vipassana – take three
Vipassana Candy Heart Sayings
ANICCA → for a sweetheart in a time of distress
EQNMT → for a sweetheart to embrace
I SIT → for a sweetheart as an everyday reminder
TAKE REST → for a sweetheart in need of relief
PEACE → for a sweetheart upon liberation
HRMNY → for a sweetheart who helps themselves to help others
B HAPPY → for all sweethearts
SILA → for a sweetheart as a devotional vow
SAMADHI → for a sweetheart uniting mind and body
PANNA → for a sweetheart gleaning wisdom
Vipassana is a type of soul food, a chalky throat lozenge that leaves a confusingly delightful coat of relief on the soul. It is a venture into the depths of self love where the single pointed focus of the breath breaks open any and all calcifications built up around the heart. Hours of concentrated focus on the sensation of the the breath in the nostrils pierces straight into the third eye and crown chakras, the areas of the pineal and pituitary glands–evoking an awakening. Without regard or attempted control over the breath, the task is a simple awareness of the very subtle felt sense of air. There are infinite breath-work practices across a variety of spiritual teachings, but the return to simplicity and the focus in Vipassana make it viscerally penetrating.
One starts with conscious, intentional breathing, and proceeds to awareness of natural, normal breath. And from there you will advance to still subtler truths about yourself. Every step is a step with reality; every day you will penetrate further to discover subtler realities about yourself, about your body and mind. - S. N. GOENKA
I have been working for a few years now to de-calcify my mind and body that had become stiff in order to free my soul. In Maine, two summers ago in the basements where I lived, worked, played, where it is dark, damp, dank, I befriended zombie spiders. These ghostly apparitions have the unfortunate fate of a slow death in which they are infected by Engyodontium aranearum (E. aranearum), a fungi that first attacks their joints, and continues to spread, completely encapsulating them and mummifying them in place. During that time where I was attempting to setup a new life in exploration of my new understanding of my queer self, I was taking in big gulps of air after having been submerged for so long. My lungs quickly grew wet and heavy as I was unknowingly dehydrated, leaving me heaving for relief.
I had left everything I thought I knew to be true up until that point. Aspirating mold was new to my otherwise desert dweller body. The air is “thicker” at low elevation, it is more dense as there is less space between the molecules, and I, like the spiders, became consumed by the fungi as it flourished in the spaciousness of my organs. Those first few months were fraught with haphazard ninja karate chopping as I whirled and twirled through the thick webbing of my life that I had stumbled into while walking a new path. If you’re familiar with cord cutting as an psycho-spiritual energetic expression of letting go and removing connections to people, places, spaces that no longer serve the evolution of your soul, you know how freeing it can be to make the cut. The release of the constriction is an enjoyable exhalation.
There were the initial physical cuts I made, like leaving the desert southwest for the down east mountain ranges of the northeast, and then there were the emotional cuts from old relationships, habits, patterns, beliefs, and attachments to those identities. The thrashing that happened was frantic as I felt an urgency for facing the invasive encounter to be resolved, cleared, and escaped, my breath was chaotic and created a new kind of constriction. And although there was an preliminary clearing, without a more equanimous breath, the next time I passed, or gazed in that same direction, there were ghost spiders dangling in a terrifyingly haunting hang time. White bodies floating in the bardo of the in between of life before and life after–there was no clear cut to be had.
On this path, whatever is unknown about yourself must become known to you. For this purpose respiration will help. It acts as a bridge from the known to the unknown, because respiration is one function of the body that can be either conscious or unconscious, intentional or automatic. - S. N. GOENKA
As my meditation practice depend during those hot summer days, I sank deeper and deeper into gnosis in deep trances of gnostic navel-gazing, re-submerging myself. My
breath naturally became more stable, I began to breath through the discomfort of the suffocating presence of the zombies, and began to hold them in reverence for their
tragic existence. Which is to say I made space to dwell in the grief of my ego death(s). It became ceremonious, and it was beautiful.
