Can you talk more about your experience? How are the last 3 days "heaven"? What was the "profound impact" on your life?
""" the basics: for 10 days, i joined roughly 50 other people in onalaska, wa (a little town in the middle south of olympia) and we learned anapanna and vipassana meditations (as intepreted by s. n. goenka). we weren't allowed to talk to one another. in the evenings, we could ask questions of the teacher, but at the end of it all i probably said about 30 sentences
here's the schedule that we followed scrupulously every day:
4am - wake up bell 4:30 - 6:30 - meditate in the hall or the sleep quarters 6:30 - 8 - breakfast and rest 8 - 9 - meditate in the hall (strong determination starting on day 4 (more on this below)) 9 - 11 - meditate in the hall or the sleep quarters 11 - 1pm - lunch and rest 1 - 2:30 - meditate in the hall or the sleep quarters 2:30 - 3:30 - mediate in the hall (strong determination starting on day 4) 3:30 - 5 - meditate in the hall or the sleep quarters 5 - 6 - tea/fruit break 6 - 7 - meditate in the hall (strong determination starting on day 4) 7 - 8:15 - video discourse 8:15 - 9 - meditate in the hall 9 - 9:30 - ask teacher questions if desired 10 - lights out
in general we were instructed to sit however was comfortable and change position as sparingly as possible. "strong determination" sits beginning on day 4 meant that we were to not move the entire hour. of course, as the pain got really bad, we were free to do so. i'll get back to the madness of this later.
day 1 we were instructed to focus on our breath. we were to keep only our breath in our minds. no counting, no visualization, no mantras. not deep breath or shallow breath. just breathe naturally and observe. as the mind wanders away, we we were told, notice it without anger or frustrating and resume observation of the breath. my mind wandered away after observing my breath for about 10 seconds max. it got a little better throughout my stay there, but not much.
day 2 we were given the same instructions as day 1, but were told to also start paying attention to the area of skin right below the nostrils. we were to note wherever the breath brushed past that area and focus on the smallest point of skin that we could.
day 3 we were told to look for sensations on the same moustache-zone. at this point, i began to feel an odd tingling sensation very lightly and ocassionally.
day 4 we were instructed in vipassana meditation. it basically consists of observing every part on the surface of the body, in a fixed order, piece by piece. we were told to observe any sensations as we go through the body and not react with craving or aversion. just observe the sensation and pass to the next part of the body.
day 5 - 10 was the continuation of this with additional elaborations on the nature of passing attention through the body. these were also the days when the weird shit started happening. i think sometime during day 5 i discovered that my entire body actually experiences a low-grade tingling 24/7, but i just never had the awareness to feel it. the ability to discern it comes and goes, but, just today during my evening meditation, i felt it on nearly every part of my body. (addendum from a month later: the tingling is gone, but still does show up from time to time during particularly good sits.) it's neither pleasant nor unpleasant and has its own internal logic. every person there felt it, as i discovered after i spoke to them on day 10.
during one of the strong determination sits, at about minute 45, the pain in my back became really bad. my mind started screaming for me to move, but i had built up enough experience at this point to have a little delay in response. i started examining the pain, really understanding it. i noticed that the pain itself, the sensation, was not so bad. what was horrible, was the nagging child inside me, the one that felt entitled to feel good all the time. the child pulled on my entire body, trying to force it to move. i ignored it and ignored it and really analyzed the pain. and... it all went away in a single instant. just dropped from my body. i don't know what happened, but i suspect i somehow managed to undo all sorts of knots of tension. i felt perfectly at ease and sat out the rest of the hour plus another 10 minutes. afterwards, i felt a tremendous elation. """
On one end of the spectrum, I am baffled by the drama surrounding the "weird shit" happening to your body. I had the same stuff happening during my meditation but I didn't find it to be all that notable. Yes, after several days you begin to isolate tiny little sensations (like weak electric current) all over your body. It's really just that and nothing more though. I guess I question the value of that particular experience - is it really such a huge revelation that practicing a small task over and over makes you better at it, sometimes enabling you to do things you didn't think were possible?
On the opposite end of the spectrum, I feel like people don't give enough credit to the experience of forcing yourself to keep a position in spite of searing pain. I am preparing to give birth soon and one of the exercises for pain management is to practice relaxed breathing while squeezing ice cubes in your hands. It's painful but also incredibly empowering to learn that pain can be overcome, and unlike meditating for days to achieve a few weird sensations, it's a practical skill. You don't have to commit yourself to a 10-day retreat or practice a particular form of meditation to achieve that though, there is a variety of ways to do it, none of them particularly mystical.
I had severe back pain, have lower back issues, and it took days to get them to allow me to meditate sitting against the wall. When my concentration would break every few minutes, I would gasp in pain, my lower back muscles cramping and spasming the whole time, because it was overwhelming. I thought, and I still think, that requiring me to go through that was ridiculous, and it was only when I told the lead teacher I was leaving if he didn't allow it that he permitted me to sit against the wall. It still hurt like hell, and that was fine, but I could hold myself physically upright at least.
I don't think the courses in the US are so uptight, though.
Everyone should have to sit, and everyone will hurt when they don't move, but if your back muscles don't freaking work, you should be able to sit against the wall. Which they did let me, eventually.
It is difficult to try and relate in words - it really is the kind of thing you just need to experience. Rather like trying to explain the taste of vanilla ice cream. My experience was something like this:
discomfort, billions of thoughts, wait, do i always have this many thoughts, oh yeah, i need to be watching my breath, etc, etc, etc, days pass along the same lines, intense light/energy, no thought, pure experience of what seems like our original state, back to thinking - OMG, can i stay here forever? reluctant return to daily life
That is a very poor substitute for what actually happened - it bears almost no semblance whatsoever to the experience.
My pleasure!
What would you say is the lasting profound effect on your day to day life?
The lasting impact has been a sense of connectedness and perfection behind our apparent reality. Yes, I know this sounds trite and the same sentiment can be found in countless books on near death experience, spiritual life, etc, etc, but that is the best way to put it.
No, seriously, before I spend ten days on anything I'd like to have some idea what the point is, even if the communication isn't perfect.
"You spend so much time trying to think that it's like clenching your fist all the time, and you've been doing it so long that your wrist is shaking and your knuckles are white and your arm is cramped and you don't even notice. You need to just stop, shake it out, and let it relax."
I don't know whether doing a big blowout extreme retreat thing is worth it or not (I'm a bit wary of them being cult-ish), but meditating now and then really helps. It's a small and mundane-sounding thing, like flossing or getting enough sleep, but it adds up.
To me, it's worth doing for the experience. You perceive the world and your own perceptions differently when you've been meditating all day for a week or more. According to the instructors, this is playing a sensation game and isn't valuable, so I'll probably be reincarnated as an syphilis spirochete or something like that.