A week well lived

A month ago I arrived in the beautiful Monterey peninsula for a week long meditation with around 150 other souls.

Friends, I had never been in a meditation retreat before... i felt silly. I didn’t really know anyone, but something had brought me this event with Kyle Cease and his incredible team.

I hadn’t done much meditation since I was in high school when it was a requirement as part of our RE classes.

I had ideas on what this week would look like, and frankly, I was wrong on all of them. (Thankful!)

It was a week so well lived. Those 150 people present became a community. We held space for each other, without judgement. We saw each other... and I mean, really saw each other.

We laughed & skipped, we played and we sang... we cried and we hugged. There was so much of the “old story” released and so much trauma spoken truth to.

I’ve learned that in my life, meditation is more important for me than showering. If I can find time for that, I can find time for meditation. That is how I recharge my body & how I can actually live my life in a way that aligns with my values.

A month later & I still have no words for how incredible the experience was.... this photo was from our last full day. After a whole week of being overcast and rainy, the sun came out and the marine layer lifted.

As a group, this same afternoon all 150 of us walked down to the beach, sat and silently meditated for an hour.

One of the things that comes to mind as I remember that is how bizarre it must have looked to the people on the beach that day. A group of young adults playing ball watched us quietly arrive at the beach and silently sit down and I could hear their conversations continue as the hour progressed...

“What are they doing?” “I think they are meditating?!” “Oh my gosh, there’s so many of them... where did they come from?” “They’re just going to sit and meditate?” “Wow, that’s kinda cool tho... they seem so peaceful” Variations of these continued over and over as different groups would walk past or people would notice us (we were hard to miss).

And then the one that hit me right in the heart “I kinda wish I could meditate too”

I wanted to open my eyes, jump up and go find the human attached to this voice and say “do it. Sit down. Meditate. Come join us”.

Friend, you don’t have to go to a meditation retreat to learn how to meditate... you just have to make a time in your day to get quiet.

You don’t need any tools or resources, you don’t even need music or someone to guide you.

Just sit. Close your eyes. Be still. Get really still and listen to your heart.

That’s meditation.

Your heart knows the answers to your questions... maybe you just aren’t getting still enough or quiet enough to hear it.

Give it a whirl, it just might change your life too!