Vipassana

Day one:
Day two: Time to run
Day three:
Day four: So much energy! How to sit still? How to concentrate?!
Day five: Pain is gone. Where? Who cares!
Day six:

Day seven:

Day eight: What has happened? Where has my concentration gone?

Day nine:

Day ten: GOoooonggggg! The serious meditation was over. The time to heal had arrived. The morning session...

The teachers left and the old students soon followed. Slowly, the new students also left the room and as I sat I begun to hear voices in the dining hall. A general hubbub was beginning. I sat a while longer observing the guy two seats in front of me. He also seemed hesitant to move. Goenka had said the course would complete at 8 and I had wrongly assumed he meant that night. We waited and soon myself and one other girl were all that remained. I decided to make a move and see what was going on. Had it really finished? It suddenly seemed so short.

On entering the dining hall I quickly took in the situation and it was all too clear communication was once more allowed. Only it was not what I was after. I wandered over to grab a drink and met Jo and Mischa. They smiled and said how I would need to remember how to talk. I made some non affirmative grunt, felt bad and quickly said, "No, it is all just so sudden". I then took tail and ran.

Outside. Into the open. People seemed to be pairing up. One other student also wandered alone. I moved to sit in the sun. To think? And so I sat for the next hour perhaps. On the verge of tears throughout. One of the servers came to say hello and I appreciated that. He was one who I had noticed always seemed to help out of true wanting. Never looked to be in a rush or that he had the want of being somewhere else, doing something else.

Why did I want to cry or feel like I could? I don´t honestly know. Not yet. Tears would come to my eyes. I think perhaps I was overwhelmed. And everyone else seemed so happy. Why did I not share their joy? Had I not managed the same during the course? And yet a part of me knew I had managed so much. Perhaps it was a fear this change would once more be lost to me? I had been here before and knew how hard it would be to keep it up in the real world.

And so I sat. Alone.

Soon the gong rung for breakfast and I followed. I spoke during breakfast, regretted it soon after - again, not truly sure why but was probably still trying to get my own mind sorted out - and then I retreated to my room to sit alone and think some more.

Talking tires you out.

Day eleven: Awoken at 4 once more knowing it was the last time not by choice. The two hours meditation had changed to a 45 minute session with an hours discourse afterwards. Here Goenka explained how to continue the practice in everyday life and emphasised how important it was to continue to practice mediation. - Was this one reason I lost the results from Tushita? - Two one hour sessions would be required each day. One morning, one evening. And throughout the day, continue to practice compassion, spend time observing sensations and meditate some more if you find opportunity.

At 8am the discourse was concluded.

I still felt a little offset when we left the course. I still had tears near the surface. I still felt sadder than when I had arrived.

Then in the tram when we had reached Karlsruhe, no, earlier. In one of the cars with one of the lifts. I cannot remember which. Only that I suddenly found I was full of happiness. More so than I had reason to be. And as the night progressed, so did the feeling. I soon caught myself wanting to laugh each time my eyes caught anothers. I would watch as wonder replaced the fear that first entered their eyes as they realised my smile was sincere and not judging. They would soon smile themselves and perhaps they wondered why?

The feeling Goenka had spoken of had arrived. I think also that I did not the almost artificial feeling, the over emphasis, the exageration of the happiness some others from the course were almost crying out that they felt. Perhaps it was just slower for me to come to terms with. Or perhaps I just needed the sharing with Jo, the talking once more to get the thoughts out, to get some help in deciphering them.

Whatever the reason, it does not, did not and I think will not, ever truly matter. I am happy. This is where it begins to count.

Visiting Lucy...

It began with a cat.

Perfect love, perfect acceptance.

It ended alone. Crawling between realities. Hoping, that in exhaustion, I would crumple finally back into the beginning.

________________________________________________________________________________

It truly is a trip. A trip like no other. Or actually, a little like mushrooms. But not a tourist trip or a world trip like the one I am on now. It is a mind trip. A trip to new worlds completely.

