About silence

A month ago I came out of a 42 day silent dieta, 6 weeks in solitude incorporating two rarely combined practices- silence + a medicine dieta. I am finally ready to share some words about it.

But first, a story.
A man in his 20s joins a monastery, committing to serve 7 years in complete silence. For 7 years, he wakes up every morning before dawn, chops wood, carries water. One bowl of broth is his only weekly nourishment.
At the end of the seven years the chief abbot comes to see him.
“So, how was it?”
The monk answers shyly: “..Difficult”.
The chief abbot shakes his head in disapproval and says: “Another seven years!”

The monk, now in his 30s, goes on to serve the monastery for another 7 years in complete silence. He wakes up every morning before dawn, chops wood, carries water. One bowl of broth is his only weekly nourishment.
At the end of the second 7 years the chief abbot comes to see him.
“So, how was it this time?” Asks the elder.
The monk hesitates and finally utters: “…Difficult”.
The chief abbot gets up angrily: “Another seven years!”

The monk, now in his 40s, goes on to serve the monastery for yet another 7 years in complete silence. He wakes up every morning before dawn, chops wood, carries water. One bowl of broth is his only weekly nourishment.
At the end of the third 7 years the chief abbot comes to see him.
“So, how was it this time?” Asks the elder.
The monk hesitates for a while. The truth seems to upset the chief abbot, yet he cannot lie. He finally utters: “….Difficult”.
The chief abbot gets up and bangs both his hands on the table in rage. “Since you arrived here 21 years ago, all I hear from you are complaints!!!”

So, how was it?
Silent dieta was deeply healing. And quite surprisingly, not difficult. Or perhaps not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be.
As I shared in an earlier brief note, a saying that applies to inner mechanics of cars and humans alike goes: “Fast, well and cheap, choose any two.” I was always firmly in the fast and well camp. Having completed this 6 weeks process I now have deep appreciation for slow processes. I am so much better for having lived through this experience.

Below is an in depth review of some aspects of my experience.

Why silence?
There is P in PTSD. For PTSD to emerge, the trauma needs to be over, putting the “post” in “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder”.

From personal and familial circumstances to the situation in my homeland in the Middle East and its ripple effects in the world, the last year brought about unspeakable trauma (that is not yet “POST”), continuous traumatic stress (CTS), deep grief and some core inquiries. Despite the many aspects in my life for which I am deeply grateful and not in any way comparing to others in suffering, come spring I felt that I needed to come up with a process to match the size of the moment I was in.

How did the idea come about?
While weeks and months long intervals of no work were built into my schedule for as long as I have been doing this work, the effects of the last year on my nervous system and attention span had me realize that a mere pause won’t do. A complete and long media fasting and digital detox had to be at the heart of this reset.

Media fasting or digital detox, as the names suggest, are practices of abstaining from media and tech for a period of time. Disconnecting for 6 weeks seemed at the time as impossible as it was necessary.

To energize this process and make it an upgrade and not just a reset, I have decided to combine my silence practice with a medicine dieta, communing deeply with the two proprietary altered state medicines I cultivate and am the custodian of. And so- silent dieta was born.

Set and setting

• Location, location, location: I sat silent dieta at the beautiful place I am fortunate to call home on Key Biscayne, a quiet island 20 minutes from Miami Beach yet worlds away. The ocean and sky were my backdrop and back yard, my teachers and friends.

  Having sat and volunteered in Vipassana many times before, I always felt frustrated that while Vipassana centers are surrounded by nature, the meditation rooms in said centers were mostly rather plain uninspiring looking rooms.

  I was therefore extra appreciative to be able to spend this meaningful time in a beautiful spacious environment surrounded by floor to ceiling windows overlooking a gorgeous and ever changing view of the ocean. If beauty is earth’s handwriting, this view felt like a love letter from earth herself that kept continuously rewriting itself.

  Being able to walk out and immerse myself in the clean, secluded, warm beach right outside my door was a deeply grounding aspect of my experience.

  The immense beauty I was surrounded with 24/7 was not only a nice add-on to my silent dieta, but was consciousness expanding in and by itself

  

• Offline before offline: Since my work entails holding space for people in altered states and to their integration thereafter, in order to disconnect for 6 weeks, I had to stop serving some 7 weeks prior to dieta, so that no one is served by me and then not have me be present for their integration thereafter.

