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Meditation
Could a Meditation Retreat Finally Alleviate My Depression?
A Personal Perspective: If my friend was going to a meditation retreat in India, I'd join her.
Updated June 29, 2024 Reviewed by Devon Frye
She’s funny. Not in a ha-ha funny way. But in this unusual, overly earnest kind of way.
Her voice is more like a whisper. I imagine when she gets angry, no one knows because she sounds like she’s just… well… talking.
But I connect with her. We’re both passionate about spiritual seeking and holistic therapies. She’s a good listener and gives great hugs. I need a comrade.
We’re sitting at a shiny wooden table on hard wooden chairs at the north end of the market on Granville Island. Windows on every side. Sun flooding in. It’s bright, massively bright.
An oversized painted parrot hangs from the rafters scrutinizing us from above. We sip overpriced cappuccinos topped with swirly designs of hearts or Big Bird or some sh*t like that. I’m desperate, terribly sad, fed up, and needy. It’s embarrassing.
Lottie (short for Charlotte) is my nurse friend. My very spiritual, very nursey nurse kind of friend. Progressive too. She thinks energy work ("healing touch") should be in every hospital. She managed to actually bring it into some hospitals.
I stare at her. She knows stuff that I don’t. I know she does. She’s older, calmer, wiser. She has answers to things I don’t. Answers I think will be my salvation.
I’m so fully uncomfortable in my skin right now. My body feels electric, pleasant and putrid. It’s been like this on and off for almost two years. On and off since the age of 17, really. I’m 25. I’ve swung like an orangutan from depressed to anxious to suicidal to severely depressed to meh to fine and back to anxious. In my body. Bones. Muscles. Joints. Every angle of every tendon of every artery is suffocating.
I am trying to fix it. Trying to fix everything and trying everything to fix it. Fix me. To stop these cartwheels of despair and whack-a-mole-like thoughts that are trying to kill me. I’m stupid, an idiot, a loser. You’re worthless, You’re nothing. Just die. I’m stupid, an idiot, a loser. You’re worthless. You’re nothing. Just die. This is my familiar mixed state of wormy anxiety and gnashing depression.
Lottie’s going to India in six weeks to meet the guru who has changed her life (her words). H.W.L. Poonja or Poonjajii. Adding "ji" shows respect, she tells me. She’s off to see Poonjajii. Has a catchy, if not cultish rhythm to it.
I sit, elbows on the table, listening so intently I think my eardrums will come out of my eye sockets, and try to shake hands with her mouth.
“Who am I? That’s the silent question you ask yourself over and over.” Lottie says. “You meditate on it and something will happen. Your mind can’t answer it because you are not your thoughts, or your mind, or… Try it.”
I’m game. Game because, if you’ve been as desperately out of answers as I’ve been, you’ll try anything anywhere, even if it’s in an open-air market surrounded by entitled DINKs shopping for organic cilantro.
I put down my coffee. If I’m about to have an epiphany it seems like you shouldn’t have anything hot in your hands.
“Who am I?” I say, not quite loud enough for the lady with the wiener dog next to our table to notice. “I’m Victoria. I’m an actress, a woman, and…”
She cuts me off (Lottie, not the wiener dog lady). “No. I mean, where are those things? Show me.”
I poke myself in the chest, like it’s obvious. "Here."
“That’s your body. Are you your body?” Her face is bright and bursting.
“Um…” I feel a headache of thoughts coming on.
“Just keep asking yourself at home: ‘Who am I?’ You’ll discover something so amazing. You are nothing! Trust me. And it’s a wonderfully peaceful place, or no-place, of nothing.” Her eyes and lips are wide and flush with energy.
I inch ever closer to the table, pushing my waist harder into the table edge. As if the nearer I can get to her physically the more I would understand what she meant. But my brain is scrambled and desperate.
The parrot is still above us, but now looks like it’s mocking me. Chiding me that I can’t get this simple riddle.
“There’s a 3-day meditation retreat, two weekends from now with two of his senior teachers. It’s free. You can be my guest if you want.”
“Yes!” The word slingshots out before I even understand what I’ve agreed to. I’ve never meditated or barely done yoga for any consistent period of time. I’ve prayed but mostly in fervent desperation. “I want to go with you.”
“Great! I’ll get the details to you once I’m home.” Lottie flings her purple wrap around her shoulders.
“No,” my chest puffs out a bit. “I mean, I want to go to the meditation retreat with you. And I want to go to India with you. If that’s OK.” Though she’s thrilled at my enthusiasm for spiritual growth, even she knows this is a big departure from my usual "keep it safe, don’t go too far afield, know everything that could conceivably happen kind of risk-taking" MO.
“OK. You sure? I’m going in less than a month and I’ve got an open-ended ticket. I don’t know when I’m coming back. Why don’t you go to the retreat first and then see what you want to do?”
“Maybe.” But I’ve decided. The ever-deepening strangulation of distress I’ve been feeling over the past two years (despite my best efforts to lessen it) gives me no other option. It’s enlightenment or bust. Of course, I do have a choice, but it doesn’t feel that way. I don’t know what else to do.
To be continued. Excerpted from my memoir in progress about the intersection between psychosis, mental illness, spiritual distress, and experiences. Read other excerpts here.
© Victoria Maxwell
