Vipassana Experience (Part 2)

The experience within meditation is not the goal.

Still, I relish the awareness and richness of those moments. During the 10-day Vipassana course, each session and each day presented a different experience, distinct from my moments in mantra meditation. All are very beautiful. The journey was not easy but truly necessary to me.

In the beginning, we were introduced to apana meditation, the mind sharpening with the awareness of the incoming breath and outgoing breath, focusing with each touch of the breath. I felt the awareness of my boundaries dissolve into what I felt like the skin of a water bubble, colored like a puddle marred by oil. As we refined the technique in the next few days and amidst the craziness of my own thoughts, the experience became a clean white space of stillness.

On the fourth day and upon learning Vipassana, the experiences became more powerful - from the tingling sensations of honey flowing slowly from the top of my head to golden stardust in shimmer sweeps from head to foot and foot to head -- and then to a hundred samurais piercing top to bottom and side to side. The entire body was bright with currents of sensation.  This was a first for me as these are usually concentrated on my hands and arms. These are not visualizations, though. My metaphors are just my own interpretation of the sensory experience. In this technique, there is no use of imagery, words or imagination.

In Vipassana, sometimes my hands would move into mudras. I did not know what these more complex gestures mean but have begun my research. The first time, my hands turned up to open palms and in the following experiences, moved into interlaced fingers, index fingers touching, thumbs touching. At another session, one hand rested on my knee while the other in jnana mudra, resting at the center.

At one point during the 4th day, the sensations of discomfort became so immensely intense on my knees but I stayed focused on the technique. The next sensation was one that lifted me from the pain. My spine lengthened. The sensation remained present but the aversion was gone. I was above it in that elevated state. And stayed seated in half lotus long after the session was over. At the end, I was transformed. In yoga, this must be the tapas burning away samskara (sangkara, as explained in the discourse). Amazingly enough, the knee pain left and sitting became relatively comfortable after.

During the 4th and 5th day of Vipassana sessions, I would also feel various sensations of choking at the throat, pressure at the heart and at the solar plexus area. This left me after a day. I felt also that lengthening of the spine - on the periphery thinking how tall I could sit as if my entire torso to the top had extended itself. I did not open my eyes. There was also a sensation of buoyancy, of being lifted as if by balloons, and then that pulsating pressure in the space above in between my eyebrows. That remained until the last day. On that last day, I felt pressure in the middle of my palms and a clockwise spinning on both. I do not know what these mean just yet.

Even as these experiences happen, I succumb to the mind drifting into various thoughts and memories. A hundred hours of sitting can cover plenty of recurrent mind trash, and as intensely as I thought and remembered, these were purged - sangkaras floating to the surface, rising up like bubbles and bursting into infinitesimal nothing.

My breakthrough would be the breakdown of the last of the painful ones, the thoughts of unforgiven hurts, the ones I kept and fed in secret. I thought they would survive the ten days. I was in tears. Just in time though, after the years, they are finally forgiven.

 These are my Vipassana experiences - surreal, unexpected, welcome, and at times, overwhelming. And yet, I remain detached from them. Thankful for what they are and nothing more.

At the end of my ten days, I ran into the arms of my waiting husband. Grateful to be, in a deeper sense, free.