When I registered for a three day meditation retreat where I will sit in “noble silence” at the time it felt like the right course of action for my personal development. I have dabbled with mediation for about seven years but I wouldn’t say I have a bona fide practice. I had been talking to Jen about going to a mediation retreat since we were in Kripalu together last March, so when she called me to say there were openings for a retreat Labor Day weekend I immediately registered continued on with life.

I was at my dry cleaners this weekend chatting, as I usually do, with them. This week’s topic was on the cyclicality of their business and how summer vacations impacted their bottom line. As I was leaving the clerk said, “I’ll see you next Saturday.” I responded without much thought, “oh no I will be away, I am going to sit meditation in silence for three days.” Her eyes go very big and she replied, “what if you go crazy?” I joked and said, “I would call her from the retreat center if that happened.”

I now find myself not wanting to tell anyone what I am doing this weekend, lest they think I am weird or different. Yet I can’t help but wonder, am I actually in the insanity now? Is going away to sit in quiet, allowing for my smart phone obsessed, movie watching, NPR listening, e-mail checking self to hit a giant pause button the sanest thing I could do for myself, my family my company and my community?

My interest in silence began in 2006 when I started doing work about bystanders and how silence and diffusion of responsibility allows everything from micro-inequities to atrocities and genocide happen. Now in my work I teach people to speak up and take action when they see injustice especially at work. This work coupled with my extroverted tendencies has me feeling intimidated when I look at silence as a tool for growth and healing (which I call quiet).

In March of 2006, I saw a documentary called Into Great Silence it was about the monks of Grande Chartreuse located in the French Alps who as I recall only talked a few hours a week on Sunday. The movie was hard to watch. It was slow, not a sound was uttered for the first hour or so of running time when at the moment the care taker called in French for a cat to be fed! I remember thinking how strange these men were and how odd their life was. I could never live as they do. I also wondered how long it took them to hear about things– like the 9-11 terrorist attack and the birth or death of family or friends. What have they completely missed by being tucked away in silence? And as I left the theater and came out into the hustle and bustle of the Cambridge streets, after sitting for 160 minutes in silence myself, I actually wondered if my life was the strange way of living, if all this noise was insanity.

So this weekend I get to experiment with great quiet, noble silence and shutting off my phone, putting away my books and even closing my beloved journal. I will just be with my thoughts, my greatness, my inadequacies, my aches, my inquiries, my questions within a community of strangers. And I believe that with no verbal interaction with these folks, I will find sufficiency, love and maybe, just maybe, discover that I am enough.