Back in January, Orion, myself, and 4 other Vegas friends traveled to central Cali and attended a Vipassana meditation retreat. Vipassana is a very specific meditation technique, taught piece by piece throughout the ten days. Here is the basic framework for this experience:
* Takes place in a remote retreat * Men and women are separated at all times * Retreat uses “noble silence” – this means we don’t utter a peep to each other during our stay, nor do we make eye contact. This is to maintain a respectful vibe, and to allow us to fall deeply into our processes. * We meditate for a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes a day, broken up only by meal breaks. * Evenings include a 90 minute video discourse from Guru Goenka, the current enlightened master presiding over this process.
Going into this adventure, I’ll admit I was more than a little petrified. I could barely eek out a solid 10 minute meditation, let alone a gargantuan 100+ hour 10 day meditation extravaganza. As the day drew closer, so did my panic level. But then a funny thing happened. On the day we drove the four hours to our destination, I hit my most peaceful, surrendered, happy state. I knew what I was about to experience would be colossal, challenging, beautiful and nightmarish. But I found the space within that said Yes to it all, and thusly gifted myself with a graceful, joyous entry into the unknown.
The first night we arrived, we all had a last talkie-filled dinner, heard the instructions from a staff member, and hit the start of noble silence. Along with the first meditation. I hit my stride right off. The first few days, actually, were easy-peasey. I bounced around the campus with a vibrant grin, absolutely loving the vegetarian fare, the quiet pace, the delicious silence, and the very relaxed meditations. For those first 3 1/2 days, all we did was focus on our breathing – specifically the area around our nostrils. Anapana meditation, as it’s referred to – and oh my God, I just LOVED it. I had gone into the Vipassana journey expecting serious rigidity – insistence on sitting still during the hour+ meditations, staff-hawks watching our every breath, bamboo rods smacking me when I had a twitch. And none of this transpired. It was an honor system, anything goes experience (minus talking, and the meditations WERE required) – I found it simply lovely. Not easy, but awesome. My ego was doing backflips.
On day four, dubbed “Vipassana Day”, the whole experience got kicked up about four trillion notches. We learned the real Vipassana meditation technique, founded in core Buddhism, which involves the following:
* Observing sensations in every part of the body * Sending our awareness part by part throughout the body, and noting what is * Reaching a state of equanimity for all that is uncovered, whether or not the sensations are painful, pleasurable, or anything in between * NOT MOVING ON IOTA FOR A FULL SIXTY MINUTES, NO MATTER WHAT
It’s the last one that got me. I see myself as a fidgity, manic, energy-crazed creature who moves, almost all the time – even in sleep. This is why meditation was always a challenge – I had an internal dialogue that told me I couldn’t sit still. And it’s external as well – I’ve heard such feedback since I was a screechy tyke. Going into the first 60 minute “Sitting of Strong Determination”, as they refer to these particular meditations, I was all aflutter. I felt like there was no freaking way I could bang this out. Not move for a full hour? While scanning my body and remaining neutral to all sensations? Shit – getting my dream threesome with Monica Bellucci felt far more probable.
And yet, I wanted it. I wanted this victory so bad I was dizzy with my focus. This meditation was a crucial one, because if I failed, I’d have resistance for the entire rest of my journey. I needed to prove something to myself in a big, big way. So I dropped the rest of the meditation technique for this particular sitting, and simply promised myself I wouldn’t move. The entire 60 minutes, I ran one thing and one thing only through my over-active noggin: YOU ARE NOT MOVING. There were profanities, as well as gentle guidance, included in the midst, but that was the gist of it.
Of course, I chose a position that would prove to be insanely painful in about, oh, 2.5 minutes. Great. An added challenge. I took it all in with all this new gusto. Nevermind the screaming pain in my right hip. Forget about the intense muscle cramping in the lower back. Just sit still, for chrissake, and show you have the cajones to get through what thousands before have done with ease.
When the meditation ended, I cried. Seriously. Because I had actually done it. Not a muscle moved for the full 60 minutes. No, I wasn’t exactly equanimous to the pain I had experience. Nor was I above the absolute elation I felt to having accomplished my goal. But all that was fine – I had laid the needed foundation. I could freaking DO this. Hot. Dog.
The rest of the retreat was a veritable roller coaster of emotional mayhem. For the most part, I stayed in a very peaceful state. But around day 8, ego started having a field day. She was already screaming up a storm in the internal dialogue, having gotten wind of all this no-mind meditation crap. She had long since been playing god-awful muzak on repeat in the headspace – shit like Lady Gaga played on repeat, at increasing volumes, despite my efforts to turn it off altogether. But I understood her resistance. I was taking away a big chunk of her power.
So she retaliated with annoying pop tunes and large doses of anger. I wasn’t so fond of Guru Goenka’s evening discourses, nor his horrifically repetitive audio bookends to each meditation. The man insists on chanting / spinging as entries into and exits out of each meditation, and I am not exaggerating when I say that is the WORST VOICE I HAVE EVER HEARD. He plays it up for emphasis, too. That’s how these enlightened chaps roll. They live to torture our egos. And I live to take it in 
ANYway, I finished the retreat with flying colors, and was so, so proud to see how well Orion did too (although not in the least bit surprised.) We had ourselves a grand contemplation during those 10 days, and left with heaps and heaps of satisfaction and gratitude. As we drove home, we laughed about the egoic resistance, the fact that Orion almost got kicked out for exhibiting “unstable” tendencies (stories for another time – and man are they GOOD), and the wild things we witnessed internally and beyond.
We marked Vipassana as a very successful venture, right away. Yet it wasn’t until 2-3 days later that we really started feeling the benefits.
Orion and I had a another awakening the Monday after we returned – one that actually happened *simultaneously*. We had never experienced a unified transcendence before – and laughed later about how un-surprised we were that we had managed to manifest such a thing. Anyway, as the no-mind state really started to permeate into our cells, we both experienced another layer of ego-death. It was so magical and meaningful/less that I really can’t describe it. But really, what we learned about Vipassana is that we really don’t know what happened there, on a mind-level. It changed us, that’s for sure. We got closer to the Truth, which is really the core reason why we do *anything* these days.
How this all relates to the now: I am deep into the awareness that I have been resisting this lessons in mass quantities during the last 30 days or so. I have an earache, jaw pain, and several angry teeth that tell me this and more. These are signs that my body has been talking oodles to me, and again, I have chosen not to listen. Even though Vipassana taught me this was, in part, the path to enlightenment. It starts in the body, and I feel that to be absolutely True. So here I am, trying to ignore my pain and messages, trying to focus fully on the external world and ignore the main priorities – to transcend into the ethers of awareness and know the true nature of reality.
That’s what happens when I touch the sun – I fall back down to earth, and ego clings all the more ferociously. I am grateful to my body for alerting me to my unconscious ways these days, and am taking steps to come back into the nothingness. Meditation, shamanic journeys, and a heightened sense of awareness are all on the menu. As always, it feels so lovely to wake up again.
Would I do another Vipassana? Probably not. I recommend it whole-heartedly to anyone who feels the calling. For myself, I just didn’t jive with Goenka in any fashion, and feel a big block to going deeper with his teachings. That said, I am *all* about the silent meditation retreat – and will actively seek out another opportunity to try something new in this space next year. Feels like a lovely yearly tradition – to shut up for 10 days and listen to what is. Maybe then I will learn to do so all year round.
“You want a love which is born out of meditation, not born out of the mind.”
- Osho
Double wow.
Captured every beat possible