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 

The Power of Breath & Silence, my 10 Day Meditation Experience {Day 1}

It was Aiza Cathe, my best friend and soulmate, who told me about the 10-day silent meditation in North Fork, CA, but the idea was something I had wanted to do for years. The best time to go, I decided, is when your life seems at a halt. I did not read much about this particular retreat or research what it’s about but decided to do it anyway. Most of the things I do I just do without researching because it kills the mystery for me -- even if the mystery sometimes makes me feel miserable. I’m in it for the lessons. All I read is the “About” section of the website Dhamma for the meditation and noted what not to bring. Attendees were to bring warm clothing, but no see-through or tight clothes; (there went my yoga outfits -- blah). Additional “not to bring” items included journals, writing pads, tape recorders, phone or electronics -- just wonderful!

The drive there was nice but at the same time emotional; I was tearing up as I got closer to the location. I really didn’t understand the emotions. When I arrived I checked in, noting that the weather was hot. I introduced myself to my roommates: 13 girls, including me. At the orientation, we were told to practice noble silence, which meant no talking to anyone unless it’s necessary (we could speak to the managers of the facility), no looking into someone’s eyes or any versions of communication, not even a smile. Let’s begin!!!

Day 1 

I knew I would have a hard time sleeping because I was excited to start the unknown. And I was right; I woke up at 2 am and woke up with a panic attack. I have never felt or experienced panic attack in my life before; now I can add it to my collection of emotions. It was a quick attack and I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. But it passed. Then we were woken up by the 4 a.m. bell, which sounded almost like a gong, to begin our day and meditation. I learned about this breathing exercise before but I’ve never had patience for it. But this time there was not much I could do but to actually practice it.  This meditation is called “Anapana” or awareness of respiration or breath. To follow your breath without changing it, was or seemed impossible at the time of practice. It basically felt like chasing someone you can’t catch or trying to pick up a call that’s on the floor but you keep kicking further as you get closer to the ball. Imagine the frustration and determination for me to get the damn breath down.

This meditation focuses only on breath: no mantras, no chanting, no music, no symbolism. Which means it was me, myself and I in my own head. Just writing this and recalling that intimacy with self-makes me teary-eyed -- and I’m at the library finishing this blog.

Lesson from Discourse:

All of me was in my head. The good, the bad, and the ugly. The good was in the background listening and observing every thought that walked by. The bad stirred things up and had no shame, nor guilt. And the ugly just fueled the bad even more. Although the good was observing she began feeling shattered emotions, blasts from the past. Some of my impurities and miseries began surfacing.

From the discourse summary book of S.N Goenka: “You have come to this meditation course to learn the art of living: how to live peacefully and harmoniously within oneself, and to generate peace and harmony for all others; how to live happily from day to day while progressing towards the highest happiness of a totally pure mind, a mind filled with disinterested love, with compassion, with joy at the success of others, with equanimity.”

Before we can live harmoniously we must deal with the disharmony within ourselves. 

Coming soon day 2 & 3 experiences,

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

<3 Namaste

Self-sabotaging Phase of Life

The past few weeks I have been torturing myself, most definitely self-sabotaging because I have been on a frenzy of why the fuck do I people please. After reading my friend and mentor Erin Lauvick blog, I feel the need to express my sadness. I have been hating on myself because I know what it’s like to be rejected and this is why I it’s difficult for me to be so honest with anyone because I hate for them to feel the rejection. The rejection I’ve felt my childhood. I didn’t fit in so I made myself fit in the mold. The mold that I want meant to fit in at all.

I know I have codependency issues and I have wanted to be rid of it for years. The worst part of it is I don’t like to reach out to anyone because I am afraid of being found out. Found out that I’m not this person that everyone sees me as. Everything is a puzzle that’s put together but it’s not who I am. I know that because I don’t even know who I really am. I’m the result of all my short comings, my mistakes, my pains, my unlovable attitude but I also am the good I’ve done, those people I’ve made laugh or smile and many more. If I can put those in a cylinder shake they as hard as I can will all things that bad sink at the bottom and everything will float or will it just drown me.

Just because you’ve seen me at my best I don’t mean I will always be at my best. I have my moment of despair and not everyone will show it but oh I will. Don’t take it as my weakness because I’m showing my emotions. I don’t matter what emotions you are showing it’s a part of you. Embrace the shit out of it because accepting them can improve your life. It may take time because you will only BE when you are ready to accept to grow. This is why I am having a hard time because it’s hard for me to accept but accepting it means growing and learning.

I just want to grow. I heard on the tv once “never change only grow” I’ve always aim for growth but I can never get used to how this journey really is and feels. I have so many demons inside me that I can’t even say things out loud not even to myself. The feeling of shame and guilt just kills me so very softly and slowly.

It’s so pathetic that I feel this way even at this age and I am tired of pleasing people and hurting this way. I know I should always say what I feel because in all honesty I’m hurting more, more than the person that should hear what I have to say. I just don’t have the courage to hurt the person intentionally.

It’s amazing that I can only recall one event in my life time that I fell apart before this journey I am taking. It’s not clear as to why I was on the floor in my bathroom crying. I just remember Jason in front of me saying nothing but just being there. I don’t even remember if I even thank him for that night. That was the last time I broke down badly.

Now that I am in this journey – it’s a never ending roller coaster ride to emotional and vulnerable feelings. It’s not that I’m ashamed to show others I’m crying it’s just I don’t want to be seen.

When others sees you as this joyful person or aggressive person and when others don’t see you as that something is wrong. But it’s not always true because I like the silence, the peace and the fact that my mind isn’t running a hundred miles a minute wasting energy on something so minuscule and useless.

Dear God guide me and keep me moving forward in this path you have for me for I know that I will be better than where I am at right now.  You keep blessing me with these wonderful opportunities and lessons I must learn along the way. Give me the courage and resilience to stand on my own belief and integrity.  Keep me grounded with all the chaos that goes on in me.