Mention a ten day vipassana meditation course to someone who has experienced it and you will invariably get a warning about the hell that is day four. Day four is when this little experiment you've undertaken to straighten out your inner muck gets serious. Day four is put up or shut up time. Days one through three when you've been struggling to find a comfortable floor-sitting position and attempting to keep your wandering mind at bay have all been practice, just a warmup for the real challenge that is to come. The challenge of day four is deceptively simple. It is at this point that you are merely asked not to move during your meditation, not to change position. This is during a session of about an hour and forty minutes, no small amount of time to hold an uncomfortable and often painful position on the floor.
My experience of days one through three was pretty average, I think. I spent my time attempting not to list books I'd rather be reading or think about naps I'd rather be taking and instead I focused on my breath as it moved in and out of my nose. I tried thousands of sitting positions and cushions and blankets over those days, trying to find a combination that wouldn't eventually make me want to run screaming from the hall. By day four I was sitting on a stack of folded blankets slightly inclined forward so it would be easier to hold my back straight. In this position I felt pain in my back, my hips, and my knees at various points, but it was by far the best one I had found so far. I still had to change position about five times in the course of an hour, most of those changes involving me sliding my knees together and twisting to one side and then the other, trying to stretch out and soothe my tired back muscles.
So when the afternoon of day four came and we were told not to move, I felt a surge of panic. Logically, I thought, what could they really do to me if I have to move? Emotionally I just wanted to do it right, I just wanted to follow the rules and not get called out for being weak. I tried so hard to just sit still but there came a point where I couldn't take the pain anymore and the allure of changing position became too strong, so I did it. Once I had moved, the spell was broken and it was so much easier to just do it again and again as needed until the session was over. I knew I wasn't doing what was expected, that I was somehow cheating, but I rationalized that maybe my body was just more sensitive than everyone else's and that the pain I was feeling was somehow more intense. If the teachers only knew how much it hurt I was sure they would never expect me to sit still for an hour or more.
That night, as we had every night, we had a discourse, or a video lecture from the gentleman who was teaching the technique. He talked for a bit about sitting still and not moving and about how painful and challenging it could be for even the most flexible students. I felt my veil of excuses start slipping away as I realized that I had given up too easily, that I hadn't really tried to observe my pain and not react to it, as we were being asked to do. I had most definitely reacted and, as I said, once I did it was easy to do it again and again, even when I wasn't so much in pain anymore, just restless or ready to be done. Using change to escape discomfort was a totally ingrained pattern for me.
The next day I approached the group sitting determined not to move. When the pain came, I did my best to simply observe it and note its intensity and not just react by freaking out or changing position. I was successful for about 45 minutes and then I simply had to move. I moved a few more times in the last fifteen minutes, but overall it was less than I had ever moved before. It was at this point that a chair became available which removed almost all of the pain of sitting I was experiencing, so the fact that I was able to sit during the remaining sessions without generally moving a muscle isn't quite as impressive if I had managed to do it on the blankets, but I still like to think that if I had kept trying on the floor I would have eventually gotten to the point where I could stop moving for an entire hour.
Anyway, this is the long way of explaining the things I'm realizing about myself right now. The moment I came home from my trip and went back to work I started noticing, really noticing the stress I feel at my job and really feeling the pressure of deciding what I'm actually going to do with my life once I finish my degree. Familiar thoughts started tugging at my mind, inciting me to start looking for a different job or go ahead and do Americorps or change schools or majors or quit school altogether and form a different plan.
Can you see the parallel? The moment things got uncomfortable, all I wanted to do was change, change, change. The idea of moving in a new direction had my mind in an iron grip, much like the allure of sliding my knees to the side and stretching out my back muscles did when I was sitting in the meditation hall. But now that I've made that connection I've started thinking about how little this escaping through change has really served my life. For one thing, if I ever ever want to finish my degree I'm going to have to actually commit to a course of action. I'm going to have to stay in one place and continue until it's done. I can't keep changing. If I'm ever going to write anything I'm proud of, I'm going to have to have the stomach to actually read it when it's done and edit the parts that don't work instead of shoving it in a drawer somewhere and starting something new. If I'm going to ever be happy at my job I'm going to have to stop doing it with one foot out the door, always maintaining the background thought of "this isn't what I really want to be doing with my life".
