| | Hello Daniel,
Thank you for your time, I'm sure you are a very busy man.
In answer to your questions:
1. Yes I am interested in long retreats, my work is very open to these requests. 3 to 4 weeks would not be a problem. A co worker went off and did a nine month Tibetan retreat no so long ago and was given leave to do so. Management was fully aware of the reason for the time off. I am fortunate in this regard.
But no I would not consider doing so in the foreseeable future for a very good reason.
Side effects; you are going to hate me for this, but this is a live issue so please bear with me. I will try to be brief.
I know that ultimately, side effects are just dancing lights and should not distract you from the the close attention to the detail of your regular practice. If you do so, the answer for your pain/weirdness will resolve itself within the practice. And so you move on to the next.
For many years I was chugging away with my hour or two per day of Hindu Vedanta, very disciplined, very focused. About 8 years ago I discovered Theravada on a 10 day SN Goenka retreat. Very challenging, very opening. I fell in love with that practice and dropped everything else to a support/maintenance level.
But really this was were the trouble started. During this retreat I had any number of very strange things happen. One example:
Scanning the body, find some pain, move on, dragged back to the pain, stay a while, move on. Pain gets worse, get dragged back. And so on. Eventually trying to not notice the pain is knocking you off your center. So you think, okay, I have no choice, I will try to rest in the experience of the pain. At least that way I can keep going. But, surprise, surprise, pain changes too. Not only that, if you relax into it, it dissolves in front of your "eyes" and releases a big dollop of energy, which flashes up your spinal column out out the top of your head. In my case this started a chain reaction that ended up with me feeling that my whole body was on fire, a glorious cleansing fire. For the rest of the retreat it was the same story, day in, day out. Eventually it resolved in to uncontrollable sobbing for hours on end. I now know that it is possible to do to perfectly good, attentive practice while your body is in constant spasm and tears are streaming down your face. Lots of lovely sensations to observe.
Through all of this, the course instructors insisted that this was basically uninteresting and that I should just continue, after much shouting and arm waving I took them at their word, although their faintly robotic attitude was a bit scary.
Take the above experience, rinse and repeat for about 2 years.
I went on retreats of between 3 and 10 days, two months in Wat Pah Nanachat in Thailand, two months doing Ashtanga Vinjasa in Mysore, India. Had progressively more crazy stuff happen, went to the teacher(s), “don't worry its all good” etc.
I'm doing one to two hours of Goenka through all this period, crazy stuff creeps in to daily practice. I'm getting a taste for this now, you really can ignore all kinds of vile visitations, body wobbles and psychic fire works if you really want to. Feels great. My girlfriend thought that I was some kind of living saint.
I've basically given up on teachers now. I follow all the instructions as well as I can, some are great especially the Tibetans, hats off to them, very happy to support a Goenka practice. But still, interviews are painful in the sense that elephants that are clearly visible in the room are being avoided, oddly it is the Tibetans who are the most evasive. And anyway Goenka says all you need is your daily scanning practice, do your two hours and all will be fine, anything else is just detail. So that's what I do.
I must say the Goenka thing is very solid, you really do feel like nothing can stop you.
But then I started getting very physical side effects. Stuff that would stop me working, and more importantly, practicing. It started with one hour sits that would be fine and normal, but the next morning, hang over. I have a very clean life by this time, very little booze. If I didn't meditate for the day, no hang over. This was a new departure and needed close attention, so replicated the situation many times just to be sure. No doubt in my mind, causal link. This was hard going, a hang over is a huge disincentive to practice. Sought advice, this time, just embarrassed silence. Thanks guys.
So I changed it up, did more yoga; same problem but with a slightly different flavor. Eventually I found that Ti-chi was reasonably safe.
The trouble now is that I'm getting hang overs every day no matter how careful I am. I'm hardly practicing at all the pain is so bad. I don't get the crazy stuff any more no bright lights or visitations or other fun stuff, just pain, visceral uncompromising pain. Sounds crazy now but I tried to use my old technique of resting in the pain in the hope that it might dissolve. No chance, this stuff is set in concrete.
Finally I stop practicing altogether, the morning hang overs have now become a permanent fixture of my life and they start to get worse, stretching on in to the afternoons. With no practice of any kind to support me, my health starts to suffer, small things just don't go away then morph in to something else. Knee problems, become back problems, become chronic migraines etc. But somehow I hold it together I start to recover, the hangovers become manageable again, my physical health starts to return.
Then (doom doom) that fateful day. I was invited by work to go on a pilgrimage to the Catholic shine at Medjugorje, Croatia. I had had some crazy stuff happen at these places before, but that was a several years ago now, and as a non-Catholic and as a non-practicer I felt safe. Also, I would be with people who I knew well and trusted. Very bad decision. Was as bad as my first Goenka retreat but with out the support of a Sangha or a practice to keep me real. My colleges had no clue either, attempts to discuss my predicament provoked outright hostility in one case. Turns out Marian devotional practice is every bit as intense as some of the Tibetan stuff. Who knew? Just had to suck it up.
So I get home, exhausted, disillusioned, vowing never to go anywhere remotely energetic ever again. A few days later I get the flu, but its not the flu its Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, some times called ME. So I spend the next two years bed ridden for most of the time, with no energy to do anything other than contemplate the contents of my own skull and in constant pain. Luckily I have some experience with both of these phenomena, so I survived. One year of slow recovery later I emerge in to the light of day blinking and disorientated but back at work and in one piece. Feels like a miracle.
So now I have that familiar itch, the one I've had all my life and that only 2 hours of daily vipassana seems to scratch. I love that practice. Life is possible with it in ways that I couldn't even imagine before I discovered it. Stuff actually gets processed in real time as its happening. No more waking up with night sweats because of stuff I should or shouldn't have done. Constantly second guessing my inappropriate thought word or deed. Life is actually fun with vipassana.
So when people talk about stream entry or second path I have very little interest. Don't get me wrong, I have the utmost respect for those who are able to pursue those goals. And a profound jealousy for those who do. But its all so far away from the facts of my practice needs. For me its about psycho-spiritual survival first and foremost. I can't imagine a life where I would have the freedom to make those choices.
For me, if I don't practice I tend to run around screaming. And as I continue to recover from my illness the time is fast approaching when I will have to get back on the cushion again like it or not. My favorite practice is Goenka vipassana but the last time I got in that vehicle, I drove it into the nearest tree. It would be fair to say that I am at a crossroads. I have seriously considered never meditating ever again. But I know that that is probably unrealistic. Where to go? I have no idea.
So Daniel, there you have it. The short version. Dull stuff I'm afraid. I suspect that this is not the kind of answer you wanted when you asked about my capabilities and intentions. I'm sorry, I've just dumped 10 odd years of barely supervised practice in you lap and asked you to make some kind of sense of it. So i'm not expecting miracles. But the reason posted my original note was that you do seem to give no nonsense answers and shoot from the hip. That has been sorely lacking in my spiritual life and would be most welcome.
Thanks again
Howard |