In this note, I want to tell you about my 10-day meditation retreat that I went through last spring. It seems to me that now is the time to tell about the results, as they have passed the test of time.
Everything that is written below is only my personal experience and does not pretend to be complete and objective, like the personal experience of any other person.
I became interested in meditation about two years ago. The reason is simple — the older I got, the more acutely I felt the stress of everyday work, and indeed modern life in general. They also added fuel to the fire of personal expectations — "you are already ... years old, and you have not achieved anything yet. At that age, Gates, Jobs were already...".
As a result, I was constantly sullen, rude to people, was very irritable, concentrated on the negative, sometimes got pleasure from the fact that something did not work out for someone ... In a word, I was a typical representative of modern society.
I understood that this should not be the case and that such a condition is not normal, even though it is ubiquitous. I read a few articles and a couple of books about meditation and started trying on my own. It was going hard enough. I didn't fully understand what to do and how to do it, and most often my meditation was either a dream session or a doze session.
I started looking for a teacher, visited several schools in Kiev, but I didn't like any of them. Some even looked like sects, where they were asked to hand over money for no clear reason, and in others the teachers were even more nervous and unbalanced than me, which was alarming. In a word, things were moving slowly and not in a very clear direction.
Then I accidentally(?) I found information about a meditation retreat near Kiev. I read the information on the site and I liked the essence. I decided to give it a try. As a last resort, I drove my car so that I could escape at any moment.
My wife and I arrived, met the organizers and settled into our rooms. The rules at first seemed very strict and even impossible:
At first, these rules seemed too strict to me. I was thinking to myself — "how in general can a modern person live 10 days without a mobile phone or Internet?". I also didn't understand the rule about what not to say. The rest of the rules also looked quite difficult to implement, and most of them were also incomprehensible. As, for example, with physical exercises. But then it turned out that no one really monitors their implementation — everything is given to us for self-control. I managed to complete them all, and then I realized why they were needed!
The daily schedule also scared me at first — getting up at 4 o'clock in the morning, a lot of meditation sessions throughout the day… To my surprise, it was very easy for me to get up at this time.
What pleasantly surprised me from the very first day was the food — excellent vegetarian buffet… I remember, and my mouth is watering. By the way, now, in everyday life, I also adhere to vegetarianism, but sometimes I allow myself to eat some fish (in sushi).
In a word, before the start of the course there was more frightening than attractive. It seemed that I would not be able to withstand such a schedule and such rules, but I was also not going to give up easily – I had to check myself.
A few hours later, an English teacher arrived. From the very first moment, he seemed to be a very kind and open person. He gave instructions on meditation and we agreed to follow the rules described above. That's how the course started.
At first, meditation was given to me with great difficulty — I could not concentrate, thoughts were swarming in my head, my back and legs ached… At that moment I realized that the brain was like a big swamp pit: constantly wandering, restless, polluted …
By the way, you can test yourself and get to know the reality of your mind better. Take a pen, put a counter on any timer for two minutes and during these two minutes try to think only about this particular pen. Only 2 minutes. However, it's amazing to realize that you don't control your brain. He is constantly jumping, spreading, some unnecessary thoughts, expectations, reflections about the future or the past are constantly flying into him… That was the case with me.
But over time, just a little bit, little by little, my brain began to calm down, learned to concentrate and do what I wanted. And then I realized the purpose of strict rules — their only task was to protect us from the influx of external information that could interfere with practice and re-alarm the brain. What kind of meditation would it be if your employees called you every day? All the rules were aimed at calming the brain and not giving it new information that it could begin to digest.
By the 6th day, my meditations had become magnificent. I began to feel happy, my brain became calm and concentrated. All my problems have found an easy and effective solution. It seemed that for the first time I was so happy for such a long time. Despite the fact that we woke up at 4 o'clock in the morning, I was full of physical strength and felt rested. There was even a sense of some kind of unity and harmony with everything around. It was a wonderful, unforgettable experience.
My wife couldn't follow all the rules – at the end of the course she broke down and filled half of the notebook with poems for children. Besides, she had never done it much, and here she did it with ease, without thinking about the words and rhyme – everything seemed to go by itself.
The course is over and it's time to return to your everyday reality. After the course, I could not remember how to drive a car normally for another 3 hours. It was a good thing it was Sunday, otherwise I could have done something bad on the road.
Have the results been preserved after I returned to Kiev and returned to work? Partly. Now I systematically practice meditation at home, in the park, while waiting for my turn at the polyclinic… I managed to effectively deal with the lingering problems that were constantly gnawing at me earlier. And in general, I became somehow more sensitive, began to help people somehow spontaneously, began to see the world around me and feel part of it. Became somehow more relaxed...
It helps me a lot in my daily life. Yes, I haven't gotten rid of all the problems, yes, I can still get angry sometimes. But it happens much less often and now it's not difficult for me to see it at the moment when it happens, stop it and apologize for my behavior.
But in order not to have any inflated expectations, I want to say that meditation is not some kind of Red Pill that I took once and everything around me became good. This is the way. A path that requires effort and perseverance. But I'm sure many of you would like to feel more calm, balanced and balanced. And it seems to me that this is a great tool to achieve this.
Probably, after reading this article, you will think that some guy with dreadlocks in a long white hoodie is writing it. That's not so. At the moment, I hold senior positions in several companies related to Internet projects and Internet marketing. I live in Kiev, not somewhere in the mountains. I have a wife and a son. I'm not a hermit or a fanatic. I have tried this tool and it gives me results that justify the time and effort spent on it.
It seems to me that this is one of the best life hacks I've tried in the last few years.
