit is like that, a three-legged race to one body-mind. Ego and deeply ingrained habits can derail the process. Coordination and cooperation of the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious parts of being can get us closer to spirit on an often long, tedious journey of consistency and course correction. We stumble, rise, and reset.

Granted, we’re not superhuman. We get beaten up and want to stay down, rest, lick our wounds. Seeking bottom is a strange kind of hope: nowhere to go but up. Finding what inspirits us helps. It’s like finding a friend, someone to lean on when we lose strength and willpower. We rationalize that we don’t need anyone and ignore an outstretched hand. We’re afraid of failing—again.

Define Spirituality

Spirituality means many things. The term is unique to each seeker. Most would agree that a higher power is the secret sauce to the deeper-authentic self, an essential ingredient to the spirituality stew. And motivation—finding comfort, strength, and purpose, especially in the throes of seemingly insurmountable challenges, like addiction.

Whether gazing into a mirrored ravaged face or the hurt in a loved one’s eyes, we find motivation to try, to seek salvation and life’s meaning. We look for ourselves. It may be searching the sky just as the sun bursts through the clouds, radiating with the light warming our faces, even for a breath’s worth, or sitting quietly in a candle-lit, dark-wooded zendo, eyes closed yearning into the vastness of time-space. It may be the right words at the right time.

Higher power is an umbilical cord, a channel of physical, emotional, and spiritual nourishment that leads to transformative healing, maybe a moment at a time. It’s vast, unending—limitless.

Spirituality belongs to no one belief system or practice. Meditation, nature, creativity, rituals, experience, religion, light, whatever fuels a will to reach new levels, quantifiable or not, can be spiritual. But we must unlock the chains of judgment, typically inheritances from private and societal experience.

Our parents school us with advice and prejudices they inherited. Don’t speak until spoken to, respect your elders, and wear clean underwear in case you get in an accident are some of the gems I often heard. Social “norms” tell us who to be.

How do we begin to know ourselves from the inside out?

“Which voice is mine?” I hear my own unspoken words. The question is rhetorical but meaningful before I close my eyes to meditate.

Overcoming Soul-Crushing Habits that Derail the Unwary

I’ve suffered a life of judgment, mine and others’ opinions. So, criticizing comes easily. Judgment is power. I get to shape the world in my vision and thereby control a seemingly chaotic existence for my own protection. If I got everyone’s number, I know who to avoid and preserve my peace and safety. So, my mind on autopilot reacts.

At the mountain retreat, my fellow meditators spoke no words. I sized them up by their looks and mannerisms. I kept score: one guy not obeying the rules of bowing in the sacred space, another young couple whispering to each other during meals, and another older man knocking on a clearly occupied bathroom door (not reading the posted signs about courtesy and protocol). The entire weekend, my eyes narrowed upon seeing each of them.

The final day’s closing ceremony, we broke silence, and each person spoke about their experience. The non-bower tearfully claimed he had a hard time—that’s all. The cheater whispering couple were grateful for the experience despite carefully timing the insulin shots one of them needed several times a day. And the old door-knocking dude was grateful for poetry and, at 83, the capability to attend the retreat.

Ashamed of my callousness, I berated myself a bit. A short while later, compassion filled me, and I vowed to do better, deepen my spiritual practices to climb another rung on the clarity through resilience ladder.

Quick-to-judgment is deeply ingrained in me. My upbringing and legal training reinforced the destructive habit that cocoons me, walls me in from brave, open-hearted connection and unconditional compassion. The key to unlock courage is conditioning, a kind of spiritual weightlifting: observing my thoughts, deepening my meditation practice, and nourishing my mind and body well. Kicking a destructive habit requires scrupulous mindfulness and daily devotion.

Our spirituality inspires us to do the hard work. Ritual, practice, and relationship help us surrender ruinous holding patterns that stifle happier versions of ourselves. Exposing the recycled misconceptions that cage us, lifting them to the light, is one step toward healing, enlightenment, and recovery. The rest is conditioning the eyes to see our inner (sun) light—painful as that maybe—longer and longer each time we look.

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