I took half a tab. An hour passed and my patience ran out and my confidence grew. I wasn´t freaking or hardly even feeling it.

So I took the other half.

I wanted it good. Not just good good, I wanted the trip to be really good..

When it hit, looking back, I see my usual arrogance and impatience in action...

Fighting against nothing. Still I lost. Clawing my way back to reality. But which reality? More than one reality? 12 dimensional. Woah! Gone again. Lost as laughter overtook my life.

Lying back, laughing. Hysterical. Tears streaming down my face, mouth not able to close. Then BAM! “Woah!” and I was ´back´. I would try to stay. For just a moment. To tell Sam and Jo... something? Something important!?

Something important I must say. Then the laughter would come. I would see it approaching and this is what would make it come. My acknowledgement would speed it up. I would try to ignore it but my subconcious would focus on it and it would fly. I´d know that what I had to say would not, could not, be said. And if I could say this one thing. This one single thing then all would be right in the world. All would be happy.

“So close”, “I know”

Grabbing my sleeping bag to help hold me up. Help fight the nothing that seemed determined to pull me, push me, wrestle me, back to where I had come from. I´d try to ground myself. On what? What was permenant? “Focus on the stove” Sam suggested. Mahahah, like that is permenant! Nothing is permenant. Nothing! Realisation would hit. Then I would begin to fall. I would fight it. Fight is so hard. Then I´d remember I´d been here before. Would be here again in the future. Why fight it? In 3 seconds I´d be in a different world/reality anyway. And so I would let go.

Falling. Drifting. Laughing.

Am I laughing or crying? Living or dying?

So many realities. When to stop in one? How to stop in one? Which one to stop in?

Each deep thought would fling me far off to somewhere new. As Sam said, it was like I was a really old computer being asked to carry out calculations too advanced for my system. I would overload. Lose touch and be gone from the world until... until I was back?

Jo recorded me. Caught him out. Dropped me to a mellow brown level where talk was heavy. Hard to get out. Every thing was dark. Earth colours. Wet earth.

The lights. The dome. The lizards each white line of stiching became. Long white fast lizards. The patches of mould that danced. The fabric that pulsed.

The beat in the background. A rythym. A message. It was there for all to hear. Everywhere. I just had to take the time to look.

Where am I running to? Is acid running or the first time I bother to stop? Stay in the shallows?

Blue spots everywhere. Blue light, streaks. Coming out, shooting out from the purple ganja plant. Snapping a piece of to snap on occasion kept me sane. The light from the moon. Waves coming out in patterns. Like the scout symbol but flowing out in the millions.

Sam and Jo ask me to decribe what is going on. How? How to share? How to describe Heaven? How to describe Hell? So many emotions would pass through me. Every emotion ever felt would pass through me in seconds. Three secondas that would leave me exhausted like hours had passed. Am I crying or laughing? I describe 1mm of an infinite facade. The corner of one small tile in the endless mosaic of life.

Maybe to write it?

Me: So much effort for such a little thing.

Jo: What are you doing?

Sam: He´s trying to write

Jo: Don´t write there, it´s already written on

Me: Stop reading what I am writing!

Jo: I can´t read it from here!

Me: Don´t read what I´m writing! (Laughing all the while)

Jo: I can´t even see it!

Me: I can see you reading it!

Jo: Oh my god (In exasperation)

Ate some choc. Too big. Spat it out. Size of a pea became the size of a watermelon in my mouth.

Tea that lasts forever. I had to tip it out. Salty digestive - also too big!

Watched my hands. And then Bham! Gone again. Watching hands that take forever to catch up. I´d wave them in front of my face and it was like watching hands pass over a shadow. Like looking at them through a wall made of horizontal slates of wood. The hands would pass behind them so you´d only see them at times. Then I could see all the bones within. I could make 20, no 30, of my hands appear in this form in front of me, slowly chasing the final product to combine once more. And I would tell myself to just be normal. Make my hands normal! Nope. Doesn´t matter. This is how I see my hands. I cannot slow it. Only wish the others were here to see it all too.

Then the acid hit. The colours, the shapes, the patterns, the action.

