Important things about silent retreat

To be silent for a long time is probably one of the most magical and personality development things you can do. The results of your work you will primarily see afterwards when you return to your normal life. So do not expect the transformation to come overnight.
It's all about overcoming oneself, what we perceive as self - the mind, and to control it. Strong motivation and mindfulness is necessary. But remember that everyone has thought about giving up and doubts about themselves and the practice. Often we experience discomfort, pain, confusion, malice, restlessness and ignorance - just observe until it disappears.
You will see that it is all worthwhile. We learn so much about ourselves and how we relate to life. And besides this, we bring our meditation to a new level.

Silence is extremely demanding, especially somewhere between days 3 and 5, when the mind often is very irritable and agitated. We can see this clearly through the critical and irritable emotions we experiencing. We are looking for external objects to channel these feelings towards. Just observe these phenomena - learn how your mind works. The mind acts like a trapped animal many times and the feeling of being able to crawl out of your own skin is often there. Well, this happens to everyone more or less. So expect it to happen to you too. Prepare yourself for this phase. Some wise words from Suan Mokkh:

"There are those who do battle with their defilement and conquer them. This is called fighting inwardly. In the practice of Dhamma we do not have to fight others, But deprecated conquer our own minds, patiently resisting all our moods. "

The feeling of wanting to break the silence arises frequently during this phase of a retreat. Try not to give in to that feeling,   give it a day more. Wait and see. Everything will change and you will see clearly how unimportant these things are for you and your life.

Believe me when that anything can be the target for your mind and take unbelievable proportions, the forces here are tremendous. Someone's hair, how I express myself, that someone does not flip the toilet lid down - yes, just about anything can become the very thing that triggers the mind. The mind can also decide that the whole idea of the retreat is completely pointless and a waste of time. Persuade the mind to accept the challenge to remain until the end.
You will also see how the things that disturbed you in the past and issues you thought were resolved, comes up over and over again. Just remember, this is a normal process and simply observe and learn how your mind works and let it go. So try to just focus on yourself, in yourself and do not care about anything outside yourself. To even avoid eye contact can make practice easier.

The key is to realize that everything is impermanent, also this demanding phase of practice. You will wonder how you could be so hung up on some things the day before. Lovingly smile at yourself and how your mind acts.

You will see so clearly that your practice is only about your, about what happens inside you - absolutely nothing else. Our practice has not in any way anything to do with the external world. When we see this, we have come a long way in our practice.

One becomes amazed and sometimes horrified by what the mind is able to create. These insights will be a great gift to us. .We sees clearly how we choose how we relate to the world around us. In other words we partly choose heaven or hell on earth.

Most of us will have problems with the length of the meditation sessions, especially at the beginning of the retreat. Switch to walking or standing meditation when the concentration level goes down or the pain takes over. It is also extremely important to vary meditation position because we are many sessions per day. Change before the pain comes!

If we break the silence it means we break the retreat. Come and talk first before making the decision. This is the main objective of the possibility of support from me. If you still end up choosing to break the retreat, we help each other to make it discretely so that it interferes with the other participants as little as possible.