My most profound woo-woo experience

I had my biggest woo-woo experience at this retreat center on top of Monteagle Mountain in Tennessee. I spent a lot of time pondering it on this bench (in the shadowy foreground). You also see the brow of the mountain and the valley below.

My biggest and most profound woo-woo experience happened in the summer of the year 2000 at my first silent retreat

I had started a daily centering prayer practice in the winter of 1999 soon after my father's death. Father Thomas Keating, one of the U.S. founders of centering prayer, was to speak at the church I was a member of then. I'd been interested in mediation for quite a while but couldn't get into the Buddhist version of it. Centering prayer is basically mediation with a Christian flavor, and that made it more familiar than the Buddhist version. I tried a few centering prayer sessions at my church, and I found the practice to be just what I'd been looking for.

Fr. Keating suggested 20-minute sessions twice a day. But I never could get myself to add an afternoon session. I did stick with daily 20-minute morning sessions for 17 years.

After Fr. Keating's talk at our church I joined a Centering Prayer group that met weekly at a different church, and I became friends with the group leader. The summer of 2000 she suggested I go to a five-day centering prayer retreat at a retreat center an hour from where I live. I was open to a longer, immersive centering prayer experience, so I signed up.

When I pulled up at the retreat center parking lot, I saw a sign that read: "Quiet please. Silent retreat in progress."

My reaction was "WHAT??!!!!"

I had no idea this was a silent retreat! I thought it would just be more centering prayer "sits" and otherwise a "normal" retreat where you talk with other retreatants.

Nope. This was real immersion!

There would be three hours of centering prayer "sits" a day. A "sit" is a meditation period. Most Buddhists sit on the floor on a cushion, but centering prayer practitioners typically sit in a regular chair with feet flat on the floor and hands in the lap. You keep your spine straight. And you close your eyes through the whole session. The group sits in a circle.

Sessions are typically 20 minutes. At a retreat the leader typically rings a singing bowl or other gong-type sound to both begin and end the session. And at a centering prayer retreat you have three back-to-back 20-minute sessions (or two 30-minute sessions) three times a day. The first hour-long session is before breakfast, the second is before lunch, and the third is early afternoon.

After each 20- or 30-minute session you have the opportunity to get up and move. You can join a slow, meditative walk around the group circle, beginning and ending at your chair. It's a way to discharge some energy. But you don't have to join the walk. You can stay in your chair or on your cushion.

You are in silence the whole day. You can talk at the very beginning and the very end of a several-day retreat. But the rest of the time you are silent. You walk to and from sessions in silence. You eat meals in silence.

Your entire day is spent in silence. For several back-to-back days.

You're encouraged not to read because reading is a way to escape dropping deeply into yourself. Journaling is encouraged, though.

At this particular five-day retreat there were sessions where a leader taught about centering prayer. He'd talk and the rest of us would listen. That was the only talking during the retreat.

As I said earlier, I wasn't prepared for a silent retreat.

But I was game. I figured I could give it a try because I'd been drawn to meditation for many years. And I found my daily centering prayers practice helpful. I did "sits" at home every day before I went to work teaching high school English at a local high school. I got up at 5 am to have time to do my sits on work days. And I found that I did indeed feel calmer and more grounded because of this practice.

It was weird for me not to talk at meals at this retreat. We ate at tables family style, so you had to gesture to have bowls passed to you. But that worked amazingly well.

I found it hard not to say hello to people as I passed them in the halls or on the lawn on the brow of the mountain or on a walk on the grounds. I became aware of how different it was to totally be in silence, not talking at all. And not having an escape from my thoughts.

Over the years I went on several days-long centering prayer retreats, and I discovered that my pattern was that the first day or two I felt antsy. And it seemed that so did almost everyone on the retreat. There would be lots more shifting around, coughing, throat-clearing during the first couple of days. Then people would settle down on the third or fourth day.

At this first centering prayer retreat I did indeed settle on Day 3. I felt calmer, quieter, more comfortable with both the silence and the sits.

But that afternoon's session involved more than just settling down for me.

It was the afternoon session of Day 3. I felt less antsy all day. And by the third session of the day I was more easily dropping into a deep meditation.

The first 20-minute session was pleasant. I got up after the bowl gong and took the slow walk with the group. And I started the second 20-minute session.

Then sometime within that session things changed...

It's hard to find words that accurately describe what I felt, what I experienced.

It was as if the top of my head opened and I was both in my body AND somewhere else, within a type of column over my head. I was me but in body form sitting in my chair while at the same time I was above my head, not in body form.

And my father was present.

