Went to the center in rural Illinois around Thanksgiving. The air was cold with a jagged wind. An occasional crow croaked ominously in the damp brown grounds. Surrounded by old decommissioned farm machinery and a jet-black manmade pond, I entered with unexpected foreboding, crossing the opening of a rickety wrought-iron fence.
I signed some forms in what felt the relinquishing of my human rights, and the leaders demanded to take away my car keys and cell phone. It was an odd request since I was earnest about doing a good job at the retreat and going deep into it. I felt immediately like they didn't trust me and wanted to control me. I handed the phone over, and prepared for the gong which marks the boundary into silence.
Silence. Sounds relaxing, doesn't it? Finally at peace accepting our inner thoughts and rhythms. Wrong, this was no natural silence. it was an enforced interpersonal death, with not so much as a meaningful glance allowed between participants. Although we were all merely obeying orders I felt like the lack of eye contact or human sympathy as an omnipresent hostility. I realized that everyone who cared for me was miles away and could not possibly contact me, nor me them. These cult leaders could do anything to us really...
Time to start the first evening meditation. The well-worn paths between meditation hall, dorms, and cafeteria had become bare dirt and were at this point a boggy muddy slough. We wore clogs in between buildings. They gave us beat up metal water bottles. As a last sound of the human voice they softly called us one by one to join the meditation hall.
We found a place on the mats and got quiet. Then the tape-recorded chanting began. In this expectant calm the halting burbling throatwreck of a song was unstoppably funny. I tried with all my might not to laugh. "Ohmmmm... ...Hngghgh!" Far from being a sacred experience it sounded, well, mentally challenged.
Then back through the misty darkness, holding my bobbing flashlight and watching its feeble beam dance over the impenetrable horror of the black pond. I fumble removing the muddy clogs in the dorm entrance then off to my divided cell. My contented roommate falls asleep nearly immediately and rips into my ears with full chested snores. How am I going to sleep? What if this place makes me actually go insane from the weird treatment and sleep deprivation? They will be waking us soon, at 4am. I toss on the narrow cot.
Next day it's back to the main hall. Time is going impossibly slowly, I get out of a two hour session and go back to my dorm. There is no living thing outside. All plants are dead, there is no sound but the unrelenting wind. Once I catch sight of a squirrel far away but it scurries leaving me alone.
In the distance, but entirely surrounding the retreat center, I hear actual gunfire. Am I hallucinating in here? No, it's hunting season. There's no way I can escape. They'll mistake me for a deer and shoot me if I step outside the iron fence. All these paths just loop back, inward inward. At the ends of the paths are signs telling you to turn back. Back to the chanting, back to the hall. No talking, no looking, no feeling. They'll shoot you if you leave, you know.
What am I thinking? These thoughts aren't right, but I feel brave, I have to stand up to this. Who can I talk to? How much time is passing. (Steal a look at the watch I smuggled in.) It's been only three minutes since I entered my dorm? Ten days has become inconceivable, like a dark mountainous wave cresting over my flimsy dinghy. And nobody knows how oppressive it is here. No one will come help me.
I lined up a one-on-one talk with one of the teachers. You can't just go talk to them, you have to write your case on a clipboard and await a Kafka-esque review process which takes roughly one hundred years in dilated retreat time. They accept my plea later that day and I enter the teacher's chamber.
She is literally dressed in a robe and seated on a raised platform. Am I supposed to kneel before it? Is this really happening? I sit down and explain that I'm getting unusually paranoid and that the way their rules are formulated makes me uncomfortable. Is there a room where I can get a night's sleep and can I have my belongings back -- just for peace of mind? She looks at me beatifically and assures me that my mind simply doesn't want to relinquish its sense of self. She explained that my question about getting my stuff back is simply nonsense. (Notice she didn't refuse, she just brought out the mind-games and discounted my feelings.)
I agreed to give the retreat more time. Maybe this panic is normal like the teacher said. They said they would look into finding me another room. Fast forward to that night. The roommate change is a no-go. Fuck it, I'm going to break the rules and just talk to one of the volunteers running the course. I'm not petitioning on that weird form. The volunteer was really evasive.
Darkness was falling. The mud, the pond, my little flashlight. Nobody can look at me. Surrounded by guns. Where did the squirrel go? "No," I resolved, "I have to get out of here, this is not right." I snuck into a staff area to find a phone. Someone saw me and started questioning me. I lied and calmly told them the teacher wanted me to make a call. Then I swiftly took the cordless phone into the bathroom and locked myself in. Overjoyed I listened to the sweet note of a dial tone. It was an audible electric road to freedom. I dialed my family. Nobody answered the phone. Tried all the numbers I could remember. Then it occurred to me that it was Thanksgiving night. They were all away from the phone, living lives out there in "regular time," time that actually passes. I left messages and went sadly back out to the cold dark paths which only fold back onto themselves.
Word must have spread to the higher-ups that a student was cracking because they did come talk to me. I told them I simply had to go. After some deliberation they brought me my keys and went out with me to the parking lot. Then things got really weird.
They pointed to a car that wasn't mine and told me to open it with my key. In some disbelief I explained that my actual car was on the other side of the lot. They insisted I was wrong! It was like a dream where I sought to weigh my words and appease my captors with the subtle nuances of dreamthought.
"OK," I said affably, "I'll give this car a try. But just humor me and let me give that other one across the lot a try too. If it's not my car then the key won't open it, right? So there's really nothing to lose." Inwardly I was contemplating the likelihood of violence and keeping a watch on their movements in the deep gloom. A faraway crooked street lamp they had installed on the property glinted off the windshield.
The impostor car did not open. They started explaining it away, but I was already off to my actual car. Opened it right up, threw my blankets and stuff inside. It was actually my friend's car (we went to the retreat together) so I couldn't just drive away with it. Another camp volunteer joined us and offered to drive me to the city.
On the fairly long drive I had a mixture of emotions. At some level I knew I wasn't right in the head. I was grateful to this lady for rescuing me and embarrassed that I couldn't "handle it" like the other students. But most of all I was grateful to leave and never -- ever -- come back. I can't explain the overwhelming panic of this retreat, but somehow I knew I just wanted to be living a joyful life with human speech and companions and time and freedom.