From Hell to Heaven in Only Eleven

I registered for a 10 day Vipassana Meditation retreat, which was actually 11 days long. You see when traveling on a spiritual pilgrimage in India, you don’t really have to plan anything. The places you need to go show up somehow. Since day one of my arrival to India the people I met told me I had to go to this 10 day Vipassana retreat. I literally heard about this in every city that I visited. So I decided to register. I researched it some and knew it would be strict because just to apply you have to agree to follow the stern rules of the program and their five precepts which are: 1. No sexual misconduct. 2. No killing of any living creature. 3. No lying-complete honesty. 4. No stealing. 5. No taking of intoxicants. Some of the rules where no speaking the entire time, no outside communication, and complete segregation of the sexes. So I leave Puttaparthi, to head to the outskirts of Bangalore now called Bengaluru, by taxi since I met 2 people that I could share the taxi with, then the last leg was by auto rickshaw. I arrive bags in tote and complete the student form. I meet some wonderful ladies and we talk it up before the time for silence arrives. There were more Indians than Westerners so we got to have some great educational conversations. The Indian women wanted to know why the women in the USA are so unstable. They viewed us as unstable and without security because we would have so many non lasting relationships with high divorce rates. In India the couples make the relationship work, they don’t give up on the spouse so easily. Everything that is worth having you must work hard for. We have the grace of God, but it doesn’t mean we don’t have to put effort into what we want. Why leave one set of problems for another set of problems. The grass is always greener on the other side. I got to learn the 5 symbols that married woman have. They have the red mark on the top of their forehead near the scalp, toe rings on both of the second toes, nose ring, a necklace and wearing the hair in one braid. If you were your hair out it means you are loose and 2 braids mean you are young and single. Now the talking ends and the hell begin. I walk into the dormitory and find my cubicle where my bed lies. I smell a bad smell. I think to myself “Damn someone really stinks, that fart is ferocious. As I go from the dormitory to the meditation halls I keep smelling the women and am like damn. On day two I realize I smell too! Now I need to know what smells. Is it my body, my feet, oh my breath. Now I know what smells but why is it smelling and how do I get to the root cause of it. This is what Vipassana does it gets to the root cause of our old patterns. It doesn’t just deal with the surface level. It is not putting in a chewing gum and calling it a day. The whole process was like going to a dentist for a root canal but not being able to have anesthesia to numb your mouth area. Can you imagine the drilling, the poking, the prodding, and then the extraction without anything to relieve the pain? Well, with Vipassana you learn to accept the pain with a calm mind and the understanding that the pain won’t last. Impermanence and awareness of your bodily sensations are the focus of this meditation. Don’t come here thinking it is a vacation and you will get to relax because it is a meditation. I am here to tell you that it’s not, but you get so much more. They work on getting rid of your old habit patterns and old faulty way of thinking. All this is done by the awareness of the breath and any body sensations that you may experience. We wake up at 4 am and begin meditating at 4:30am until 9 pm. We meditate for 2 hours then eat breakfast, after breakfast we meditate for 3 hours with a break then after lunch meditate for 4 hours with 2 breaks. Then we have a discourse and another 1 ½ hour meditation in the evening. The goal is to sit without moving. Even though you begin to have back pain, knee pain, and pain in other parts of the body for sitting for so long, we have to focus on the breath, remain equanimous with the bad and good pain. We can’t seek cravings or aversion. You sit through the pain while screaming inside all kinds of curse words. On day 2, I could remember saying make it stop, and wanting to cry in my head. Day 2 was the most difficult for me. I felt tremendous pain during the meditations. I noticed that on our breaks the physical pain would go away. The pain was only while sitting but would leave almost instantaneously to stretching. In my mind I knew relief would come, but I couldn’t want for the relief either because that is a craving. By day 3, the back pain I experienced was gone. For some reason it was a breeze for me. Day 4 was hell again. Each day we had to do a different meditational exercise while sitting for the extended period. That was helpful because it kept me from getting bored, but the exercises became increasingly difficult. The exercises were aimed at sharpening the mind. There were several things happening at once. At one point I felt a sensory overload because I got bit by a mosquito and it began to sting really bad and it was at the time that my knees were in tremendous pain and my back was hurting so I said F*** it and moved. I was somewhat disappointed but still proud of the fact that I sat for the other periods without moving. I remember thinking on day 6 that I could join the marines now. The mind training that they do on the marines must be similar. This is geared at strengthening you so that you don’t crack under pressure. You are trained to observe yourself, observe your reactions and observe your body under pain, pleasure, whatever and not react. It is like you are watching a movie, just the observer, taking yourself out of the picture and not reacting. I was still feeling the pain by day 10 and I guess that was the point to still experience the pain but to be able to be an observer. I have to say that going to the Mooji Satsangs in Thiruvannamalai truly helped prepare me for this. Mooji would tell us to meditate on “I am” and just observe what we are feeling or experiencing. He really emphasized awareness and observance and would ask “Can the observer be observed?” Day 11 (their day 10 because they start with day 0 which is why they call it a 10 day retreat instead of 11) we were able to break the silence and can you imagine how much chattering was going on? It was such a relief to speak to someone and not have such long meditation periods. Also, on the last day we learned a meditation for sending love, compassion, and our good merit to others. This was beautiful. Thus, going from Hell to Heaven in only 11 days. The true test will be when I go home and someone does something that would normally piss me off. Will I be able to observe myself and not react or will I react? I also experienced that Hell is within and Heaven is within. We create our misery because we don’t except change. When we say we love someone it is not always a pure unconditional love. It is wanting to control the person, to be possessive of them and we have expectations of them. We do or give expecting them to give or do back. If we truly love someone we would do for them without any expectations in return, we would not try to possess them. That is what unconditional love is about. We have to remove our blinders. You see the person you want to see, not the person for who they really are, and then you try to change them to who you want them to be. Can you truly love someone for who they are the good, the bad, and the ugly? To see pics of retreat go to: http://picasaweb.google.com/rmadolphe92/VipassanaRetreat#