Change can be a wonderful thing and can move life in directions one never suspected, but I think for me right now is put up or shut up time. Right now it's time to commit to a path and continue on it even through the uncomfortable parts, even through the pain. It's time to try, anyway.
xo,
C
My experience of days one through three was pretty average, I think. I spent my time attempting not to list books I'd rather be reading or think about naps I'd rather be taking and instead I focused on my breath as it moved in and out of my nose. I tried thousands of sitting positions and cushions and blankets over those days, trying to find a combination that wouldn't eventually make me want to run screaming from the hall. By day four I was sitting on a stack of folded blankets slightly inclined forward so it would be easier to hold my back straight. In this position I felt pain in my back, my hips, and my knees at various points, but it was by far the best one I had found so far. I still had to change position about five times in the course of an hour, most of those changes involving me sliding my knees together and twisting to one side and then the other, trying to stretch out and soothe my tired back muscles.
So when the afternoon of day four came and we were told not to move, I felt a surge of panic. Logically, I thought, what could they really do to me if I have to move? Emotionally I just wanted to do it right, I just wanted to follow the rules and not get called out for being weak. I tried so hard to just sit still but there came a point where I couldn't take the pain anymore and the allure of changing position became too strong, so I did it. Once I had moved, the spell was broken and it was so much easier to just do it again and again as needed until the session was over. I knew I wasn't doing what was expected, that I was somehow cheating, but I rationalized that maybe my body was just more sensitive than everyone else's and that the pain I was feeling was somehow more intense. If the teachers only knew how much it hurt I was sure they would never expect me to sit still for an hour or more.
That night, as we had every night, we had a discourse, or a video lecture from the gentleman who was teaching the technique. He talked for a bit about sitting still and not moving and about how painful and challenging it could be for even the most flexible students. I felt my veil of excuses start slipping away as I realized that I had given up too easily, that I hadn't really tried to observe my pain and not react to it, as we were being asked to do. I had most definitely reacted and, as I said, once I did it was easy to do it again and again, even when I wasn't so much in pain anymore, just restless or ready to be done. Using change to escape discomfort was a totally ingrained pattern for me.
The next day I approached the group sitting determined not to move. When the pain came, I did my best to simply observe it and note its intensity and not just react by freaking out or changing position. I was successful for about 45 minutes and then I simply had to move. I moved a few more times in the last fifteen minutes, but overall it was less than I had ever moved before. It was at this point that a chair became available which removed almost all of the pain of sitting I was experiencing, so the fact that I was able to sit during the remaining sessions without generally moving a muscle isn't quite as impressive if I had managed to do it on the blankets, but I still like to think that if I had kept trying on the floor I would have eventually gotten to the point where I could stop moving for an entire hour.
Anyway, this is the long way of explaining the things I'm realizing about myself right now. The moment I came home from my trip and went back to work I started noticing, really noticing the stress I feel at my job and really feeling the pressure of deciding what I'm actually going to do with my life once I finish my degree. Familiar thoughts started tugging at my mind, inciting me to start looking for a different job or go ahead and do Americorps or change schools or majors or quit school altogether and form a different plan.
Can you see the parallel? The moment things got uncomfortable, all I wanted to do was change, change, change. The idea of moving in a new direction had my mind in an iron grip, much like the allure of sliding my knees to the side and stretching out my back muscles did when I was sitting in the meditation hall. But now that I've made that connection I've started thinking about how little this escaping through change has really served my life. For one thing, if I ever ever want to finish my degree I'm going to have to actually commit to a course of action. I'm going to have to stay in one place and continue until it's done. I can't keep changing. If I'm ever going to write anything I'm proud of, I'm going to have to have the stomach to actually read it when it's done and edit the parts that don't work instead of shoving it in a drawer somewhere and starting something new. If I'm going to ever be happy at my job I'm going to have to stop doing it with one foot out the door, always maintaining the background thought of "this isn't what I really want to be doing with my life".
Change can be a wonderful thing and can move life in directions one never suspected, but I think for me right now is put up or shut up time. Right now it's time to commit to a path and continue on it even through the uncomfortable parts, even through the pain. It's time to try, anyway.
xo,
C