This piece was published in the January/February edition of Branches (www.branches.com), an Indiana magazine, “devoted to what matters most: your health, your environment and your spirituality.”
My wife, Jill, and I often lead small groups of people into the wilderness for what some call a vision fast. It’s a powerful opportunity for people to examine their sense of purpose and mark significant transitions in their lives. On one such trip, we hiked out with 5 fasters to an idyllic base camp in the middle of Harriman State Park in New York State. It was November and an early freeze had set in, but the area was beautiful – so calm and still.
We camped at a backcountry shelter, which was risky because it was open to any campers who wanted to be there. But I expected, in the first week of November on what turned out to be the coldest weekend that entire winter, we would have the place to ourselves, with perhaps a few quiet hikers passing through. When we arrived, my hopes were confirmed. We were alone and had all the privacy and quiet we would need for such an adventure.
After a day of preparations and group work, Jill and I sent our fasters out alone into the peace of the woods for a 24-hour solo. The quiet surroundings would hold them as they ventured on this inner journey.
The first group of Boy Scouts showed up about 10 am that morning. By the middle of the afternoon, six – SIX – separate groups, including two Boy Scout troops and some kind of Men’s Adventure group, arrived to camp in and around our formerly quiet and cozy campsite. And it’s not that they were just numerous – maybe 60 people in all. They were also LOUD!! In a matter of hours, our peaceful sanctuary had become Grand Central Station.
As you can imagine, this was not some kind of enlightening experience for me, surrendering myself to the give and take of life. I was mad and I stayed mad long after all those campers headed off into the distance the next morning. I had intended to provide a peaceful sanctuary for our retreatants and I had failed miserably. A magical experience was ruined by some loud campers and my bad mistake.
Of course, often the difficult moments in our lives offer us the most benefit, even if we can’t calm down enough in the moment to realize it. In seeking peace in the midst of the challenges of our lives, we often seek escape, retreating to places or environments that help us to embody that calm. Some of us go to nature. Some of us go to church (or temple, mosque, etc.). Some of us go on vacation. Some listen to music. Some read. Some of us sleep. But this weekend experience reminded me that the real stillness we seek is within. If I had been internally calm, I would not have found myself upset by the external noisiness. It’s as if we all have noisy troops of Boy Scouts running through our heads… and we keep trying to escape them, never to recognize that they are us. We blame the outside world for all the commotion we’re making on the inside.
This inner stillness, of course, does not come easily. Our minds are filled with random, involuntary thoughts – judgments, associations, memories, repetitive meanderings. And these uncontrollable thoughts stir our emotions, upsetting our baseline calm with fear, grief, anger, jealousy, pride, on and on. My simple story certainly revealed my ongoing struggles with finding that still place. Our fasters all returned from their solos, viewing the “great visitation” as a positive opportunity for their growth. But my wife and I endlessly fretted, worried that their experiences had been ruined and hoping that the noise would finally come to an end.
Coming to a place a peace in the midst of so much inner and outer noise is no easy task, which is why so many of us turn to simple solutions with at best short-term benefit. In our consumerist culture, we are routinely told that nothing requires hard work anymore. A book, a diet, a pill, a new, shiny whatever will quickly fix our troubles. It even has a name now – retail therapy. Yet, all the spiritual teachers of the world emphasize how hard the path can be – that there are no easy answers – that while the spiritual path is profoundly rewarding, with its first fruit being joy, it takes dedication and work, that the inner peace we seek will come to us only if we put in the time.
And every tradition throughout the world tells us that some form of contemplative practice is a MUST! We must practice stilling the voices within. Meditation, recognizing its many names and forms, is that practice.
My personal favorite form of meditation is centering prayer, popularized by Trappist monk Father Thomas Keating. Whereas most meditation practices emphasize the act of attention – attention on the breath, on a mantra, on an object – centering prayer emphasizes the act of intention – the intention being emptiness before the mysterious source of our existence. When the inner voices begin to speak, drawing us away from our inner stillness, we call forth a short word – God, Spirit, Love, One – to return us to our intention – emptiness before the Spirit. Practicing such a meditation consistently (at least 20 minutes a day), we soon find those Boy Scout troops inside our heads losing their sway.
And in such a practice lies the secret to a life of peace in a chaotic world. Peace is within. Peace is within.
In these troubled and chaotic times, when outer peace is ever more difficult to find, it seems the call is upon us more than ever: to find our own inner peace in the midst of the noise, turmoil and disruption that makes up modern life.
