Despite the fact that I had never meditated in my life, I went on a 10-day Vipassana Meditation Retreat. For 10 days, I accepted a vow of complete silence: No talking with others, nor any silent communication by gesture or eye contact. Further, no cell phones, computers, TV, radios, music, no alcohol, no reading or writing. NOTHING. No input, no output. Except 100 hours of meditation.
Here follows the story of my experience: Part 4. Previous entries are posted here.
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After six days of meditation, I wonder what is happening to me. I’ve gone from the lowest of lows to the highest of highs in a few short days. At the end of the course, I tell a fellow meditator: “This is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.” His response: “Really? Ten days of sitting is the hardest thing you’ve ever done?” Short answer: absolutely. The long answer requires some philosophy.
The Vipassana meditation practice – and the ten-day retreat – works on a variety of different levels. The teacher instructs us to simply remain aware of sensation, exploring every inch of the body to observe what sensations arise. Some sensations are pleasant, like the full body buzz I wrote about last month. Some are painful, like dull and sharp back aches, and some are unpleasant, like intense itches or a foot falling asleep. The teacher instructs us to not react to any of these sensations. So I do not move to scratch an itch on my nose even as it goes from mildly annoying to a tiny volcanic hot explosion of electricity.
Every emotion has a place that it manifests in the body. When I’m angry, if I pay attention closely, I’m able to feel the physical sensation of that anger in my body. Maybe it’s in the pit of my stomach, like a ball of acid. The subconscious or “unconscious” mind is always aware of this and every sensation on the body (and therefore, every emotion). I sit watching a movie, engaged in the story unfolding, and I have an itch on my arm that I scratch. I may not even be aware, consciously, that I did so. It’s my subconscious mind that did it. It is always awake, even during sleep, and aware of the sensations everywhere on the body. During meditation, I feel sensations and my subconscious mind wants to react. By not reacting, it’s like I’m pulling on the reins on a wild horse.
That’s how Vipassana meditation is meant to work. I pull the reins on my animal (subconscious mind) to teach it to no longer react unthinkingly to every sensation or emotion. I am training my subconscious mind to observe and accept.
And as I remain totally silent over the course of a ten day retreat, I have no output to express my emotions. Without a phone, computer, radio or TV, there is almost no distraction; there is no input. Without input or output for ten solid days, I begin to release some of the things that have been buried deep inside my body.
Little emotions… like the hurried stress and twitch of shame I feel when I arrive late to a meeting, or the quick jolt of anger when a driver does something stupid on the road. These emotions, which seem minor, find a place in my body and remain there. They build up as more and more emotion piles up and isn’t addressed. And that’s just the little hits. There are also a lot of deeper, powerful feelings that get buried in the body. This happens to all of us.
All these things shake loose during ten days of no input and no output. There is nothing to distract me from myself. Once the “noise” from the hubbub of daily life begins to die down in my head, I am left only with who I am and what I carry. Emotions come out after they have lingered and built up for so long, after they have become much bigger than the original emotion because they are stored in my body and, over time, cause me more pain than the original transaction. During the retreat, I wasn’t the only one to break down and cry. It was a regular occurrence. The emotion pours out in surprisingly powerful ways. So, attending one of these 10-day retreats isn’t an escape from the real world into some haven of silence and peace; rather, it’s a painful and difficult journey. Fortunately, it’s worth it (more on that next month).
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Follow up notes to this month's column:
1. The "tiny volcanic hot explosion of electricity" cannot be stated dramatically enough to match the experience. It was summertime hot, 100 degrees every day, so I'd naturally have a little sweat on me. Sitting down to meditate, the sweat settles and dries as I cool. And the itches that would come up, especially on my face, were unbelievably irritating. There were times I wanted to scream as I fought off the urge to itch. Other times, I'd successfully watch and wait and the itch would die down, only to come back stronger and more fierce than ever before. I could swear that there was a tiny person on my face stabbing me with a red hot pitchfork, twisting and laughing as I struggled. I wanted to kill that person.
2. I've learned so much by going back. After my first retreat, which seemed to knock me off a lot of bad games I was playing, was too emotionally powerful for me to fully understand. I understood some of what happened to me, and some of how the retreat works.
But it wasn't until I went back for another 10-day retreat seven months later, and then again on a 3-day retreat just last month, that I began to understand what this thing is all about. That's how this month's column came together... while it's "about" my first ten day retreat, it's really fueled by understanding that came in later retreats.
3. I find the "chemistry" of how this experience works fascinating. How, after ten days of shutting down the noise of the world, so much naturally comes out of your mind and body. How the experience is meant to be painful, because it's a purging of emotions stored in the body. How it's like a cleansing in that way, and how I felt so much lighter when it was over. Like the baggage I was carrying with me was gone. The point of going is not to relax and enjoy, but to go through pain in order to come out on the other side freer.
4. Going to these retreats has not removed my reactions to little things in life. I still get angry, frustrated, sad, in response to some of the stupid little drama things in life, in addition to bigger, more challenging issues. But I am much more aware of how that works, and I can step back and watch myself. It doesn't make it go away all that easily, but it does make it easier to cope with it.
I will cover, in future columns, how I did successfully live without emotional reactions to things, for a solid four months after my first retreat. It was a wonderful time. Unfortunately, it didn't last. But I'm still far better off than I was before all this.
