Writer/Author

"You really think you are an introvert?" My student looks skeptical. Compared to her, I spend so much more time interacting with others. She doesn't realize how much time I spend alone, at home, reading, writing, computing. How much time I spend meditating, all in order to restore myself for more social interactions.

As part of the Wisconsin Book Festival, I spent Thursday night out for dinner and drinks with a few other queer writers. We were needing to eat, yes, but also celebrating our successful event (Losing Gender at Room of One's Own) and getting to know one another a bit better. Quite a few of us are out, not just in terms of gender/sexuality, but also "out and about" - people on the town, well-known, etc. I was surprised to hear that one of the people at the table, easily the most public, is intensely introverted and has social anxiety about interactions in public.

Down Time

I find that when I am left to my own devices, I don't interact much with people.


I would categorize myself as relatively extroverted, or would have, since I have strong interaction skills and enjoy - thrive even - off interacting with others. However, I have come to understand that my state of rest and recoup is to be alone - alone even without Dylan. To putter, read, write, meditate, do yoga, walk, photograph. If this state goes ignored too long - if I am traveling and always a guest, teaching a lot, or "busy" with work (a student of mine prefers and suggests using the word "full", which I appreciate), I get cranky and funky and my ability to socially interact shuts down. This is my self's way of reminding me that I have limited resources, though mine are higher than most folks I know. I have to take that down time before it takes me down with it.

Dis/connect

I went into a Post Office this afternoon, and waited in line, watching a solo woman clerk interact with numerous international students, most of whom had a limited grasp of English and couldn't understand her directions quite clearly. 2 or 3 had to come back a third time, only to be corrected and start again. Key words were missing, key ideas, and I felt the loss, felt for the international students, wondered at how privileged I am to "get it" - especially reading Other People's Children, recommended to me by Birdfarm, as of last night.

Then it was my turn. I took up a few packages - copies of my new chapbook destined to friends, a mix cd (comment on the last blog entry and you can get one, too!). One package I hadn't gotten the address for yet, and I sheepishly grabbed that one without making eye contact - Oops!, I uttered, and slipped it into my bag.

"This is wrong" she stated, and sighed, looking over her glasses at me. I felt a deep gulp arise, just from her stare. "It's written on here wrong." She paused and looked at me, and it took until she asked me if I knew how to correctly address an envelope, which I had just seen her do - for the third time - to a young Taiwanese woman - to realize she thought I wasn't from the US. I blushed, felt angry, how much mail have I sent in my life?! - then chilled down a bit - sure, I did do it wrong, turned the wrong way, only good for parcel post, not for an envelope. She carefully explained how to do it, and I asked if we couldn't just send them parcel post? Yes, but we had to move the return address around, etc. This whole time I was burning shame, burning away a feeling of having done wrong, and not because I did wrong, but because of the way she had addressed me; like a child.

In getting some space, some curiosity about the situation, which usually helps, I took a deep breath and looked around as she scanned the items and added up my total. It was then I saw a sign directly in front of me, almost impossible to miss, now that I was looking, that told me my clerk is very hard of hearing, and reads lips, so make sure to face her straight on. It also said, with a small smiley face, that sign language is spoken there.

Wow. Did I ever miss that. The power of the situation suddenly shifted, and I looked back at the clerk, re-considering our whole conversation, the way she had repeated everything very carefully to all the folks who'd come before me, always using the same phrasing.
"Will that be all for today?" she asked me, and suddenly I heard her voice another way- vulnerable, unsure, and slightly dampened, as speech from folks with hearing impediments can sometimes be - soft on the consonants.
"No, thank you," I said, sure to make eye contact with her, enunciate clearly without overexaggerating, and shaking my head. She smiled - actually smiled! - I don't think I'd looked at her face once the whole transaction, so absorbed in my own experience.

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I had another blog post planned before this happened. It turns out it's still relevant. I left my psychiatrist's office with renewed prescription for meds, and a conversation she and I had had buzzing in my head. She had talked about Temple Grandin, and her latest book, which includes a concept "that I believe is as fitting for humans as animals" as she said. Grandin talks about how the "seek" part of an animal's mind - the sniffer, the explorer - manages to suppress anxiety as it is in action. So animals use it for not just the purpose of sussing out the situation, but also to alleviate anxiety about the situation. But it works the other way, too, I think. I think that sometimes we seek in order to stave off anxiety - compulsive shopping, anyone? myself included! - and that seeking can actually become drug-like - always wanting something new, for instance, instead of the "same old same old."

And yet, when we attune ourselves and become curious about the moment - like I did at the post office, like meditation trains us to do, or Miksang, or writing, or just deciding to pay attention (go Reem!), we do realize that the world is always different, always changing.

Meditation teachers say it all the time - hell, *I* say it all the time - "get curious, it'll help, help the panic, help the sadness, open things up." But now I have another understanding of this.
That the story is just that - a story - and as it turns out, the story I had in my head at the post office was just that, a story, missing a ton of the nuance in favor of a familiar situation, as gross as it was. The anxiety I had in interacting with this woman was old business, old news. It wasn't relevant - it was triggered. When I made the choice to seek out, not anything in particular, but just to sniff around a bit, I found better data, more relevant, that could help alleviate my anxiety and give perspective. For humans, I think, the "seek tampers anxiety" could be true, but of course, we can even take it a step further, have cognition about that new information. From disconnect to connect in a few short seconds.

"So, What Was It Like?"

Photo of the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya from my retreat.

