This Body Can Feel Peace

Day six.

This body can feel peace.

So for the duration of the course,

We would split our actions.

Half the day would be spent in meditation,

Formal meditation,

And the other half would be spent sleeping,

Resting,

Eating,

And just attending to our bodily needs.

And over the time,

As the days progressed,

I was getting a deeper and deeper sense of calm.

But this was more of a surface level calm.

You know,

We couldn't talk,

We couldn't interact,

So all the general social anxieties and other sort of interpersonal things were sort of falling away.

All we had to do was be there for the meditation,

Be there for the lessons learned,

For the progress that we're making internally,

Be there for the sensations arriving and arising in the body,

Good,

Bad,

Or otherwise.

But I came to this from a place of,

And a past of,

Anxiety and depression,

And other sort of life and relational and interpersonal and mental concerns that I think everyone faces from time to time.

Where we realize,

And very quickly realize,

That at our core,

A lot of us are quite neurotic.

A lot of us have a lot of suffering,

And indeed,

The first noble truth of Buddhism is that there is suffering.

And when you spend days just watching and allowing and sort of being with your thoughts,

You start to see very quickly that your mind never stops.

It is incessant.

It's just this continual,

Perpetual voice of chattering.

During the meditation,

And after the meditation,

My mind rarely,

If ever,

Stopped.

And I'll share with you a moment of peace in this session,

But the general observation was that,

And this is going to dispel a myth of meditation,

The goal of this meditation,

The goal of Vipassana,

And the goal of a lot of meditations isn't to silence the mind,

Isn't to become blank,

Isn't to become empty of thoughts,

But rather to be equanimous,

Rather to be balanced,

Rather to be aware of the thoughts that are arising,

To not give them weight,

To not fall into them.

You know,

A thought of rise is like anxiety,

Like I shared in an earlier session,

To not get caught up in it and lost in it and trapped by it and impacted by it.

That's all well and good,

But when you sit for 10 days straight without talking,

You start to become aware that your mind is like five radio stations playing at once,

Playing memories of the past,

Memories of the things that have happened,

The thoughts,

Feelings,

Moods,

Emotionalities,

Replaying conversation,

Throwing up thought,

Throwing up feelings,

Things about the future,

Things that you're going to do,

Things that you should do,

Look at this thing in the present moment,

Look at that bug,

Look at that sky,

Just over and over incessantly,

And very quickly you get used to it.

It sort of is this background noise because as you start focusing on the sensations of the body,

The mind tries to grab you,

But it sort of starts to learn in its place,

So to speak,

And it never quite shuts up,

But it just sort of becomes a dull murmur of continued chattering in the background.

But do you know how when you're at home and the air conditioner or the heater or the fridge or whatever,

Some piece of equipment turns off for a moment,

It's on and then it turns off,

And you realize that you've actually been low-key disturbed by this constant humming and noise that you weren't even really aware of on a conscious level,

But now that it has stopped,

There's a profound feeling of silence in your house that you were otherwise missing,

But you weren't aware of that chatter and the impact of that chatter of your mind until it stopped.

Well that's sort of like the impact of the mind,

And what I wanted to share with you was a moment that arose during meditation,

Because what I've realized is that in the same way that the mind is projecting this constant chatter,

So too is the body.

Over the days we learn to feel and become aware of all the feelings arising in the body,

And the Vipassana theory suggests that the way the mind and the body interact,

Sort of the way that the mind feels and senses and sort of makes sense and triggers those thoughts,

Is due to a feeling that is arising in the body.

Now I'm sort of agnostic as to my belief of the sort of deeper end theory,

But what I am sort of sure of is that the mind was constantly chattering and the body was constantly throwing up sensations,

That was a fact.

So with the mind constantly chattering,

The body constantly chattering,

Even the subtle sensations in the body,

Even the things that were arising that weren't painful,

There was still this constant noise.