Crying or laughing?

Then the acid hit.

Crying or laughing?

There are two zones. Funky colours and lights zone. Or funky brain zone.

Playing in the shallows or diving into the deep end.

I´d snap out. Tell the others I didn´t know if I would recommend or not. Visiting the worlds I was in. The things I was seeing. The thoughts I was having.

Hell yes I would recommend it! It´s so good! And then I would cry...

The moment I stop speaking I can hear the beginning of what I said.

The only way to escape is for everything around to be lost. Only through becoming lost could I ever be found.

Do I choose to return from this ´crazy´? Is not to be given the choice in the first place crazy?

If you are everywhere and nowhere, are you somewhere?

Which reality? Who`s reality?

What if you corrupt your own reality?

If you cannot remember being sober. If you cannot remember being sane. How can you ever return? Or know that you have returned once you arrive? You could pass it by in your ignorance and keep on searching for all eternity.

When noone speaks reality can be found. But which? Groundhog day. Knowing the life thought will pass. Then not knowing if it would ever end? Or did it just begin? If I stop talking I will think. Then I will have to enter reality. But what is reality? To talk is to avoid. And maybe I don´t want to re-enter? In fact, I remember saying at one stage how I did not want to ´wake up´ to reality again.

How many times will I go here?

Where is reality?

You call this falling asleep to a dream. I call this awakening to reality.

Switch the concepts around.

Forever

Wherever

Always for me a small white speck back there. At the end of infinity. Keeping me from joining the crazies. To snap out of it and then sink back again. Still knowing the other state exists but knowing I could not return by choice. Phycotic? I knew that it was all in my mind. Will always all be in my mind. I am creating it. No one else may enter. No one else can control. (Later thought – hypnosis. Does it enter this rhealm?).

When the world began to spin and reality begun to be flung far from reach. As I sat up with a “Woah!” and attempted to grab on to this reality. As I watched it exist, felt it exist and then knew it to be sliding away, I also realised some people just never return. They slide on forever. Lost to us.

Jo´s sleeping was a grounding point. That he slept and had been awake showed time had passed. Showed there was a time existance somewhere. Whether I would ever return was now the question.

Towards the end of the night, as the others drifted off to sleep, I found friendship in the pen. I began to try and record the thoughts going through my mind. Try before the acid would come to take me back to crazy world.

Scribblings keep the mind sane. Show evidence of a past. Potential for a future.

The existance of these scribblings again allowed me to know that on some level time was passing.

And always the important message I want to, have to, get across to the others. To say the one concept. And yet to know it is lost. The fight, lost before it has even begun. It ended with me finally sinking back. Letting the crazy win. “The crazy always wins” Sam said. And as I slipped out of it for the last time, I whispered, or more gasped out, that this time the message would have to remain unsaid. It was for someone else to tell perhaps. Not mine this time. And then crazy.

To laugh or to cry? Is there a difference?

We all need better seats to watch the man who is waiting for the start of the show of life to begin. He sits, seat bound, arms crossed, in wait for the beginning of the creation of a reality that will never be. We run in mobs to grab seats in his arms, his legs, his head, his everywhere. We join him in staring out of skinless windows at the show about to begin. We wait to watch him. He waits to watch us.

Goodbye... again

Last night in Beneficio. Again. Winds are still whipping up an absolute storm too. Roofs being lost, trees coming down and a sky murky with dust.

Tomorrow I will head off early morning with Jo by bus to Granada. From there it is just over 500kms to Valencia hitching. Then my plane is the next day at 1pm. Bit late to organise a couch surfer so a night at the airport it could be (o:

All going well, my next entry will be from the land of chocolate and cheese...

Beneficio once more

Booked my flight to Switzerland for the 13th. I fly into Basel at 3pm and there I will stay with a CS'er Florian. A city ambassador, he sounds really nice. Then two days later i will begin Vipassana. No talking for 10 days again. I really enjoyed it last time and figure that if this time it is only half as good, I will still love it immensely!

bus home

camels

sahara