In early April I went on retreat for 2 weeks. My annual delight (re-light), these retreats are a commitment to myself, an opportunity to leave 
behind what is apparent and what has become, to adventure boldly into un-certainties. It is a time of spacious nature living (I love to stay in my tent under stars and among scorpions or buck and baboons) and of lots of silence and quiet reflection.
The theme of this year’s retreat was a Zen text pointing to the great inconceivable inexpressible, that which lies beyond duality. “The Great Way is easy for those who have no preferences,” it begins. The text continues: “stop talking and thinking and there is nothing you will not be able to know”.
We spoke a lot about listening (yes ironically). But a whole new possibility of listening opened up for me with the bold assertion: “Listening is the end of the known”. Listening has intrigued me for a long time. Listening in this way is not listening to anything or listening for anything but a bigger vaster very aware and spacious broad receptiveness. A gentle profound acknowledgement.
2 weeks on retreat has been followed by 7 weeks of incapacitating illness. First my old projects (eyes and head pains) then a small but potent injury: a severe infection as a result of an unfortunate bite through the joint right into the bone (fracturing the tip) of my index finger from a fearful cat. Infection raged - in joint and bone - hard to treat medically and perhaps with health insurance I would have accepted the surgery the doctor strongly recommended.
2, The number of wisdom and receptivity, and 7 full exhalation pausing in the gap of no-thing, add up to 9 weeks, 9 the number of transformation, the liquefaction of self by which caterpillar becomes butterfly.*
The past 5 weeks of the illness (5 – releasing unconscious fears - came into the world meaning regeneration, putting off the old and putting on the new) especially saw me cocooned, largely in bed, somewhat feverish; the finger at times felt and certainly looked as though it was liquefying.
*Inside the cocoon, in a process called histolysis, the caterpillar digests itself from the inside out, causing its body to die. During this partial death, some of the caterpillar's old tissues are salvaged to form new. This remnant of cells are called the histoblasts and are used to create a new body. Using its digestive juices, the caterpillar turns his old larval body into food which he uses to rebuild its new body
