Day Six

Today would have been Day 6 of the Vipassana 10-day silent meditation course. I attended my first Vipassana two years ago, and by Day 6 I was just catching my stride. By Day 6, I was observing sensations with equanimity and not getting as swept up in craving and aversion. By Day 6, I was beginning to dissolve stored emotions, wounds, and traumas, some that I'd taken on in childhood, some I'd inherited through my ancestral lineage, and some I'd carried with me for many lifetimes. By Day 6, I'd learned to sit in Great Determination - a fancy way of reminding us to stop fidgeting, stop trying to get out of the moment of pain and discomfort. Most sessions had me sitting with intense physical pain, as a battle played out between my body - who wanted to slump forward and give up and scream out in pain, and my mind - who held many roles as Observer, Complainer, Martyr, Steadfast Meditator, Rule Follower, both weak and strong and every shade in between. There was an ongoing battle of trying to save me from this excruciating pain.

By Day 6, the mental chatter was abating. I sat with my pain and discomfort, fires erupting across my skin, my body becoming a heavy weight crushing my sitbones into the floor.

Then...I stopped fighting it. I convinced myself that I would just watch myself spontaneous combust, or be crushed by the weight of molten lava dragging my body down into the depths of the earth.

When I allowed myself to feel the intensity of the physical sensations, they trickled away. My body calmed, my mind calmed. My mind calmed, my body calmed. My mind would find its way to another trigger, memory, emotion...and the corresponding sensation in the body would take on a shape, temperature, intensity.

I stopped fighting it.

I observed.

I allowed.

I can breathe again.