Whew. So that may have been one of the most intense 36 hour periods of my life. Obviously, I’m here, writing to you, on the evening of the second day of what was supposed to be a 10 day silent meditation retreat. So I suppose on the one hand, I have to come to terms with the fact that it was a failure. I walked out on the second evening, and we’ll talk about why in a second. In another sense, it wasn’t a failure at all, but explaining that will take a little work too. Suffice it to say that I learned a few things about myself, and maybe I learned a bit too much, too quickly.
One thing to get out of the way - I have nothing against Vipassana, or specifically the Northern California Vipassana Center. Just because I left doesn’t mean that I think it’s a bad practice, and I don’t want anything I’m about to say to make anyone think I feel that way.
Why did I leave? Well, I’d like to blame a piece of it on the weather. The weather was awful; cold, and raining hard constantly. By the second day everything I owned was drenched. I’d blame a piece of it on the center itself; for one, the sessions were all video recorded, not live, and the man doing the speaking had a particular Dracula-esque drone/intonation that I found grating. But these are all smoke screens. What it boils down to is that I essentially lost my shit and was freaking out - lonely, wet and crying in the woods like a child (there were some woods behind the center where we were allowed to walk). I broke like a twig.
To understand that, you have to understand a bit more about Vipassana, and about Love. Love is the key. Love always was the key, love still is the key. For those who don’t know, Vipassana is a style of breathing meditation based on some very ancient Vedic texts. Again, I have nothing against it, but it has been described as “cold”. It advocates following the breath to reach a certain state of emptiness, of equanimity. What others smarter than myself have suggested, though, is that when you reach this balance, this emptiness, it is cold - the void. Other disciplines - such as Tantra - add on a second truth, which is variously described as compassion, or love, to “warm up” this void. But Vipassana - basic Vipassana - doesn’t talk much, if at all, about love, or compassion.
On the morning of the second day, I basically started to freak out. I had visions of my father being dead and nobody being able to reach me. I felt like the people sitting around me were zombies. I felt trapped. (It didn’t help that the center made a really huge deal about people leaving; they kept pounding it in, even closing a gate behind you and asking to check your cell phone). Its easy, but a bit too simple, to blame this on the intensity of having to meditate, or stay silent. Yes, those are scary. The thing is, though, I’ve done a good bit of meditation, including a full daylong retreat, and I never felt that way at all. I *like* meditation; that’s why I signed up. When I left the daylong I felt rejuvenated. So what was the difference this time? Simply put, I realized that I just didn’t feel loved. Even worse, I felt completely detached from love, from everything I loved. Everyone there was, in fact, actively engaged in trying not to care about me, or anybody else for that matter. (The last time I went to a daylong it was a slightly different style, taught by monks who were physically present. And we were allowed to talk to each other as students, when we weren’t meditating).
And I realized something about me: love, and passion, are a key part of who I am. And they’re also what I’ve spent the last 6 years largely without. The whole root of the problem with my life is a lack of love and passion, and my resulting anxiety about that, which causes not only free-floating anxiety, but specifically anxiety about attachment. So to suddenly find myself out in the woods in the dark, with people I don’t know and aren’t allowed to even make eye contact with, while the Deluge of Ages pours down around me, and then to be told that if I leave it’s a sign of a weak mind and a failure - well, I basically freaked.
Again, this is not about Vipassana, or about the NCVC - this is about me, and what I learned about myself, which is this:
1) Passion is the key to my happiness. I’m a passionate person, and I have to follow my passion.
2) My passion is changeable. It moves. That’s just the way it is, and that’s just something I’m going to have to be OK with.
3) I am sensitive. I’m vulnerable, and easy to hurt, because I’m so attuned to what people think of me, and yet often very confused about their reactions as well.
4) Because I am passionate and changeable and sensitive, I often scare people. Like a car careening out of control, people don’t want to get close. Understanding this and managing it in my personal relationships will help, but to some extent I think I just have to accept that’s part of who I am. Some people just won’t like me or will even be afraid of me. At least now I understand why, and can accept that.
5) Because of this, I have to grow a thicker skin about other people’s reaction to me. As long as I am kind, and act out of love, if people still don’t understand, that just has to be OK. Their reaction is an outgrowth of my choice.
6) This passion can’t be confused with reactivity. It is changeable, yes, but it’s part of a longer plan, not a to-the-minute thing. I have to get better about instant gratification and listen for my true passion(s).
I feel as though I’ve made a lot of progress in dealing with my own anxieties in the last year or so. It was scary and awful to suddenly be confronted with the literal, and figurative, dark woods at the center of my soul, and to have all those anxieties flood back up all at once, especially when I felt like my surroundings were bereft of love. It was too much to take and threatening to unseat me. It also wasn’t going to be a good space for me to learn any kind of meditation technique. So that’s why I left.
On the way out, I turned to the woods, tiny flashlight pointed in, and tears streaming down my face, I said “I love you, woods - but I am not a monk.”
I need to be loved, I deserve to be loved. I *am* loved, to some extent, and my life will be more full of love in the future, if I have anything to say about it. I need to find love. As an adult, that can be tricky. But I think a good place to start is to be around people/creatures who love. Pets and children obviously come to mind. So does volunteering, and senior citizens. Maybe even (gasp) Unitarian Church. Perhaps a combination - volunteering with animals, or kids, or with a church. Whatever it is, I need to find love, and friendship, and community - and then, of course, hopefully romantic love as well. Like the Beatles said, Love is all I need.
So I’m back out of the woods. I’m glad I went; it’s been hard to feel passionate lately, and at least it uncovered some of that passion. It also was a bit of a mistake, but yet a really important learning experience that will guide my future. And as much as I feel sheepish, and like a coward or a failure, I think it took a lot of guts to look all those people in the eye and say “No, this isn’t right for me.”
In the immediate term, my plan is to have a 9-day “staycation”. I’m going to do my own meditation retreat in my house, with a similar set of rules: up by 7, bed by 11, meditate an hour a day. One big difference: at least one, if not two, hours of exercise. Healthy food, cooked by me. No caffeine, no alcohol. No porn or masturbation. And no programming. Focus on people - write to people I care about and tell them so. Spend some time finding new people to start relationships with. Find some love.
