Nada

 If you want a desert experience in prayer because it is recommended as part of spiritual growth, or because you think it will make you an adept, a spiritual guru, or just feel good, it won’t be the desert.  If it is to happen and when it happens, it will be on a Power’s time and not your own.  In the desert you lose all interest in a God, Power, sense of relationship with such.  It is nada, nada.  It is Mu.  Nothing.  Most people run back to their place, book, space where they had good feelings or some interest.  Nada gets rid of all your previous sense of prayer and ideas.  From Nada, nothing, you grow if you have the humility and patience to sit it out over time.  When a person in recovery begins to go to meetings that they used to enjoy, and say, “I no longer get anything out of this,” they are growing but don’t know it.  To be present with no palpable return is part of Nada.  But it is not nothing.  It only appears that way.