Invite Your Demons on Retreat

If you are so motivated, and your life allows it (I did little to no retreat when my children were young), it can be worthwhile to take a day or a weekend, a week, or even longer to go on a meditation retreat under the guidance of experienced teachers. It is not a sound idea to just go off by yourself for long stretches. That can lead to painful mental sidetracks. You want to be around others who know what they’re doing and can supervise your retreat time.

Retreat invites all your resistances and demons out into the open. When you see them, and you entertain them for a while, and they pass away, and come back, and pass away, and come back, and pass away, and… They begin to lose some of their power over you. Negative defeatist thoughts require care and feeding. When you starve them, they start to fade into the background. To our great relief, that’s one of the forms less me takes: less negative carping from your inner critic. You laugh at him or her. It’s like your inner critic’s pants are always falling down in public. Oops.