30/40: Inward
Honouring the direction to head inward after substantially feeding the outward.
snick in American English
noun Origin: echoic
1.
verb intransitive
2.
to make a click
Do you ever get fascinated by a word? Lately for me it has been ‘snick’. While in British it can mean a cut or a glancing blow, in American and Canadian it is often used for the small sound a lock makes when closing.
snick
When I emerged from my most recent depression in November 2024, I began a very busy and intense year and a half. Activity in what felt like every direction. Physical. Emotional. Mental. Psychological. Spiritual. Busy, busy, busy, busy.
It’s been lovely. I have enjoyed it all tremendously.
Over the past week being off work has given me time that was much needed to be with myself as well as family and a few close friends.
I have found myself feeling quite tired, going for naps day after day, spending hours reading books, and just quiet.
Yesterday and today in several contexts of my life, I stopped to listen, and there was the sound, in the silence.
snick
To everything there is a season,
a time for every purpose under heaven:2 a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to uproot what is planted;
3 a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 a time to gain, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time of war, and a time of peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, Modern English Version
I grew up with this song, as it was released six months after I was born. It’s one of those songs that is always comfortingly in the background of your life, you know the kind?
snick
North American society has been very progress-focused for too long. Grow, increase, build, multiply, more and more and more.
But systems cannot just go in only one directions any more than individual people can. Periods of economic prosperity are followed by recessions, even depressions at times. Wars put additional strain on economies, on lives, communities, nations.
2 a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to uproot what is planted;
3 a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
Does it seem odd that after weeks of this personal practice of letting go, this movement that might seem inward to the outside observer, now that it is almost over, that I am finally naming the movement as inward?
Perhaps it is. It’s funny how something like sitting down at a laptop after early morning meditation can feel very outward in its movement, or so inward. It can be both on the same day. Neither, I suppose. What I’m trying to say is I don’t think it’s intrinsically one or the other. Not from the inside, anyway. Not as the writer, ostensibly. Sure, I write these things but where do the words come from? I doubt I will ever know.
Not Depression
Going inward can be part of a depression. In my life anyway. I don’t think it is this time. Of course it isn’t always easy to tell at the time from the inside. But some of the important indicators of stability remain. The joy and delight in singing and making music with others, as well as passionately listening to it. The pleasure I experience when I am with others. The lack of excessively negative inner dialogue. Waking early, keen to meditate and write. And so on.
It simply feels like time to close the door to some extent. To protect time for myself and for those I love. To allow lessons that have arisen strongly for me both in my times of writing and thinking and in what I have been reading here to land all the way in.
It has been an extremely rich time of learning and it feels like there is an awful lot to digest, so that is best done in stillness.
Silent Retreats
As it happens, it looks like there are two silent retreats coming up for me in May. The first is May 11-15 and if you are interested in this kind of event and live in the vicinity of Central Ontario, the deadline to register has been extended to April 15, though it still says March 20 on the registration page.
Our little Hamilton meditation group is also planning a half day of silence on a Saturday in late May but we are still sorting details.
I haven’t yet been on a silent retreat yet lasting more than 48 hours so am feeling very excited about the one at the St. Francis Retreat Centre in Caledon, Ontario. It looks like a lovely place to have a retreat and the focus is the famous spiritual work by an anonymous author from the 14th century called the Cloud of Unknowing. If you are unfamiliar with this work, you might find this blog interesting as it not only provides context from a secular standpoint but also lengthy excerpts of the work in a modern translation that is wholly accessibly to the 21st century reader.
So abandon the world’s ‘everywhere’ and ‘something’ in exchange for this infinitely more valuable nowhere and nothing. Don’t be bothered that your intellect is unable to comprehend it. I love it even more for its inscrutability. Its infinite worth makes it incomprehensible. Also, remember that you can more easily feel this nothing than see it. It can be experienced but not grasped. That’s why it seems completely hidden and totally dark to those who’ve only been looking at it for a very short time. Let me clarify ‘dark’ here. When a person experiences this nothing, the soul is blinded by an abundance of spiritual light and not by actual darkness or by an absence of physical light.
So who labels this ‘nothing’? That would be the outer self. Our inner self calls it ‘all’ because experiencing this ‘nothing’ gives us an intuitive sense of all creation, both physical and spiritual, without paying special attention to any one thing.
—The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 68
It feels like these Silent Retreats, in the way of things in the Universe, are coming into my life at precisely the time I most need them.
Letting Go
This 40 day personal practice has been all about letting go of sufferings. Outwardness may not seem to be a form of suffering, at first glance. It’s light, sunshine, time with friends, enjoyable activities out in the world. All kinds of wonderful things.
It’s isn’t outwardness itself that is suffering. It’s a desperation of outwardness when the time has come to return within. Like the child that has become overtired and refuses to come indoors after a busy day, outwardness that is spent may insist on continuing in the busy past its bedtime.
So it’s letting go of refusing to let go, of insisting letting go is a terrible idea, of clinging to an energy that has passed its ‘best before’ date.