Some time back I attended a Vipassana. A vipassana is a 10 day silent meditation retreat where you are practicing meditation with a concentration on the body sensations and the insight this provides. To do this, you are to be fully silent and not have any contact with other people (Full silence, no eye contact, gesturing, or touch). You are also not to have any other distractions or new content interfering with the process — meaning you will not have access to your phone, notebooks, or books. Leaving you fully alone with your body and mind.
According to a study made by the social psychologist Timothy Wilson and his colleagues at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, this seems to be a lot of people’s worst nightmare. In this study, participants were to stay in a room alone with their thoughts for 15 min, but they were given the possibility to give themselves an electric shock during the time if they wished to. Of course, before the experiment, all participants argued that they would pay to avoid being shocked. Despite this, an astonishing 67% of the male participants and 25% of the female participants decided to give themselves a shock when staying alone with their thoughts in the room. Meaning people rather have an electric shock than staying alone with their thoughts. This test was for 15 minutes, a vipassana is for 10 days and the schedule is strict — you are woken up at 4 am and meditate on and off all day until 9 pm. With breakfast and lunch offered, but no dinner to be had. Fully pushing you to go from a Doing state of mind to a Being state.
Now you might think, just like I did over the first few days of vipassana, why would ANYONE put themselves through this? This is TORTURE! And yes — it is, at least for the first few days! But it is a profound torture that opens up a fully new awareness of your mind. The experience is of course different for everyone and I can only speak for my own experience. But regardless, the practice has been around for over 2500 year and has been shaped by generations with the purpose of “total eradication of mental impurities and the resultant highest happiness of full liberation". This might sound very extreme, but the core of the practice is to accept and experience the fact that your thoughts are either focusing on the future or the past, and your mind labels your thoughts as good or bad. Your good thoughts create a craving for the good, while bad thoughts create an aversion of the bad. These cravings and aversions leave you in a state of misery, as you are not staying in the present moment, but always wanting something else than what is here now- craving pleasure, or averting from pain.
“The Happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts.” Marcus Aurelius
In Vipassana, you use your physical sensations when sitting in meditation to work on not creating these cravings and aversions. Any pleasant tingling or painful pulsing feeling is challenged to just be seen as a sensation. Not good or bad- just different sensations that are experienced here and now. This can then be related to anything in life. By doing this you realize and fully experience that everything constantly changes, painful feelings disappear, and so do pleasant feelings. So there is no reason trying to hold on to a feeling, as the only thing that is constant is change — change is inevitable! This does not mean that you are not to enjoy the pleasant feelings of life. It means that you should enjoy them more, for what it is NOW!
So what are my key takeaways?
In life pleasure and pain is inevitable, but how we deal with these sensations determines how we experience our life. Everything will pass, everything will change and there is nothing you can do about that. The only option you have is to fully live now in this present, with the good and the bad. Misery is amplified as soon as this reality is not accepted, and you crave or avert for something else. The vipassana is a great way to create new neurological pathways for practicing this new way of relating to your cravings and aversions. Being ok with the fact that some days are easy and some days are hard. There is no static life balance, our minds and bodies constantly change and we need to work with what we have been given to us on this day. Nothing is ever perfect, it just is — and that is the beauty of life!