This is the question, the inevitable, loving, probing question, one receives upon returning home after being gone for 12 days anywhere. But this question takes on special space when one is returning from a meditation retreat. Before I left, my sister-outlaw Patty (who will be my sister-in-law in a few months) noted that I was pretty courageous to go sit with myself. That was pretty outstanding of her to see - most folks see "retreat" and think "peaceful" and "vacation." The point is, of course, that there is no real thing as a vacation and that peace only comes through facing the deep stuff head on.

What I attended is a program called Warrior Assembly at Shambhala Mountain Center, in the Flatirons of the Rocky Mountains. It's what we call a "land center" - for instance, the center I direct in Madison is a "city center" - SMC and a few other locations are out in the wild, based on the raw land instead of in cities. SMC is the largest of the land centers - both by size and permanent staff - and 8,000 feet up, it's as raw as raw gets. I did my month-long meditation retreat there four years ago (dathun: month sit) and though I have visited other centers since then (Karme Choling, for instance) I knew I wanted to return to SMC for another program. As the program got closer I dreamt of the bouldering and dryness, the sun and the Stupa, the wide-open nights and small-town sized staff and program participants (300 is the average population during the summer, far larger than the local hole in the road for getting liquor and other amenities called Red Feather Lakes).

Warrior Assembly is a cumulative program - a 10 day celebration chock full of various practice transmissions at the end of two years' worth of 1o weekend programs. I actually qualified to do it over three years ago, but time, money and frankly, enthusiasm, to do it didn't pique until now. I had wanted to do the "more traditional" seminary path in Shambhala Buddhism - dathun is the first part, then Sutrayana seminary, then Vajrayana, and I will still do those latter parts. But between the requirements changing (one now needs to do Warrior Assembly to do Vajrayana) and some encouragement from the local sangha, as well as a decision by one of my best friends and my co-practioner Becky, with whom I did all of the other programs, I knew it was time.

Despite the fact that everyone thinks I was in silence for 10 days, I wasn't. There are many forms of retreat, and this one, I'd say, is more focused around Enlightened Society (Shambhala-speak for "not just sitting on your duff and meditating but actually doing something with what you learn to help the world"). The name of the program refers to the Shambhala path, which in some ways can be called "The Way of the Peaceful Warrior." One of the practices, the Dorje Kasung, have the slogan "Victory over War." How can we, while talking, walking, interacting; working, loving, organizing, still keep our heads on our shoulders, keep a good head and shoulders, and not just while sitting silently in a tent weeping our way through our deep dark issues?

I've done the month-long sit, and I'm hear to say that for my experience, the 10 days with some talking was far harder than a month in silence. I really have come to terms with my social anxiety in sangha-work - folks with whom I can be brutally honest, neurotic and even funny have helped me to face those anxieties and see them as hollow shells. Or so I thought. Put me instead into a 100-person container of strangers, give me a bunch of powerful transmissions and turn up the weather (40 degrees and raining the first three days, 80 degrees, windy and dry the rest of the time) and I quickly became raw, broken down, what Chogyam Trungpa, the founder of Shambhala, calls "thorougly processed." Insecurities and old habits appeared almost instantly - struggling to find ways to be accepted by others, scrambling for some kind of ground in a totally groundless container, even if the ground was neurotic and shit-filled, which is pretty much was inside my own mind.

Things I thought I was "over with" came back with vengeance and kicked my ass. All this time, though, others showed such love and honesty, containing me and my inner damage while taking care of themselves. It became clear pretty quickly - even then, but especially now in retrospect - that I was in fact having a "sane breakdown" if that makes any sense - not that it has to make sense. Breakdown in the sense that my ego, the part that says who I am and what I like every day, got lost along the way, and some other me, some deeper ground of fear and goodness, of sadness and joy, got the mic for a few days.

My last memory of the retreat is of the campfire on the final night, songs and jokes making the rounds with 25 or so of us watching the tail end of the fire and many shooting stars scratching across the sky. I snuggled into the middle of a pile of my spiritual peers - fellow Warriors, not against anything, but for sanity, in both a personal and total sense, and all the dirt dug up turned into a deep affection for the work, for these other workers, for the world. In that open space, the mountains brazen against the sky, turned white by the sun and wind - in that open space, everything lay out to dry - my self-defeating habits, my deep love of humanity - and from the charnel ground remains some seeds were planted of which I have a feeling it will take time to see the fruits. After ten days like that, I HOPE it takes time for them to fruit - I'm not sure I could harvest them right now.

"Can't you be more specific?" some of you are saying... "What did you do all day?"

A special calligraphy practice for three hours every morning. Two to three hour talks every day in the afternoon by the program directors. An hour or three of silent shamatha sitting meditation every day. Hour-long silent lunches eaten in the shrine room out of a single bowl. Discussion groups with other practicioners alternated with one-on-one meditation instruction meetings. Group breakfasts and dinners in uplifted dress. Early morning or late night independent hikes to the Stupa or Kami Shrine, or Marpa Point. The times in between filled with far-from-silent discursive but also often brilliant conversation with any of the 100+ other participants or staff.

It was a lot like life, in other words, and a lot not. Very social, very busy - only also very focused with a lot of practice.

Photos will be up soon on Facebook and Flickr - though I didn't take many, wanting to focus on the new practices, as Miksang sometimes takes me away in a situation like this, instead of taking me deeper in. I'm happy to answer any questions, if possible! - in comments section. Thanks for listening.