I woke up on Day 6 with a lot of sadness about BE leaving. It turns out I haven't made that much progress with the whole "letting go of attachments" things as I had thought. Which sucks. That morning after breakfast, VW (the quirky, German volunteer organizer) gave a talk to the group and made a remark about how he had to kick one of the girls out for talking. Huh. Maybe she didn't decide to leave after all. Somehow this makes me feel a little... less sad about it. On the guys' side, everyone has been so respectful of the rules and really good about not breaking the silence. Apparently, that hasn't been the case on the womens' side because this isn't the first time VW has made mention of issues in the womens' dorm.
Around day 7 after lunch while I was washing my dishes, I accidentally dropped my plate into the water and splashed the guy next to me in the face. I felt so bad about it, and I couldn't even say sorry. He was already clearly having a rough time here and he just had this look of "...ugh, this too?" on his face. He kind of looks like the main guy from the show The Shield, but a little bit stockier, so picture that guy making that face and that's what I was seeing. Oh well. Later that afternoon we were in the hot springs together, just the two of us, and I'm pretty sure he peed in it right as he got out, so... yea. As it turns out, the next day he ended up leaving the retreat. I like to think that if anything, I helped him reach a decision he was going to make anyway.
Antsy guy from our morning Tai Chi sessions is getting antsier by the day. Whereas before I found him to be incredibly distraction, disrespectful, and annoying, I've now come to feel a lot of sympathy for him. Can you imagine how difficult this whole experience must be for him? Eight days later, he still can't sit still for a second. He must be struggling so much right now. As an aside, one time I was walking through the streets of San Francisco with my friend KC (the same friend who had done this retreat a few years ago) and we passed a homeless person on the street, who was very clearly on a lot of drugs. As we passed, the person either said some inaudible phrase or just made some really awful noise and I remember not really giving it much more thought until my friend KC remarked, "that person must be in so much pain." Just those few words were such a reality check. This wasn't just some homeless person like the many others we had surely passed already on our walk. This was a person. Period. A living, breathing, thinking, feeling human being. Anyway, I digress. I really, truly want antsy guy to make it through the 10 days, he's fought so hard for so long already.
On a completely unrelated side note, the night sky here is beautiful and has a lot of stars to see. Having said that, to be honest, I was expecting to see more. When I was a kid, I visited Guyana and remember the sky being flooded with stars. I've never seen anything like that since. I chalked that up to the fact that Guyana wasn't very developed, so there wasn't much light pollution (or any pollution for that matter) to get in the way. So I was expecting the same thing from this random place in the middle of nowhere Thailand, but I guess not.
A wonderful thing happened around day 7 or 8: my back stopped hurting. I guess once you sit upright for long enough, you build up much stronger back muscles. It made it a LOT easier to concentrate and to sit still for a much longer period of time when my back wasn't hurting. It's really hard to keep your concentration if you are shifting positions every three minutes but now I can go for a good half an hour in the same position with no problem at all.
I was also able to repeat that rolling sensation on my chest a few times over the course of days 6-8. But another crazy thing started happening too. During his first talk way back on Day 1 or 2, VW mentioned a whole bunch of benefits of meditation, most of which I wrote off as total BS. Things like curing cancer and diabetes and a whole host of other medical ailments. Cancer? Seriously? You're telling me that I can just think my way into getting rid of those pesky genetic mutations causing uncontrolled cellular replication? Right. BUT, one thing happened that totally blew my mind. One time after I was able to maintain my focus for a good 15 or 20 minutes, I opened my eyes and I kid you not, I started seeing more clearly. Not in the figurative "the answer is right in front of me!" sense, but in the physical "I can literally see the world more sharply" sense. As if I had just put on a new contacts prescription for the first time and hadn't realized how fuzzy things had been until now. The scientist in me wants to be completely skeptical and can think of a million other reasons as to why this might have happened. Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe I was just more aware of my surroundings because I more mentally focused. Maybe my eyes had time to rest so my eye muscles weren't tired and were able to focus better. I can't say exactly what the cause was but regardless... I saw more clearly. It only lasted for a few seconds before things went back to normal, but man, it's awesome when your body can surprise you in a good way. And I was able to repeat it a few times over days 6-8. And it wasn't just because I was closing my eyes for a while, because other times when I've kept my eyes closed but haven't been able to focus, there wasn't an improvement in my vision. In fact, things are usually blurrier when I first open my eyes when that happens. Just... crazy. These positive externalities are an interesting and pleasant side effect, but the real joy is that they seem to be physical manifestations of what is happening in my head, namely that I'm actually making some progress on clearing my mind. Which is awesome.
STAY TUNED for the next installment!
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