The place we end up going on vacation is a tiny island called Gili Meno, located off the coast of Lombok, which is the next stop east of Bali in the great, sprawling1 Indonesian archipelago. I'd been to Gili Meno before, and I wanted to show it to Felipe, who had never been there.
The island of Gili Meno is one of the most important places in the world to me. I came here by myself two years ago when I was in Bali for the first time. I was on that magazine assignment, writing about Yoga vacations, and I'd just finished two weeks of mightily2 restorative Yoga classes. But I had decided3 to extend my stay in Indonesia after the assignment was up, since I was already all the way over here in Asia. What I wanted to do, actually, was to find someplace very remote and give myself a ten-day retreat of absolute solitude4 and absolute silence.
When I look back at the four years that elapsed between my marriage starting to fall apart and the day I was finally divorced and free, I see a detailed5 chronicle of total pain. And the moment when I came to this tiny island all by myself was the very worst of that entire dark journey. The bottom of the pain and the middle of it. My unhappy mind was a battlefield of conflicted demons6. As I made my decision to spend ten days alone and in silence in the middle of exactly nowhere, I told all my warring and confused parts the same thing: "We're all here together now, guys, all alone. And we're going to have to work out some kind of deal for how to get along, or else everybody is going to die together, sooner or later."
Which may sound firm and confident, but I must admit this, as well--that sailing over to that quiet island all alone, I was never more terrified in my life. I hadn't even brought any books to read, nothing to distract me. Just me and my mind, about to face each other on an empty field. I remember that my legs were visibly shaking with fear. Then I quoted to myself one of my favorite lines ever from my Guru: "Fear--who cares?" and I disembarked alone.
I rented myself a little cabin on the beach for a few dollars a day and I shut my mouth and vowed7 not to open it again until something inside me had changed. Gili Meno Island was my ultimate truth and reconciliation8 hearing. I had chosen the right place to do this--that much was clear. The island itself is tiny, pristine9, sandy, blue water, palm trees. It's a perfect circle with a single path that goes around it, and you can walk the whole circumference10 in about an hour. It's located almost exactly on the equator, and so there's a changelessness about its daily cycles. The sun comes up on one side of the island at about 6:30 in the morning and goes down on the other side at around 6:30 PM, every day of the year. The place is inhabited by a small handful of Muslim fishermen and their families. There is no spot on this island from which you cannot hear the ocean. There are no motorized vehicles here. Electricity comes from a generator11, and for only a few hours in the evenings. It's the quietest place I've ever been.
Every morning I walked the circumference of the island at sunrise, and walked it again at sunset. The rest of the time, I just sat and watched. Watched my thoughts, watched my emotions, watched the fishermen. The Yogic sages12 say that all the pain of a human life is caused by words, as is all the joy. We create words to define our experience and those words bring attendant emotions that jerk us around like dogs on a leash13. We get seduced14 by our own mantras (I'm a failure . . . I'm lonely . . . I'm a failure . . . I'm lonely . . .) and we become monuments to them. To stop talking for a while, then, is to attempt to strip away the power of words, to stop choking ourselves with words, to liberate15 ourselves from our suffocating16 mantras.
It took me a while to drop into true silence. Even after I'd stopped talking, I found that I was still humming with language. My organs and muscles of speech--brain, throat, chest, back of the neck--vibrated with the residual17 effects of talking long after I'd stopped making sounds. My head shimmied in a reverb of words, the way an indoor swimming pool seems to echo interminably with sounds and shouts, even after the kindergartners have left for the day. It took a surprisingly long time for all this pulsation18 of speech to fall away, for the whirling noises to settle. Maybe it took about three days.
Then everything started coming up. In that state of silence, there was room now for everything hateful, everything fearful, to run across my empty mind. I felt like a junkie in detox, convulsing with the poison of what emerged. I cried a lot. I prayed a lot. It was difficult and it was terrifying, but this much I knew--I never didn't want to be there, and I never wished that anyone were there with me. I knew that I needed to do this and that I needed to do it alone.