He had died in January 1999. This retreat was in July 2000, and this experience was exactly 18 months to the day after his funeral.

My father was present in this out-of-the-body experience I was having.

I could faintly see his face within this column, a faint presence. Smiling. And at different ages. In his 30s, in his 40s, 50s, 70s. Different ages. Smiling, happy, pleasant. Reassuring.

I felt he was with me, wherever this was.

It felt like it was over my head. But it was much more expansive than being in my body.

And I was also still in my body!

I could wiggle my fingers and toes. I could open my eyes and see the retreat room with afternoon sun flowing into the windows. But I was also above my head in that column with my father's presence.

The leader rang the singing bowl for the second 20-minute session to be over. But I was still having an out-of-the-body experience so I didn't get up. I stayed in my chair and also in the column with my father's faint presence. I kept my eyes closed. I could hear the group members walking slowly around the room. I could hear the bowl ring to start the third and final session of the afternoon.

And I was still in AND out of my body.

I'm not sure how long my out-of-the-body experience lasted. And I don't quite remember how it ended. But at some point during the last 20-minute session I left the column and went completely back into my body. It happened gradually. When the bowl rang to end the final session of the afternoon, I was back to "normal."

But I was kind of freaked out!

I felt I needed to talk with someone about what I'd just experienced. I tried to get my friend, the one who'd invited me, to have a conversation...but she was NOT going to leave the silence—and she rebuffed my request.

So I had the rest of the afternoon and evening to ponder it.

The whole out-of-the-body experience was very pleasant. I kept reminding myself of that.

My mind was pleasantly blank. It wasn't full of thoughts as it usually was. It was so interesting to experience this quiet mind. I was kind of freaked out because I didn't have any similar experiences for comparison and was trying to figure out what had happened. But my mind was also less anxious than usual, less cluttered with thoughts—more open, more spacious.

I remember wondering that evening at bedtime if I'd be able to sleep.

Yes, I slept great!

And the next day's centering prayer sessions were back to "normal." No out-of-the-body time. Just nice meditation sessions with no or few thoughts. Between sessions I'd sit on the bench near the brow and journal about what I'd experienced.

When we could talk on Day 5, I asked some other retreatants at my dinner table about what I'd experienced. They said my crown chakra had opened, that things like this were happening all over the world. One shared that she had an ongoing relationship with her son who had died. They assured me my experience wasn't so weird.

I tried taking with the group leader, a local priest, about my experience, but he was the least helpful. He said it sounded like "disassociation." He was wrong. And telling me that was actually unhelpful.

The only negative part of my experience was when I returned to the "real world" and didn't have anything simliar with which to compare it. That made me feel concerned sometimes.

The experience itself, though, was very pleasant. Not frightening at all.

And the effects were positive.

For a few months after the retreat my mind was less cluttered, less full of thoughts and anxiety. It was more open and spacious. I could sit contentedly in silence.

I remember that about a week later I drove a friend who was singing in a chorus back up this mountain for a concert. We had to get there really early. And I didn't take anything to read. I was very happy to sit in silence before the concert. My mind wasn't working on overdrive as it usually did.

I could sit and just be.

I could be totally present to what was happening around me. The concert was Beethoven's 9th, and that's why my friend was there. She was singing "Ode to Joy." The whole concert was richer than usual. I think it's because I was so open then.

Gradually, though, the openness, the spaciousness, diminished—until my mind went back to its normal overthinking with a side of anxiety.

But I look back now and think about that out-of-the-body experience and see it as the most profound woo-woo experience of my life.

It reassured me that life goes on beyond this body and this place. That there is a more than what we see and feel and hear in our daily lives.

And that the other side of the veil is very close.

That we can even experience it at times.

And that there's a happy, pleasant place outside of time. A "place" we can share with our loved ones who have died.

I expect that after our deaths we can share with our loved ones who have not crossed over yet. My out-of-the-body experience sure changed how I think of this life and the other side. I felt reassured that it's a pleasant "place" of happiness. I felt it really was my father who was with me.

There is so much of that experience that is hard to put into words. "Time" and "place" don't seem to be words that fit. But that's how we experience life on most days and in most situations, so those are the words I use now.

I went on several days-long centering prayer retreats after this one. I didn't have another out-of-the-body experience at any of them. But I did have some interesting, hard-to-explain other experiences.

I'll share those in later posts.

I know others have had out-of-the-body experiences. I've read about some. I know others who have had near-death experiences.

There is so much about this life that we don't understand. There is so much more than what our five senses typically experience.

I call a lot of those "woo-woo" for lack of a better term. I'll be sharing more of mine.

And know I know many of you have had your own...