Reflections from 60 days of Serious Meditation
7 key lessons that emerged from the longest meditation retreat I've done in my life
I started my Vipassana meditation journey in the summer of 2012. After the first silent 10-day retreat I noticed my mind was lighter, so I kept going back a few times a year. In 2018 I sat my first 20-day retreat, in 2019 I sat my first 30-day, and in 2022 my first 45-day retreat.
All the while I experienced the gradual development one does as they walk the path and dig deeper into the truth of impermanence. Less reaction, more awareness, and more peace were new staples in my life directly connected to thousands of hours of Vipassana training.
Impermanence is pervasive in the universe but not well understood and often rejected by the ego. Many treat change as an enemy but when you face its truth within the framework of your body, it opens the door to liberational wisdom. The truth of change helps you see why dissatisfaction and stress are so common in the human experience and how insubstantial the self and ego are.
I sat the silent 60-day Vipassana retreat in India, at the long course center in Kutch. I was truly impressed by how supportive the environment was there. I got to sit the retreat with my wife and a bunch of serious Vipassana meditator friends also joined. I knew the retreat was going to be a deep one, but it turned out to be much deeper than anticipated. Many of us felt like it was a life-changing retreat.
The following are 7 key lessons that emerged from the 60 days of serious meditation:
1. All thoughts are empty until you give them value. The mind has an excellent capacity to create stories that are based in half-truths or are just simply delusions with the aim to feed your agitation. Many thoughts are the noise of reactions. Thoughts are so flimsy that they should never be automatically considered true. Not grabbing on to any thoughts, especially during deep meditation supports pure observation so that ignorance can melt away.
2. Stress comes from attachment. The things you crave and the things you hate are both forms of attachment. Clinging makes the mind inflexible and fills it with tension. If you look at reality objectively, you will see that how much the mind struggles is directly related to how much you refuse to let go. Teaching yourself how to let go is hard because it moves against the direction that the ego wants you to go in. Even though it’s challenging, letting go is needed if you want to pursue healing and liberation.
3. Time is a factor of ego. As your ego decreases, the stress of time will decrease as well. Time is based on perception. In moments of peace and wisdom, time can move incredibly quickly. Hours can feel like a few minutes. In moments of agitation, time can feel like it’s moving painfully slow. Time is less of a worry when you can more so live in the present moment, instead of having your mind swimming in the past or pondering the future. Only in the present moment can you find the peace of timelessness.
4. Whenever a thought arises, it will simultaneously create sensations on the body. Sometimes we think we get attached to our thoughts, but what we are actually craving or fighting is how the thoughts make us feel in the body. Anger, passion, fear, and all emotions arise with sensations on the body. Challenging memories and thoughts are not the real problem, what you don’t like is how they make you feel.
5. Wise Friendship is everything. Surrounding yourself with good people who have aspirations similar to yours can propel you in the right direction much more quickly. If you want to build virtue, spend more time with the virtuous. Having the type of friendships that help you build good qualities is essentially a form of protection that stops the past from dragging you back in and supports you in opening the door to a new and better life.
6. The body and mind are composed of change. When you directly feel that the body is solely composed of moving atoms that are interacting with each other at incredible speeds, you start to see that ego and the sense of self are not fundamentally real. This wisdom helps you have flexibility in daily life. You should let yourself change, because you are change. Staying the same or going back to who you were is never the goal. What will most support your joy is letting yourself grow and evolve.
7. After healing, there is liberation. Many enter Vipassana meditation to build the qualities of compassion, awareness, and non-reaction so that they can feel more peace of mind. As you walk the path, it becomes clear that healing is an early step and what comes after is embracing the journey of total liberation from all self-created stress and suffering. We live in a special time in human history where liberational wisdom is available, it’s a great time to free yourself.
You can learn more about Vipassana through Dhamma.org, there are meditation centers all over the world that teach the same technique for free.
Special Sale for My Two Latest Books
My book about relationships called How to Love Better is 49% off the original price on Amazon and its available in bookstores.
My book of poetry and short quotes called The Way Forward is 46% off the original price on Amazon and its available in bookstores.
Silence … 60 days…. easy to read that is a long time
so is this a craving I’m experiencing to get on another retreat, or….