Question and Answer

With Irma Gomés

In each edition, staff writer Irma Gomes answers questions regarding retreat. Please email her with your questions at: irma_gomes@hotmail.com

Q: Should I keep a meditation or retreat journal?

A: This is a very good question, and in order to give you an educated answer I had to go back and review my meditation and retreat journals. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to do so. I started doing guided retreats around 1990 and unfortunately, at that time, my teachers did not encourage me to keep a retreat journal. It wasn’t until years later that I started to write down what went on in my mind during retreat. They seemed more like diaries to me. Sometimes a spontaneous poem would pop up, sometimes nothing. I wrote ideas on projects to undertake after finishing retreat as well.

When you do retreat, particularly long retreats, your mind goes into another state, an observation mode that is hard to describe. It’s as if you are seeing and hearing yourself from a different perspective. When you listen to your thoughts, more often than not, it seems like they’re not worth writing down. However, during retreat, these thoughts are holy; ideas that angels come and whisper in our own quietude.

Re-reading my retreat journals I was struck by what was written during those precious times. There were expansive ideas and divine messages that could lead to profound realizations today. In some instances, I wrote phrases that I have read and heard my teachers say many times. The difference though is that when you read a phrase like, “You can reach ultimate happiness,” on your own, you might not get it. Your heart wants to believe it. You want to think that this is an absolute fact. But the understanding can only arise when you hear it from a person you trust, which includes you.

In retreat, the same thought can come to mind but this time it is a realization. The idea comes to light from the aspect of your inner self that you trust. Write it down. You must. If you or someone you cared to share it with read it in the future, it could bear even more meaningful fruit.

Why write it down? Because we forget. We finish retreat and go back to our jobs and family life. Daily occupations start to get our minds busy and distracted from the retreat state of mind. If we record the realizations in writing, then we can refer to them as much as we need, to keep them fresh in our mind.

Amazing things happen in retreat and when you write them down you allow your mind to see where you are on the roadmap to heaven. Bon Voyage!

Q: What kinds of things do you write in a meditation journal?

A: There are a variety of worthwhile points to record about your meditations, such as the clarity and intensity of the meditation, its quality, length and a specific description. You can also note the percentage of time you spend focused on your breath, preliminaries and main subject of the meditation. If you’re keeping a six-times-a-day-book, you can make room in it to write down the length and quality of your meditations as well.