10 Days in Pomona

My vipassana experience

4am. Dong...dong...dong. out into the cold mountain air. brush your teeth. Splash some water on your sleepy face, trudge up the path to the hall, and settle in for the first of 7 meditation sessions of the day. Time seems to stand still as you sit, perfectly still, cross legged, aching from head to toe. Tiny tingles begin to creep up and around and its all you can do, in the perfect Noble silence, not to scream. Internally, outwardly. painstakingly, you wait. Patiently. persistently. Do not move. Do not fidget. In the darkness of your eyelids you hear the rustle of others' restlessness, and it is of some comfort. But not much. Your mind begins to wander, as the mind does, to such trivial things. What will I eat for breakfast? Stomach rumbles. No don't think about that. Its hours away. The cucabarros haven't even begun to squawk, so you know it is no where even near dawn. Patiently. Persistently. Inside, your body begins to react to the stillness, the darkness. You are aware of every moment as it ticks by. How many more ticks....Dong! dong...ahhh, relief. But wait. First, the chanting.

"Bhavatu...sabbe..mangalam."- May all Beings Be Happy.

This is a typical beginning of the days in the life of a vipassana student. 10 days. No alcohol. No drugs, not so much as a panadol for your headache or in my case, severe menstrual cramps. no ciggys. no meat. Not even dinner besides two pieces of fresh fruit of their choosing at the 5pm tea break. No talking, unless spoken to by the teachers or manager, or even eye contact with anyone. no phones, No Music, no books, no writing utensils or any other such distractions. All alone. In your own head.
Concentrate on your breathing. The sensations that occur between the nostrils, and the area just below the nostrils and above the upper lip. In, out. In, out. I can feel it. Feel my own breathe. Natural breathe. Soft, almost imperceptible, if not for the fact that there is nothing else. But breathe.

HOW did I get here? The story is such that one day walking, walking as I always did along Sunrise Beach every morning since I arrived there, I passed a young man. Our eyes met, locked. Smiled. But did not speak. Listening to music, it was easy to ignore people. In my own little world, sad little world. Walking back, our pathes crossed again. Eyes met. locked. and again, smiled. But my mouth would not move, nor my feet to get close enough for even the obligatory "hello" or "g'day". I thought to myself, "not today. I don't feel like talking. If he wants to talk to me, he'll have to chase me..." and it left my mind. Some time later, the music in my ears stopped and for whatever reason I turned around. There he was, running. After me? I stopped. And as he approached, I noticed he was quite good looking. he smiled, we smiled and he said "You walk slow. I sat down to meditate after passing you, then went for a swim and when I emerged there you were again, the first thing I saw. So I felt compelled to talk to you." He then explained. he had just been to a meditation center in the Blue Mountains. It had helped him. And when he saw me, he thought, " She needs to surrender." And so I did. I know only that his name was James. I named him James Ocean. That afternoon, I applied online to the next available 10 day course in Pomona, about 30 k's outside of Noosa. And a few weeks later, I was on my way to the center.

It was an important time. A time of reckoning. What do I DO? I had been thinking. I did not know. I truly, truly did not know. After traveling on and on, 7 months up the coast of this strange land, searching, searching. And yet, nothing, nothing was coming. No great revelations. No great understanding. Only confusion, sadness, listlessness. Where am I? What am I? oh and always the WHY and HOW, etc..etc. Seemingly endless unanswerable questions. I needed help but did not know where to go or how to find it. I was tired. of searching, looking. and then, I was found. By this strange young man, on the Sunshine coast of Australia on a cold and windy winter's day. I found a way.

During my time at the center many things happened. You notice things when you are unable to speak, unable to communicate. Every sign I saw, I read. every noise I heard, I listened. I was aware. REALLY aware, of everything. And what a struggle! when you are deprived of your own free will to do and go as you please, suddenly life gets real simple. Eat, sleep, meditate. That's IT. Oh but the food. The food was Divine! Every meal was so wholesome. I grew quite fond and accustomed to our morning porridge and stewed spiced dates (or were they prunes?) heaping huge fruit bowl of apples, oranges and banana halves, bowl of yogurt, muesli and oat bran, various breads and spreads. Concoct your own special dish of happiness. And teas! Lemongrass, peppermint, liquorice, green or black. Sometimes a pot of chai if we were lucky. Honey and milk, both soy and cow. A jar filled with linseed laxative (which I made great use of) and a landscape of a beautiful soaring mountain in the background.
Kangaroos lounged and grazed mere inches from you, almost as if you weren't even there, baby joey's peeking out of their mama's pouches if you remained quite still. Butcher birds and magpies singing for a crumb or two, or if they were really cheeky they'd just swoop in and steal a bit of your toast. For lunch, a beautiful medley of lentils, soup or a nut and seed casserole, sprouted mung beans for garnish on salads of beets and black currants, zesty and tangy with citrus notes and garnished with parsley and coriander. Tomatoes with basil and vinaigrette atop colorful greens. Heavenly food. For body and mind.

