When I was seventeen years-old I ran off to the monastery.

It sounds dramatic, but an opportunity for temporary ordination as a monk came up and teenage Lodro didn’t have summer plans, so he shrugged and said, “Why not?”

There is one moment that stands out during that month-long meditation retreat. We were on a break and as I moved to the exit of the meditation hall, I spotted a spider web. I paused and there was a moment of deep relaxation. I wasn’t annoyed the spider web was in my way. I wasn’t admiring it either. I was simply there, alongside the spider web.

That is the power of a meditation retreat. The effects are, admittedly, a bit ineffable. “I was simply there” does not make the top ten list of any “benefits of meditation” list. And yet, it’s the most powerful of experiences that derive from a proper upending of your habitual activity.

In even a short retreat, we invert the activities of our body, speech and mind. Instead of spending time churning away at work and distracting ourselves with social media, squeezing in 10-20 minutes to be with ourselves, we spend all day being with ourselves and a tiny amount of time attending to the details of our lives.

Instead of speaking constantly, often on things that don’t truly matter, we practice silence, chant meaningful verses and engage in deep listening to one another.

Instead of letting the mind run like an excited puppy without a leash, we bring it close to us and gently tame it with kind and loving time together.

That attention to how we engage in our activities, speech and with our mind then transforms our relationship to the world around us. The most mundane aspects of life - such as stepping around a spider web - are no longer things we need to get through in order to get to what we want to be doing. They are not even things we slow down long enough to appreciate. They are actually invitations to connect with our basic sanity and wakefulness.

This weekend I had the good fortune to spend time in retreat with my teacher, Dza Kilung Rinpoche. It was a rare and precious opportunity: a half dozen of us were specifically invited to descend on his retreat center on Whibdey Island, off the coast of Washington, and spend two intense days learning practices that are generally not taught in the West. But the allure of “secret” or “advanced” practices is not what drew me in; it was spending time in a spacious container with a supportive community and a teacher who wants nothing more than for me to wake up to my own awake nature.

(paid subscribers: you can scroll down to the bottom to redeem a special discount code for the retreat Adreanna and I are leading this summer!)