And this one time,

I think it was around day six,

Maybe day seven,

I was sitting in meditation,

Sitting in strong determination,

Getting to the sort of pointy end of the session,

This sort of 35 to 55 minutes in,

And lots of pain,

And doing what we were talking about in the previous couple of sessions,

Looking at the pain,

Trying to be equanimous about it,

Trying to find where the pain is,

Looking at the duration,

The extent,

The inner parts of it,

Where it's sort of sitting in the body,

How deep it goes,

How it extends its component paths,

All of these things,

Just mindfully observing the sensations as they're arising,

Noting my response to them,

Noting the visuals and the imagery,

All of the things that are coming up,

And then moving on to the next part of the body and being equanimous about the pain that's still arising.

I was going through this process,

You know,

We're going through the process,

All of these things happened.

And then like I said in the previous session,

How there was peace to be found within the pain,

There was this moment in which everything just stopped.

The body stopped projecting sensation,

The mind stopped with thought,

And although my eyes were closed,

It felt like I was aware of the entirety of my body and of the room and of everyone in there meditating and of the world in general.

It was this sort of profound and utter feeling of peace.

It was an experience of such,

I don't even know how to put words upon it,

It was just a release,

A joy.

And I had this distinct feeling that,

Oh my god,

This is what peace feels like,

This is what relaxation feels like,

This is what it feels like when the incessant chatter of the mind and the incessant chatter of the body stops.

It was like the fridge or the TV or the heating system that has been on the entire life,

The traffic,

Whatever it is,

Finally and for once stopped.

And I was just there,

This awareness floating in this space,

And it must have lasted 5 to 20 minutes.

I can't even tell you,

It was a decent chunk of time,

I'm guessing,

But it was amazing.

And during this time,

Two revelations started.

One was,

I was like,

Okay,

This body can feel peace,

This body is capable of peace.

Because prior to that moment,

I thought I'd felt peace,

And I had in varying instances and varying things with different ways to get to feelings of peace and relaxation,

Different types of meditation and other implementations and medications and all of these things.

But ultimately,

That was just like an analogy to or just a,

Like 1% of this feeling.

And in that moment,

I'm like,

Okay.

In the same way that I now know I can process overwhelm,

I now know that my body is capable of peace.

And I had this distinct feeling that I wanted to share this revelation with the world,

The people who follow me here and elsewhere,

The people who I interact with,

My friends,

My family,

Everyone,

I want everyone in the world to know that they are capable,

That it is possible to feel such peace,

That with profound practice,

With dedicated practice,

With vipassana,

With what we're doing here,

It's possible to feel peace.

And then a couple of other thoughts arose,

Because let's let's pause that one for a moment,

Because that is true.

And I've kept this revelation that my body can feel peace.

And it's like there's this comfort,

This knowledge,

This understanding that no matter what is I'm feeling,

No matter what is arising,

I,

Or rather this body is capable of feeling peace,

This mind can stop and there is joy to be found within.

But of course,

The practice told us to be aware of good sensations.

Is this not yet a feeling of craving that I could become addicted to?

Because there's a warning about craving of good feelings.

If I hunt this good feeling,

If I try and get it,

Then I'm now craving and you become like an addict,

Addicted to substances,

But in this case,

Addicted to trying to get your body to feel a certain way.

And when you can't,

You suffer.

And the moment that feeling arose,

I started falling out of it.

The moment the idea that this could be a craving,

Something to crave,

I fell out of it.

And of course,

Later on in later sessions,

I tried to reattain that space and I couldn't.

And I suffered through the inability to fill the craving that arose.

And then a second revelation arose.

And the second revelation was one of a lack of self-worth and in self-judgment,

Something arose from the past.

And the words were,

I don't deserve to feel such peace.

Ooh,

There's an insight.

There's an insight into the nature of my mind and the prior conditioning that I've been facing.

There is a part of me internally that feels like I don't deserve to feel such peace,

AKA that I am unworthy,

That I'm not deserving,

That I,

You know,

Due to some sort of past conditioning,

Past traumas,

Past issues,

Past whatever's,

From parents,

From religion,

From society,

From circumstance,

From whatever,

I've indoctrinated into myself that I don't deserve to feel good.

