My Vipassana (10 day silent meditation) experience and thoughts on reality
In this episode, I share a deeply personal account of attending a 10-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat. Before diving into the experience itself, I explore the concept of subjective versus objective reality and discuss how our limited senses shape our perception. I then detail the rigorous schedule and strict rules of the retreat, the specific meditation techniques I was taught (focusing on breath and body sensations), and the intense emotional and psychological experiences I went through, including vivid dreams and confronting my insecurities. I describe perceiving a powerful sense of interconnectedness but ultimately chose to leave the retreat on day 5 because the atmosphere felt "cult-like." Despite leaving early, I explain my intention to attend another Vipassana course in the future and complete the full 10 days.
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My Vipassana experience changed my thoughts and my views on reality.
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Before we get into it, I think it's important for you guys to know that I believe in science,
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I believe in experimentation.
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I believe that experiences that are unique to myself are likely a glitch in my perception
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of reality.
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That being said, thankfully, science has somewhat proven that our local reality and our subjective
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reality is a fraction of objective reality.
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There's a couple of ways we can prove this with some thought experiments.
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The first is just recognizing that our senses are limited.
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And what I mean by this is we can only see a small fraction of wavelength of light.
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We can only hear a small fraction of all frequencies.
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What this implies is there is more to our local reality than our senses can perceive.
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And we can see this when as we age, we can't hear certain frequencies and they're no longer
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a part of our reality.
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Now we do have access to some of these other local patterns through technology and such
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as X-ray vision and infrared and other modalities like that.
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The second thought experiment is a little bit harder to grasp, I would say.
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We know that we only have five senses, but there are other organisms that have perhaps
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more such as certain birds have a sense of direction.
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They always know where north is.
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And maybe we don't have this sense of direction.
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To extrapolate from this line of thinking, there may be other senses that we don't have
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access to and we don't even know what they are, such as a sense of time would be a good
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example.
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Another way to think about this, if someone was born without the ability to feel touch
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or feel vibration or hear or to smell, it's hard to describe to them what smell is.
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It's like if they've never smelled anything before.
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Now without getting too medical, there are different pathways in our brain which are
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responsible for our senses.
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So usually when we say someone is born without sight, they still have a functioning occipital
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lobe.
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There is something happening at the periphery so they can still dream.
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But if someone had no vision at all and their visual cortex was in functioning, that would
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be a different story.
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So we can realize that our local reality and our reality that we perceive is very different
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than an objective reality than the true reality.
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I say this because in vipassana, I was sometimes confused as to what was my local reality and
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what was true reality.
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And so vipassana is a silent meditation.
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The first time you go it has to be for 10 days and you're meditating about 10 to 12 hours
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a day.
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You wake up at 4 in the morning, you meditate for 2 and a half hours, you have breakfast
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at 6.30 until about 7.30 and you meditate again for 3 hours.
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You have lunch and then you meditate again for 3 or 4 hours in a light dinner.
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You're not allowed to talk.
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There is no technology allowed.
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You have to leave everything behind.
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You're not allowed to sing, you're not allowed to dance, you're not allowed to make eye contact
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with others.
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This purpose for me is to completely know yourself in silence without any external distractions.
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It's very difficult and I think that's something you should know if you are going to one.
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So the first day they teach you breath work or how to meditate by focusing on the breath.
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And my teacher who was a retired family physician, which is interesting as I'm a family physician
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myself, he said when you take a, when you breathe in, notice the air hitting your nostrils.
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Notice how the air is cool when it hits your nostrils.
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And when you breathe out, notice the air hitting the top of your lips or your mustache if you
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have one as I do.
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I notice how the air is warmer.
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Focus on the coolness of the air as it goes in your nostrils and the warmth of the air
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as it hits your upper lip or your mustache.
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If thoughts appear, if your mind gets distracted, do not react to that.
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Just bring your focus back to the inhalation and the coolness and the exhalation and the
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warmness.
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And the key distinction here is to not to try and control your breath, just focus on
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the coolness and the warmth.
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So we do that for 10 hours on the first day.
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The first night's sleep and others who have spoken to have resonated similar experiences.
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You have lucid vivid dreams about your nightmares.
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And personally, a lot of my identity is somewhat coupled with my intelligence and the success
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I've achieved.
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So a lot of my dreams were about losing my license, failing medical school and failing
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school in general.
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The second part of the vivid dreams I had, and this is very distressing, and most people,
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including me, I cried a lot when I was with Vasano, was about my body image issues.
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So I've struggled with my weight, I've struggled with body image most of my life, but I've
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married way up.
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My wife was way out of my league.
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And a lot of the issues, a lot of the dreams were about her cheating on me or realizing
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that I'm not good enough.
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And it was more from a physical standpoint, which is where my insecurities lay to, and
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still to this extent, to today, lay a little bit.
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The second day you wake up and you get into focusing on different sensations that your
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body experiences.
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So the way of a person is structured is there is a teacher there.
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You're not allowed to talk at all except you can talk to the teacher for five minutes a
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day if you'd like to.
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But beyond that, it's complete silence.
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And as I said before, you're not allowed to run.
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There's no exercising, there's no writing, there's no reading.
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You can bring any religious artifacts.
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It's just you, your clothes, and that's it.
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You're not even a luxury laundry.
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You're supposed to bring the amount of clothes you're going to use.
