The best way to control cows and sheep is to give them a big, grazing field
Suzuki Roshi
I feel like all these silent meditation retreats have been excellent training for the next several weeks. In fact, in a lot of real ways I see all the same dynamics arising around me and inside of me as very similar.
It seems like it doesn’t matter if your isolation was a choice or not. However you’ve found yourself there, isolation forces you to sit alone with everything that makes you the most uncomfortable. The discomfort is a persistent melody, like a tune stuck in your head – you can try and drink it away, or eat it away, or drugs it away or anger it away – but it turns out to be an infuriating game of whack a mole. The truth, of course, is that it always has been – but in isolation, there is a deep and frightening realization of the truth that there’s no “doing” it away – that the old tricks don’t work the same way, or are just not available. There is nothing to do, nowhere to go, no productivity tricks to rid yourself of the powerful emotions. Just you and your discomfort that rises and falls – cresting and collapsing – like waves.
the Good Heretic 