My Vipassana experience changed my thoughts and my views on reality.
Before we get into it, I think it's important for you guys to know that I believe in science,
I believe in experimentation.
I believe that experiences that are unique to myself are likely a glitch in my perception
of reality.
That being said, thankfully, science has somewhat proven that our local reality and our subjective
reality is a fraction of objective reality.
There's a couple of ways we can prove this with some thought experiments.
The first is just recognizing that our senses are limited.
And what I mean by this is we can only see a small fraction of wavelength of light.
We can only hear a small fraction of all frequencies.
What this implies is there is more to our local reality than our senses can perceive.
And we can see this when as we age, we can't hear certain frequencies and they're no longer
a part of our reality.
Now we do have access to some of these other local patterns through technology and such
as X-ray vision and infrared and other modalities like that.
The second thought experiment is a little bit harder to grasp, I would say.
We know that we only have five senses, but there are other organisms that have perhaps
more such as certain birds have a sense of direction.
They always know where north is.
And maybe we don't have this sense of direction.
To extrapolate from this line of thinking, there may be other senses that we don't have
access to and we don't even know what they are, such as a sense of time would be a good
example.
Another way to think about this, if someone was born without the ability to feel touch
or feel vibration or hear or to smell, it's hard to describe to them what smell is.
It's like if they've never smelled anything before.
Now without getting too medical, there are different pathways in our brain which are
responsible for our senses.
So usually when we say someone is born without sight, they still have a functioning occipital
lobe.
There is something happening at the periphery so they can still dream.
But if someone had no vision at all and their visual cortex was in functioning, that would
be a different story.
So we can realize that our local reality and our reality that we perceive is very different
than an objective reality than the true reality.
I say this because in vipassana, I was sometimes confused as to what was my local reality and
what was true reality.
And so vipassana is a silent meditation.
The first time you go it has to be for 10 days and you're meditating about 10 to 12 hours
a day.
You wake up at 4 in the morning, you meditate for 2 and a half hours, you have breakfast
at 6.30 until about 7.30 and you meditate again for 3 hours.
You have lunch and then you meditate again for 3 or 4 hours in a light dinner.
You're not allowed to talk.
There is no technology allowed.
You have to leave everything behind.
You're not allowed to sing, you're not allowed to dance, you're not allowed to make eye contact
with others.
This purpose for me is to completely know yourself in silence without any external distractions.
It's very difficult and I think that's something you should know if you are going to one.
So the first day they teach you breath work or how to meditate by focusing on the breath.
And my teacher who was a retired family physician, which is interesting as I'm a family physician
myself, he said when you take a, when you breathe in, notice the air hitting your nostrils.
Notice how the air is cool when it hits your nostrils.
And when you breathe out, notice the air hitting the top of your lips or your mustache if you
have one as I do.
I notice how the air is warmer.
Focus on the coolness of the air as it goes in your nostrils and the warmth of the air
as it hits your upper lip or your mustache.
If thoughts appear, if your mind gets distracted, do not react to that.
Just bring your focus back to the inhalation and the coolness and the exhalation and the
warmness.
And the key distinction here is to not to try and control your breath, just focus on
the coolness and the warmth.
So we do that for 10 hours on the first day.
The first night's sleep and others who have spoken to have resonated similar experiences.
You have lucid vivid dreams about your nightmares.
And personally, a lot of my identity is somewhat coupled with my intelligence and the success
I've achieved.
So a lot of my dreams were about losing my license, failing medical school and failing
school in general.
The second part of the vivid dreams I had, and this is very distressing, and most people,
including me, I cried a lot when I was with Vasano, was about my body image issues.
So I've struggled with my weight, I've struggled with body image most of my life, but I've
married way up.
My wife was way out of my league.
And a lot of the issues, a lot of the dreams were about her cheating on me or realizing
that I'm not good enough.
And it was more from a physical standpoint, which is where my insecurities lay to, and
still to this extent, to today, lay a little bit.
The second day you wake up and you get into focusing on different sensations that your
body experiences.
So the way of a person is structured is there is a teacher there.
You're not allowed to talk at all except you can talk to the teacher for five minutes a
day if you'd like to.
But beyond that, it's complete silence.
And as I said before, you're not allowed to run.
There's no exercising, there's no writing, there's no reading.
You can bring any religious artifacts.
It's just you, your clothes, and that's it.
You're not even a luxury laundry.
You're supposed to bring the amount of clothes you're going to use.
And very modest clothes, so shoulders covered, knees covered, things like that.
And again, the focus is to be completely internal, to completely essentially not think of your
body as your body as just a body, that your soul, your mind, your spirit, or whatever
you call it resides in.
So the second day you start body scans slowly and essentially how you're taught the second
day is try and focus on the strongest sensation you're feeling right now, the strongest physical
sensation.