Isn't that curious?

But now that I'm aware that that feeling is deeply rooted,

I can start to combat it.

I can start to become aware of its impacts and I can start to counteract it.

So although the feeling left,

And although it didn't come back in such a profound way for the duration of the rest of my time in the Vipassana retreat,

I've come away from that session.

A couple of important things that have lasted.

This body is capable and can feel peace.

I know that to be a fact now.

And I also know to be aware of such similar feelings.

And importantly,

I've got the insight into some of my conditioning.

I know that a part of me feels unworthy,

Undeserving,

That I shouldn't or don't deserve to feel such joy,

Such peace.

And now that I'm aware of it,

Now that I know that there's this deep rooted feeling inside me,

I can start to take actions to combat it.

With a practice like this,

Just sitting and being with those feelings and thoughts that arise.

But in life in general,

To just know that it's like,

Okay,

I've got to work on my gratitude practice.

I've got to work on my internal loving kindness.

I've got to work on the words that I say to myself.

There's a lot to be said here and a lot to explore.

And I'd like you to move into a little bit of a sitting session now.

And just draw your attention back to the sensation of the breath at the nose.

And keeping your mind anchored on the breath at the nose,

I want you to just sort of become aware of the mind.

The mind will wander,

The mind will sort of throw up thoughts,

Moods,

Emotions,

Memories,

Feelings,

And other things,

Mental phenomena.

And I want you to anchor yourself in the breath,

The sensation of the breath at the nose.

And if you need to breathe a little bit harder to sort of really feel it,

Do so.

But just be aware of those mental phenomena arising.

Anchor yourself with the breath.

Don't get attached to the thoughts that come.

The analogy here could be to look at a road that has a lot of cars going back and forth,

And find a point across,

You know,

A letterbox on the other side of the road,

And just focus your attention on it.

Cars,

Aka thoughts,

Will go past.

They'll be noisy,

They'll be smelly,

They'll be fancy,

They'll be broken,

They'll be old,

They'll be new,

They'll be colourful,

There'll be motorbikes,

There'll be people walking,

There'll be all of these things crossing that road.

Your job is to just look at the mailbox and not get drawn away by anything that travels down that road.

So in this way,

I invite you to sit with the sensation of the breath at the nose,

And for one minute just be aware of the mental phenomena that is coming,

But maintain your attention of the sensation of the breath at the nose,

And just see how you go.

So,

Today we looked at the idea that the body can feel peace.

The idea that with practice,

With dedicated attention,

With equanimous awareness of the sensations in the body,

With focus,

It is possible for the mind and the body to be at peace,

To release,

And for moments of stillness to arise.

We also looked at the idea of not clinging to that craving,

To that sensation,

As well as the idea of becoming aware of the underlying conditioning that we have,

And in this case I shared the idea of self-worth that arose,

Because once you become aware of these inner conditionings,

You can take action to best address them.

And the practice we looked at was returning our focus to the sensation at the breath,

And allowing the thoughts and other mental phenomena to arise,

But not being captured by them.

Using the analogy of focusing on a letterbox across the busy road,

With the cars and other things going by,

Being aware of their passing,

But not losing ourselves in their passing.

So I encourage you to sit with any thoughts and feelings and insights that have arisen,

And take some time to explore that practice.

If you want to sit for a bit longer,

Do so.

And if you find yourself getting lost in those thoughts,

That's okay.

Gently,

Lovingly,

With a smile,

Return your focus back to the breath,

And continue for the duration of the session.

And if you have any questions,

Would like some further clarification,

Or have an insight you wish to share,

Please do so in the classroom.

There I'll be able to give you a voice response,

And you'll be able to read the questions and answers from other students.

This is an opportunity for deep learning,

Further introspection and insight,

So please don't miss out.

I look forward to seeing you in the next session.

Thank you.

This track was taken from the course,

The Path Within.

Lessons from a 10-day Vipassana retreat.

It's out now on InsightTimer,

And available through my profile.

I invite you to check it out.