Yesterday I finished my second Vipassana at the Montebello Dhamma Suttama. Day 1 of the 10 day silent retreat was also my birthday, so I consider this experience something of a rebirthing process.
I feel stronger than I remember ever feeling. My dedication to the daily-ish 2 hour practice has really paid off. At a more experiential level, I understand that it's not about the sensations, or the peak meditative experiences, or the intellectual insights. It's about the marriage of awareness and equanimity, and through that, nurturing the identification with that joyful, equanimous wisdom that is activated when we accept the impermanence of all things.
I will write a longer essay on this particular Vipassana, this weekend while I'm in Toronto with Ben for his birthday. But the key experience I had was the recognition of how much misery is being caused by the automatic habit of self talk. I can feel this ball of craving and aversion in my throat, I can feel the connection to another ball at the level of visualization that connects the daydreams to the words. I can feel how inactive the energy centres near my ears are, as I block out the input of data from the actual world, imprisoned as I am in my narrative world.
As I toggle between the consequences of a thought stream driven mostly by a constant pulse of longing and self hating, and the rewards of quiet and stable self observation, the choice to be made is obvious. Next Vipassana that challenge will definitely be to keep noble silence with myself. To my daily practice I add the challenge of spending more time in the spacious non-narrative place, and with equanimity, building a more intuitive ease with that place. In time, making it not just a refuge, but a home.
