Wow.
Honestly I don't even know where to start. I never thought I could learn so much about myself, the world, and the mind all in one place . Saying nothing, and sitting down and breathing. Kinda silly if you look at it from the outside. At least from a perspective that doesn't understand.
Going into the meditation centre I thought I had a good idea of what to expect and what I would be doing. I thought I was just going to be sitting down and miedtating and relaxing and having a nice weekend away frmo things. Soo I realiazed that was an escapist mentality and I was running away from my problems. I met a couple people there and the vow of noble silence began.
There is an "awareness"
Noble silence had started and I thought it was actually pretty funny how everyone kinda walks around like drones not talking to each other ( no communication of any sort was allowed ) . First meditation session was starting and we were given our instructions. Some voice of a old brown dude plays " observe your breath with a caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalm and quieeeeeeeeeeeeet mind, keep your attention on your respiration and if your mind wanders gently bring it back " . We were to sit down in the meditation hall and keep our mind focused on our breathing for an hour...Okay? Sounds easy, I'll give it a try. I start and I really started to understand why we were doing this . I couldn't keep my mind focused on my own breathing for more than 10 seconds. My mind would break off into tangents of thought completely removed from the current reality I was in. Understandable , my eyes were closed, its completely silent and I'm supposed to direct my entire attention onto my own natural breathing pattern. My thoughts would go off in erractic directions . "whats for dinner?" " did i forget anything?" " how many emails do I ened to reply to when I get back" "my back is sore" this sucks" "Can I open my eyes?" OH, I lost focus... That's one thought chain but you get the point. Rinse and repeat this for another 11 hours in various periods throughout the day. Holy fuck. At the end of it all my legs feel like imploding , I'm bored as hell , frustrated I cant even do this simple ass task , and to top it off its just day 1 . As I'm laying in bed i reflect on what the hell just happened. An idea came into my head that just stuck. Im sitting here watching my body breath on its own and my mind wander like a dog in a squirrel park.
WHAT IS WATCHING THESE TWO?
I came to the conclusion that there's in fact a "soul" or silent awareness or whatever you want to call it. All that hippy shit about mind body and spirit finally made sense to me. I get it. Not through what someone else told me , what through what I read in a book. But through my own direct experience. At this point I started to get why there was a vow of noble silence, "Experience this for yourself and just you". No one talks to you , no one looks at you, no one interacts with you . Nothing. Just you and a meditation mat . Simple.
Time became irrelevant
After day 2 the days just all blended together into a mush and I stopped cared about the time or the day and just became present with what was going on. You sit for what feels like hours and you look at the clock and only 10 minutes have passed. Time seems so be so much more full if you just pay attention to the present moment. As soon as you get side tracked by yout thoughts and recollect yourself back to the moment time seems to just whiz by. It's almost as if my brain uses frequency of thought to dictate time. By day 6 or so I was able to focus so well on my breath that each inhale felt like an indescribable amount of time. Such a weird feeling.
Vipassana Meditation
What an insanely simple tool yet incredibly powerful. over the course of 10 days I learned the original meditation technique originally taught by Siddartha Gotama A.K.A "The Buddha". I've always been curious about meditation and it's purpose before going to the course. Theres just so much noise around meditation that I didn't know what it was anymore other than something to do with sitting down. I'll break down the techniue into what i cirrently know.
Fundamentals
Breathing , Awareness , & Sensation
These 3 pillars are the absolute core of Vipassana meditation called Anapanasati (Crazy Pali words I know). The stronger the pillars , the stronger the house being built upon it so to speak. We spent the first 3 days building the foundation in order to ground ourselves during the Vipassana meditation.
First Stage
As I said earlier the first stage is just an awareness of the breath. Being competent in this stage is crucial to being able to successfully meditate in the later stages. As easy it sounds it is incredibly difficult to do due to the condition our mind has taken in modern society with all the distractions and stimulants around us daily. So it took a while to reprogram the mind to actually focus on something.
Second Stage
Natural breathing , aka going with the flow . We spent this stage letting the body naturally breath to its own cycle and not forcing it to breath deeper, slower, faster , anything. Letting our body do what it does best essentially instead of trying to control it to our wishes. After all it's been doing it since we were born and we're not even aware of it 90% of the time.
Third Stage
The final corner stone of Anapansati is the sensation of the breath. We spent this stage coupled with the mental focus and natural breathing. We observed the feeling of the breath leaving and entering our nose. Whether it was hot or cold, what nostril it was going in, the temperature change felt on the skin. Sounds really stupid but trust me it has a purpose. We narrowed down the area of focus down to a tiny dot below the nose and we were ready to start the next stage.
All 3 stages were to narrow the sharpness of the mind, focus the mind , and be aware of the mind. IE mental bootcamp.
The real fun starts
Now that we were coupled with the fundamentals we could start Vipassana Meditation. We shifted our awareness of the sensations of the breathing on our nose to the rest of the body. We began to feel these "sensations" ( I use that term VERY loosly) all over the body. I started with the head going down to the toes and back up. Slowly but surely we began to be aware of the entire body and the "sensations" . Some areas had spots that were cloudy and some very active.
Mental complexities manifested as "sensations" on the body
Now here's the crazy part that I found to be awesome. The teacher told us that we had progressed down to a very deep part of the subconscious mind. we did this by using the breath which is the bridge to the subconscious. Our conscious mind would use that bridge to access the parts and begin our work. Very tense sensations on various parts of the body were identified and we were shown how to deal with them. We were to not react to the sensations with thoughts of aversion or craving. Any thoughts of that nature would multiply the sensations and make it bigger . It required a completley detached observation of the sensation AKA zen lense, in order for the sensation to dissapear. There were different sensations that required a different mindset to deal with. For example pleasant sensations were not to be craved or else they would multiply , same with the unpleasant ones. Doing so would cause more harm then good dealing with a mental level of this depth. The rest of this time we would spend slowly unclogging our bodies ( on a purley surface level) of these sensations. This continued for the rest of course slowly with our bodies being cleansed. This was a HUGE test of my mental strength as I had to remain in a balanced mental state regardless of what happened. If I made huge progress I had to be detached with it or else they would multiply and I'd regress back. If I made no progress I had to okay with it or else I'd regress back. If I made negative progress I ahd to be okay with it or else I had to regress back.
All in all theres so much mroe to dive into but that's the general gist of the retreat.
Rest in peace S.N Goenkaji
Stay Humble, Stay Blessed