  I took the time prior to dieta to visit my family back home and be with my father who has Lewy Bodies disease and my mother who lovingly cares for him + freeze my eggs which was a surprisingly positive experience (it may warrant its own share) and come home in time to get all my silent dieta ducks neatly in a row.
  🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆

• Preparation: Unlike a retreat center where meals are cooked for participants and the environment is catered to require zero interaction, running my own medicine dieta required me to create these conditions for myself. With the help of a beautiful support angel, people in my life and around me were prepared, a little private page about dieta protocol was put up and shared with relevant humans, a meal delivery service was scheduled to drop off meals twice a week and more.
  A double sided laminated sign in English and Spanish was made for me to carry whenever I left my place to the beach or elsewhere explaining I was observing silence, so that I don’t seem rude when not exchanging pleasantries. While I was in my silent cocoon, said support angel seamlessly handled all touch points with the world.

  Preparation paid off and dieta flowed without a hitch.

• Timing: I opted to go into silence at a time of minimum distractions, when most of the few locals I know in this new city were escaping the heat of summer to vacation elsewhere and 80,000 of my closest friends were off to erect a temporary city in the black rock desert. I had no FoMo around skipping that desert meta- gathering as I knew that the only gathering I needed at this time was the gathering of my own (capital S) Self.

The night before:
You know the feeling when the air conditioner or another static noise stops and what you thought was quiet, suddenly becomes a lot quieter? When turning off my tech the night before dieta I had that exact experience, only internally.

As soon as I shut down any and all alarms and notifications and turned off my devices, I experienced an audible effect of quieting down that was so notable it had me saying out loud: “WOAH”. Though I was in complete solitude, I felt as though I was not just doing something, but I was a part of something, much bigger than myself. That feeling remained with me throughout dieta and to date.

3X, from the get go:
Here’s one aspect that took me by complete surprise. The benefits of experiences like media fasting, food fasting, sleep and the like, are phase based. Meaning: 24 times fasting for one hour at a time is not equal to 24 consecutive hours of fasting, 8 time sleeping one hour is not the equal to 8 consecutive hours of sleep etcetera. I liken it to surfing. One cannot catch big waves by going into the ocean knee deep multiple times and coming out to dry after each time. To catch big waves one has to go deep.

Knowing how long it took me in the past to drop into the depth of silence when sitting Vipassana or vision quest, I expected it will take me the same or longer. Surprisingly, what I found was this time was that the full effect was there from day one.
This was particularly notable when working with medicine. From day one, 1 gram of medicine felt like 3 grams, 1.5 grams felt like 4.5 grams. That was a remarkable effect I never had before. Silence was a multiplier that required no build up.

Schedule and supportive activities:
People imagine that my only activity for these 6 weeks was “meditate”. In fact my schedule was more than meditate, eat, sleep, rinse, repeat. I created my own curriculum of activities that felt supportive of my process.
Below are some of the activities I dedicated time to, body, heart, mind and spirit.

1. (💪🏼Body) Let’s get physical

   As I was preparing for my silent dieta, it became clear that in order to stay grounded through this time I needed to up my physical practice to a whole new level. A routine practice won’t do. I needed a disciplined regimen.
   In most physical practices we are used to think of stretching as the appetizer and / or the dessert to a workout. I decided to make stretching my main course, determined to be able to do the split by the end of dieta. Done did it. ✅ My body feels GREAT, lean and strong as ever and I eagerly look forward to my practice.
   My physical practice has become such a meaningful and rich part of my life, I plan to dedicate a post to it at some point in the future.

2. (❤️Heart) Space to grieve, time to process

   This year has been a year of deep grief on many levels, from the personal, through the familial to the collective. Moreover and much due to some of said grief triggers, I found myself needing to process deep inquiries around core aspects of self, identity and roots. Silent dieta gave me the opportunity to grieve and process, in a way that honored these processes and allowed me to move through them with softness.

3. (🧠Mind) In silence, language

   This April I left the Bay Area after 7 years and made Miami my home base. Since then, I intended to pick up Spanish but found myself unable to make good on this intention. I attempted Duolingo but a couple of minutes a day didn’t seem to make any dent and I pretty much gave up on learning Spanish till further notice. Silence, it turned out, was this notice.
   Disconnecting for 6 weeks gave me the spaciousness and momentum to pick up the minimum critical mass of a beginner Spanish. It also served as a mental floss of sorts, which felt good. Hablo español ahora y tengo la intención de ser fluida.

