Are you so busy, you’re forgetting to eat, breathe, pray? Maybe it’s not busyness that’s plaguing you—perhaps it’s fatigue or extreme weariness, a phenomenon that is showing up for many people during this period of quarantine. You probably can’t turn off your computer and telephone for 30 days, or even 5 days. But you can find 5 to 20 minutes for a mini-retreat—something that you can do at home or work, any time of the day.
How can you best benefit from a mini-retreat during your busy day? The best way to boost your time-out is to be purposeful, to set an intention that gets at the heart of what you need. This week we will take a mental vacation by engaging our sense of sight and allowing our minds to rest and relax.
Are You “Top-Heavy”?
As Guo Gu, a Zen teacher and scholar, said at the most recent Lion’s Roar Summit (June 24 – 28, 2020), we live “top-heavy,” predominantly in our minds. We rely on our mental capacities to evaluate, analyze, and judge. We sort people, places, and things into categories such as good versus evil, right versus wrong, and us versus them.
When you take a mental vacation, you relieve your mind of its judging and sorting responsibilities and allow other senses to take center stage. This week I’m suggesting a way to pay attention without judging. Instead, observe what’s around you without evaluating. We’ll use the sense of sight, to see with fresh eyes. Seeing with new eyes engages the body and allows your mind to relax.
I also encourage you to do this without judging yourself and how well you’re doing the suggested steps. Is your mental chatter persistent? Does it criticize people, places, and things? Does it also judge you? We frequently judge ourselves quite harshly: I must be doing this wrong; why can’t I get through this faster; I must look stupid doing this; and other mean-spirited criticisms. So the intention of this mental vacation is two-fold: no judging of what you observe and no self-judgment either. When you watch yourself without the burden of evaluating how well you’re doing, you will be more present and experience peace of mind.
Retreat #3: Looking With Eyes Wide Open
I hope you will experience the benefits I have gained from merely 
looking, free of judging, and fully immersed in the details of another living thing.
- You may discover a greater awareness of nature’s rhythms.
- You may sense subtle responses in your body, heart, and soul when your mind takes the back seat.
- You will lay down new neural pathways that serve you in many different ways: increased mental focus, deeper concentration, and longer attention spans.
- You will know a more profound sense of being present in your life.
Follow These Suggested Steps
Take this retreat outside if you can. If not, find objects from nature in your home: plants, stones, creepy crawlers, or pets. Whether indoors or out, walk around covering several feet of the area to experience 2 or 3 different objects.
Start by grounding yourself in this way: stand (or sit) and feel your feet in contact with the ground. Then, visualize long roots that start at the soles of your feet: they wind their way to the center of the earth, down through the many layers fully grounding you to the planet. Pay attention to how your feet feel. Move the energy from your top-heavy head to your body. Focusing on your feet is a simple way to do this.
- Now, start exploring.
- Stop when something catches your attention and walk over to it.
- You can choose a plant, a pet, a flower, a stone or rock, a bird, or a creepy crawler. An FYI here: many traditions consider stones and rocks part of our sentient world, so if a stone looks interesting, go for it!
- Study it with your eyes. Lean over it, lean into it, and get under it. Be playful!
- Look without judging, or even naming, what you are looking at. Use only your sense of sight, fully taking in its size, shape, colors, texture, or movement.
- Maintain the attitude that everything is new. Look at what you chose as if you’ve never seen anything like it before. Observe it without judging, describing, or naming.
- When you feel satiated, move to something new. Start again. Spend between 5 and 20 minutes in this retreat.
Some things to reflect on:
Reflect on what you felt, sensed, intuited, or understood by looking with your eyes wide open.
If you missed the first post in this series, you can read it here.
Please share your experiences with this mini-retreat in the Comments section below the blog post or on my Facebook page. You’re invited to share a mini-retreat of your own.
Stay tuned for a new 20-minute retreat coming next week.
