Well the title certainly creates a feeling that this is going to be an all round rosy post but I wouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover and I suggest neither should you…
I will concede though (SPOILER ALERT) it does have a happy ending but come on, who doesn’t like a happy ending!
Because unless you’ve been living under a rock, Positive Psychology is here and it’s making a lot of headway with research, on just how focusing on what’s right rather than on what’s wrong is the best way to take us from Misery to Happiness.
This series of blogs though is about my experience of the 10 day course in Vipassana meditation, a cathartic experience both at the time and now through my writing. I really didn’t know what to expect, sure you can read the website but I didn’t bother. The most I knew about it was what Kerwin Rae had shared and how he’d done it 7 times, that it was an intense form of meditation that they taught to Monks and it was actually more like 11 days so he’d endured a total of 77 day’s. Along with the fact that after the 10 days silence Kerwin disliked re-engaging with the other attendee’s of the course because of a perceived one up-man ship that he encountered with various stories of ‘my experience was better than you’re experience’.
The reason I went into the course with little to no expectation, other than I knew it would be a challenge was because, as I will share by the end of the series, my experience was different, as would each of yours be. That’s the point isn’t it, we’re all so different and unique in our perception of reality… Yet at the core of it I find we’re all the same. I’ve always held the belief since I was a child (god knows where it came from) that this place, our Earth held both Heaven and Hell – not that they were some other realm that happens after we die but that in our earthly life, us human’s can experience at times both of these states; or we can be born into them; or we end up there through life choices, kamma or circumstance. Never has religion been on my radar, I could never comprehend how there were so many different dogma’s all professing to be the righteous path but none demonstrating the pure essence of their teachings… but that’s a whole nother blog!
Day 4 found me initially questioning my meditation practice, although my mojo was back and the MA15+ rated scene’s continued to flow through my mind; it was with clarity that I was starting to be fully aware of my craving for love throughout my life. I wanted to pose these thoughts and questions to the teacher as I had the previous day.
Day 3’s questions though were the basic:
- Can I move my position, or should I push through the pain and maintain my posture?
- Why if universal law enables other beings to kill for food, do we humans need to be vegetarian?
At lunch though (just before we get the opportunity to speak to the teacher) I found myself pondering my life, sitting on a bench in the sun, enjoying the sounds and feel of nature and it dawned on me just how happy I was. That I didn’t want to be anywhere else right at that moment, that I was exactly where I wanted to be, learning and experiencing Dhamma. This was my ‘Heaven on Earth’ but it was more than just a Happy Place it was the happiness within me that was shining through and I couldn’t help but to cry tears of joy.
Time to choose your next adventure… The Pain Barrier or Missed the G Spot
If you’re not ready to take your next adventure now then you can always subscribe and come back later…
It's the Journey not the Destination 
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