What I Learned After 15 Days in Silence at a Buddhist Monastery
What Happens When You Feel It All: reflections from a meditation retreat — not the kind of “retreat” you’re used to.
This isn’t the kind of “retreat” you might think it is.
I love retreats. And I “hate” them.
I’m talking about long, silent meditation retreats. The kind that has little to do with the western idea of “wellness getaways”: yoga, smoothies, and ocean views, and everything to do with facing yourself. It’s a lot of work — physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.
It’s not easy. And I don’t think it’s meant to be.
Before I go on, I want to be clear: this is just my experience.
It could be different for you.
It has been different for me before.
And I’m sure it will be again.
But right now, here and now — this is what it was like for me.
Why do I go to retreats?
I love being alone with my feelings. With my thoughts. Just me, my body, my mind — and a little structure. And it’s so hard. Sometimes it’s peaceful and beautiful. But a lot of the time, I can’t even call it peace. Not even close.
I love deepening my practice — but it hurts. My knees ache. My back tightens. My mind fights, resists, and wonders. And yes, there are moments — sometimes hours, even days — of bliss and joy. But the path to that place isn’t easy.
I love giving myself this time. Dedicating it fully to my inner world, my growth.
But let’s be honest — it’s hard to pause your life. Not just for a moment (like the name of this Substack), but for 10, 15, 30 days. It’s disruptive. It sets things back. And the longer I’m away, the deeper I go — and the longer it takes to land again in the noise and movement of daily life.
I love how it changes me. The way these retreats shift how I think, how I see, how I am. But coming back is hard. I return different — and the world hasn’t changed. (A friend of mine compared it to coming back from the Burning Man bubble). Re-entry can feel like hitting turbulence. My pace is slower. My heart more open. The world often feels too loud, too fast. And I have to meet the resistance — in myself and in others.
And I love challenging myself.
But it took me a long time — and a lot of painful mistakes — to do that with love.
Not from a place of judgment or shame or urgency to fix something broken in me…
But from a place of love.
Not “I need to fix this part of me.” But “I want to love this part of me.”
Welcome it. Integrate it. Become it. Hold it.
And I’ll go again. And again. Hopefully for 30 days next time — a whole month — if I can create the space for it.
Because all the discomfort, all the fear, all the things I just named — they are so small compared to the person I’m becoming. The one I’m learning to love.
What I learned during this retreat
Have you ever really felt your emotions fully?
Sat with them, watched them, breathed with them — without trying to change them?
I’m sure you’ve had moments like that. I have too.
But I had never before had the chance to sit with my emotions uninterrupted.
No emails.
No text messages.
No scrolling through Instagram.
No explaining myself why I feel the way I feel — to friends, partners, coworkers.
No trying to figure out where the feeling came from, or what to do about it.
No asking why.
No fixing.
Just being. Being with what was present. For days.
I watched emotions change — not because I made them change, but because I stayed.
What would happen if I allowed anger to exist… without plotting revenge, without swallowing it down, without judging it?
What if I just welcomed it?Accepted it. Even loved it.
Could I love my anger for days on end?
Could I sit in it, breathe in it, be big in it?
Could I love my grief? My sorrow? The pain buried deep, deep inside me?
Could I be with all of that — without distraction — 24/7?
This retreat asked me to try. The instructions I received from my teacher were simple: your meditation object is a wise and loving quality of your heart, from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed, you do everything with the speed and the manner that you can stay with your meditation object. The wise, loving quality of your attention, welcoming your emotions, or your breath.
For the first time, I had to sit with a fear I’d been avoiding for a long time.
A fear that was terrifying. I kept trying to figure it out:
What am I afraid of?
How do I stop it?
How do I fix it?
But the fear didn’t want logic. It didn’t want solutions. It wanted to be seen.
It came with goosebumps and the hair on the back of my neck standing up.
It shook my whole body.
And strangely — it was beautiful. To feel something so fully. To be with it instead of against it.
Because when we don’t feel something for a long time, it comes back big. And that’s okay. It deserves space too.
The fear was huge. I struggled with it, but I stayed. I had nowhere to go. And eventually — it changed.
It softened. It shifted into something else. After two or three days of sitting in that fear, something inside began to settle. I looked around and felt… peace. Maybe even joy. That quiet joy that comes when you don’t have to hide from yourself anymore. When you don’t need to keep walls up, trying to protect an identity that can’t include sorrow, or rage, or vulnerability.
When you let all parts of you exist — something opens.
I don’t know how else to describe it except to say: I became a little more whole. A little more me.
The part of me that carries pain. The part that’s felt deep grief. The part that knows rage. The part that gets afraid.
And it’s all okay.
It’s okay to cry.
It’s okay to be angry.
It’s okay to be afraid.
It’s even okay to want to hide.
But if you stay with what’s there — if you meet the fear — there’s something else on the other side.
There is something else on the other side.
Do you want to know what it is?
This post is a continuation of what I shared last week — about the power of feeling emotions instead of fixing them. It’s my experience.
Sitting with fear. Letting anger stay. Watching grief move through my body, not in minutes, but over days.
And no, there is no solution, not even an answer. But a kind of peace.
The kind that comes when nothing inside you needs to be hidden anymore.