Having arrived in Pomona after a 3- hours-drive by train my stuff was picked up and brought to the meditation centre. I had to walk there, but that wasn’t bad, because the other students were with me, and so I had the possibility to talk to them before the course started. There were very different types of people taking this course, but I don’t want to describe them or tell their names.
before
The first days we started to prepare ourselves for the proper technique of Vipassana meditation. That means, you have to sharpen your mind by focussing one small special part of the body. On the first day I was woken up at 4:30 . They were striking a gong. So I started my first day being quite tired. First exercise was to sit straight for two hours. Horrible, just horrible. I thought I was going to die. Minutes felt like hours and hours like days. In the end I managed it. The worst thing about it was to stand up to this enormous pain in the back. It hurts like hell und you just want to get out of there. So the first days were real torture and I was always looking forward to the very good meals which were provided in the morning and for lunch. Of course, vegetarian food ( to be honest I missed the meat ) 😛 After endured torture of three days (32 hours pure meditation) our minds were sharp enough to learn the proper technique. We started to observe all the different sensations from the body sent to the surface of all parts of the body. Dribblings, numbness, pain, immense pain and more pain. 🙂 It was a really good feeling to know, that your mind has got very sharp and could feel all the sensations throughout the body. So I kept on feeling and observing the immense pain which was raising in my knees during the following days. At first I tried to ignore it, I wanted to stand up to it, and forced myself to keep on sitting straight without moving. But I damaged my body and got a bursa inflammation (bursitis=Schleimbeutelentzündung) in my right knee after the fifth day. That day I was sitting there, with this immense pain and just observing it for one hour like the teacher said. It felt like my knee was going to break . :0 After I had managed this I was really proud of myself and went to my bunk (for ten days I shared a small room with an Australian guy. I wasn’t allowed to take photos. Sorry for that guys). Back in my bunk I saw my swollen knee and my first thought was, of course, I have got a bursa inflammation in my knee because of sitting crosslegged for one hour without moving. Dark thoughts were running through my mind. Do I now have to cancel the course? 😮 Will I be able to continue my worldtrip at all with that knee and all that kind of different doubts. I created a lot of Sankara. :/( That’s the theory of this meditation. If you suffer or like something very much, your mind creates a Sankara of it, to get full happiness and to reach the final goal. You have to change these habit patterns of your mind and stop creating new sankara, by just observing each sensation objectively, pleasant or unpleasant, once your mind stops creating new Sankaras, the old ones will come to the surface and pass away)
I decided to talk to the management about my health problem. They were really kind and said, they will give me a chair, so that I can sit comfortable and can stretch my legs. So from the 6th day on I sat in a chair during meditation. 🙂 The effect was perfect, the pain stopped, I had a straight back and I could concentrate on the meditation again. So I increased my skills really fast and by the 8th day I was able to sleep with a woken mind. The rest of my body was sleeping (tired from 11 hours meditation). It was just fantastic and I started to crave for this feeling (could be really helpful). But that was a mistake again, because the first thing you learn by this kind of meditation is not to crave for a sensation of your body. It’s all natural and the process of changing. Everything changes. So I have never had this perfect experience again. :(That changed my will to finish this course and I had moments when I thought about giving up and leave to Brisbane. Fortunately, I didn’t and my patient mind (by exercising daily 11 hours of meditation you really get patient) was wandering to other things than doubts ( so much Sankara, such a lot of work to destroy it) :/. I have stayed for the last two days.
On the tenth day I got a ride to Brisbane from a really nice woman and her son both from New Zealand.
My lift
They dropped me off in Brisbane and I checked in at the YHA hostel for two more days. I think about taking another meditation course in another part of the world. I just have to figure out where and when. 🙂
after
The ten days of meditation were really hard (no mobile phone, no sports, noble silence), frustrating and horrible on the one hand, but, on the other hand, this course, the sorrounding (mountains, nature, animals) were just magic and awesome. I felt like being in the Garden of Eden.:) I became much more aware of the framework of the body, ( on the experimental level), of myself, and the best of all is, that I improved greatly in being patient. I can deeply recommend this course to everybody who feels unhappy and wants to change his/her life. 🙂