And I worked through rounds of cord cutting that at first felt like thick rope attached to hulking anchors. Dredging them up from the Rio Grande and the Animas and the Arkansas riverbeds that had been sustaining me, and dropping new ones along the Kennebec and the Carrabassett rivers in hopes of a different silt to bloom a new variety of lotus. These first cords necessitated a saw to cut through, and although it felt exhausting, it was also energizing as the possibility of and opportunities for new ways of being had me dancing, hiking, fly fishing and skinny dipping in the flow of life. Prana, the Sanskrit word for breath, and meaning life force, was pulsating through my being–a new level of awakening.
In Vipassana two years later, with no river or creek in sight, but many rivers, oceans, and seas crossed, I felt the tugs of thinner fluorocarbon like tendrils of the lingering web of Maine that kept me emotionally hooked. I had recently sold my investment property in Kingfield and closed the transaction remotely while hiking the cliffside trails on pilgrimage in Japan; I was officially unanchored, but not untethered. Like the stringy, fibrous legs of nato, I began the process of digesting more truths. This time in the depths of meditation in the outback I sat and found deeply impacted barbed hooks in my heart-space. All the betrayal and heartbreak and abandoned dreams I had pivoted away from when I swiftly returned west just months after that arrival on the Carrabassett river rolled like trout in the riffles of late afternoon light, flashing their shimmering and glistening soft vulnerable bellies in my general direction, catching my polarized gaze.
In fly fishing there are barbed and barbless hooks. And even if you purchase the barbed hooks, it’s often recommended to pinch the barbs with your pliers. This is kinder to the fish, less physically damaging, and allows for a swifter release. It also creates a higher skill level of landing the fish as without a barb it’s possible for the fish to unhook itself. But sometimes you forget to pinch the hook, many times the spider fly options at the fly fishing outfitter only come barbed (because barbed hooks are less expensive), and it isn’t until after you’ve casted, and set the hook, and reeled in the fish, that you see the deep flesh wound of the barb. So you try to keep the fish wet, it gasping for air, while you fumble your pliers to ply the hook as gently and humanly as possible–which is not always possible and again, is an acquired skill.
Not that after this course you will forget the past entirely, and have no thought at all for the future. But in fact you used to waste your energy by rolling needlessly in the past or future, so much so that when you needed to remember or plan something, you could not do so. - S. N. GOENKA
As is Anicca: a life-saving pfd (personal flotation device) that says this too shall pass
As is Equanimity: a life-sustaining practice of neutrality
As is Sitting: a devotional practice of surrendering to stillness
As is Resting: a requirement for restoration and regeneration
As is Peace: an acceptance of the non-duality of life
As is Harmony: a reciprocal relationship with all beings, including and firstly the self
As is Happiness: a state of gratitude for the truth
As is Sila: a commitment to abstaining from creating new sankaras
As is Samadhi: a complete and profound presence in the moment
As is Panna: a dedication to self-reflection for learning and growing
In that bardo time, between Maine and the outback, I spent countless hours, days, weeks, months detoxifying from the consumption and internalization of other peoples thoughts and beliefs stored in my body that dated all the way back to childhood. I drenched myself in golden elixirs of castor oil packs to relieve the liver of the anger, ginger poultices to aid in rebalancing the kidneys, took chalky shots of bentonite to cleanse the digestive tract of all the bullshit I was so viscerally holding onto. I had to go west to drain in endless waves of tears the grief in my lungs where the air is thinner, dryer, and the sun is hotter, more direct, in order to dry up all that fungi.
But the thing is, the mold exposure, as with all dis-ease and illness, was the medicine itself. A true fun guy who invited me to “break the mold.” Demanded I live differently, asked me to completely reset, and realign. I had to see myself differently, but first I had to see myself. And Vipassana was the most powerful mirror I’ve faced to date. It guided me back to my shattered heart where a million pieces laid strewn about and asked me to sweep them all up, pour the truest golden elixir, self-love into all the wounded spots, a kintsugi of acceptance for a true resetting and strengthening. And thankfully it also showed me my resilience, which allows me to move forward in confidence, that when my heart breaks open again, as I believe it is meant to do in order for the continued expansion of consciousness and growth, I will embrace the opportunity yet again.
If you’re zombified and want to detox, there are meditation centers worldwide.
Dhamma Ujala in Clare, Australia
Vipassana Centers World Map
Comments