What are you longing for?

This was the main question that pervaded this past weekend, while I attended the Mind and Life Europe retreat, led by Martijn van Beek and Hanneli Agotsdatter. It was quite an amazing experience. The retreat was a contemplative way of reflecting on how we lead our lives as academics and practitioners. It was one of the most wonderful things I have done in a long time. There is nothing as joyful as pursuing something meaningful, even when it is hard. Let me share some aspects of the experience.

We started on Friday night with gentle meditation and yoga exercises, after which Martijn gave a short lecture on the idea of a "vita contemplativa", a contemplative life. This idea is about how we can bring a spiritual dimension into everything we do, not just a few minutes of meditation or mindfulness on the cushion. We ended the evening with a beautiful meditation practice in which we virtually connected our hearts to the middle of the earth and to each other.

The next morning, we continued with the meditation and yoga practices, but then deepened the contemplation into a question that was quite a bombshell: what am I really longing for? And in addition to that, what are my talents and on the other hand the things that I would like to cultivate. I realized that I had neglected this question about longing--being in a stable job for the last ten years. But also in my spiritual life, it is so easy to just get stuck with the practices you are doing, instead of thinking about why you are doing those. It is so easy to get caught up in the doing mode, rather than being aware of why you are doing those things and focus a bit more on the being mode. During the retreat we did quite a few journalling exercises to ponder these questions, and then we shared with each other in breakout rooms.

I was blown away by the wisdom in the group. I had many insights driven by these conversations. One of the things I was thinking about was that while I love ballet practice dearly, the physical feats achieved by this will never last. The only thing that is a meaningful product out of this pursuit is the mental work. But that in itself is not to be underestimated. Metaphorically, it allows me to connect with the wisdom in my body, and to dance with the open questions in my life.

In the afternoon of the second day, we had a good conversation about how to put these things into practice in our everyday work life. Stefano Poletti and myself got the precious opportunity to share our paths. It was amazing to reflect on what I have done over the years, and to realize the wealth of experiences I have had the chance to accumulate.

On the last day, we then brought back this richness of experience into the daily life. How can we continue this? For myself, I would like to really bring a few minutes of meditation practice in the middle of my day so I get the space to see what is going on, and tune in with any gaps that may be occurring (that is my personal biggest gap). I also hope I will be able to remind myself of loving kindness in the many meetings I have during the day, to make these contemplative values more of a continuum. Finally, I think I need to do this practice more often, and especially to do a short retreat to reflect on what projects I need to let go of, because I tend to overcommit myself. As Gabor Karsai wisely said: we tend to focus on the things we produce, but fail to notice the side effects of these productions--the effects on our health, the effects on our family that is ignored and so on. I ended with the reflection that when you are running too fast, you may miss the goal or the point of it all. Hopefully writing this down will help me to remember this a bit better.