The silence is now over. It was a challenging 10 days and I might have worked harder than I have ever before. By no means was it a vacation nor was it relaxing. This was a retreat in its true nature, retreating back to the self and examining. I am reintegrating into the bigger reality. My lenses are still a bit hazy and right now reality seems a bit dreamy but beneath all that there is some clarity. There is the clarity to see things as they are. I heard this lesson over and over throughout the 10 days... "see things as they, not as you want them to be". Our minds are such that they resist living in the present and rather travel to the past or jump forward to the future and when they do come to the present they come with baggage, unnecessary baggage that is distorts our perception of reality and disables us in taking right actions. Ofcourse this lesson is nothing new, we hear this over and over packaged in different words "live in the moment", "let it go", "go with the flow of life" and intellectually it makes complete sense to stay in the moment and enjoy it, yet why is so challenging to do? For years now I have dabbled in various studies pertaining to the art of living whether it was through yoga, through spiritual lectures, qi gong, music, traveling, meditation, running, and ofcourse just living my own experience and I think of myself as a preacher of "living in the moment" but experientially I found it challenging. My mind thoroughly enjoyed blasts from the past and taking trips to the future and when it came time to use my mind in the present it was cluttered. Now I must give my mind some credit, it is quite creative and very quick to dissect and I appreciate it for those qualities but when untamed my mind and anyones mind is like a wild elephant. I don't know about most people but I wouldn't be caught in 2 feets distance from a wild elephant. Yet we humans walk around freely with our wild elephants and when our elephants are angered...well it sucks for the object of our anger. Fortunately we have been raised in a society where some conditioning and training of the mind happens but only to a certain degree and to a certain point, after that it is each persons responsibility to tame their elephant. In my case, I have always just been curious and asked "why", why is life like this and what is the meaning, why is there misery, why is there happiness, and what is true happiness and bliss, and why am I doing what I am doing. The answers may or may not be there but it is important to understand reality and understand ourselves. Know ourselves. What came through loud and clear to me over the last 10 days was even though I knew to be in the moment and to live in reality, I only knew it at the intellectual level and experiencing it it a whole different ball game. When the Now is not the pleasant the mind unconciously travels to the past or the future as an escape and perhaps it gives us temporary relief, but in return when the Now is pleasant we are unable to enjoy it because either we assess it with the baggage from the past or future or we have so well conditioned our mind that it is ALWAYS in the past or future. What the now boils down and what Knowing ourselves boils down to is "change", constant change within and without. I know it sounds very New Agey, but in actuality its old agey, this is what the people of the past were doing, they may not have all been enlightened but in some way or anothere they were in a symbiotic relationship with nature and grasped life as it is... rising and falling... in a constant change.
What I was taught over the course of the 10 days was not understanding change at the intellectual level but experiencing change and more importantly NOT reacting to change. Why, because it is change... here one minute gone the next. The days prior to the 10 day journey were a mixture of subtle excitement for the unknown experience along with anxiety of leaving for 10 days but moreso the anxiety of change. I knew that although on the surface it is only 10 days the quality of the 10 days would be deep and transformational and this would mean change in some way. Change is a scary subject, it usally means stepping out of your comfort zone and into the unknown. It means work, it means letting go and rebuilding and for some reason all of this sparks some fear. Whether I was prepared for change or not I didn't know, at the moment I was more worried about being prepared to become an icicle and hoped and prayed that there would be lots of heat in the rooms. I had never done a Vipassana course before and quite honestly didnt have a strong meditation practice. Sitting for an hour was just not my thing and more so I just didnt have the time to do that even though I did a great job of getting in an extra hour of sleep, lingering out all of my tasks, and entertaining my mind and its creativity (again I really do have lots of love for my mind). But I so badly wanted to do this vipassana course and wanted to do it this year before 2010 because somehow doing it in 2010 would just not be the same (again I love you mind). I had heard about Vipassana 3 years ago and stored it in my mind as this is something that I will do. I felt ready to recieve the teaching this year and when I was first put on the wait list, I was not happy. How could they put me on the wait list, dont they know that this is my year?! More importantly didnt I know that the courses get filled up and I have to make a decision atleast 3 months in advance if I want to do it. After about 6 months of waiting I got into the December course. My first thought "Yay, Im in", and my second thought "hmm... so do I really want to go?" and then the excuses started and the emails asking "how cold is it going to be? because Im cold sensitive" haha... My mind finally gave up and together we checked into the mental hospital. Yes, the mental hospital. Day 0,the day I arrived to North Fork, was quite pleasant. I had no expectations of the accomodations so was happy to see there were beds and curtain separators between people and there were 2 showers AND there was hot water! I was in a dorm with 10 girls and we were checking in for the first time. I was under the impression that the minute I arrive to the center would be the end of talking and this was not the case. There were about 150 students and Men and Women were completely segregated. The women gathered in the dining hall and as we ate yummy veggie food consisiting of salads, soups, stews and lots of teas, we also chatted, A LOT! Some people were taking their 2nd, 5th, 10th course, I was impressed and now more curious about the teachings. Getting back to our dorm I made an effort to atleast exchange a couple of words with the girls in my neighboring quarters so that Im not left pondering about their name or where they are from the entire time and Im not with complete strangers. Side note: Interesting how only exchanging a couple of words in this case can shift someone from being a stranger to a friend whereas in our daily lives we can exchange a couple of words in haste with someone and erase the person from our minds or never quite consider them a friend. Our first meditation session was in the evening and after that complete silence. Lights were out at 9:30pm and I layed in bed wondering what the hell I just got myself into.
This is just the beginning... more to come.
Mettalove
For more information on vipassana visit www.dhamma.org
