The Power of Breath & Silence, my 10 Day Meditation Experience {Day 6}

From reading this experience of mine, I hope you are enjoying the read and have inspired you to begin your own meditation practice.

Day 6

I woke up feeling dizzy and defeated, but yet cheerful – odd, I know. I had been feeling dizzy and nauseated since day 5. I thought I was getting sick again or something was definitely wrong with me that I may need to be hospitalized (goodness, that sounds dramatic). I honestly don’t know which was worse not being able to breathe during meditation on day 2 because of sickness or meditating while feeling dizzy and nauseated all day long. I had to learn to adjust to the changes in how I felt from days 2 to 6. My focus was the comparison of those distinctly different feelings.

I didn’t have much to eat all day because of my preoccupation with how I felt. I had to force myself to eat so I would have some kind of energy throughout the day. However, day 6 was absolutely my favorite day thus far because by mid-afternoon -- viola -- God graced His presence upon me. I was finally able to meditate: I sat for an hour with slight movement and flowed with my breath. I felt victoriously joyful and liberated while tearfully blissful for being able to accomplish Vipassana Meditation. The best way I can explain the sensations are lightness: the entirety of my surroundings were bright, my body was slightly warm all over and I was moving gracefully. My mind was clear from monkey mind chatter and I felt like I was glowing. Coincidentally, was I was wearing a Rocky T-shirt featuring the scene after his run up to the monument where he had his arms up like he’d won.

That’s how I felt.

Lesson from Discourse:

The one thing that stuck out during his sermon was that you can love your mate so deeply but still be detached. In past relationships, my experience has been that you will lose yourself being with someone. Don’t get me wrong, I learned from a few and the rest I was left hanging. All of these were my fault for sure because each time I let myself get lost. That’s what happens when you put others before yourself because of craving and aversion of bad habits. The sensations of pleasant and unpleasant were my choice of suffering without any understanding of my emotions.

Each and every time, I enjoyed being with someone thinking that each of those past men at their time were the ONE. Those were the pleasant moments, the ones where I thought that this time, it could be love. I was blinded by all the cravings, aversion, the mental and physical depletion, and self-doubts. Truth be told I thought those were normal outcomes all the freaking time as well as the consequences I’ve put myself through. Now looking back, I laugh at myself for putting myself in those situations. I was very naive and inexperienced in the beautiful struggle of life; others can be cruel with no empathy nor compassion for others. I thought everyone has those mental and emotional depletions too; I was wrong.

As Wayne Dyer said: “Work at being content with who you are, rather than pleasing others by being inauthentic. Say to yourself, ‘I am what I am, and it is okay as long as I am not hurting anyone else in the process.’ “

You don’t have to apologize for anything or anyone. You don’t have to apologize to anyone for anything that you are.

Craving is a fire that will keep on burning, no matter what fuels it. It takes you away from being peaceful. By learning to be aware of all the feelings within and to remain equanimous towards them, only then you can stop the fire before it starts again. Then and only then you can come out of misery.

The Divine in me honors the Divine in You. I recognize my true essence in every soul I meet. I am you, you are me and we are one.

The Power of Breath & Silence, my 10 Day Meditation Experience {Day 4 & 5}

              The Meditation Center

As my continuous effort to share my 10-day meditation with you. Here are the rest of my days. I hope you learn something about yourself while reading these blogs.

Day 4 
I woke up feeling blank -- no thoughts or emotion, but by mid-afternoon, I was feeling frustrated again. Just when I thought I was getting the breath right, I didn’t. Also, I couldn’t sit still; for someone with a little A.D.D stillness isn’t possible. I had been meditating for four days, twelve hours a day, which isn’t really the typical day for me. I typically am either in front of the TV watching movies or shows on Netflix. Stillness and observing the mind and following the breath isn’t the practice I do all the time. Twelve hours of sitting down, one hour at a time with 5-10 mins break in between make YogiWonders a frustrated meditative practitioner. But by the end of the night, I was able to focus and get some clarity of how the meditation is done. Without any judgment and feeling disappointed I needed to be more patient with myself and be one with breath.

Lesson from Discourse:

Because we are so ignorant about our situations our misery multiplies and we wonder why we are always stuck in the same freaking situation and that we never move away from it. When I thought I got the breathing down they added another technique which kind of made me frustrated because after getting something down another came up. So while breathing was my main focus we were told to now observe the sensation on your body from head to toe. Sensations included such physical feelings like itching, throbbing, crawling, sweating, etc. and the trick was that you can’t go back to another part of your body once your attention had passed it. So if your ears started to itch while you were observing your knees, no can do. You must keep moving forward. I’m sure you see the lesson there. By focusing on the sensation on your body this helps you retract your mind to focusing on the pain -- the pain of sitting for an hour for a slight moment. Also if you didn’t feel a sensation of a particular part of your body we were not to go craving it or wanting to feel something there. Another lesson, right!

Day 5
I woke up with my ego thinking I was the shit because I finally was able to get the breathing down; oh was I wrong. By mid-afternoon, I started feeling dizzy and nauseated and I was getting impatient haha. I had to tell myself that’s what I got for being an egotistical fool -- thinking I was the cheese nits. My appetite wasn’t intact and I was worried because dinner was at 5 p.m. and all we had was fruit. With bedtime at 10 p.m., so you can imagine that I was scared of starvation! Haha poor me. But it was very hard to focus when feeling dizzy and wanting to throw up. Then I began feeling indifferent about things as though I was seeing and feeling things in a different lens. It was much harder to focus for sure. However, by the end of the night, I was able to start flowing with my breath. I began feeling the heat all over my body which is hard to do, for me at least, because I am always cold so this was great. Because my body was in so much heat I was burning so many calories that I was starving at the end of meditation. I was confused at first because I thought something was wrong haha.

Lesson from Discourse:

I learned about the four types of attachment that keeps coming back to our life and makes us miserable all the time. First is the desires and the bad habit of craving. Second is clinging to “I” and “mine.” Third is the craving for sensations, pleasant or unpleasant. The fourth is suffering: our tendency to hold on to that pain that does not really exist. We make such a huge deal about it because it’s what we’ve only known to do. We become ignorant and believe that we can’t change our ways. What you put out to the universe is what you will receive. Your mind is such a powerful tool when you put it to good use of kindness and love. It’s a practice.

I am a being -- a soul broken into pieces but brave enough to glue myself back and be as transparent as I can. In doing so, this beautiful struggle of life doesn’t seem so hard to live with.

The divine in me honors the divine in you. I see the true essence of every soul I met. I am you, you are me, and we are one