4. (✨Spirit): Soul matters

   Shadow, according to Carl Jung, is the part of the unconscious that contains repressed thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It is believed that when parts split and turn to shadow we are to turn them into allies before integrating them.

   Moreover, according to IFS (Internal Family Systems) parts of the psyche may leave us by the grace of trauma and when ready, we can integrate said parts.

   Silent dieta allowed me the spaciousness to complete deep inner work by way of shadow work and integrating soul parts. If that was the only thing I have accomplished during dieta- DAYENU, that would have sufficed.

Other general observations:

Energy in, energy out:
Initially, I focused on the attention- fasting element of silence, the abstaining from news, media and other “incoming” energy. What was unexpectedly potent was the effect of abstaining from “outgoing” energy for that long. Abstaining from writing or speaking for 6 weeks was some 4 times longer than my longest silence prior to dieta. Avoiding any and all exchanges of energy, in or out, was exactly just what the doctor prescribed.

Mama said there’ll be days like this:
Dieta was a non linear process and even throughout it I questioned myself and my process. I wondered whether being in dieta was a form of escapism? Am I offline when I need to be online for others? Will the effects last or will I regress to checking the news far too often soon after? etcetera.

A month out of dieta I am happy to report the effects remain and I very well know that was the right thing to do. While I may experience fluctuations, my feeling is that my baseline across a myriad of aspects has upgraded significantly. All of those whom I interacted with in the last month share a similar feeling, and none of whom is in the business of telling me what they think I want to hear.

Community:
A quote by Albert Camus sums well my approach to community and space holding:

“Don’t walk behind me for I may not lead,
Don’t walk ahead of me for I may not follow,
Walk alongside me and be my friend.”

I am very grateful to walk this path alongside friends and companions. Throughout this process I felt grounded in this community of friends and dear humans, who inspire and teach me every day. This community both provided me loving support and gave my dieta an immediate purpose of it being in service towards something greater than myself.

If you are curious, please visit www.Houseof42.club to read group description, find relevant links and if you’d like- request joining the group.

Not holier than thy:
Whether coming back from the Amazonian jungle, having spent time in an ashram or at a workshop of sorts, many people who have recently completed a big process often walk around with some air of “holier than thy”. That is the opposite of how I felt and feel.

This process leaves me feeling more grounded in my human than ever before. 
I am more connected to the elements, I feel more grateful for and connected to people in my life, I am softer and more open and can lead with compassion in a way that was not available to me before.

Growing up?
I was tempted to start my first post dieta share by announcing that I joined the Church of Scientology, but decided not to lead with a prank since I figured some people may drop out after that first line and will never get to the “just kidding” part, so I decided against it. I must be adulting.

Integration:
I strongly believe that any process is only as good as its integration. Since I never sat a 42 day silent dieta, I didn’t know what my integration would be like, but what I did know prior to silence is that I do not want to make commitments on behalf of the person I’ll be coming out of it.
So instead of just giving myself a couple of weeks or months to integrate without work commitments , prior to dieta I completely cleared my schedule of any and all post dieta commitments, giving my post dieta Self full agency to choose her commitments based on present moment data and not be tied to any existing ones.
I am so grateful I gave myself this complete and unbridled freedom. This last month I was able to travel, play and say YES to things I would have been unable to had I made other commitments prior to dieta.

Let’s PLAY:
Play is the highest form of presence and I am ready to up my game. Way up.
I am excited to re-engage with life and my greater creative community in a way I haven’t since I left NYC to the bay some 8 years ago. My time being largely cocooned in the bay allowed me the focus to be in my process, to bring forth 42 and hone that craft. AND.
More than ever before, I am ready, willing and able to play, collaborate, travel, dance, serve medicine, deepen existing relationship and welcome new ones. I lovingly welcome invitations to all of the above and more.

In closing:
My favorite poem by Rumí goes:

“I slept and dreamt that life is joy.
I woke and saw that life is service.
I served and learned that service IS joy.”

Yes I come out of this dieta feeling better. AND. Feeling better is not the end goal, it is only the beginning. Feeling better, I can now apply myself to be in service in much greater capacity than ever before. The state of the world needs all hands on deck.

Thank you. If you’ve read so far, thank you for reading. I hope this share is in service to some of you reading. If you have any comments to share, are curious about my work, and/ or want to invite me to travel/ explore/ speak/ dance/ collaborate.. please feel free to reach out.

Till we meet again, see you everywhere,
Osher.