Little Suzie Creamcheese

Little Suzie Cream Cheese. It is a very brave thing to face potentially not only all your personal Gods but also all your personal demons for 10 days or more silent meditation.

So when I hear about people who are going to do this, I know what an extreme experience this will be for those who haven't done this yet, both in a good way and a bad way.

begin quote page 193 1/3 down from top of page in "Eat Pray Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert. begin quote
"---When the woman at the Ashram Seva Centre gave me my new job assignment of Key Hostess, she said, "We have a special nickname for this position, you know. We call it 'Little Suzie Creamcheese', because whoever does the job needs to be social and bubbly and smiling all the time."
What could I say?
I just stuck out a hand to shake, bade a silent farewell to all my wishful old delusions and announced, "Madam--I'm your girl."
begin Chapter 65 page 193

What I will be hosting to be exact, is a series of retreats to be held at the Ashram this spring. During each retreat, abaout a hundred devotees will come here from all over the wrold for a period of a week to ten days, to deepen their meditation practices. My role is to take cae of these people during their stay here. For most of the retreat, the participants will be in silence. For some of them, it will be the first time they've experienced silence as a devotional practice, and it can be intense. However, I will be the one person in the Ashram they are allowed to talk to if something is wrong.

That's right--my job officially requires me to be the speech-magnet.
I will listen to the problems of the retreat participants and then try to find solutions for them. Maybe they'll need to change roommates because of a snoring situation, or maybe they'll need to speak to the doctor because of India-related digestive trouble--I'll try to solve it. I'll need to know everybody's name and where they are from------I see them coming in from Denmark, from Detroit and it feels like that scene in 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' where Richard Dreyfuss and all those other seekers have been pulled to the middle of Wyoming for reasons they don't understand at all, drawn by the arrival of a spaceship. I am so consumed by the wonder at their bravery. These people have left their families and lives behind for a few weeks to go into silent retreat amidst a crowd of perfect strangers in India. Not everybody does this in their lifetime.

I love all these people, automatically and unconditionally. I even love the pain-in the-Ass ones.--------They're going into silence, deep into their own minds and souls. Even for an experienced meditator, nothing is more unknown than this territory. Anything can happen in there. They'll be guided during this retreat by a wonderful woman, a monk in her fifties, whose every gesture and word is the embodiment of compassion, but they're still afraid because--as loving as this monk may be---she cannot go with them where they are going. Nobody can. end quote