An hour of rest at noon. take rest. Take Rest. Your only time, to shower, wash or walk the short pathes through the forest surrounds, fenced in. Please stay within the center boundaries. For your own safety they say. I felt like a caged animal. Pacing. Let me out of here, I pleaded silently. And yet I stayed. I pledged to, the day I arrived, and I intended to keep my promise. Everyday I wanted to quit. And then by the end, never wanted it to end as the discourse finished and we all trudged back to our dorms to collapse in a heap of mental exhaustion. 9:30 lights out. And begin again. 4 am. Another day. Another chance to expel the demons we'd been collecting. Over time, we arrange quite a stockpile of sankaras. Reactions, mental conditioning. There was much work to be done.

Funny what solitude and confinement can do to people. I saw some women furviously cleaning, cleaning ANYTHING they could find with a speck of dirt, sweeping the pathes littered with leaves furiously only for the wind to blow them all back again. Didn't matter. Gotta do something, gotta keep busy, gotta stay out of the mind. But this was not the purpose. Me and another girl became known as the "walkers". This had become my escape since arriving in Oz and I put those short little pathes around the center to great use, making lap after lap every morning after breakfast til the bell rang again.

The men and women were separated from day one. We could see them, across the white ropes. On their side of the center. vaguely aware of their presence. But we were too busy fighting our own battles to pay them much mind. We women passed each other on the pathes, diverted our eyes as we brushed past. Each one of us in our own personal hell of silence. But even through the corner of your eye, body language revealed that we were ALL struggling. Going to bat with this or that. Our own mental conditionings to react, to avert the pain or crave the pleasant sensations we all became so used to in our daily lives.

This Will Also Change. Life is an impersonal constantly changing phenomenon. Things rise, and pass away. Rises and passes away. Remain equanimous. Objective. No reaction. Not to pain nor pleasure. This too, shall pass.

I suffered through the aches and pains my body dished out, between fleeting moments of pleasant vibrations and sensations. Feelings of elation and then pain again. One hour. Two hours. Don't move. Just sit. And observe. Don't become attached to the pleasure, don't react to the pain. Just observe. This is what a good meditator does. Detach yourself from "me" "I" "mine". say to yourself "Let me see how long this will last.." This will help you. Learn to look at life as such: the impersonal, constantly changing phenomenon.

On day 6, I lost my shit. In the hall, during one of our sits of Determination. You are not to move, not to change your posture, no matter how painful, for one hour. I was in agony. My hips and thighs burned and ached with such force, such fierce, piercing pain. The tears came and began slowly trailing down my cheeks. I wept silently, so as not to disturb anyone else in the hall. In my head, the Coldplay song "And tears streamed, down your face, and you were something I could not replace.." Later on during the discourse, Goenka stated that day 6 is the hardest day. A day many people quit. But I could not. I was determined. Stay.

So many times during that 10 days did I think of the people I love, loved, lost. New and old. daydreamed of times to come and remembered things I hadn't thought of in years. Thought of what now to do..and I realized, with less shame how much I missed "home". Missed my people. My places. And that it was ok. That perhaps, my work here, out on the other side of the universe practically from everything I know, is nearing a close. Time to go back to the place and people I love, and begin again. Be Happy.

Now back in the real world, I feel lighter in heart, mind and body (I lost 2 kilos in there). My tolerance and compassion have grown exponentially. For the first time, in a long, long time, I feel FREE. FEEL free, when I have been all along, but locked in my own mind, my own personal reactionary hell from all the times I suppressed this or didn't deal with that. We all do it, doing it all the time. And according to vipassana technique, the only way to eradicate the suffering is to experience the Truth inside the workings of your own body. If you can sit with your pain and pleasure and not react to it, amazingly, you begin to feel strong enough to apply that discipline to the rest of your life. sit with it. But Stay out of the Cage. This too, shall pass.

Onward and Upward my people. Quite literally in fact. It seems there may be work available for me at Cape Tribulation following my 2 week excursion with my folks come September. So it looks like I may not be coming right home after all..:) Until then I reside in Coolum Beach with Trombello the lion cat and Melita, my sweetie flatmate. It's good to be "home". What's that saying..Home is where the heart is. I'm glad I found mine again. I feel ready to love again. I think I might be. Yes. Happiness.