The only other tourists on the island were a handful of couples having romantic vacations. (Gili Meno is far too pretty and far too remote a place for anyone but a crazy person to come visit solo.) I watched these couples and felt some envy for their romances, but knew, "This is not your time for companionship, Liz. You have a different task here." I kept away from everyone. People on the island left me alone. I think I threw off a spooky vibe. I had not been well all year. You can't lose that much sleep and that much weight and cry so hard for so long without starting to look like a psychotic. So nobody talked to me.
Actually, that's not true. One person talked to me, every day. It was this little kid, one of a gang of kids who run up and down the beaches trying to sell fresh fruit to the tourists. This boy was maybe nine years old, and seemed to be the ringleader. He was tough, scrappy and I would have called him street-smart if his island actually had any streets. He was beach-smart, I suppose. Somehow he'd learned great English, probably from harassing19 sunbathing20 Westerners. And he was on to me, this kid. Nobody else asked me who I was, nobody else bothered me, but this relentless21 child would come and sit next to me on the beach at some point every day and demand, "Why don't you ever talk? Why are you strange like this? Don't pretend you can't hear me--I know you can hear me. Why are you always alone? Why don't you ever go swimming? Where is your boyfriend? Why don't you have a husband? What's wrong with you?"
I was like, Back off, kid! What are you--a transcript22 of my most evil thoughts?
Every day I would try to smile at him kindly23 and send him away with a polite gesture, but he wouldn't quit until he got a rise out me. And inevitably24, he always got a rise out of me. I remember bursting out at him once, "I'm not talking because I'm on a friggin' spiritual journey, you nasty little punk--now go AWAY!"
He ran away laughing. Every day, after he'd gotten me to respond, he would always run away laughing. I'd usually end up laughing, too, once he was out of sight. I dreaded25 this pesky kid and looked forward to him in equal measure. He was my only comedic break during a really tough ride. Saint Anthony once wrote about having gone into the desert on silent retreat and being assaulted by all manner of visions--devils and angels, both. He said, in his solitude, he sometimes encountered devils who looked like angels, and other times he found angels who looked like devils. When asked how he could tell the difference, the saint said that you can only tell which is which by the way you feel after the creature has left your company. If you are appalled26, he said, then it was a devil who had visited you. If you feel lightened, it was an angel.
I think I know what that little punk was, who always got a laugh out of me.
On my ninth day of silence, I went into meditation27 one evening on the beach as the sun was going down and I didn't stand up again until after midnight. I remember thinking, "This is it, Liz." I said to my mind, "This is your chance. Show me everything that is causing you sorrow. Let me see all of it. Don't hold anything back." One by one, the thoughts and memories of sadness raised their hands, stood up to identify themselves. I looked at each thought, at each unit of sorrow, and I acknowledged its existence and felt (without trying to protect myself from it) its horrible pain. And then I would tell that sorrow, "It's OK. I love you. I accept you. Come into my heart now. It's over." I would actually feel the sorrow (as if it were a living thing) enter my heart (as if it were an actual room). Then I would say, "Next?" and the next bit of grief would surface. I would regard it, experience it, bless it, and invite it into my heart, too. I did this with every sorrowful thought I'd ever had--reaching back into years of memory--until nothing was left.
Then I said to my mind, "Show me your anger now." One by one, my life's every incident of anger rose and made itself known. Every injustice28, every betrayal, every loss, every rage. I saw them all, one by one, and I acknowledged their existence. I felt each piece of anger completely, as if it were happening for the first time, and then I would say, "Come into my heart now. You can rest there. It's safe now. It's over. I love you." This went on for hours, and I swung between these mighty29 poles of opposite feelings--experiencing the anger thoroughly30 for one bone-rattling moment, and then experiencing a total coolness, as the anger entered my heart as if through a door, laid itself down, curled up against its brothers and gave up fighting.
Then came the most difficult part. "Show me your shame," I asked my mind. Dear God, the horrors that I saw then. A pitiful parade of all my failings, my lies, my selfishness, jealousy31, arrogance32. I didn't blink from any of it, though. "Show me your worst," I said. When I tried to invite these units of shame into my heart, they each hesitated at the door, saying, "No--you don't want me in there . . . don't you know what I did?" and I would say, "I do want you. Even you. I do. Even you are welcome here. It's OK. You are forgiven. You are part of me. You can rest now. It's over."