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And very modest clothes, so shoulders covered, knees covered, things like that.
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And again, the focus is to be completely internal, to completely essentially not think of your
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body as your body as just a body, that your soul, your mind, your spirit, or whatever
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you call it resides in.
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So the second day you start body scans slowly and essentially how you're taught the second
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day is try and focus on the strongest sensation you're feeling right now, the strongest physical
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sensation.
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So I'm bald, so oftentimes for me it was the wind or the breeze.
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We are inside but there's fans going on my head.
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And then try and notice something that's more subtle.
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And maybe it's an edge on my eyebrow, which is what I'm feeling right now, or an edge
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on my thigh.
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And slowly you try and focus on the most subtle sensation and ignore every other sensation.
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The philosophy behind this, which science does back, is we can only hold one thought
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or we can only pay attention to one thing at a time.
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And the root of anxiety is from switching between different thoughts and different sensations.
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So the key of vipassana is really focusing your mind to just feel or perceive one thing
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and keep your attention focused.
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It's very difficult.
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I was able to somewhat do it by the end of day two.
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Day three is when things get a little bit weird.
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And it's hard for science to even test for what happens on day three and day four onwards.
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But day three is when you start doing internal body scans.
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So day three, you start with, you know, focus on something you feel on your head and then
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you move down to your eyes and then your nose and then your lips and then your neck and
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all the way down to your toes.
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And that's essentially a classical body scan.
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You start noticing sensations.
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And as soon as you notice sensation at one level, you just keep going down.
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And again, you will get distracted.
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You might say a sensation is stronger on your head, but you are noticing it in your sensation
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on your chest right now.
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You just have to tell yourself, I'm not noticing a sensation on my head.
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I'm noticing a sensation on my chest and just bring your attention and your focus back to
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the task at hand.
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And you know, you will get a lot of external thoughts because you're not really used to
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sitting in silence, you're used to distracting yourself whenever you have a negative thought.
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And then I'm a person and there's no distractions.
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It's just you.
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So you have to kind of sit with a thought and ignore it and essentially say, I'm, and
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maybe ignoring it is not the right word.
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You're essentially telling the thought, I'm not thinking about that right now.
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I'm focusing on my breath or I'm focusing on the sensation I can feel.
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The fourth day you get into towards the end of the third day, this kind of begins as internal
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body scans.
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And what the teacher says is, you know, see if you can follow your breath in through your
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nose, through your, you know, going over your trachea, your bronchus, your bronchioles,
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and your alveoli.
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And this is where things get weird.
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So because I have a medical background, I felt like I could feel this and I know I,
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you know, it doesn't seem possible.
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I should be able to, but feel the gas exchange into the blood in my, in my alveolar membrane.
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And then see if you can follow your blood.
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Focus on your blood flowing into your heart, you know, into your left ventricle, out the
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aorta, and going into your subclavian artery.
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And the more medical terminology you know, and the more science, you know, and an extent
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you can, and the human anatomy, you can almost convince yourself that you're, you're, you're
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feeling these, these sensations and you can follow your breath or you're near on firing.
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And at this point, science essentially goes out the window, but I was fairly convinced
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I was feeling these things.
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Then this a focus on your digestive tract or the peristalsis.
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I believe what he said is just focus on your, the food moving.
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Once you get into body scans, you start getting these waves go over.
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It's a very powerful feeling, mostly in your solar plexus or around your abdomen is what
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I was feeling.
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And I think others have described the same as you start feeling this very, very powerful
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waves, like some things almost trying to escape you.
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And I kept happening over and over in body scans.
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And at times I had to take a break because the feeling was so powerful.
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You are allowed to walk for exercise, but you can make eye contact.
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You have to look down and you have to walk very slow.
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Where I did my vipassana in Montabella and Quebec, there's a nice path and gardens in
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a forest.
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So it's a beautiful walk.
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And you can get into walking meditation slowly as well.
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By the fourth day, I was starting to realize the cut like feel of vipassana and others
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have commented on this as well.
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You know, you have everyone, especially when you're walking outside, everyone's walking
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very slowly, being very mindful because you're not allowed to run.
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You can't walk fast.
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And this dong or this big bell would ring and everyone would slowly turn and head to
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the meditation hall.
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The vibe was very much like a cult.
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And it did get to me on the fifth day.
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The fifth day when I woke up, I remember looking at the trees and I thought I could see every
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individual molecule or atom in the leaves.
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The world didn't seem separated and I didn't seem separated from the world.
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It felt like we were one entity and there is no distinction between myself, a rock, a
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tree, the air, the building.
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Everything was meaningless but also very beautiful at the same time.
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It's difficult for me to describe that feeling, but it was a very powerful feeling.
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I did leave vipassana on the fifth day and I'm not sure if I kind of regretted not staying.
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But it was difficult but by the fifth day it does get easier.
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And the reason I left is I have a very anti-authority, almost anarchist personality in some way,
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especially in the way I think.
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And the cult-like feeling, just like I just couldn't take it anymore, I couldn't handle
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that I'm in this place where everything feels like a cult.
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And that's why I chose to leave on day five.
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They do try and convince you to not leave.
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I did speak to the teacher but at the end of the day I think I had made up my mind.
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I haven't done another one since but I do plan to in the future and this time I do plan
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to stick the whole ten days.
