I have returned from spending a week at a Zen monastery. The Zen Monastery Peace Center is in Murphy’s California and is involved in many aspects of transforming lives around the world. The retreat that I attended was based on the book by Cheri Huber titled, “There is Nothing Wrong with You.”
The environment was so different than “out in the world,” that it was difficult to adjust for the first couple of days. We didn’t talk. We didn’t make eye contact. We ate in silence. We meditated. I walked for hours a day sometimes. There were three workshops a day where we worked on developing skills to deal with the conditioning that haunts each and everyone of us.
I had an experience the last night where I was finally able to see the world from Center. It was an experience that I cannot describe. I think I can’t describe it because it wasn’t an intellectual experience and it wasn’t an emotional experience. It was an un-experience, which is what made it so powerful. I looked up at the stars and I saw something I had never seen before, I saw myself. There were no bounds of social conditioning, there was simply nothing. Which means, in the same breath, there was everything.
One thing I can tell you though, I got god in the experience. Really got “it.” I knew unequivocally that god was not without, god was within, while at the same time knowing that there was no out and there was no in. Everything was god.
What a trip.