So I'm bald, so oftentimes for me it was the wind or the breeze.
We are inside but there's fans going on my head.
And then try and notice something that's more subtle.
And maybe it's an edge on my eyebrow, which is what I'm feeling right now, or an edge
on my thigh.
And slowly you try and focus on the most subtle sensation and ignore every other sensation.
The philosophy behind this, which science does back, is we can only hold one thought
or we can only pay attention to one thing at a time.
And the root of anxiety is from switching between different thoughts and different sensations.
So the key of vipassana is really focusing your mind to just feel or perceive one thing
and keep your attention focused.
It's very difficult.
I was able to somewhat do it by the end of day two.
Day three is when things get a little bit weird.
And it's hard for science to even test for what happens on day three and day four onwards.
But day three is when you start doing internal body scans.
So day three, you start with, you know, focus on something you feel on your head and then
you move down to your eyes and then your nose and then your lips and then your neck and
all the way down to your toes.
And that's essentially a classical body scan.
You start noticing sensations.
And as soon as you notice sensation at one level, you just keep going down.
And again, you will get distracted.
You might say a sensation is stronger on your head, but you are noticing it in your sensation
on your chest right now.
You just have to tell yourself, I'm not noticing a sensation on my head.
I'm noticing a sensation on my chest and just bring your attention and your focus back to
the task at hand.
And you know, you will get a lot of external thoughts because you're not really used to
sitting in silence, you're used to distracting yourself whenever you have a negative thought.
And then I'm a person and there's no distractions.
It's just you.
So you have to kind of sit with a thought and ignore it and essentially say, I'm, and
maybe ignoring it is not the right word.
You're essentially telling the thought, I'm not thinking about that right now.
I'm focusing on my breath or I'm focusing on the sensation I can feel.
The fourth day you get into towards the end of the third day, this kind of begins as internal
body scans.
And what the teacher says is, you know, see if you can follow your breath in through your
nose, through your, you know, going over your trachea, your bronchus, your bronchioles,
and your alveoli.
And this is where things get weird.
So because I have a medical background, I felt like I could feel this and I know I,
you know, it doesn't seem possible.
I should be able to, but feel the gas exchange into the blood in my, in my alveolar membrane.
And then see if you can follow your blood.
Focus on your blood flowing into your heart, you know, into your left ventricle, out the
aorta, and going into your subclavian artery.
And the more medical terminology you know, and the more science, you know, and an extent
you can, and the human anatomy, you can almost convince yourself that you're, you're, you're
feeling these, these sensations and you can follow your breath or you're near on firing.
And at this point, science essentially goes out the window, but I was fairly convinced
I was feeling these things.
Then this a focus on your digestive tract or the peristalsis.
I believe what he said is just focus on your, the food moving.
Once you get into body scans, you start getting these waves go over.
It's a very powerful feeling, mostly in your solar plexus or around your abdomen is what
I was feeling.
And I think others have described the same as you start feeling this very, very powerful
waves, like some things almost trying to escape you.
And I kept happening over and over in body scans.
And at times I had to take a break because the feeling was so powerful.
You are allowed to walk for exercise, but you can make eye contact.
You have to look down and you have to walk very slow.
Where I did my vipassana in Montabella and Quebec, there's a nice path and gardens in
a forest.
So it's a beautiful walk.
And you can get into walking meditation slowly as well.
By the fourth day, I was starting to realize the cut like feel of vipassana and others
have commented on this as well.
You know, you have everyone, especially when you're walking outside, everyone's walking
very slowly, being very mindful because you're not allowed to run.
You can't walk fast.
And this dong or this big bell would ring and everyone would slowly turn and head to
the meditation hall.
The vibe was very much like a cult.
And it did get to me on the fifth day.
The fifth day when I woke up, I remember looking at the trees and I thought I could see every
individual molecule or atom in the leaves.
The world didn't seem separated and I didn't seem separated from the world.
It felt like we were one entity and there is no distinction between myself, a rock, a
tree, the air, the building.
Everything was meaningless but also very beautiful at the same time.
It's difficult for me to describe that feeling, but it was a very powerful feeling.
I did leave vipassana on the fifth day and I'm not sure if I kind of regretted not staying.
But it was difficult but by the fifth day it does get easier.
And the reason I left is I have a very anti-authority, almost anarchist personality in some way,
especially in the way I think.
And the cult-like feeling, just like I just couldn't take it anymore, I couldn't handle
that I'm in this place where everything feels like a cult.
And that's why I chose to leave on day five.
They do try and convince you to not leave.
I did speak to the teacher but at the end of the day I think I had made up my mind.
I haven't done another one since but I do plan to in the future and this time I do plan
to stick the whole ten days.