When all this was finished, I was empty. Nothing was fighting in my mind anymore. I looked into my heart, at my own goodness, and I saw its capacity. I saw that my heart was not even nearly full, not even after having taken in and tended to all those calamitous33 urchins34 of sorrow and anger and shame; my heart could easily have received and forgiven even more. Its love was infinite.
I knew then that this is how God loves us all and receives us all, and that there is no such thing in this universe as hell, except maybe in our own terrified minds. Because if even one broken and limited human being could experience even one such episode of absolute forgiveness and acceptance of her own self, then imagine--just imagine!--what God, in all His eternal compassion35, can forgive and accept.
I also knew somehow that this respite36 of peace would be temporary. I knew that I was not yet finished for good, that my anger, my sadness and my shame would all creep back eventually, escaping my heart, and occupying my head once more. I knew that I would have to keep dealing37 with these thoughts again and again until I slowly and determinedly38 changed my whole life. And that this would be difficult and exhausting to do. But my heart said to my mind in the dark silence of that beach: "I love you, I will never leave you, I will always take care of you." That promise floated up out of my heart and I caught it in my mouth and held it there, tasting it as I left the beach and walked back to the little shack39 where I was staying. I found an empty notebook, opened it up to the first page--and only then did I open my mouth and speak those words into the air, letting them free. I let those words break my silence and then I allowed my pencil to document their colossal40 statement onto the page: "I love you, I will never leave you, I will always take care of you."
Those were the first words I ever wrote in that private notebook of mine, which I would carry with me from that moment forth41, turning back to it many times over the next two years, always asking for help--and always finding it, even when I was most deadly sad or afraid. And that notebook, steeped through with that promise of love, was quite simply the only reason I survived the next years of my life.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
sprawling
|
|
| adj.蔓生的，不规则地伸展的v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的现在分词 )；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
mightily
|
|
| ad.强烈地；非常地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
decided
|
|
| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
solitude
|
|
| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
detailed
|
|
| adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
demons
|
|
| n.恶人( demon的名词复数 )；恶魔；精力过人的人；邪念 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
vowed
|
|
| 起誓，发誓（vow的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
reconciliation
|
|
| n.和解，和谐，一致 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
pristine
|
|
| adj.原来的，古时的，原始的，纯净的，无垢的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
circumference
|
|
| n.圆周，周长，圆周线 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
generator
|
|
| n.发电机，发生器 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
sages
|
|
| n.圣人( sage的名词复数 )；智者；哲人；鼠尾草（可用作调料） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
leash
|
|
| n.牵狗的皮带，束缚；v.用皮带系住 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
seduced
|
|
| 诱奸( seduce的过去式和过去分词 )； 勾引； 诱使堕落； 使入迷 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
liberate
|
|
| v.解放，使获得自由，释出，放出；vt.解放，使获自由 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
suffocating
|
|
| a.使人窒息的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
residual
|
|
| adj.复播复映追加时间；存留下来的，剩余的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
pulsation
|
|
| n.脉搏，悸动，脉动；搏动性 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
harassing
|
|
| v.侵扰，骚扰( harass的现在分词 )；不断攻击（敌人） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
sunbathing
|
|
| n.日光浴 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
relentless
|
|
| adj.残酷的，不留情的，无怜悯心的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
transcript
|
|
| n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
kindly
|
|
| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
inevitably
|
|
| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
dreaded
|
|
| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
appalled
|
|
| v.使惊骇，使充满恐惧( appall的过去式和过去分词)adj.惊骇的；丧胆的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
meditation
|
|
| n.熟虑，（尤指宗教的）默想，沉思，（pl.）冥想录 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
injustice
|
|
| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
mighty
|
|
| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
thoroughly
|
|
| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
jealousy
|
|
| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
arrogance
|
|
| n.傲慢，自大 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
calamitous
|
|
| adj.灾难的，悲惨的；多灾多难；惨重 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
urchins
|
|
| n.顽童( urchin的名词复数 )；淘气鬼；猬；海胆 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
compassion
|
|
| n.同情，怜悯 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
respite
|
|
| n.休息，中止，暂缓 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
dealing
|
|
| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
determinedly
|
|
| adv.决意地；坚决地，坚定地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
shack
|
|
| adj.简陋的小屋，窝棚 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
colossal
|
|
| adj.异常的，庞大的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
forth
|
|
| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |