I meditated 100 hours for 10 days as if my life depended on it (And here's what happened)
It was not my first round of 10 days in silent meditation, it was actually the third. So I was ready even though I knew it was going to be a tough one.
Truth is, I was desperate.
I hadn’t recognised myself for a very long time.
It was part burnout, but part… I don’t know, a big, grey cloud - a fog, constantly surrounding me.
I felt as if this fog was between me and life.
I specifically felt it when hanging out with friends and family,
That I wasn’t myself.
That I couldn’t fully feel the joy or benefits of doing the things I would normally love.
I had tried everything I knew, but all new things plus all the old tools that I collected from 8 years of inner work – didn’t work. I experienced it as if that big, grey cloud was in the way.
So 8 years after doing my first Vipassana,
I found myself being back almost as desperate as the first one.
I did the first one in Ubud, Bali, without any previous experience of meditation. It was shortly after my mom had passed, and when I walked in – I was in a phase of my grieving where I didn’t want to live anymore – and when I walked out, I wanted to live! It was a life changing experience for me, and still to this day, I think it saved me.
Could Vipassana be the thing, that saved me again?
I took the train from Stockholm to Ödeshög, in Sweden, arriving at the meditation center on the countryside, nestled next to a small little forrest of birch trees. Very typical Swedish buildings, red with white corners.
I was ready to dive straight in. The exhaustion was also making me long to close my eyes and sit in stillness.
So I’ll take you straight to the experience too.
Goenka says that Vipassana is The art of living and The art of dying. Through this meditation you learn and know it in your body - that everything is constantly changing, arising and passing away, and that this is true to everything in the Universe. This is the law of nature.
You enter noble silence in the evening of arrival - day 0, and then you commit to a special code of discipline. You are not allowed to bring in a phone or music, books or journals. Only yourself and clothes.
The gong wakes you up at 4 in the morning and you meditate from 4.30am to 9pm in the evening. There’s a few breaks during the day, but the meditation schedule is very intense. The longest period you sit is 4 hours (with 5 min breaks every 90 min or so)
You eat breakfast and lunch and as an old student you fast until the next morning again, no dinner.
Day 1 to 3 – you focus solely on the breath going in and out of the nose, and as time progress you start feeling the touch of the breath over your upper lip, and you focus on that sensation. The intention of this is for your mind to become so sharp and focused that you are able to do vipassana starting day 4.
You focus on the breath as it is – you don’t change it or use any breathing techniques.
Day 1 to 3 was the hardest part, but honestly – it also didn’t get much easier.
But damn, day 1 to 3. I was in a 9 of 10 of suffering. A 9 of 10 in anxiety.
I had a 9 out of 10 pain in my heart/left chest that I felt was going to kill me it was so intense.
(I am saying a 9 because I know that in my first round, it was 10 or 11 out of 10 in emotional suffering. I remember people complaining about physical pains from the long sittings, but my pain was only mental and emotional, I didn’t even feel my body.)
It was dark. My thoughts and my mind went all the way into the depth of the darkness.
Why am I here, I want to go home, I’m dying, I’m so stupid, I’m such a mess, only a really broken person does this to herself for 3 times, this won’t help. I’m so tired of myself, I don’t want to be stuck in this brain. My mind was racing. I had shallow quick breathing. Thoughts were moving quickly. This lasted for all awaken hours for 3 whole days. And there were many awaken hours. 5 min sometimes felt like 5 hours, and the days were long. The suffering felt consuming.
I found the only place of ease was when I slept. It felt hopeless.
Is being human supposed to be this much suffering?
How much suffering can a human hold?
Day 4 I heard myself thinking – is this a moment of ease?
A minute later the ease was gone.
I have to admit. For the full 10 days I was in a frantic energy.
You vision yourself sitting in peace in meditation at a course like this.
But I moved as a crazy person, there was so much stored stress, so much unease and anxiety in my body. I couldn’t slow down. Part of it felt like it wasn’t a choice – it was just how my body operates, it’s what it knows. Another part felt like – desperate determination, a controlling part of me, a part that can’t let go, surrender or trust. “I am the one who have to fix this”.
When I woke up by the gong at 4 am every morning I was up in an instant, got dressed in about 30 seconds, brushed my teeth and found myself every morning being first of the females in the meditation hall at 4.15.
I was deeply committed. But also deeply desperate. This had to work.
This has to work.
Day 4 - We moved into the vipassana meditation and at least the mind – had started slowing down. It still was in quite a dark loop, but I was getting better at observing it – and not being eaten alive by it. The vipassana meditation also helped me in not having constant flow of thoughts – because you have to be so focused on what you are doing. (What you are doing is basically scanning, noticing and observing sensations in your body)
The purpose of the practice is to observe the sensations and reality as it is, not how you want it to be. Moment to moment. And to be aware of and understand on an experiential level: the law of nature – that everything is constantly changing.
On day 5 – in a moment of feeling like I was going to explode out of anxiety – a vision came to me.
(**note: vipassana is not about visions or visualizations so don’t add this into what the Vipassana teachings are – this is my personal journey and experience)
It was so strong that it completely pulled me in, I had to follow it.
It took me to a soundproof room with white walls, white floors and white ceiling.
In this room I was screaming at the top of my lungs.
I was hitting the walls with all my strength and moving my body across the room.
I was so angry. I felt like a crazy person and I wanted to express it.
Suddenly the anger moved into grief and I was a pile in the middle of the room, weeping. Wailing.
And then, my mom and grandma was there, standing next to me, over me, as I lay on the floor. It was the two of them in spirit form, they were both in the age as when they passed.
They wanted to comfort me.
But I screamed at my mom – it doesn’t count when you are not here in real life!
It’s not the same when I can’t hug you or touch you. It doesn’t help. I want you here alive. I can’t live without you.
The pain is unbearable.
(Saying those words - I felt this unbearable pain in my body and tears started rolling down on my cheeks in my meditation, it was hard to breathe at this point, my throat felt tight and contracted, trying to not actually wail in the meditation hall, a part of me wanted to run out, but I stayed with the sensations)
In the vision I started intensively vomiting. A lot. It felt as if I was throwing up the resistance of the truth.
The truth of what is. What I’ve been resisting since she passed. That she is not here with me in human form anymore.
My grandma and my mom stayed with me until the process was over, and when I was finally able to stand up – I told my mom – I don’t want to live without you.
But you are – she answered. You have to. Accept the reality as it is.
Back from the vision, I was still crying.
In my head I now heard two voices.
One felt like me and one felt like…. It came from somewhere else.
“I don’t want it to be true”
”But it is.“
“Why MY mom?”
”Everyone dies. Everything is constantly changing.
It’s the law of nature.”
”I don't want her to be dead.
”But she is”
”She was too young!”
“Yes. And it happened, it was her time.”
“But my life changed when she died.”
“Yes.”
Everything changed and not in a good way!
“Yes, everything changed.”
“I don’t want this to be my reality.”
But is is. Your mom died.
Yes. She died.
I heard my mind saying yes to her dying and the reality of her not being here with me in the physical world any more. Over and over again. I repeated.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. She died.
And for the first time in 8 years, I could sit with and observe, the reality as it is. Not as I want it to be.
For 8 years I have not been able to think about her or memories with her without an extreme pain. I realized that I’ve been missing her with resistance of what is. Not with acceptance of what is. I’ve been thinking, how can I ever accept that my mom died, I can’t ever accept it. And of course you get tired – constantly fighting your life and your reality as it is, constantly fighting the things you cannot change.
I felt a profound shift. In this moment there was still missing her, but an open hearted missing, an allowed missing. A – I can be with this – missing.
….
The days blur together,
I remember day 8 was the day with most moments of ease.
I thought, maybe it’s gets easier now
But by day 9 the anxiety was back. (though not as strong as the first 3 days)
I know – and choose to believe – that it’s all suppressed emotions and past experiences coming up to the surface – and now when you have nowhere to go but to be with yourself, you have to sit with them, and allow all of it to come.
I did not budge. I never left a meditation early (you could choose to sit some of them in your room and many people started leaving the meditation hall one after one). I was determined to never leave. I wanted to sit. All I wanted to do, was to sit. It didn’t matter how much anxiety, how much physical pain.
A few times I heard myself saying – this is the part of me that might kill me. That I’m so damn stubborn. Why am I so scared of giving up? What would happen if I left the meditation hall early? It felt so scary In my body, I couldn’t do it. The part of me that wants to be a good student, to accomplish, to do everything right, to be “better than everyone else” – the part of me that was desperate for change - was strong.
And also, I have so much gratitude to this part of me. I’ve learned over and over, that I can do hard things. That I can trust myself. That I am committed to the deeper thing.
I started changing the teachers words “you have to work hard” to “I’m deeply devoted to the practice” and I noticed that was really supportive to me in terms of changing the energy of how I showed up.
By day 9 I was worried, maybe I expected too much around my burnout and that big grey cloud – I still felt a heaviness. I decided that whatever happens, that the healing around my mom and resisting life as it is was more than enough if that was the only thing I left with. I mean, it was huge, profound.
Before the evening meditation I was in the meditation hall 30 min before everyone else.
I loved the meditation hall even more when it was empty.
I could feel the energy of the space more in my body.
I felt connected to something greater.
I bowed down in prayer.
My forehead on the ground.
Help me. I felt despair.
I can’t do this anymore.
Give me a sign, anything.
Tell me what to do.
And it felt like my mind got split into two.
It was that voice that I know so well,
The voice in despair that I’ve heard so many times.
And it was also another way saying:
That’s the voice.
That’s it.
Don’t believe it.
And suddenly, I got it.
I’ve been praying, asking and grasping from the wrong place.
I’ve been believing this voice so much.
The voice that says I can’t do this, this is too much, something outside of me please help me.
It’s not the truth.
It’s not my guidance.
It’s not ME.
I don’t have to believe it and def not let it consume me as if it is who I am.
I don’t have to identify with it.
This was another profound experience.
People started coming in to the hall and I sat back up in meditation.
Committed to the practice, I kept on meditating.
And then, I don’t know…
On 10 day when I woke up I felt the same… still very much, just wanting to go home.
(And now we all could see how close it was – we had done it! I bow to all vipassana meditators, for me they are all warriors)
Then slowly, slowly, it was as if as the day moved by things started clearing up in my mind.
I felt lighter. Clearer. Like I could see my reality better than I have in a very long time.
I felt so much gratitude for all of it. I could totally see my blessings.
There are so many.
I felt… more faith.
I started seeing visions of my future, ideas and inspiration coming in. A desire to create. A desire to choose again. To build. To continue.
Now I sit here writing. contemplating
Is the big, grey cloud really gone?
Did Vipassana save me once again?
I think so, but only time will tell.
Thank your for reading.
**The vipassana I’ve been doing is Vipassana as taught by S.N. Goenka in the tradition of Sayagyi U Ba Khin, and it’s not a rest cure, or a rite and ritual, you can read more about it here: https://www.dhamma.org/